Ahead of Yoon's US Visit, US Eavesdropping Allegations... Pentagon "Reviewing the Matter"

Confidential documents of the U.S. government leaked online have revealed that the U.S. government conducted wiretapping and eavesdropping on allied countries, including South Korea. With President Yoon Suk-yeol's upcoming visit to the U.S. at the end of this month, the allegations of U.S. wiretapping have drawn attention to the potential impact on future South Korea-U.S. relations. The U.S. government stated that it is actively examining the matter.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

According to a compilation of U.S. media reports on the 10th, the confidential U.S. documents suspected of wiretapping, which spread through social network services (SNS), included conversations between former National Security Office Director Kim Sung-han and former diplomatic secretary Lee Moon-hee regarding artillery support for Ukraine.

According to the documents, when former Secretary Lee mentioned the possibility of officially announcing weapons support for Ukraine, former Director Kim noted that it could be misunderstood as deciding on weapons support in exchange for the upcoming South Korea-U.S. summit.

The New York Times (NYT) reported that the information included expressions indicating it was obtained from a 'SIGINT (signals intelligence)' report. SIGINT refers to signals intelligence used by U.S. intelligence agencies for wiretapping phone calls and electronic messages.

The leaked confidential documents reportedly also included information related to other countries such as the United Kingdom and Israel. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that the documents contained information related to domestic issues of various countries, including allies.

Currently, the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating the allegations of confidential documents being leaked on SNS.

In response to domestic media inquiries regarding this matter, the U.S. Department of Defense explained, "The Department of Defense is actively examining this issue" and "has officially requested an investigation from the Department of Justice." This reaffirmed the position expressed earlier on the 7th when confidential U.S. documents related to the Ukraine war spread through social media (SNS).

In particular, the U.S. wiretapping allegations have emerged just before President Yoon's state visit at the end of this month, drawing attention to the potential repercussions on South Korea-U.S. relations. Since the location of intelligence collection is presumed to be within South Korea rather than the U.S. mainland, public opinion may call for a strong response from the South Korean government. If domestic public sentiment worsens over this issue, the significance of the first state visit in 12 years could be diminished, and there is a possibility of negative effects on South Korea-U.S. relations.

This is not the first time the U.S. government has been caught wiretapping allied countries.

The most widely known case was in 2013 when Edward Snowden exposed the indiscriminate information collection by U.S. intelligence agencies. Snowden, who worked at the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) was collecting personal information of millions of its own citizens without authorization through the surveillance program 'PRISM' and was monitoring allied country leaders including those of South Korea, Japan, France, and Germany.

In particular, it was revealed that the NSA even wiretapped the phone of then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel, which caused tensions between the two countries for some time. Former U.S. President Barack Obama promised to stop wiretapping allied country leaders, but this promise was not kept.

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