Former intelligence chief Kim Man-bok, in many respects, is a strange figure. He has generated so many controversies that many say even now, seven years after he stepped down from his post, that he should never have held such an important position.
Such a view may not be too harsh, if one looks at what Kim has done during and since his stint as the head of the National Intelligence Service from 2006-2008 during the Roh Moo-hyun administration.
For starters, Kim made public — in violation of the law prohibiting NIS staff from revealing what they did while in service — that he visited North Korea shortly before the 2007 presidential election and told senior officials there that Lee Myung-bak was certain to win the election.
In 2011, Kim, who played a leading role in the 2007 summit between Roh and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, gave an interview to a Japanese magazine regarding the meeting, again violating the NIS Law.
Then last month, Kim said in a forum that Roh and the North Korean leader had a telephone hotline between them and they spoke to each other whenever necessary. This stunned many, but as the media scurried to play up the story, Kim withdrew his comments.
The controversy was followed by the recent publication of a memoir — which Kim coauthored with two other former security aides to Roh. As the NIS moved to seek a court injunction to ban its sale, Kim voluntarily pulled the book from bookstores.
These breaches of the NIS’ confidentiality code — especially by the man who headed it — deserve severe criticism on their own. More baffling is that they could have been a carefully choreographed publicity campaign for Kim’s political ambitions.
As it turns out, Kim has gained membership of the ruling Saenuri Party, with the aim of running in the next parliamentary election in his hometown of Busan. He was quoted as saying that, although he had served in a liberal administration, he had a conservative perspective that was suited to the Saenuri Party.
What he did not say was that Busan is one of the conservative party’s home bases and anyone on a Saenuri ticket has a high chance of election there.
The situation took another twist lately, as Saenuri officials learned Kim publicly supported an opposition candidate in the Oct. 28 by-elections, which were held two months after he obtained party membership. This resulted in the party, which at first welcomed the “defection” of a senior figure from the rival camp — taking steps to expel him.
Kim now says that he will run as an independent candidate. We hope he will not. The pride of NIS has already been damaged too much and we already have too many things to scoff at in Korean politics.
