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Contributors
Gordon
Cucullu- Contributor
Former Green
Beret lieutenant colonel, Gordon Cucullu is now an editorialist,
author and a popular speaker. Born into a military
family, he lived and served for more than thirteen years in East
Asia, including eight years in Korea. For his Special Forces
service in Vietnam he was awarded a Bronze Star, Vietnamese Cross
of Gallantry, and the Presidential Unit Commendation. After separation
from the Army, he worked on Korea and East Asian affairs at both
the Pentagon and Department of State as well as an executive
for General Electric in Korea. His first major non-fiction work,
Separated
at Birth: How North Korea became the Evil Twin, is
based in large part on his extensive experience in
Korea and East Asia as a governmental insider and businessman.
[website]
[go to Cucullu index]
 A
Spy in the Ointment
Do the Koreans have a 527?...
[Gordon Cucullu] 11/2/04
An
AP news report in late September noted that an agent employed
by South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (formerly the
Korean Central Intelligence Agency) who was serving as a consular
official in Los Angeles, had met with fund raisers from the
John Kerry campaign. An unknown amount of money was raised
by the agent and passed to the campaign. Reportedly, the Kerry
camp returned $4,000 because of ‘concern about [its] origins.’ Considering
the amounts of money foreign governments - especially Asian
governments like South Korea and China - throw into American
politics the $4,000 sounds like chump change, especially in
light of other related information.
This
intelligence agent, Chung Byung-man, previously served in Atlanta
where he came into contact with an American, Rick Yi, described
as a ‘former military attaché’ who had worked in the Clinton
White House. Yi became a private businessman and was an aggressive,
successful Democrat Party fundraiser. Since 2003 Yi reportedly
raised more than $500,000 for various Democrat candidates including
an unknown amount for John Kerry. Yi visited Chung after the
latter was reassigned from Atlanta to the consulate office
in LA.
During
a visit Chung reportedly proposed to Yi that a Korean political
action group be formed to support John Kerry’s presidential
run. Chung was prepared to finance and assist in the startup.
Then an investigative Associated Press reporter discovered
that Chung was an official in South Korea’s National Intelligence
Service and wrote a story about it. Almost immediately Chung
fled to Korea. Anonymous officials there confirm Chung’s employment
by NIS but deny that the Korean government was trying to influence
a US election. The Kerry campaign denies knowledge of Chung’s
true background.
It
gets more complicated. Rick Yi was business partner to one
Chun Jae-yong, who was the son of former Korean strongman Chun
Doo-hwan, himself convicted in 1997 in a Korean court of bribery
charges. The younger Chun wrote a check to the Kerry campaign
for $2,000 which was returned. Yi now says that he and Chun
have discontinued business activities. As is true in many of
these cases, little is written down and personal contacts are
made through networks and relationships.
Why
does all this matter? It is old news that Asian governments - working
through a loose coalition of individuals and politically oriented
groups - have long sought to buy influence in US politics.
South Korea has a reputation for such under the table activities.
During the mid 1970s a character named Park Tong-sun established
himself in Georgetown and became a prime mover and shaker on
the Washington scene. A scandal broke surrounding Park and
later investigation disclosed successful and attempted bribery
of many US Congressmen.
What
drove the Koreans to take what many regarded as reckless actions?
Quite simply, the Korean government feared that America would
not honor its defensive treaty obligations, thereby inviting
a North Korean attack. They saw America abandon its South Vietnamese
allies to conquest by invading North Vietnamese forces despite
a treaty affirming the US commitment to its security. Within
a year after Saigon fell Jimmy Carter was elected president
on a platform in which he vocally promised to withdraw American
troops from Korea without consultation with the South Korean
government, also treaty allies.
In
the minds of Korean observers it had become impossible to trust
the word of an American president. Even if he pledged support
they saw proof positive that a hostile Congress could undermine
him. Therefore it was necessary in the Korean worldview that
they have Congressmen upon whom they could rely under any circumstances.
In their society at the time the usual way to secure loyalty
in a public official was through bribery. So off they went.
Illegal, risky, and foolish, but understandable under the circumstances.
Now,
almost three decades later we see suspicious activity this
time targeted not at Congress but at a potential chief executive.
Ironically the issue with South Korea is not worry about a
chief executive like Carter who was weak, but fear that President
Bush is too strong. His upbraiding of North Korean and categorizing
it as part of the Axis of Evil makes the present South Korean
government very nervous. Since 1997 South Korean President
Kim Dae-jung and his successor Roh Moo-hyun have followed a
policy of accommodation and appeasement regarding North Korea.
The
Kim Dae-jung government passed huge bribes to the North Koreans
to pretend to talk peace while they covertly pursued manufacture
of nuclear weapons. This duplicitous action won Kim a Nobel
Prize. Both Kim and Roh deliberately turn a blind eye to the
horrific human rights abuses inflicted on its population by
North Korea, preferring instead to cook deals with the regime.
Under the Kim-Roh leadership South Korean has attempted to
occupy a position as ‘mediator’ between the US and North Korea,
as if it did not have a dog in the fight. Former National Security
Advisor Richard Allen categorized this action as ‘a serious
breech of faith’ by South Korea.
So
President Bush’s hard line on North Korea - not least his ‘outing’ its
nuclear weapons R&D program - has frightened those South
Koreans who have developed an under-the-radar, cozy relationship
with the Kim Jong-il regime. While the initial deal drawn up
with North Korea was cobbled together by Jimmy Carter supposedly
acting independently in 1994, it was welcomed by the Clinton
administration and by many observers as a way of averting possible
war on the Korean peninsula. In a nutshell this Agreed Framework
stated that if North Korea ceased its nuclear programs the
US along with Japan, South Korea and Russia would construct
two light water nuclear reactors for energy (the product could
not be weaponized), provide huge tonnage in food supplies and
medicine, and dump shiploads of fuel oil into the country.
Three
years later, in 1997 when Kim Dae-jung was elected president
of South Korea he expanded this by instituting the so-called ‘Sunshine
Policy’ that was ostensibly an outreach program to develop
accommodations with North Korea. Later, witnesses have reported
on huge sums of money - by some accounts as high as $1.5 billion - passed
furtively to North Korea to bring it to the table. Along the
way the abhorrent human rights abuses in North Korea were intentionally
ignored. At the time US policy makers went along with this
policy of intentional ignorance, citing a need to deal with
the most critical nuclear issues first. This crass abandonment
of North Korean innocents to the death camps and starvation
conditions imposed by the dictatorial Kim Jong-il raised the
ire of many in America - including then candidate George W.
Bush - as well as people with consciences in South Korea.
The
opposition Grand National Party in the legislature initiated
investigations of Kim Dae-jung’s behavior and has insisted
that human rights be an essential part of any agreement made
with North Korea. While the US Congress last week unanimously
passed the North Korea Freedom Act which President Bush eagerly
signed into law, the ruling party in South Korea was lobbying
to kill it but GNP legislators encouraged passage.
The
ruling party in South Korea has been increasingly under the
microscope for financial irregularities and overall incompetence,
to the degree that fistfights and name calling are common occurrences
on the floor of the National Assembly. President Roh and his
Uri Party would like to see pressure on them from America diminish
because they fear not only for retention of power but also
from possible criminal prosecution. One way to get the US off
their backs as they see it would be to change leadership in
America. As a consequence the South Koreans are in odd agreement
with North Korea: both are working hard to see that George
W. Bush is defeated for re-election in November. This puts
them foursquare with most of the reprehensible, corrupt, and
dangerous regimes in the world.
As
every politician knows the grease that makes the wheels of
power turn is money. In an odd way it makes sense to foreign
governments seeking influence with American government to apply
it liberally, especially in a climate of rapacious fundraising
that characterizes American presidential election campaigns.
Sometimes it falls into the ‘how could they be so dumb’ category,
e.g., Gore accepting checks at a Buddhist monastery then when
caught expressing shock that monks who lived with a vow of
poverty were handing him sequentially numbered checks for five
grand each. Other times it can be a bit more subtle such as
the short-term leases on the Lincoln Bedroom and ‘meet-the-Prez’ coffee
klatches.
In
this case intelligence/consular officer Chung seems to have
been trying to take advantage of the latest goofy American
innovation, campaign finance law, in order to establish a 527-like
structure in order to buy some squeeze in a future Kerry-Edwards
administration, or at worse have the Senators’ ears in case
a critical bill might be on the Senate floor and they might
actually show up to vote. Give the Dems credit, they’ve never
yet seen money, Asian or other, that they didn’t like and were
only too happy to have bagmen like Rick Yi run the traps for
them.
It
goes without saying that much more would be heard of this if
the party affiliation were reversed. ‘Koreans Bribe Bush’ would
be above the fold in the NY Times if that were the
case. So the story languishes in the background and only reaches
a large audience because of Internet news organizations, talk
radio and, if pushed hard enough, perhaps cable TV. Bottom
line is that in this case the South Korean government operating
through a thinly disguised agent attempted to manipulate American
election law in order to establish an influence foothold in
the Kerry-Edwards campaign through use of illegal foreign contributions.
The thin evidence at hand suggests that while the Democrats
did not solicit the funds neither were they eager to turn down
the help.
Such
extraordinary efforts to pick an American leader that they
think can be manipulated is a left-handed compliment to George
W. Bush. The Kerry camp pretends that the ‘world hates us’ because
of righteous indignation when the reality comes clearer daily
that the world fears an honest American leader who demands
accountability from enemies and more so from friends. A president
who will not wink at Oil for Food frauds or sell out his principles
for money. A president who will demand a reckoning for grotesque
human rights abuses, and will hold a bright light on lying,
cheating, proliferating weapons of mass destruction, and state
support for terrorism. When all the pieces are on the board
the puzzle is not difficult to put together at all. CRO
copyright
Gordon Cucullu 2004
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