[Yang Nak-gyu's Defence Club] 'SI Disclosure' Impossible Without US Cooperation

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Yang Nak-gyu, Military Specialist Reporter] There are growing prospects that the disclosure of information that could reveal the truth about the case of the public official killed by the North Korean military will be practically difficult. This is because the information was obtained by the U.S. side, making disclosure impossible without U.S. cooperation. This is why the Ministry of National Defense is showing caution in releasing information.

On the 21st, the Ministry of National Defense stated, “Regarding information disclosure, we will follow regulations and procedures, but we take a cautious stance on indiscriminate disclosure of intelligence assets by the Intelligence Headquarters.”

Since the disappearance of Mr. Lee in September 2020, the military has explained in briefings that based on Special Intelligence (SI), there were circumstances suggesting that Mr. Lee voluntarily attempted to defect to the North. In the October National Assembly audit of that year, the military also revealed that the word ‘defection to the North’ appeared in the information they had detected.

The term ‘defection to the North’ likely came from intelligence assets obtained by the U.S. military. The U.S. military uses RC-135 Rivet Joint aircraft, which collect electronic communication intelligence to eavesdrop on North Korean communications, and RC-12X Guardrail reconnaissance aircraft for interception missions. Although our military also possesses the signal intelligence collector ‘Baekdu,’ it mainly operates in forward land areas, so for eavesdropping in the West Sea maritime area, U.S. intelligence is superior.

At that time, the video information was also captured by the U.S. military. It is known that the U.S. intelligence satellite ‘Key Hole’ identified 10 cm objects on the North Korean ground using infrared detectors to film floating objects. Our military deployed the Israeli-made Heron unmanned reconnaissance drone over the West Sea NLL maritime area but failed to detect the killed public official.

Generally, the decision to disclose military-handled information is first made by the responsible department. If the department deems disclosure possible, it can be made after review by the Ministry of National Defense’s Information Disclosure Deliberation Committee and approval by the minister. However, if the U.S. side is reluctant to disclose information, the issue of disclosure inevitably ends up as a political controversy.

This is similar to the 2012 NLL dialogue transcript leak incident. At that time, Jeong Moon-heon, a Saenuri Party lawmaker, claimed that former President Roh Moo-hyun said to Kim Jong-il, the National Defense Commission Chairman, during the 2007 inter-Korean summit that he would ‘abandon the NLL.’ Although political controversy continued over this, the released dialogue transcript proved it groundless.

Meanwhile, on the 20th, the People Power Party stated that they would investigate not only this case but also the “2019 forced repatriation of North Korean fishermen” incident. On the same day, Woo Sang-ho, the Democratic Party’s emergency committee chairman, opposed this by saying, “They want to claim that it was fabricated as a defection to the North at that time, but where would the Moon Jae-in administration have had a motive to fabricate it as defection to the North?” The political controversy is intensifying.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.