List of Undercover Agents Leaked in Intelligence Breach for U.S. Ally

A South Korean military intelligence official was arrested on suspicion of leaking personal information of the country’s overseas agents said to be spying on the nuclear-armed North Korea.

The intelligence breach was first reported by South Korean media on Saturday. Yonhap News Agency reported that the Korea Defense Intelligence Command discovered about a month ago that classified information related to its agents stationed abroad had been leaked.

The South’s military intelligence command has had sensitive information leaked before, local media reported. The last incident was discovered in 2018 after an officer was found selling information, over the course of about five years, about agents working undercover in China.

In 2017, about 15 million pages of South Korea’s classified information, including operations to incapacitate Pyongyang’s military leadership and intelligence supplied by the United States, leaked to the North after the South’s Defense Integrated Data Center was hacked.

The Defense Counterintelligence Command investigated, and a military court issued an arrest warrant to a civilian official assigned to the Korea Defense Intelligence Command, the country’s defense ministry announced on Tuesday. The suspect’s identity was withheld.

The suspect behind the latest incident allegedly provided information of the country’s “black agents” to a Chinese national of Korean descent, the South Korean Defense Ministry said.

“Black agents” are the South’s undercover intelligence officials responsible for carrying out espionage activities overseas against North Korea. Agents working as diplomats with official covers were reportedly affected by the recent leaks as well.

Yonhap reported that the suspect was working with the command’s overseas operations department, and that North Korea might have acquired the leaked information. The Chinese national involved could be an informant for the North’s Reconnaissance General Bureau, the outlet said.

Newsweek has contacted the North Korean Embassy in Beijing and the Chinese Foreign Ministry for comment by email.

The Reconnaissance General Bureau is North Korea’s primary foreign intelligence service, responsible for intelligence collection and clandestine operations, the U.S. Department of Defense said. South Korea, Japan and the U.S. are its major intelligence collection targets.

The Pentagon also said North Korea’s intelligence services have several ways to collect information, including human intelligence and cyber intrusions. Human intelligence is defined as intelligence derived from information collected and provided by human sources.

The leaked information was originally stored on the command’s internal computers, Yonhap reported, but it was transferred to the suspect’s personal computer and eventually leaked to a third party. The suspect, who denied the allegation, said his computer was hacked.

Under the Military Secrets Protection Act in South Korea, transferring military secrets to a personal laptop is prohibited. The military authorities have not ruled out that the suspect left the classified information on the laptop intentionally and allowed it to be hacked.

South Korea’ military authorities did not illustrate the effects to its intelligence network, but some agents have stopped their activities abroad and returned home, according to Yonhap.

The incident also comes as South Korea promoted trilateral cooperation with Japan and their mutual ally, the U.S., to jointly respond to North Korea’s threat. Defense ministers from the three countries held their first trilateral ministerial meeting in Tokyo on Sunday.

In a joint statement released after the meeting, the defense chiefs announced the Trilateral Security Cooperation Framework had come into effect. The framework institutionalized security cooperation among the three defense authorities, including information sharing.