This is how North Korea infiltrated the southern unions
What happens in South Korea between the government, trade unions and North Korean spies. The article by Giuseppe Gagliano
South Korean prosecutors have charged four senior members of one of the country's largest trade unions with spying for North Korea. The move, which is seen as highly controversial by South Korea's liberal opposition, came just months after President Yoon Suk Yeol's conservative administration launched what some commentators have described as Korea's largest counterintelligence operation. of the South in over 30 years.
THE OPERATION AGAINST THE SOUTH KOREAN UNIONS
The operation came to light on January 18, when hundreds of police officers, led by National Intelligence Service (NIS) officers, conducted raids on a number of regional offices of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU). Founded in the mid-1990s, KCTU represents over 1.1 million members. Most of its members are supporters of the Democratic Party of Korea (DPK), a centre-left liberal coalition that ruled South Korea until last year.
Since its inception in 2014, the DPK has been engaged in a bitter political rivalry with the People's Power Party (PPP), a conservative coalition currently ruling South Korea.
FOUR OFFICIALS ACCUSED OF SPYING FOR NORTH KOREA
On Wednesday, four KCTU officials, all men, aged between 48 and 54, were charged with several violations of South Korea's national security law, including spying for North Korea and meeting illegal with North Korean intelligence officers. South Korean government prosecutors accuse the four of meeting multiple times with their alleged North Korean handlers. The alleged encounters also take place during overseas trips to Vietnam and Cambodia between 2017 and 2019.
While abroad, the four alleged spies were allegedly trained and given instructions to establish what prosecutors describe as "an underground organization [operating] under the guise of legal union activities." The four men were allegedly tasked with leading KCTU into actions that were against the United States and Japan. They were also asked to help organize worker rallies against PPP policies. In other cases, the alleged spies have photographed American military installations located in South Korea.
The opposition DPK has strongly condemned the allegations, describing them as a throwback to the days of right-wing military rule, which South Korea experienced until 1987.
The NIS remains highly controversial among center-left South Koreans, many of whom see it as a corrupt state entity that is politically aligned with the conservative PPP. Between 2018 and 2022, the liberal DPK government spearheaded what it described as an "anti-corruption campaign" within the NIS.
As a result of that campaign, three former NIS directors were charged – and ultimately convicted – of covertly diverting funds from the agency's clandestine budget. The funds were eventually used to help then South Korean President Park Geun-hye's re-election campaign. Their ostensible goal was to prevent the DPK from coming to power, fearing that the left-of-center party was too close to Pyongyang. President Park also went to jail for accepting bribes from NIS.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/corea-nord-spionaggio-sindacati-corea-sud/ on Sat, 13 May 2023 05:28:11 +0000.