New deputy director is expected to push for the end-of-war declaration
President Moon Jae-in on November 26 appointed a controversial figure notorious for his anti-America and pro-Chinese views as the first deputy director of the National Intelligence Service (NIS), South Korea’s spy agency.
The appointment shows the Moon administration’s willingness to push ahead with controversial plans such as declaring an end to the Korean War and rushing to replace the current armistice system with a peace agreement. Park Sun-won, his choice for the position, suggested these ideas in the past.
President Moon Jae-in appointed Park, head of the NIS’s planning and coordination office, as the first deputy director on November 26. The first deputy director is tasked with gleaning intelligence on North Korea and overseas affairs. The appointment will probably be Moon’s last reshuffle of the spy agency’s leadership before the upcoming presidential election in March.
Park Soo-hyun, senior presidential Blue House secretary for public communication, told the media that “Park Sun-won is a veteran expert on security issues and has a reform-oriented mind and ability to push things ahead.” Park Soo-hyun added that “we believe that Park Sun-won will contribute to finding a breakthrough in improving inter-Korean relations, as well as relations between North Korea and the United States.”
Park Sun-won is a well-known figure among leftists for his role in the student activist movement in the 1980s. He was arrested for organizing the 72-hour illegal occupation of the U.S. cultural center in Gwangju, South Korea in 1985. He was put in prison for two and a half years.
Park served as a unification, foreign policy, and national security strategy advisor to President Roh Moo-hyun. At that time, he was described as someone with “self-reliance” ideas and had many conflicts with diplomats and senior officials who emphasized the importance of the alliance with the United States. He was the point man who arranged the inter-Korean summit in 2007. He is known for suggesting the idea that the South Korean government should approach North Korea by separating the issue of a peace agreement with the declaration of an end to the Korean War.
In 2010, he was an advisor to the Democratic Party’s truth commission on the sinking of the Cheonan Warship, when a North Korean submarine fired a torpedo at the South Korean warship, killing 46 sailors on board. At that time, Park argued that North Korea was not responsible for the attack, and that the warship sank on its own due to a defect in its design. He even said that the United States has more reliable information and data on the sinking of the Cheonan but is not releasing it to the South Korean government. Then-Defense Minister Kim Tae-young filed a lawsuit against Park for spreading false statements, but the court found him not guilty.
In December 2010, Park also said, “I heard from a senior U.S. official that a unified Korea would have to hand away a portion of North Korea to China.” This comment caused a significant diplomatic problem.
Park Sun-won showed his pro-China views more directly after the Moon Jae-in administration came to power. In August 2017, he argued that in order to appease China it was necessary to temporarily suspend the operation of the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile defense system deployed in South Korea.
In January 2018, Moon appointed Park as the South Korean consul general in Shanghai. He worked there for six months and returned to the NIS.
Park wrote a memoir in 2012 titled “Develop Hard Power.” He introduced various episodes with North Korea that occurred during the Roh Moo-hyun administration. In 2007, the U.S. Treasury Department froze North Korean secret funds in an account with Banco Delta Asia in Macao. At that time, Roh’s Blue House negotiated with the U.S. Treasury Department to release the $25 million in funds that were frozen. In his memoir, Park explained that the Roh administration tried to use South Korea’s government-run EXIM Bank and Bank of Korea to circumvent restrictions on the fund and send it to North Korea.
President Moon Jae-in wrote an endorsement for the book. Moon wrote that, “Dr. Park Sun-won is liberal and progressive, and has lots of capabilities.” Moon added that, “We finally have a national security expert who is both capable and has a progressive spirit.”
The South Korean media interpreted that this appointment was made in order to find a breakthrough in inter-Korean relations. Recently, U.S. President Joe Biden said that he will review a “diplomatic boycott” of the Beijing Winter Olympics in February. South Korean liberals expected that the Beijing Olympics is the last chance of holding another summit with Kim Jong-un to finalize the “end-of-war declaration” they are desperately hoping for.
It is unclear how the appointment of Park Sun-won, who is pro-China and North Korea and arguably anti-American, will affect the Moon administration’s final attempt to declare an end to the war. An end to the war requires consent from the U.S. as it was a major signatory of the Armistice Agreement.
