North Korea News Podcast by NK News - Roundtable: What to make of North Korea expert Sue Mi Terry’s indictment

Episode Date: July 25, 2024

The U.S. has charged prominent North Korea expert Sue Mi Terry, a former CIA analyst and White House official, with allegedly working for South Korean spies in exchange for luxury goods and expensive dinners. The NK News team joins the podcast to discuss Terry’s indictment, its implications for North Korea policymakers, its impact on South […]

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most closely watched regions in the world. Don't wait, spaces are filling fast. Hello listeners and welcome to the NK News podcast. I'm your host, Jack Oswetsit. This episode was recorded on Tuesday, the 23rd of July, 2024. And I'm joined here in the NK News studio by three of my best colleagues. We've got Chad O'Carroll, Jongmin Kim, and Yifang Bremer. Welcome on the show, all of you.

Thanks for having us. Hi there. Hello. And I like to nickname this episode Terry Talk, because we're going to be talking all about the Sumi Terry case and things around it. Yifang, you wrote the first story for NK News about this. So give us a quick summary of events to let us know what has previous podcast guests, Sumi Terry, been accused of. Well, so last Wednesday, we in Seoul woke up to the news that US federal

prosecutors in New York charged prominent North Korea expert Sumi Terry with allegedly working for South Korean intelligence in exchange for luxury goods and expensive dinners. Okay. What she accused of actually spying for South Korea? Well, the specific charge accusations are that Terry promoted Seoul's policy positions in Washington, DC through publications and media appearances, and that she also

shared sensitive information with South Korean intelligence and facilitate access to US government officials for our okay intelligence. So these are the specific things. Right, and among the access to US officials, it seems the main thing that became an issue in the indictment was Harry, Terry's handwritten note that she apparently gave to NIS agents, which the US intelligence took photo of,

looking at it from afar, it was something like Terry getting into a car after meeting the secretary of state, very, very high level. And it was apparently an off-record meeting, but Terry took handwritten notes and showed it to the NIS agents apparently. Okay. But that's not technically classified information, but that is working with or helping South Korean intelligence offices. Correct. So the specific things that Terry is being accused of is that she never registered

as a foreign agent in the Foreign Agents Registration Act, FARA, as required by law, while by law while working together with national intelligence agency agents, that's the NIS, from 2013 to 2023. So that's a period of 10 years. And three administrations in South Korea. Right. So we've got Im Young-bak. Park Geun-hye. Oh, okay. Sorry. Park Geun-hye, Moon Jae-in and Yoon Sung-yeol. Okay. So after him, I'm going, all right. Now, as Yifang said, it was in exchange for luxury goods. What's been mentioned specifically are designer handbags, some coats, dinners at Michelin-starred restaurants and more than

30,000 in covert funding for a public policy program that she controlled. But it does seem a bit like small potatoes. Are we to understand that Ms. Terry worked for the NIS in exchange for these gifts, like this, that was the tat for the tit, or is it more likely that she did it for some ideological or other reason and these gifts were merely the icing on the cake, the gravy?

Well, looking at how she apparently allegedly worked for three different administrations with very different ideological views, especially on North Korea. For instance, Moon Jae-in and Yoon Seok-yul have polar different views on North Korea policy. And also, we keep mentioning NIS agents, but in the indictment, what it's mentioned

is that they are mentioned as NIS handlers who were working under the guise of being a diplomat at the US embassy. South Korean embassy. Sorry, South Korean embassy in the US. Right, there's of course the embassy in DC, but there's also a separate embassy to the United Nations in Manhattan.

So that's. I mean, yeah, you're right. So $37,000 over 10 years, what's that like three, less than $3,000 a year. And that was for a program, not for her. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But 30,000, 10 years for some coats and some handbags, it seems pretty small potatoes. Exactly. And I think if you were to zoom out on this and look at the fact that the cash compensation

is all sort of loaded to towards events events right at the end of the period of investigation. The luxury gifts, I mean, yes, one shouldn't receive luxury gifts like that if one is trying to portray themselves as an independent expert on the issue that the embassy officials are gifting from, but it's not, yeah, it doesn't look like that big of a deal when you're like at 30,000 feet looking at this, right? Which raises the question of why the FBI invested a decade using pretty myriad different means to surveil and track and photograph and listen from a distance. There's a lot of bugging going on. And monitoring her articles, her output, taking photos, CCTV footages.

And so I would argue that there's quite a strong possibility that Sumitari didn't think she was doing anything wrong here. And that a lot of this activity, you know, it was in DC. I worked in DC 12, 13 years ago in the think tank community. It's very normal to have meetings, lunches with ROC embassy officials, dinners with Japanese officials as well. And, you know, I've been treated to very nice meals in the past by East Asian embassies. And it's well known in DC that NIS officials are embedded in the South Korean embassy. And so there's a really thick gray line here, I think.

And I think many people, one person I spoke to this morning was saying to me that they were worried about their own activities in light of this, because things like having a lunch with an NIS official that we all know as an NIS official, but from an embassy and sharing the types of information you might as a policy person share with a journalist, which may include, you know, some background on a meeting that you've had with the secretary of state, possibly, that is, that's not that controversial by itself.

And so there's, yeah, I think, I think there's, there's a lot of concern about what actually has happened here. And I think the big worry is that this is the tip of the iceberg, a much bigger investigation into in proprietary, maybe not just on South Korea's intelligence service, but you know, like most countries in DC operating an embassy will have intelligence people all vying for influence and information and power. So it could be a warning shot to all of them to like really chill out, especially from friendly countries. It could be something South Korea specific that we don't know about yet,

that will come out into the ether, but there's a strong possibility there's a lot of classified information that is not in this indictment that relates to other things. But yeah, I think like the key thing for me is the fact that there are photos of the NIS official going to luxury stores to buy handbags in plaques. And I mean, the restaurants part, like I said, it's very common in DC. Some people decline, some people participate. I think it's down to personal prerogative. If it's above a certain value, you probably should be asking questions, Michelin star

restaurants and so on. But the fact they went into these luxury boutique stores in broad daylight, it does make me think maybe there was just some feeling that they're not actually doing something wrong. If you're a new NIS official, you might not know about FARA in detail. But on the flip side, we should remember that the FBI did apparently speak to Terry on multiple occasions and encouraged her to warn her about this kind of thing and encouraged her to potentially consider registering under Farah. Right.

If I'm in the indictment, which we've read, it says that quite early in the piece that the FBI met with her after one of her meetings with NIS handlers and said, you may be a target for an influence operation by South Korean agents, right? Yes, that's what the indictment mentions indeed. That at least on one or two occasions, one was 2014, if I'm not mistaken. And also more recently, she did meet with FBI agents who have warned her about her activities. I also just want to add that I think we should, first of all, emphasize that she's not being convicted. She's not been convicted yet. These

are accusations. It's an indictment. That being said, the evidence is quite damning. I think we can all agree on that. So yeah, I just wanted to clarify that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, I do have a question here on what does the lawyers say? I'm getting to that, but we're sort of working our way up to it. Just before I cede the floor to Jong-min, on the presence of NIS agents in consular and

embassies in America, a source of mind told me several years ago that there are in every rock consulate and embassy two intelligence officers, one who is declared to the US government and one who is typically not declared. So I just thought I'd throw that in there. I don't know whether that's the case. I've only got one source that said that to me, but I thought that's an interesting thing. So they do often present themselves as minister counselors if I'm a diplomat, but I am actually an NIS agent. What were you going to say, Jongmin? Right. The South Korean perspectives on all this, considering it's a verdict, I imagine South Korean government to stay quiet until it's not a verdict. So they would probably

wait, I thought. But it seems it very quickly sort of turned into South Korean domestic spat in South Korea, which sort of ironically show how bad the influence operation is here. They started, former NIS chief and deputy and the presidential office started publicly talking about how this is the other administration's fault that the NIS handlers were so amateur. And they are sort of, it seems that the interesting thing from in South Korea right now is less, they are focusing less on how Terry received these gifts from the NIS agents, but more focused on how clumsy the NIS agents were. South Koreans are sort of focusing right now on how influence, it seems like the premise is that influence operations happens all over the world and they are sort of focusing right now on how influence, it seems like the

premise is that influence operations happens all over the world. And they are sort of embarrassed how South Korean intelligence officers were doing it in broad daylight and reading between the line and the indictment. It also sort of points several parts point to how they were doing this so blatantly. Maybe part of the reason why she was indicted. But yeah, but Pak Ji Won, who was director of the reason why she was indicted. But yeah. But Pak Ji-won, who was director of the NIS under Moon Jae-in's administration, he sort of

hit back and said that he criticized the government for questioning the abilities of the intelligence service. Is he saying that this is normal? Yes, that's what I'm saying. They are, rather than denying anything like, oh, we didn't do it. They're more focusing on, oh, the previous administration was so bad at this hiding the covert operation. And they're saying this than denying anything like, oh, we didn't do it. They're more focusing on, oh, the previous administration was so bad at this hiding the covert operation and they're saying this publicly. And the presidential office official speaking anonymously also said that the South Korean government

may consider probe into the Moon administration and ISE officials for replacing experts at the NIS with amateurs. I mean, this is all obviously an attempt to deflect blame officials for replacing experts at the NIS with amateurs. I mean, this is all obviously an attempt to deflect blame because this alleged conduct happened over a period of 10 years, that includes the UN administration. So to me, it's a very silly thing

that's going on in South Korea. Right, it doesn't match the timeline, does it? One thing also that surprised me is that a lot of South Korean media right after the UN administration released their stance that this is all the Moon administration. A lot of media here just straight up copied that and without any critical notes to that. So in that sense it worked I guess. Yeah. Now, didn't she also, hasn't Sumi Terry also written things that have been critical to or critical of or opposed to South Korean government policy during that 10-year period?

I would imagine so, and that's the part of the legal defense, right? That has happened. Right. Back to then to Yifang, what is her lawyer saying? So very quickly after this news came out, Terry's lawyer released a statement, which is that Dr. Terry has not held any security clearance for over a decade, and her views on matters

relating to the Korean Peninsula have been consistent over many years. She disagreed with the South Korean government policy when it was at odds with their own views and supported South Korean policy when it aligned with her own views. So yeah, and the lawyer basically rejected the allegations made by the prosecutors. Okay. Now we haven't pointed out yet, but we should, that she was once a CIA analyst in the noughties, I think what, 2001 to 2008, something like that, and left well before this period that she's accused of working as an agent for South Korean NIS began.

But it was mentioned in the indictment, wasn't it, Yifeng, that she apparently left the CIA possibly also under suspicion that she was too close to South Korean intelligence. I think it was a complaint from the CIA that she's too close to her. Right, that she left rather than get fired or something like that. Yeah, I mean, there's been media reporting. I couldn't find this in the indictment, but I might be wrong here. But from what I read was that there was a anxiety that she was too close to South Korean officials. And the choice was basically resign or be fired. That's what came up in some of the initial reporting. But I'm not sure if that's

Ah, okay. It may not perhaps it isn't in the endowment then. It is an unusual claim. I mean, if you are an intelligence agent, you're supposed to have relations with other with allied intelligence agents from allied countries. The United States and Korea are in an alliance together. Why is this such a big deal? Oh, John, sorry, back to the sort of just clarifying on the CIA bit. The indictment does mention that during her interview with the FBI in 2023, she admitted that she resigned from the CIA because CIA had quote unquote problems with Terry's contacts with

South Korean and IS officers. Okay. Now again, back to the question that South Korea and the United States are allied countries. Why would this be such a big deal? Well, allies, you know, the agreement with five eyes countries is you don't spy on each other. Korea is not one of the five eyes. Korea is not one but I think the expectation should be that your allies are not I mean should be that your allies are not spying on you especially on your home turf. Now there has been claims recently

of the US doing that to South Korea, just was it last year? Last year's case of presidential office bugging. So the US is not entirely clean on that front, but I think that, you know, to me, this doesn't really You know, to me, this doesn't really read about spying more so about influence peddling. And you know, you can see there's a lot of talk in the indictment about columns being written, about events being hosted, about venue, like convening, bringing people together from the rock side to share their perspective. Yeah, actually, let me interrupt there and ask Yifeng, tell us about these happy hours, these diplomatic happy hours that are mentioned in the indictment that she's supposed to have organized and

why those happy hours, what makes them interesting for the NIS? So according to the indictment, Terry's accused of organizing events that allowed NIS agents to access US congressional staff. So for example, 2022, she hosted a happy hour in Washington for congressional staff members, which was allegedly paid for by South Korean intelligence officers who also attended this event posing as diplomats.

And obviously the congressional staff was not aware that they might've been interacting with intelligence agents. And I do think that's, that, that is quite significant. On the flip side though, if you go to a, if you go, I've been to many of these happy hours in DC and you often meet minister counselors from the rock embassy. And if you're smart, you know who they are. That's their job is to get out there and interact. I think the key difference here is they've engineered a situation and paid for it basically clandestinely, if that's the case.

And which Sumitari may have known exactly who were the agents, but didn't tell any of the congressional staff. My point is whether or not this case came up or not, this will be happening on a weekly basis in Washington DC. Now you say that because you've been in DC, right? But I mean, it's the same in Tokyo. It's the same anywhere.

There's a rock embassy. I've had many engagements, meetings over the years with people in South Korean foreign ministry in embassies that I've thought, Hmm, they're probably not regular diplomats. The key sign for me is always they want to meet me so often and ask so many questions, whereas regular diplomats don't normally tend to care about. They get bored of you very quickly. Yeah. For good reasons.

But, but, um, for me, like, I wanted to just focus a little bit of our attention on something I think got overlooked a lot in the mainstream reporting, which was, this was the most troubling issue for me. It was the FBI indictment, there's a comment, description of how Sue Mitare and her NIS handler were discussing ways to pipe NIS money into things like events, happy hours, and so on. And they talked about using South Korean think tanks to covertly send money. There's a plural there, discussed potential ROK think tanks that could serve as an intermediary

for ROK NIS funds. And they implied that this channel has been used in the past because the NIS person was allegedly trying to do it bilaterally and do it quote directly without the complicated process of involving a third party, which we've been doing so far. For me, this is really troubling because it raises the potential that many South Korean, any South Korean think tank that those in DC are partnering with could be providing money for ulterior reasons. And if you're taking money from the South Korean embassy in DC to run an event, you know, there's definitely

a potential that could be coming from the NIS based on what we've seen in this indictment. But you wouldn't expect if you're participating or co-hosting with think tank A or B from Seoul that actually this might be money that is being pushed in to further some kind of NIS goal. And I think like I've had a few conversations with people in DC that this part is is gonna have a lot of damage in the longterm because it will cast a shadow on partnerships on potential work with South Korean things tanks. And of course the embassy in DC itself, a lot of nervousness.

And one person I spoke to today said, if I'm having a lunch or dinner now, do I have to worry about FBI filming me from? I would worry about that as well and it's it's a lot of damage when you think about it that has not really led to any from what we can see here any gain that could be considered notable. Right and what are people in DC saying? Have there been any comments in the media? Any sort of responses? Not on record. No and I think a lot of people that

I speak to talk about the deafening silence from a lot of the very prominent scholars and academics who have worked with her very closely. I mean, of course, I understand that this is very new and it's very sensitive, so people don't want to run their mouth. But at the same time, this is also a case about a very public figure, a lot of public money goes into these think tanks. So I do think that at some point, yeah, there should be a bit more clarity about what those who work with her think about this too. Zhongmin, do you have anything you'd like to tell us? Well, for me, recently, after this indictment, I started questioning every single column that I read from experts in DC.

Looking at the editor's note at the end or their position names or titles, because the Wilson Center department was also named like KF Hyundai Motor or something. I'd never really given much thought into like where the money and the funding is coming from. Although there were sometimes signs when South Korean government sort of influences the title, for instance, like 70 years of alliance. South Korean president is so brave

or something like that, right? But I did for transparency, I also, my time at CSIS in 2019, 17, it overlapped with when Dr. Terry was there. And the time there, I was like a Bangna intern, but I did a lot of errands. But then the, what I gathered from my time there was that there are a lot, a lot of 1.5 track meetings going on that are not publicized. Sorry, what does that mean? 1.5 track meeting like public officials, high level officials or working level officials meeting with academics or experts for policy views brainstorming or thinking of potential new reports that they can send to the South Korean government or the US government to suggest policy direction.

For instance, when a new administration is coming in and so on and so forth. And there were so many of those un-publicized events as well, not the public ones. So I'm just wondering how many of those things that I saw while I was there were funded by some company. How has the CIS been responding to the CIS? No comment.

Have they been clearing their website of any mention of her? Yes, yes, I mean, so what happened, CIS asked at every article that they had online that was offered by Dr. Terry, they posted a notice saying that the US Department of Justice unsealed an indictment charging Dr. Terry. CSIS is not a party to this litigation and takes the allegations seriously.

CSIS maintains strict policies to ensure full compliance with the Foreign Agents Registration Act and the intellectual independence of its scholarship in light of these allegations, CSIS cannot verify the independence of the scholarship of this material. So this is a really important point to me, which I think illustrates a much, much bigger problem. So CSIS is taking this position on Sumiteri, but if you are receiving money from the South Korean government directly

or indirectly through a Korean state think tank or something like the Korea Foundation and you're a think tank in DC, your project is only going to get funded if it's roughly in line with what the administration wants to promote as the foreign policy objective of the time. There's no way. So that's a way in which the Korean government tries to direct control and direct the conversation within some limits. There is no way right now the think tank could get funding from the South Korean government directly or indirectly on calls to end the Korean War, for example, some key Moon Jae-in

policy. There's no way that's going to happen. So, and when that funding it lands, uh, in, you know, there are going to be report, uh, reports that need to be written, there's going to be some kind of launch event that will need to take place, they'll need to be convening with government officials on the U S side to share the, the, uh, results of the report, there'll probably be invitations to embassy officials. Now, what I have a hard time with all of this is that sounds a lot to me. What in NIS we're doing with Sumitari.

It's just with Sumitari, it's clandestine, right? With Korean government money coming in, in, in six figure sums to think tanks for specific projects on celebrating 70 years of the alliance or warming ties with Japan. What's the difference? Because yes, the academics involved in that can finesse the report and they will have freedom to promote their own perspective on this, but it's likely that if they stray too far away from what the funding objective is, that they're not going to get this money anymore.

We know this is true because, you know, Josh Stanton on his blog 10 years ago documented how Nicholas Eberstadt of AEI lost Korea foundation funding shortly after publishing, but quite critical stuff back in the early 2000s. So I think there's a big conversation to be had about the Korean government funding that goes to think tanks in DC and the level of freedom there is to really use that money to come up with creative materials. Okay. You've just mentioned the Korea Foundation a couple of times. What exactly is it?

Is it simply an arm of the Korean government to fund money to think tanks? It's part of the South Korean foreign ministry. It's affiliated. It's a government organ. Yeah. It has a very large budget. Its current president is a former South Korean foreign ministry official.

And they do a lot of work on, you know, promoting South Korean culture, academia, like stuff. Young generation expert development and stuff like that. Yeah, which I think, I don't think there's much dispute that this is sensitive stuff. But when it comes to policy and supporting projects at major think tanks that only mirror what the incumbent government's foreign ministry objectives are, I think that that does raise serious questions about whether or not they should be

registered under FARA. You know, I worked at the Korea Economic Institute, we were registered in DC under FARA, still is. And yeah, we had funding from KIEP, which was provided. Korea Institute for International Economic Policy. And as part of that, the rulings with FARA, as a staffer, I had to report to the Department of Justice every

single month, every person I met. So there's total transparency over where the, if there is influence, which vectors it's being applied through. So I think there's a big conversation on that. But I think, yeah, the point I just find jarring is that all of the stuff I'm seeing Sue Mitteri be accused of, I see that on a much bigger macro level. Yes, with less precise control, but from 30,000 feet, it looks like a very similar type of influence. That was mostly the response from South Korean experts who were involved in a lot of think tanks events in the past as well.

Domestic think tanks within South Korea? Right, like South Korean experts, South Korean academics that I spoke to, their initial response is, what? Shock, because they're so used to it. They are- Basically they're saying everyone's doing this. Right, so the reason why they didn't want to go on record

was because now they're questioning if any of the activities that they have done before, any of the events they've been to where public officials meeting 1.5 track stuff, was that illicit? They're starting to question whether or not they were involved in this as well. But before I move on, I actually had a dumb question

for Chad about Farah. So it seems like the indictment, the reason why, like, although like from a macro level, it looks like it's something we are kind of used to, like the think tank world is used to, it seems like the main point and the indictment is that she wasn't registered under Farah, right? So why aren't more think tanks Farah registered? Well, it's, I think there's obviously, going back to your description of what CSIS said,

that there's a think tanks want to be seen as objective pillars of intellectual output. And if you're far registered, it does put, you know, it sort of taints you in some way. But it's risky, no? Which part? To not be registered. To not register.

Yeah, and Department of Justice right now is apparently doing quite a big push and making a big scene about people who are receiving money from governments and promoting positions without registering. But yeah, I think you were about to say something, Yifeng. No, I mean, we've heard a couple of times on this podcast now that people are worried,

you know, going for dinners with people from the government with diplomats. I do think there's a difference between that and between the allegations of literally receiving luxury goods. Okay, so here's an interesting counterpoint though. What's the difference between receiving a luxury handbag and a $14,000 business class Korean Air return ticket to come to Seoul to participate in an INSS roundtable? Or taking experts to Samcha dinner at a room salon, like very expensive ones and you know, changing the invoice.

I've seen that multiple times in South Korea. I mean, the figures we're talking about in Su-Min Terry's case could be the single travel spend on a five star peak season, first class or business class round trip. And there'd be no question about that in many circles. But if you look at any of these conferences happening, whether they're in DC or in Korea, conferences about Korea or Korean security or inter-Korean issues, whenever they fly in somebody from overseas, bam, there's 20 to $30,000 right there.

Because you've got your business class ticket,, you got several nights in a good hotel, you got your driver, maybe an interpreter, or a handler, a body person who carries bags for you. That's a lot of money right there. Yeah, just to clarify, I don't think we're saying that all of these are like okay to do, but it's more like, it's more widespread in various forms. Although there is something that Yifeng reported

on last year as I recall, about just the sheer waste being spent on conferences, right, Yifeng? Which is happening again in DC this week. Yeah, I think that is a whole different story. But yeah, I mean, I do think that there's a lot of public money going around. And I think it's good that people question if it's efficiently spent, because a lot of it's public money. This is tax-based money.

Yes. Yeah. Now, earlier, Chad brought up the issue of under the Mungyeong administration, South Korea was lobbying the US Congress to support its proposed end of war declaration with North Korea. Does this fall under the same rubric? It felt more obvious and more transparent,

but did it involve inappropriate gifts and or fine dining? I think, I don't think any of this stuff is specific to one administration or the other. I just mean that activity, lobbying the US Congress for police support, our effort to get an end of war declaration signed. Well, I'm not aware of lobbying that took place in that regard. I mean, yes, I imagine certain think tanks might have been, I don't think really lobbying at all, actually, to be honest. I think that there was some activity in promoting that or drawing attention to it, but it wasn't, I

remember at the time, it wasn't very much flavor of the month, that whole suggestion, it kind of landed on deficit. There was one individual who I'm not going to name that I think a lot of people had suspicion about receiving money in return for providing a venue to regularly promote Moon Jae-in policies, someone that appeared in the career circle in DC. When you say venue, you don't mean a physical space, but output. Well, both. Oh, I see. Both, both.

And that person has pretty much disappeared from the field. But was quoted in the last week. We're maybe thinking of someone else. Oh, we might be. We'll have to check off there later on. Now, the indictment does hint at at least one other individual who may be involved. Now, without speculating who that person might be,

do you see any signs or have any intuition that there is a whole network of individuals and institutions that have been shaping US policy and public opinion in favor of South Korean interests who may find themselves at the receiving end of an indictment? I mean, that kind of touches on the question of why the FBI went in so hard. What's the reason behind it? Should other people be worried or not at all? I mean, we also shouldn't forget that Dr. Terry worked

for the CIA and it might just be a message to CIA agents, former CIA agents to not do anything stupid. We don't know if this relates to anything between the US and South Korea, to not do anything stupid. We don't know if this relates to anything between the US and South Korea, whether it is any diplomatic thing going on or whether it's just sending a message to former agents. Yeah, we do care about what you do after your career at the CIA.

I think though, there is definitely a question mark about the future and what the impact of this whole scenario is going to be when it comes to pretty much the entire career policy ecosystem, not just in Washington DC, but in Brussels, here in Seoul, in Tokyo. Where is the money coming from when there is an event? Who is covering the costs and why these costs can be really, really significant. Like we could, we, some, some events, uh, you know, have full AV production crews that are going to be, you know, by themselves, like six figures to hire.

So I think we're going to have big questions about that. Happy hour events. There's going to be anxiety, I think we're going to have big questions about that. Happy hour events. There's going to be anxiety, I think, about attending things like that if it's not clear on what the purpose is, where the money's coming from. Just to say it openly, I mean, as a podcast host, I'm happy to attend any happy hour. Literally, I'm happy to attend any happy hour that I'm invited to. But I do think that going forward after this indictment, I think people who are running Think Tank and events, public events, will try to be at least

a little bit more transparent about where the funding is coming from or at least look like it to not risk anything. Yeah. That might be a good thing. I hope so, I hope so. But I mean, it, you know, it's still so difficult to know where the money's coming from.

I looked through Korea Foundation report yesterday that listed its donations to certain think tanks in the United States and many of them were from anonymous donors. And we're talking like figures of $200,000. Why would someone, you know, maybe there is a, people don't want attention, but when there's that kind of activity happening against the backdrop of this and diamond, it doesn't doesn't look good. Yeah, again, coming back to why the FBI or the Justice Department has gone so hard on Sumitere, it does feel a little bit like a warning shot to to frighten the others. Is that that quote from Voltaire, my French is a bit rusty there, Chad, yours is better, but from time to time,

it is necessary to kill one of the generals in order to encourage the others. I heard the same one in Korean recently. Il beol baekgae. You punish one person to give to enlighten a hundred. Now, after the indictment came out, FBI acting assistant director in charge, Christie M. Curtis wrote,

compromising national security endangers every American by weakening our defenses and putting lives at risk, unquote, and also emphasized that Terry's actions had proposed a severe threat to national security. It feels a bit overblown, is that hyperbole? I mean we don't know the whole story but... Right, and simply based on the indictment we have before us. I wouldn't characterize it as a severe threat to national security, but I think... But I think that's his job, though.

I think Yifeng's point is crucial because if, you know, someone told me, suggested to me that there's probably a lot more classified information that the FBI have relating to this investigation, 10 years of investigation, that has not been revealed. We can only speculate if that's true or not and if it is what that kind of information may be and perhaps that comment relates to that. I don't, we just don't know. All right, now there was a good story written this week,, Jongmin, for Korea Pro by Ben Engel in which he talked about the Korea Gate scandal of the late 1970s, which involved widespread

bribery and influence peddling of actual sitting members of Congress. And this, of course, feels like it's on a much smaller scale. But what did you get from the article? What did you think of it? Right. It involved not only the sitting members of the Congress, but also editorial board of like foreign affairs and journalists as well. So very similar influence peddling method

back in the days, although it didn't involve your code or anything. But it seems, I agree with Ben in general, in that this investigation, this indictment, the influence and the probe may go on for years going forward, because the Korea gate at the time as well It took years for the investigation although it's sort of anti-climatically sort of disappeared Right and only one person went to jail for that was one member of Congress who received a hundred thousand dollars

Right because the other person had like a friendly jury in the state was Was not jailed. Yeah, he also I'm gonna quote a sentence from his article, South Korean diplomats urgently contacted American media figures in late 1972 to project a positive image of South Korea to the American public. That does feel very parallel. That year was when there was a martial law.

So martial law, so South Korean government- The Yushin Constitution. Yeah, Yushin Constitution. So South Korean government was rushing a lot to try to get a positive image out there in the US, considering how if they don't do that, the American authorities will not really okay the vividly authoritarian regime. But it seems like, I think the difference is at the time, they relied on this one person rather than a whole lot of network.

Right. But I guess this, in this case, the implication might be a bit different because it involves like a think tank world. Chata, have you, from your sources at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or the Korea Foundation, received anything on the record or off the record about coordination with the NIS? So one of the organizations that was mentioned by implication, you could reverse engineer this by looking at the Wilson center event listing, uh, was K A I S the Korean association of international studies.

We did send them a press inquiry to ask what their level of involvement with NIS was, no response so far. We also asked a career Foundation simply because it's involved with so much funding in DC and across America. The title of Terry's position at the time. Yeah, well, yeah, and Sue Me Terry, at the time of this Wilson Center event, was working for this Hyundai Korea Foundation

Department of Korean Historical Studies within Wilson Center. So we asked also down to implication, Korea Foundation, what their position was, their relationship with NIS and they denied that they had worked actively with NIS for any remittances or decisions relating to, so that there's a quite hard denial there. The question also asked about indirect cooperation. They didn't touch on that yet in their response. Okay. Well, then let's move on to final thoughts.

Chad, where do you see this going? I think this is going to have profound long-term impacts for think tank world in DC. A chilling effect? I think, you know, fewer conferences. I think from the Korean side, it's going to make life a lot harder if people want to interview American officials or think tank experts. It's going to make life harder for smaller, medium sized Korean think tanks that might be assumed to potentially be a bit too close to

Organizations like the NIS it's going to have impact for those in DC within the think tank community and their relationships with the South Korean officials and counterparts And I think I know I would I would hope the positive that comes out of this is that Think tanks will be much much clearer about Who's funding these events. And, you know, we're a small business where we're here to make money, we don't make much, but I can tell you when we do an event, we're very careful about spending

because events cost a shitload of money. Right. Um, no, I think we need to emphasize they cost a lot of money. We've done them in DC. The, the, the prices are crazy. You need to have a grant to do an event. And we've been lucky to work with Uni Career Foundation in the past who've supported

events were transparent about that. But when you see these events in five star hotels with like two, 300 people, real time translation, camera crews everywhere, this we're talking about significant money here, people flown in and you have to ask why. And I think that conversation needs to happen a lot more. I think the other thing I would add is that I really, I really think the politicization of this in South Korea is unfortunate, the idea that this is attacking the Moon administration. Because, you know, I was just, you'll remember this under the Lee Myung-bak conservative administration.

You know, I was just, you'll remember this under the Li Ming Bak conservative administration. In 2011, NIS entered the 19th floor of the Lotte hotel when an Indonesian delegation was staying and one of the Indonesian delegate members went back to his room and caught them in the room. Like they were copying allegedly files onto a USB memory stick as that delegation went back in. So this is sloppy stuff back then under a conservative, conservative administration. It's sloppy stuff now. I think I'm surprised the talking point from the intelligence services is we do not confirm or deny, uh, and I think that's the usually what Western intelligence services say, but it's, I think everyone is looking pretty bad right now.

You find final thoughts? I don't have much to add to that. I'm just is looking pretty bad right now. Yifeng, final thoughts? I don't have much to add to that. I'm just going to keep following the case. I have no idea what's going to happen. Okay. Well, we do thank you for writing the initial story, putting a lot of facts in there. I encourage listeners to go back there and read Yifeng's reporting on it. Jongmin, your thoughts?

Just adding on to Chad's comment, I will be closely monitoring what's happening in South Korea regarding this, especially next week there is a intelligence committee private briefing by the NIS at the National Assembly. I'll keep an eye on that. These are those briefings that are often leaked to reporters immediately afterwards by one of the members of the National Assembly who'd made some notes on paper. But of course we're now hearing it through hearsay so that you're getting some garbling of the messages, right? Right.

So grain of salt, but I'm pretty sure that they will be discussing this, but in light of this, rather focusing on how sloppy the NIS has been and they didn't really develop since then. So I'll keep an eye on that. And I just, yeah, I mean, I know the evidence in this case is, is very strong, but we should remember that DOJ have had a pretty checkered record when it comes to FARA prosecutions. A lot of them have not worked out and the people at the target of these

investigations have won their cases and had charges dropped. So we, we shouldn't discount that as a possibility. And as has been pointed out, Sumitari has only been indicted, has not yet gone to trial yet. So let's see. This feels like one of those things that at worst there may be some kind of a plea bargain and a non-custodial sentence of some sort. But the damage is done to the career it seems. That's a pity. All right. Well, I guess that's where we'll leave it for today. Thank you very much for joining me on the show. Jongmin Kim, Chatter Carolyn, Yifang Bremer. Thank you. Thank you. Get to the core of Korean insights with with Korea Pro's exclusive Seoul event series.

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