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staff photographer)

By Kim Jeong-pil, political correspondent and Seok Jin-hwan, Blue House correspondent

In connection with charges that the National Intelligence Service (NIS) falsified evidence in the espionage trial of an ethnic Chinese North Korean refugee and former Seoul public servant, the prosecutors carried out a sudden search and seizure operation of the NIS on Mar. 10. This is the third time the NIS has been raided by the prosecutors, following a wiretapping case in 2005 and a 2013 investigation into charges that the NIS manipulated public opinion and interfered in politics during the 2012 presidential election.



With the country’s highest intelligence agency being raided on multiple occasions for abusing its security assets, it has been suggested that it has given up its reason for existing.

The team headed by Yun Gap-geun from the Seoul Central Prosecutors' Office - which is investigating the case - searched the NIS headquarters in Seoul's Seocho district, at 5 pm on Mar. 10.



On Monday, the prosecutors sent an investigation team to the NIS offices associated with the falsified documents. Internal documents were seized, data from the NIS intranet and computer servers, and records of the investigation into the case in which documents were falsified.



Ten investigators and prosecutors took part in Monday’s raid, including No Jeong-hwan, director of external affairs for the Seoul Central Prosecutors' Office, and two other prosecutors from the investigation team. After receiving a search warrant from the court the preceding weekend, the prosecutors carried out the raid on Monday with the cooperation of the NIS.



This is the third time that the prosecutors have carried out a search of the NIS.

In Aug. 2005, the agency was raided for the first time in what became known as the “X-File” case, involving illegal wiretapping of politicians, bureaucrats, and civic organizations. In Apr. 2013, the NIS was searched once again in connection with suspicions of manipulating public opinion ahead of the 2012 presidential election.

Little more than a year since a NIS agent was investigated for making politically motivated posts online just before the election, the agency was raided by the prosecutors in connection to the fabrication of foreign documents related to the defendant in an espionage case.

Before the raid, President Park Geun-hye brought the issue up while presiding over a meeting of her secretariat in the Blue House on Monday morning. “In relation to the ongoing trial of a Seoul public servant who is accused of violating the National Security Law, the controversy that is taking place about falsifying the evidence and data is deeply regrettable,” Park said. “We must swiftly and accurately uncover the truth about this situation so that we can assuage public doubt.”



This was the first time that Park commented publicly about charges that the NIS had falsified evidence of espionage. It seems likely that she concluded that she could no longer ignore a situation that was having a bigger impact as time went and as the country’s intelligence agency became implicated in the case.



“The prosecutors must investigate this case thoroughly so as to leave not a single trace of suspicion, while the NIS must cooperate fully with the prosecutors’ investigation,” Park said. “If any problems are detected with the results of the investigation, these will have to be corrected.”

However, she did not mention the appointment of a special prosecutor or the replacement of NIS Director Nam Jae-joon, which the opposition political parties have been requesting.


“At this point, the NIS will need to be redesigned from the ground up,” said an official with the prosecutors on condition of anonymity.

“If the NIS used public security assets to interfere with the presidential election inside the country and to falsify the documents of a foreign state outside of the country, it must not be allowed to exist.”

“It is likely that intelligence agencies in other countries will not trade information with the NIS, since its offices get raided every year,” the official said.



There are questions about how effective the prosecutor’s search on Monday was. Since the layout of the NIS headquarters is not public knowledge, there is no way of knowing exactly which tasks were done in which places. As a result, the prosecutors had no option but to carry out the search in the areas to which NIS staff directed them.



Furthermore, considering that 24 days have passed since the press conference on Feb. 14 when MINBYUN-Lawyers for a Democratic Society brought forward allegations that documents had been falsified, the NIS would have had a chance to destroy evidence of this. Indeed, when the prosecutors searched the NIS last year in connection with allegations of manipulation of public opinion in the 2012 presidential election, NIS Director Nam Jae-joon did not sufficiently cooperate with the prosecutors, preventing them from getting their hands on much evidence.

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