hankyoreh

At a candlelight demonstration on Oct. 29

Then-President Lee Myung-bak personally ordered additional increases in staffing for the Military Cyber Command in 2012 ahead of the general election in April and the presidential election in December, a document suggests. The timing for Lee’s additional order, which came after a previous staffing increase in 2010, came while the command was reporting to the Blue House on its “internet posting operations,” suggesting an increased likelihood that the president was aware of the illegal nature of its activities when he ordered the increases.

Democratic Party lawmaker and National Assembly Legislation and Judiciary Committee member Jung Sung-ho provided this explanation to the Hankyoreh on Oct. 22 after reading a confidential national defense document titled “Unit 1011’s Periodic Unit Planning Report, 2012.” The name “Unit 1011” refers to the Military Cyber Command.

Running some 40 pages and signed by Cyber Commander Yeon Je-wook and Chief of Staff Ok Do-kyung, the document included a passage reading, “2/1/2012: President re-emphasizes staff increase. Discussions to be held with Ministry of Strategy and Finance as soon as possible to ensure necessary capacity and increase workforce.”

Lee was recently confirmed to have issued his first order for increased Cyber Command staffing verbally at a Nov. 12 meeting of Blue House secretaries in 2010, the same year the command was established on Jan. 11. During the meeting, Lee was quoted as calling for “expanded Military Cyber Command staffing,” stressing that “currently serving soldiers and civilian workers” needed to be added and that soldiers should be “used as civilian staffers once their mandatory military service period ends and they are discharged.”

One crucial difference exists between Lee’s initial order in 2010 and his second in Feb. 2012. With the first, it is unclear whether Lee was aware of the illegal nature of the command’s internet posting operation. At the time of the Feb. 2012 order, however, Lee is very likely to have been aware. On Oct. 1, a Ministry of National Defense task force reinvestigating the command’s internet posts issued interim findings reporting the “discovery of 462 documents reported by the Cyber Command the Blue House through KJCCS [the Korean Joint Command and Control System] and the national defense intranet between Jan. 8, 2011, and Nov. 15, 2012.”

It emerged at the time that psychological warfare division 530, ostensibly founded for “defense against North Korea psychological warfare toward the South,” was deviating from its original mission and providing “daily cyber trend” reports to the Blue House over KJCCS, including information on social media activities by celebrities, results from the Apr. 27 by-election, and trends in connection with candlelight protests against US beef imports.

The document indicates that Lee’s “renewed order” for increased Cyber Command staffing came in the middle of this period on Feb. 1, 2012 – suggesting that a possible connection between Lee and the command’s illegal internet activities will need to be investigated.

The document’s content also ties in with another document from Mar. 10, 2012, titled “Results of BH [Blue House] cooperation meeting on Cyber Command,” which was reported on by the Hankyoreh last month. In the document, the Cyber Command stated that the “net increase in staffing is not based on Ministry of Strategy and Finance consideration, but is a presidential order, and it should be stipulated during cooperation with the Ministry that this is a ‘something the President has ordered twice.’” The follow-up meeting was held in March following orders given by Lee in Feb. 2012.

“The ‘Unit 1011 Periodic Unit Planning Report, 2012’ document appears to have been used for discussions with the Blue House and Ministry of Strategy and Finance when the Cyber Command reported to Minister of National Defense Kim Kwan-jin in connection with a staffing increase,” said Jung Sung-ho.

“Now that it has been confirmed that the Cyber Command’s staffing was increased on orders from President Lee Myung-bak, Lee’s investigation by prosecutors appears inevitable,” he added.

By Kim Kyu-nam, staff reporter

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