North Korean Intelligence Structures

Abstract

IntroductionCompared to other states, it is especially difficult to gather reliable information about North Korean intelligence structures. Every intelligence agency is interested in working under nonpublic conditions and keeping its structures secret. This means that no numbers about employees, or about the size of the organization, or details about operations and cooperations with other agencies, and so on, are available. The Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK) is obsessed with a cult of secrecy, refusing every kind of request concerning security subjects. It is still a widely insular state, its regime of nepotists frightened of being removed by nearly everything: capitalism, the angry crowd, the imperialists, and so on. It controls every move and every communication, both inside and outside. This fear can be perceived as the history of Korea, which had to fight battles with other different states or interest groups over the centuries. In the eyes of the North Korean government, every rumor must be a reason to distrust close allies: in 2003, reports circulated that the Russian intelligence agency Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki (SVR) had installed secret nuclear monitoring equipment in Pyongyang-allegedly following a request from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Of course, the ruling elite in the DPRK has something to lose: its boundless power and privileges.There are four main problems in undertaking research about intelligence in the DPRK:* There is a large number of intelligence organizations connected in a nontransparent way.* There is high employee fluctuation and simultaneous multiple occupations in the security and civilian sectors.* Cooperation between the DPRK and Chinese intelligence, as well as with sub-intelligence organizations, is nontransparent.* The Western focus on classic intelligence needs ignores to specific DPRK requirements.For Western intelligence analysts, this means that most data about intelligence in the DPRK is decontextualized, and individual items of information often seem to stand isolated from each other. Requested surveys tend to become more political assumptions rather than independent realistic scenarios. Concerning the media, only a few North Korean spies and illegal traders find a route to publicity; for example, John Joungwoon Yai, Kang Song-hui, Won Jeong-hwa, Chang Min-ho, or So Sokhong, together with his wife Pak Chong-sun.Survey of SourcesMuch of the information about the DPRK's intelligence operations, structure, or personnel is outdated, classified, or more-or-less feasible attempts at speculation. Some information is supplied by defectors or people working in the DPRK-members of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) or of the slowly growing business sector. Defectors are important, but most of them have "only" a job-defined overview and have tried to exaggerate their own knowledge-a comprehensible form of behavior. You need more defectors, to cross-check the given information, than ever leave the DPRK. The other problem is the lack of qualitative and quantitative data, especially about intelligence-it still doesn't exist, in contrast to the massive flow of information about agriculture, nutrition, and so on since the mid-1990s.In these difficult circumstances, it is necessary to define the aims of doing research in this field: What is really interesting and what is important to know? What kind of sources are reliable and who can you trust? In how many different ways can research be done, and how can the results be compared and connected?Only a handful of intelligence-related publications, declassified reports, and predominantly gray literature in the form of conference papers or more-or-less open source documents of a highly variable quality are available.1 Highly interesting information and analysis is provided by research institutes, think tanks, and governmental organizations-in particular, from the East Asian region, but from friendly governments too. …