hankyoreh

A panoramic view of National Intelligence Service.

Now that the Anti-Terror Act has taken effect, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) is moving into full swing with terrorism intelligence collection and countermeasures. While the spy agency is already under fire for exaggerating terrorism intelligence and releasing personal information about civilians just a fortnight after the bill became law, it is dragging its feet about appointing an anti-terror human rights officer and providing organizational support for that officer, as it promised to do in order to offset the negative effects of increasing its authority. Before launching its counterterrorism activity, the agency should first ensure that the human rights officer can do their work, experts argue.

The Anti-Terror Act calls for the establishment of a center under the Prime Minister to oversee counterterrorism activity nationwide. Accordingly, the office for government policy coordination appointed Moon Yeong-gi, a brigadier general in the reserves and former assistant commander of the special operations command for the ROK army, as the first director of the counterterrorism center on June 10. The appointment was made swiftly, coming just one week after the Anti-Terror Act took effect.

In contrast, the position of the counterterrorism human rights officer, which was included in the law as a concession to fierce opposition from civic groups and opposition parties, remains unoccupied, 20 days after the law was promulgated.

The human rights officer, who will serve for two years, is supposed to be appointed by Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn, the chair of the national terrorism countermeasures council.

The responsibilities of the human rights officer include offering advice about how counterterrorism policies and institutions can protect human rights, making suggestions about how to improve those policies and institutions, handling complaints about human rights violations that occur during counterterrorism activities and making proposals about how to prevent such violations.

The position of human rights officer has already been criticized as being a paper tiger with far too little status and authority. Not only is the officer basically prevented for reasons of security from even accessing the telecommunications, financial, and location information collection activities of the NIS - which is the crux of the Anti-Terror Act - but it may be impossible for a single officer to regulate all of the wide range of counterterrorism activity.

When asked about the late appointment of the human rights officer, an official at the Prime Minister’s office said, “We are in the final stages of vetting candidates for human rights officer. Prime Minister Hwang will make the appointment soon.”

“I think that we are seeing these side effects because they started out with just the counterterrorism functions. If the human rights officer is to have any significance, the government needs to be committed to using a transparent process to appoint someone who will be acceptable to everyone. But I get the feeling that the government isn‘t even able to do that,” said Oh Dong-seok, a professor in the law school at Ajou University.

If the Prime Minister’s office finally gets around to appointing the human rights officer, the officer’s first task could be figuring out why the NIS exaggerated terrorism information about the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and investigating the human rights violations related to its disclosure of personal information about a South Korean citizen.

On June 19, the NIS claimed that ISIL had called for terrorist attacks on a South Korean national surnamed Kim and released a press release containing Kim’s full name and address.

In the face of ensuing controversy, the NIS told the National Assembly’s Intelligence Committee on June 20 that there was a miniscule chance of Kim actually being attacked by terrorists and that the agency had been trying to make the public more alert. But the agency is now facing criticism for stoking fear of terrorism by blowing intelligence reports out of proportion.

The response from other countries whose citizens have been included on ISIL hit lists is reportedly quite different from the NIS.

“In Canada, where about 150 civilians have been included on lists of ISIL targets, the government has only taken measures after first explaining to each of these people the situation [that the lists were designed to instill fear in the public]. But in South Korea, the information was provided to the press before the person in question was even aware that they were on the list. I think the government was too careless in its response,” said Park Hyeon-do, a professor of Islamic Studies at the Institute of Middle Eastern Affairs at Myongji University, during an interview with KBS radio.

By Kim Nam-il and Kim Jin-cheol, staff reporters

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