hankyoreh

Two former spy agency chiefs were convicted for illegally wiretapping the phone conversations of civilians during the Kim Dae-jung administration.

Lim Dong-won, 72 and Shin Gunn, 65, who both served as director of the National Intelligence Service (NIS), received three years’ imprisonment and four-year suspended sentences.

The Seoul District Court said, “As NIS agents were used for illegal wiretap operations for a long time, and they were certainly informed by special agents, [the accused] must have known about the unlawful activities of the organization. As directors of NIS, they had an obligation to prevent violations of freedom...but they failed to stop their agents from unlawfully spying on civilians. As if they directly allowed such illegal activities to happen,” the court added.

In explaining its rather lenient sentences, the court said that “the behavior of both defendants is sharply different from wrongdoings of business owners or corrupt public employees pursuing personal profit. Moreover, the illegal wiretapping is, by nature, a government agency’s unlawful actions against the people. Therefore, we cannot ask these defendants to bear total responsibility [for the entire agency], as they served as chiefs of the spy agency for a short period.”

According to the verdict, the two former NIS directors did not give the direct command to collect information through the wiretaps, but were passively involved in the illegal scheme by permitting and/or observing it.

In response to the ruling, Shin told reporters he will seek an appeal, while Lim said merely that he would consult his lawyer. The two men were arrested and indicted last December for illegally intercepting telephone conversations of high-profile civilians while operating a special unit as directors of the NIS. Both were released on bail shortly after being charged.