hankyoreh

By Lee Kyung-mi, staff reporter

Evidence has surfaced that the National Intelligence Service (NIS) distributed gifts to senior writers and reporters at conservative newspapers, asking them to cover specific topics in their columns.

In a Mar. 10 hearing in the trial of former NIS director Won Sei-hoon - held in the 21st criminal division of the Seoul Central Court, with Hon. Lee Beom-gyun presiding - public prosecutors revealed that members of the NIS Twitter team had systematically shared articles by conservative and right-wing figures on Twitter. Won, 63, faces charges of manipulating public opinion in the 2012 presidential election and interfering with politics.

According to the prosecutors, a leader of the NIS’s Twitter Security Team No. 5 surnamed Jang sent an email on Apr. 2009 to a civilian contractor surnamed Son and told him to ask editorial writers at conservative papers to run columns on particular topics.

On several occasions, Jang also sent Son lists of names and addresses of people who speak from the conservative point of view, including senior writers at conservative papers, online media, and research centers, instructing Son to send them gifts. In addition, Jang asked Son to share articles from conservative newspapers on Twitter. The NIS official also taught Son how to increase the number of followers and how to use an automated program in order to spread this information systematically.


“Through ongoing tracking and analysis, we have also confirmed that the NIS shared articles from conservative and right-wing papers using automated programs,” the prosecutors said.

Furthermore, a security text file that the prosecutors located in the email inbox of an NIS Twitter team agent surnamed Kim lists the Twitter accounts of conservative and right-wing newspapers whose tweets were supposed to be distributed using the automated program. Four or five of the accounts which were particularly active were labeled as “important.”

The list includes the account of Rev. Yun Jeong-hun, who headed up the Crusading Part-Time Force, or Shibaldan in Korean, an organization that campaigned on Twitter for Park Geun-hye, presidential candidate for the Saenuri Party (NFP), during the 2012 presidential election.

Not only did the NIS retweet posts by Rev. Yun, but prosecutors also found that dozens of NIS accounts were operated in support of Shibaldan.

Convicted on charges of running a Twitter campaign in support of Park, Rev. Yun was sentenced to 10 months in prison, suspended for two years.

In Kim’s inbox were files containing the issues and talking points for each day along with the Twitter posts that were to be retweeted. The files had various titles, including “Park Chung-hee,” “Privatization of Incheon Airport,” “Ahn Cheol-su,” “Irregular [workers],” “Judges,” and “Food Security.”

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]