Go to contents

Former NIS chief Kim Man-bok’s shameful memoir

Posted October. 02, 2015 07:16,   

한국어

“Mr. President, I will take responsibility as the National Intelligence Service`s chief to set up an inter-Korean summit at the earliest day,” former NIS chief Kim Man-bok told then President Roh Moo-hyun. He proposed the president to hold an inter-Korean summit soon after receiving his letter of appointment from the president on November 23, 2006. He made this public in his memoir entitled “Roh Moo-hyun’s plan to achieve peace on the Korean Peninsula: October 4 joint declaration by the heads of two Koreas,” which will be released on Sunday to mark the eighth anniversary of the October 4 Joint Declaration by the former president and then North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

Kim Man-bok brags that while Roh expressed opposition by citing the North Korean nuclear issue, he persuaded Roh by saying, “Chairman Kim Jong Il (of the North’s National Defense Commission) is not the kind of person who will let a guest leave empty handed.” While Roh expressed concern over the North’s nuclear weapons development, the NIS chief seems to have been only interested in "Chairman Kim’s gift."

In the book jointly written by Lee Jae-jung, former Unification Minister, and Baek Jong-cheon, chief of the unification, foreign affairs and security policy office under the presidential office, Kim Man-bok also addresses an episode on his secretive visit to the North on August 2, 2007. Back then when Kim Yang Kon, the director of the United Front Department of the Workers` Party of North Korea, positively responded to the suggestion for an inter-Korean summit, Kim said, “Embracing a quince tree in the garden that was struck by lightning, I even smiled alone because I felt it was like praying for success of negotiations.” As the spy agency chief wrote on such superstitious behavior in his memoir without feeling shame, readers feel awkward.

Just two months before the presidential election in 2012, conversation records from the inter-Korean summit caused a stir to South Korean politics in connection with Roh’s mention of the Northern Limit Line, the de facto inter-Korean sea border. The NIS made two copies of the records and kept them at the presidential office and the spy agency, but its chief Kim claimed, “I never instructed publication of the copy kept at the NIS.” We wonder if the new memoir does not contain exaggerations meant to show off or inaccurate memories.

After secretively visiting the North to convey a stone to commemorate the Roh Moo-hyun-Kim Jong Il inter-Korean summit on the eve of the presidential election in 2007, the former NIS chief provided conversation records of his talks with the director of the United Front Department of the North Korean Workers` Party to a South Korean daily newspaper and was handed suspended booking by prosecutors in January 2008. His conversation in question was “If the Lee Myung-bak administration takes power, it would be able to push for even more aggressive North Korea policy.” Given this behavior, it would be better for Kim to write a memo of confession. Doesn`t a spy have to remain tightlipped until he dies?



eligius@donga.com