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SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A civilian employee in South Korea’s military intelligence command was arrested for allegedly leaking military secrets, the Defense Ministry said, as local media speculated the information was about South Korean spies operating abroad and that it may have been sent to North Korea.
A military court issued a warrant Tuesday to arrest the employee in the Korea Defense Intelligence Command for alleged leaks of confidential military information, the Defense Ministry said in a brief statement. It said it won’t disclose details of the employee’s criminal allegations because an investigation was underway.
South Korean media reported the employee gave a Chinese national thousands of confidential documents including those on the intelligence command’s list of agents operating in foreign countries with disguised names and jobs. The reports said the leaked documents have the real names and ages of those secret agents and where they are stationed. It was unclear why the employee allegedly handed over the information to the Chinese.
Observers say the command has long sent agents to China and elsewhere to build up a network of informants with contacts in North Korea or to directly meet North Koreans living there. The military intelligence command is one of South Korea’s major government bodies tasked with collecting information on North Korea. South Korea's biggest spy agency is the National Intelligence Service.
Yonhap news agency reported military investigators have detected signs that the leaked information was supposed to be passed over to North Korea. Yonhap said the Chinese national, of Korean descent, may have been an informant working for North Korea’s spy agency.
If such confidential military secrets had ended up in North Korea, that would likely pose a huge setback to South Korea’s overseas intelligence-gathering abilities while endangering the safety of South Korean spies abroad, observers say.
In a closed-door briefing for lawmakers on Tuesday, the Korea Defense Intelligence Command said that it has brought back command officials dispatched abroad and imposed a ban on overseas business trips by other officials, according to one of the lawmakers, Lee Seong Kweun.
Another lawmaker, Park Sunwon, cited the intelligence command as saying the military’s counterespionage authorities will investigate the arrested employee. Park suggested that the investigation is expected to take at least several months.
The arrested employee has reportedly denied the allegations, arguing that his laptop was hacked. But Lee and Park quoted the intelligence command as telling lawmakers that the information leak wasn’t a result of hacking.
The two Koreas remain split along the world's most heavily fortified border since the end of the 1950-53 Korean War. Their animosities have deepened in recent years, with North Korea extending a provocative run of missile tests and South Korea expanding its military drills with the U.S. in a tit-for-tat cycle.