Korean Church back in the streets against corrupt intelligence service
Seoul Sept 26, 2013: South Korean Catholics are back in the streets to pray and protest
against abuses of power and interference by the National Intelligence Service (NIS),
South Korea's intelligence service.
On Monday, in front of Seoul City Hall,
lay people and members of clergy, including priests and nuns, from across the country
shouted slogans and sang songs against the intelligence service and its interference
in the lives of ordinary citizens, asking for its dissolution.
Among the many
cases of abuse, protesters mentioned the last presidential election that ended with
the defeat of the United Democratic Party candidate Moon Jae-in, a Catholic, who was
also present at the prayer meeting. His defeat was apparently "engineered" by people
trained by the NIS who sent large numbers of text messages to voters extolling the
conservative candidate and current President Park Geun-hye, whilst spreading false
information about her opponent.
The Catholic Priests' Association for Justice
(CPAJ) , set up under the Park dictatorship, took part in the prayer for the first
time, and openly called for the dismantling of the NIS. After getting the go-ahead
of the Korean bishops , who had previously spoken with Vatican officials, priests
joined the long battle engaged by lay Catholics against the intelligence service,
describing the situation as a "serious crisis".
More than 5,000 ordinary citizens,
men and women religious as well as lay people, took part in the demonstration, united
in defending the right to personal liberty against a "dangerous organisation" that
constitutes a " threat to democracy". Anonymous Catholic sources from Justice and
Peace interviewed by the newspaper Hankyoreh said that the large presence of Catholics
shows that, despite the bishops' great prudence, the situation is "dire".
After
the South Korean Church issued a protest manifesto against NIS interference, it was
joined by civil society groups that have for weeks held vigils and protests in front
of the headquarters of the NIS and of the ruling Conservative (Saenuri) Party. Everyone
is calling for the resignation of top NIS officials, an apology from the government
for the election fraud and the dismantling of the surveillance system that "brought
the country back to the years of the military dictatorship" of the 1970s.
The
National Intelligence Service (NIS ) was created in 1961 as the Korea Central Intelligence
Agency (KCIA). Its initial task was to supervise and coordinate domestic and international
intelligence activities. However, thanks to its sweeping powers, it was able to intervene
and actively influence South Korean politics. In 1981, it took the name of Agency
for National Security Planning (ANSP), following a series of reforms instituted under
President Chun Doo-hwan and the Fifth Republic. It assumed its current name in 1999.