Information Security News: Ex-army officer busted for espionage

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2911952

By Yoo Jee-ho
JoongAng Daily
October 31, 2009

South Korean authorities have nabbed a former South Korean army officer, 
who was also a consultant to a presidential agency on unification, for 
allegedly leaking confidential military intelligence to a North Korean 
spy he met overseas.

The Suwon District Prosecutors. Office and the National Intelligence 
Service said Thursday that a 37-year-old man named Lee had been arrested 
for handing over military intelligence over the past 17 years in 
exchange for $50,600. Lee had been working as a lecturer at a 
Gyeonggi-based university on security administration.

According to the prosecutors, Lee holds a doctorate degree in political 
science and served as a troop information and education officer from 
1998 to 2001. Lee also served as a consultant to the National 
Unification Advisory Council, a state body promoting unification and 
advising the president on unification policies, and as a member of the 
Education Center for Unification under the Unification Ministry. Lee 
also gave lectures on security at military bases.

According to prosecutors, Lee befriended a North Korean agent named Lee 
Jin-woo while studying political science at the University of Delhi in 
India in 1992.

After returning home, Lee, the South Korean, snuck into North Korea to 
become a member of the ruling Workers. Party in 1993 and in 1995. 
Between July 1997 and February 2009, Lee met with Lee Jin-woo on nine 
occasions in Beijing, Singapore and Bangkok, and handed over CDs 
containing classified military information running to nearly 6,000 pages 
in total.

The prosecutors said the information that Lee passed on included South 
Korean Army field manuals on ground operations and the U.S. Army.s 
doctrine called Field Manual 100-5.

Then, between 2006 and 2007, prosecutors said Lee attended security 
seminars hosted by the National Intelligence Service and handed over his 
recording of the discussions.

Lee also leaked detailed coordinates of key South Korean national 
facilities, including the headquarters for the Marine Corps and some Air 
Force training bases, prosecutors said.


________________________________________ 
Did a friend send you this? From now on, be the 
first to find out! Subscribe to InfoSec News 
http://www.infosecnews.org