COMMENTARY South Korea's 'heroic' spy By
David Scofield
South Korea's media and elected
officials have been heralding the patriotic virtue of a
Korean-American released on house arrest after serving
seven years in a US prison on espionage charges - a
national celebration of deceit that may further cloud
the "future of the alliance". Meanwhile, the ninth round
of the US-South Korea Future of the Alliance Talks
dragged on - concluding on Tuesday without reaching a
resolution on contentious issues concerning the timing
of a US Forces in Korea (USFK) withdrawal from Seoul and
the allocation of land south of Seoul for the
development of a unified USFK facility.
In 1997,
Robert (Chae-gon) Kim, a naturalized US citizen since
1974, was convicted of using his position and access to
highly sensitive, top-secret information at the Office
of Naval Intelligence to locate and pass off top-secret
intelligence on North Korean submarine movements and
Chinese naval deployments to South Korean naval attache
Baek Dong-il. Evidence has it that he offered his
services to the South Koreans in a bid to build trust
and potentially pave the way for more lucrative acts of
duplicity in the future.
According to US Federal
Bureau of Investigation wiretaps, Robert Kim and his
brother Kim Yung-gon devised a plan to "acquire",
reverse engineer and sell a secret US military computer
system to the South Korean government, a plan that if
successful would likely have ensured the two brothers a
huge windfall for their efforts. Robert Kim acquired
export permits and licenses that would have allowed the
Kim brothers to export stolen, sensitive technology to
South Korea under the guise of normal technology trade.
These licenses were ultimately revoked by the US
Department of Commerce in June 2000.
Espionage
in intelligence agencies is not new. Money, blackmail -
the motivators are many, but the gall of Kim claiming
his treasonous behavior was motivated only by love of
his birth country is frustrating, not supported by fact,
and wholeheartedly accepted by the South Korean press
and relayed as truth to the Korean people, many of whom
consider Kim a hero and a patriot - nationality
notwithstanding.
That Robert Kim is guilty of
sedition is incontrovertible. He was not tried and found
guilty, but rather pleaded guilty to "conspiring to
gather national defense information" when confronted
with the mountain of evidence investigators had
compiled. He pleaded guilty and cut a deal on
sentencing; a deal that in 1997 reflected the strong
desire of the US government to maintain the perception
of a strong US-South Korea alliance, vital to
maintaining the deterrence component of the 1994 Agreed
Framework with North Korea.
But these facts are
conveniently avoided in the South Korean press, and by
extension, ignored by the South Korean people. Robert
Kim, with a nudge and a wink from the South Korean
government, is being portrayed in all media sources,
left, right and center, as a patriot who selflessly
sacrificed for his homeland. There has been no
discussion of his financial problems: the US$200,000 in
credit-card debt the assistant US attorney asserted
during Kim's bail hearing; the export license he
acquired; the highly sensitive technology he was hoping
to sell to the government of South Korea; to say nothing
of the fact he's still clutching his US citizenship,
apparently in no hurry to settle in the land of his true
patriot love, South Korea.
The intentional
exclusion of relevant facts related to his case by South
Korea's media and government is an example of a national
tendency to bifurcation, a bipolar approach to the world
that portrays issues as starkly "good or bad", with any
act committed in defense of Korea's "pride" being good.
Reality and logic take a back seat to a system of
institutionalized myth-making that makes a hero of
someone like Robert Kim, a national myth that bears
little resemblance to the truth, and casts the "alliance
formed in blood" with the United States in doubt.
The government of South Korea does not seem at
all embarrassed about the celebration of Kim's
"espionage in the name of Korea". Indeed, sitting
lawmakers, the press and various civic groups have been
very vocal in demanding that Kim be allowed to return
"home", regardless of his US nationality or the fact
that he's spent the past 30 years living in the United
States.
While Robert Kim sits out his house
detention at his home in Virginia, his South Korean
support groups are kicking activities into high gear in
anticipation of his eventual return to Korea - though
the Korean patriot has not indicated he'll be giving up
his US citizenship any time soon.
The chairman
of President Roh Moo-hyun's Our Open Party pledged his
party's support for Robert Kim and his family - Robert's
brother Kim Song-gon is now a sitting member of the
party. Robert Kim "Aid Associations" have been
sponsoring "white envelope" meetings, hoping to collect
more than $4 million for South Korea's spy - a
retroactive salary of more than $500,000 a year for the
seven-plus years Kim spent in prison. The National
Assembly is hosting a public exhibition of his pictures,
while newspaper editorials express hope that Kim will
"come home" and tour South Korea's schools giving
lessons on how to be a patriotic Korean - a guide to
duplicity and advice on how to use a position of trust
for personal gain, all while wrapping the whole vile
exercise in the flag of patriotism.
Robert Kim
is not a patriot of any country. He is a deeply
corrupted American of Korean ethnicity who used his
position of trust within the United States government to
further his own agenda. He made it known to his South
Korean handlers that he would be more than happy to
violate both laws and any remaining ethics or morals he
may have had in order to build trust and buy him the
credibility necessary to broker even larger, more
lucrative illegal transactions in the future.
The nation's reaction to Kim and the insistence
that he was somehow noble in his quest to enrich himself
through espionage is absurd and deals a further blow to
what remains of the "future of the alliance".
David Scofield, former lecturer at the
Graduate Institute of Peace Studies, Kyung Hee
University, is currently conducting post-graduate
research at the School of East Asian Studies, University
of Sheffield, United Kingdom.
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