By Lee Jin-woo
Staff Reporter


The nation’s spy agency said Thursday it will investigate illegal eavesdropping cases allegedly committed during the President Kim Young-sam government of the 1990s.

The Agency for National Security Planning, predecessor of the National Intelligence Service (NIS), allegedly recorded private meetings of politicians, executives of conglomerates and senior journalists between 1993 and 1998, a local vernacular daily Chosun Ilbo reported.

Former agents of the spy agency said a special group of four agents with the code name, ``Mirim’’ and their informers at expensive restaurants, bars and hotels generated thousands of tape recordings and reports, according to the report.

The NIS subsequently issued a statement, expressing its willingness to investigate the case and reveal the truth to the public.

``We regret about the suspicion as we have been trying hard to unearth previous misdeeds of the agency to win the confidence of the public,’’ the agency said. ``We will inform the public of any details that emerge and introduce new measures to prevent any similar illegal practices in the future.’’

``The existence of Mirim was known to an extremely limited number of ranking officials within the agency as only one or two top officials of the agency were briefed on the contents of the recordings,’’ a former agent was quoted as saying by the daily. Another agent said he and his informers recorded up to 10 tapes a day.

They said the special team was dissolved soon after Kim Dae-jung was elected president in the 1997 election. As a retired agent let out the tapes in 1998, some tapes had been secretly circulated outside for about a year until the agency found and seized them again in 1999.

Yesterday’s report was initially based on an audio tape, which was acquired by Lee Sang-ho, a MBC reporter, last December and January this year. Lee made four trips to the U.S. in order to acquire the tape and interview related people.

The controversial tape contained a recording of a 90-minute secret discussion between an executive of a giant Korean company, who was also a close aide of the group’s chairman, and president of a vernacular daily, discussing a plot to help a certain candidate during the presidential election at a hotel in Seoul, sources said.

However, MBC decided not to air the program as the story, based on the illegally recorded tape, is likely to put the broadcaster into a time-consuming legal battle caused by a massive amount of compensation lawsuit from chaebol. Since then, the tape, which is supposed to be part of some 8,000 tapes secretly recorded by the agency, has been called ``MBC Lee Sang-ho X-File.’’

``In the tape, two people’s names were not clearly mentioned, but their names were written in a report to top officials of the agency,’’ another former agent, who was familiar with the secret espionage activity, was quoted as saying.

MBC held a meeting of its senior officials yesterday to discuss whether they would stick to its previous decision not to air the program.

``Considering one of political figures mentioned in the tape still belongs to the incumbent government and the advertisement market for television is quite tight these days, it will be hard for MBC to air the report as it is likely to cause serious damage against the company, one of the biggest advertisers in Korea,’’ an official of MBC said on condition of anonymity.

things@koreatimes.co.kr