A military intelligence official indicted this week for allegedly selling military secrets was recruited by a suspected Chinese operative in 2017, military prosecutors said Wednesday.
Military prosecutors indicted the official at the Defense Intelligence Command on Tuesday on charges of aiding the enemy, receiving bribes and violating the Military Secret Protection Act for leaking the secrets, such as a list of undercover agents, in return for money.
Prosecutors said the 49-year-old claimed he was arrested at an airport in the eastern Chinese city of Yanji in April 2017, where he had visited to meet his contacts.
During questioning, he was offered to work for the suspected Chinese intelligence agent, which he claimed to have accepted as his family’s safety was threatened.
The defense ministry’s headquarters is seen in this file photo taken Jan. 31, 2023. (Pool photo) (Yonhap)
The defense ministry’s headquarters is seen in this file photo taken Jan. 31, 2023. (Pool photo) (Yonhap)
While the official con
fessed to first selling secrets in 2017, prosecutors confirmed he had received money since May 2019 and leaked secrets since June 2022. The official demanded a total of 400 million won (US$299,000) over about 40 occasions and received about 160 million won in total.
The official leaked 30 files — 12 in the form of documents and 18 in voice messages — over the period, including a list of some undercover agents, a military prosecutor told reporters on condition of anonymity.
The official skirted security protocol to collect the secrets by taking photos and screenshots, and took them off base to his personal quarters to upload them on a Chinese cloud server, according to the prosecutors.
Still, the case is unrelated to any human intelligence operatives inside North Korea, the military prosecutor said.
Counter-intelligence officials only discovered the leak in June this year.
The agent took thorough steps to evade being caught, accessing the cloud server with a different account every time, setting passwor
ds for every file, and deleting communication records.
He communicated with the suspected Chinese agent through the voice message function in a game within a popular messaging app in China.
Military prosecutors, however, did not pursue espionage charges, apparently due to the lack of a clear connection to North Korea. South Korea’s military law defines espionage crimes as spying for North Korea.
The military prosecutor said an investigation was still under way, noting the possibility of the suspected Chinese agent being a North Korean operative.
Source: Yonhap News Agency