hankyoreh

An off the record PDF file from the Ministry of Unification about the supposed purge of Ri Yong-gil on Feb. 10.

Three months have passed since the Kaesong Industrial Complex was shut down. That same day saw the “execution” of former Korean People’s Army Chief of General Staff Ri Yong-gil.

Yet Ri recently came back from the dead to appear at the seventh Korean Workers’ Party (KWP) congress, which ended this past May 9. It was an embarrassment for the Park Geun-hye administration, which had previously leaked the false intelligence to the media. The big problem, though, is that it was the result of a structural issue: the misuse and abuse of North Korea intelligence by the Blue House, National Intelligence Service, and other state agencies to suit Park’s policies and perceptions, which are rooted in predictions of an imminent collapse in Pyongyang.

At 11:48 am on Feb. 10, the South Korean government made its final decision to shut down the complex and told the press of an upcoming announcement. At around 3 pm that same day, the Unification Ministry, which was in a commotion over the decision, provided reporters with an “off the record” PDF file titled “North Korea unexpectedly purges Chief of General Staff Ri Yong-gil in early February.” It asked to be cited anonymously as a “North Korea source.”

In addition to stating that North Korea had “executed Chief of General Staff Gen. Ri Yong-gil in early February on charges of ‘factionalism’ and ‘abuse of power and corruption,’” it also described Ri as an “avid drinker” who was “in poor health because of a deteriorating liver.”

But the intelligence ended up proven false when North Korea’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper reported on May 10 that Ri had been named as a KWP Central Military Commission member and politburo candidate member at the first plenary session of the party‘s seventh Central Committee.

The report of Ri’s execution was in itself unusual. “This kind of reporting of North Korea intelligence has not happened since the Unification Ministry was founded,” said a reporter who has covered the ministry since the early 1990s. The Unification Ministry’s function is to analyze North Korea intelligence, not produce it. Even when it has received intelligence from the NIS in the past, it has not made it public.

But the reports about Ri were just one of several recent leaks of intelligence from a “related organization.” A similar situation happened with the group defection of 13 workers at a North Korean restaurant in China. In such cases, the “related organization” is almost without exception the NIS.

After the Hankyoreh printed a May 11 article showing the claims of Ri’s execution to be unfounded, an NIS official telephoned the reporter to insist that “the NIS never made that intelligence public” - effectively confirming speculation that after its decision to shut down the Kaesong Complex, Park‘s Blue House then had the Unification Ministry release “intelligence” produced by the NIS on Ri’s alleged purge.

South Korean intelligence agencies have often been caught empty-handed when accurate and prompt intelligence is needed. One of the most high-profile examples was the Dec. 2011 death of Kim Jong-il. According to Pyongyang‘s official announcement, Kim’s death actually occurred at 8:30 am on Dec. 17. Yet the administration of then-South Korean President Lee Myung-bak did not find out until two days later, when the North‘s Korean Central Television aired a special announcement at noon on Dec. 19. For over fifty hours, an enormous intelligence vacuum had prevailed. It was an especially embarrassing episode for an administration that had boasted of its “awesome” North Korea intelligence, citing then NIS director Kim Sung-ho’s report to the National Assembly on Sept. 12, 2008, that Kim had “recovered enough to brush his teeth” following a stroke earlier that year.

The false reports of Ri’s purge appear connected with the Kaesong Complex’s shutdown. Indeed, it seems likely to have been a way of drawing renewed emphasis to the Pyongyang regime‘s “violence and instability” to counter possible negative opinion at home over the decision. The document on Ri’s execution stressed current leader Kim Jong-un‘s “distrust and anxiety” toward key officials and predicted that his “politics of fear” would result in “senior North Korean officials seeming blindly obedient on the surface, but with deepening inward skepticism.” The execution, it added, was “expected to function to increase the North Korean regime’s instability.”

A structural factor behind the intelligence failure and abuse may have been Park’s longstanding perception of the North Korean regime as being on the verge of collapse.

“Working-level intelligence agents don’t play around when it comes to intelligence,” said a source with abundant experience working with North Korea intelligence within the administration.

“Most of what we have described as ‘intelligence failures’ have been disasters brought on by the top leaders and the ‘tiger moths’ currying favor with them in an attempt to use North Korea issues for domestic political ends,” the source added.

The Park administration and Blue House could now use the Ri intelligence disaster as an occasion for some serious soul-searching.

“The problem lies in the skewed perceptions of President Park Geun-hye, who wants to interpret every purge or execution of a high-ranking North Korean military or party figure like Jang Song-thaek, Hyon Yong-chol, or Ri Yong-gil as a sign of the Kim Jong-un’s instability and imminent collapse,” said a former senior government official.

“For Ri Yong-gil to be confirmed alive and well after the administration essentially announced he had been executed is a serious intelligence failure and misuse that speaks to the need for the Park administration to do some serious reflection on its North Korea policy,” the former official added.

In a briefing on May 11, Ministry of Unification spokesperson Jeong Joon-hee said he had “nothing more to add” on the Ri execution reports.

“The North reported on Ri Yong-gil with a picture. It looks like we’re going to have to take that at face value,” Jeong added.

Another senior administration source said the determination “was made because Ri Yong-gil hadn’t been seen for some time.”

“When it comes to humint [human intelligence], usually about half of it is accurate,” the source added.

By Kim Jin-cheol, Lee Je-hun and Choi Hye-jung, staff reporters

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