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The new logo of the National Intelligence Service

After eight years, the National Intelligence Service (NIS) has changed its organizational motto again.

The NIS announced on June 13 that it had adopted the new motto of “soundless dedication solely for the protection and glory of the Republic of Korea.” The service described it as “meaning that we intend to guard this five-thousand-year-old country from threats and become a cornerstone for the limitless development and prosperity of the great Republic of Korea.”

The motto change is the NIS’s third. Previously “we work in the shadows toward the bright land” since the 1961 founding of the Korea Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA), it was changed to “intelligence is national power” with the Kim Dae-jung administration’s 1998 renaming of the Agency for National Security Planning (ANSP) to its current National Intelligence Service. The motto was changed yet again to “nameless dedication to freedom and truth” during the first year of the Lee Myung-bak administration in 2008, after the NIS decided the existing motto “failed to properly reflect our duties and functions as an intelligence organization and our agents’ sense of mission.”

In addition to the new motto, the NIS also changed its emblem. The previous emblem, made in 1998, showed a compass and flame, while the new one shows a “taegeuk” swirl pattern (which appears on the South Korean flag) and flame flanked by a dragon and tiger above and below.

The NIS described the new emblem as “reviving the Korean nation‘s spirit to show the NIS’s momentous task in guarding the Republic of Korea, achieving unification under liberal democracy, and making the Republic of Korea great.”

Meanwhile, the NIS is also holding a contest offering prizes for research papers on security and criminal law as part of an effort to revise laws and institutions connected with its authority, including the National Security Law and systems related to wiretapping and the evidentiary power of digital materials. The top prize is 5 million won (US$4,270), with two papers awarded runner-up prizes of 3 million won (US$2,560) each and 20 to receive participation prizes of 500,000 won (US$430) each. It is the unprecedented in South Korean history for an intelligence organization has offered prize money to encourage legal and institutional changes to bolster its authority.

By Kim Nam-il, staff reporter

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