Sacrifice for an organization

Intelligence agencies that work behind the scene have a culture of suicide. It has to be called as a culture since intelligence agencies grant honor and respect to suicides. If an enemy finds out the identity of an agent, the agent attempts suicide by poisoning himself or shooting a gun at himself. In such cases, a suicide is committed to avoid extreme tortures for the individual and to prevent disclosure of confidential information for the nation.

But the problem is that a suicide or a similar attempt is committed to cover up abnormal intelligence activities in Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS). When criticism arouse against the NIS’ false espionage accusation of You Woo-sung in March 2014, Kwon Se-young, a veteran NIS officer, attempted to kill himself by burning coals in a closed car. In November of 2005, another NIS agent Lee Soo-il committed suicide after investigation on illegal eavesdropping by the Agency for National Security Planning (ANSP). Gong Un-yeong, who led the ANSP’s "Mirim" team that is at the center of eavesdropping activities, also attempted to injure himself during interrogation.

In the West, it is hard to see such cases where an agent sacrifices himself to protect an organization that has conducted illegal activities. Rather, there are some scandals where an organization sacrifices an agent. In 2003 during the administration of Tony Blair, the U.K. Ministry of Defense has revealed identity of Dr. David Kelly who worked for the nation’s intelligence agency, resulting in Kelly’s suicide. Another case is a leak gate in 2002 where the U.S. administration of President George W. Bush disclosed the identity of CIA secret agent Valerie Plame.

A technical officer at NIS surnamed Lim killed himself. In charge of RCS operation at the NIS. Lim introduced the mobile phone hacking program RCS. Before committing suicide, Lim erased all related files. Out of concerns over unnecessary doubts that might be raised by Lim’s suicide, the NIS argues that there was no illegal surveillance and claims all the deleted files can be restored. It remains questionable whether the deleted files can be fully restored. Even if it’s possible to restore the data, any misdoings that may have happened can be solely blamed as personal deviant behaviors of the operator, who already killed himself. The phrase in his suicide note, "My excessive ambition at work appears to have caused today‘s situation," remains like a riddle.