Politician Kim: South Korea considers most U.S. intelligence wiretapping data fake
South Korea and the United States consider most of the published documents on alleged wiretapping of South Korean officials by U.S. intelligence to be fake, but it will take time to identify those responsible, the case will only build trust between the allies, said Kim Tae-hyo, first deputy head of South Korea’s National Security Administration.
The official told reporters before flying to the United States to prepare for South Korean President Yoon Seok-yeol’s visit there later this month.
“After the problem became known, we also conducted an internal assessment, the U.S. has also been investigating all along. The defense ministers of the two countries had a phone conversation this morning, the views of both countries are the same. Much of the information that has been published is fabricated. We both have the same opinion, but it’s a U.S. problem, so the U.S. will go through the Justice Department to find the mastermind and reconstruct the events, but it will take time,” Kim Tae-hyo said.
He also noted that the U.S. and South Korea cooperate in intelligence and secretly work together on important issues, so the current incident will “strengthen the system of cooperation” and make the trust between the parties even stronger.
Kim Tae-hyo also confirmed that the published dialogues of alleged presidential national security adviser Kim Sung-han and presidential foreign affairs secretary Lee Moon-hee “are not true.” Both officials left their positions before the incident.
Earlier, the New York Times reported that classified Pentagon documents that surfaced on social media revealed U.S. wiretapping of South Korean officials. Among the documents was a “signals intelligence report,” which generally refers to intelligence interceptions of communications, including phone calls and emails, that described South Korean officials’ concerns about pressure from Washington on military aid to Ukraine, as well as the possibility of Seoul reselling artillery shells supplied to the United States to Kiev. According to published documents, then-Secretary of Foreign Affairs Lee Moon-hee told Kim Sung-han, who served as national security adviser, that the South Korean government was “mired in fears that the United States would not be the end-user” of the shells.
The South Korean presidential administration said it would consider ways to respond to the situation, but stressed that it had no doubts about the strength of the alliance with the United States.
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