HAPPENING NOW:
How the Insurrectionists Breached the Capitol
In the Face of the Fascist Threat, an Epic US Intelligence Failure
Behind the IRGC-Hezbollah Alliance, Soleimani Bonded With Mugniyeh’s Family
Former U.S. Defense Secretaries Warn Against a Military Coup
Россия: Главное разведывательное управление (ГРУ)
Among the Most Popular Stories of 2020: JFK Records Suit Tests CIA Secrecy
‘Eyes in the Sky’: The Scary Realities of Wide Area Surveillance
中国:国家安全部(MSS)
Inside The Five Eyes: ‘Like a Moon Base’
Will U.S. See a Rural Insurgency?
Bellingcat: FSB Team of Chemical Weapon Experts Implicated in Alexey Navalny Novichok Poisoning
Россия: Федеральная Служба Безопасности (ФСБ)
RIP: Jerrold Post, CIA Profiler Who Said Trump Was a ‘Malignant Narcissist’
Iran’s Intelligence Service (in Farsi ایران: وزارت اطلاعات و امنیت ( واجا) و سپاہ پاسداران انقلاب جمھوری ایران (سپاہ)
The Five Eyes See ‘Every Corner of the Globe’
美国:国家安全局(NSA)
The FBI, the Law, and the Growing Threat of Trump Terrorism
Pakistan’s ‘Deep State’: پاکستان: انٹر- سروسز انٹلی جینس (آئی ایس آئی)
Paradigm Shift by Pandemic
South Korea: National Intelligence Service (NIS)
Up From the Cold War
The functions of the National Intelligence Service (NIS) include:
- collection, coordination and distribution of South Korea’s strategy and security
- the investigation of crimes related to national security
- maintenance of materials, documents and facilities related to the nation’s classified information
- and the planning and coordination of classified and public information.
South Korean intelligence agencies have played a central–and sometimes bloody–role in the country’s politics and foreign policy.
The NIS, created in 1998, was a successor agency to the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA), which dominated South Korea’s government during the Cold War. The first director of the KCIA, Kim Jong-pil, helped lead the 1961 military coup that brought President Park Chung-hee to power. Park’s government used the agency suppress and disrupt anti-government and student protests for two decades. Then, in 1979, Park was assassinated during a dinner meeting by KCIA director Kim Jae-gyu. Kim was subsequently hanged.
Politics
The NIS, created to reduce the agency’s influence in domestic politics, continued to become embroiled in political scandals. After the country’s 2012 presidential election, NIS officials admitted they conducted an illicit campaign in favor of a conservative candidate, Park Geun-hye, who defeated her liberal rival, Moon Jae-in. In June 2018 three former NIS directors (Lee Byung-kee, Lee Byung-ho, and Nam Jae-joon) were found guilty of illegally passing money to President Park’s office for use as bribes.
When Moon Jae-in won the presidency in 2017, he promised to take the NIS out of politics. The NIS has played an important role in assessing the state of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal and supporting Moon’s efforts to forge an agreement between North Korea and the United States to denuclearize the Korean peninsula and end the Korean war.
The NIS director is Park Jie-won. The agency’s budget is classified.