To your dismay, after studying Korean for years at university, you now work in a government office that records agricultural statistics. The week after you’ve attended a South Korean Embassy event, a Korean diplomat asks to meet you.
She introduces you to a colleague, a Mr Kim. Another week later, and Mr Kim asks you to write a short paper on the recent election to help him better understand local politics. He is, after all, new to the country. It would be a very kind favor and it would help you practice Korean. Although, it’s weird, you think: Mr Kim doesn’t read the newspapers?
Mr Kim then pays you more than such a task was worth – in cash! This is good, you think. A few weeks later, you’ve written short papers on local politics, the school system and the media – and received good money!
Then Mr Kim asks whether you’d be interested in writing a more detailed paper on agriculture. He’d pay more money, and it is what you do at work. Maybe you could present it in Korea, he says. A free trip and more money …
Close allies spy on each other. It’s a tradition. Alliances are presented to the public as built on mutual trust and shared goals, but individual nations always prioritize their interests.
This means that in any bilateral relationship, there rests a degree of uncertainty and distrust. Intelligence operations are used to gather intelligence and influence the intentions, capabilities and strategies of partners.
This increases certainty and builds trust. It allows partners to safeguard national security, maintain strategic advantage within the framework of cooperation and, importantly, avoid surprises. Handled maturely, intelligence acts as a form of bilateral reassurance. This also applies to the South Korea-US relationship.
Despite the willingness to “fight tonight” in an “ironclad” alliance, South Korea and the US routinely undertake intelligence operations to reduce abandonment anxiety and to secure competitive advantage. Cold War arms control serves as an example.
The US conducted operations to verify South Korea’s compliance with arms control treaties, which impacted US relations with global partners, while South Korea conducted operations to break out of the constraints imposed on it through arms control agreements.
Of course, there are areas in which South Korea and the US compete directly. They are natural competitors in all economic fields. Securing intelligence and influence to out-compete the other is just as natural as fighting side-by-side.
As is common in cases of “recruiting friendlies,” activity often commences in a gray area that sits between diplomacy and espionage.
The gray area between diplomacy and espionage arises from the similar tasks that diplomats and intelligence officers undertake. Both diplomats and intelligence officers gather information and seek to persuade interlocutors to benefit the state. For the diplomat, these are the first two of four broad overlapping categories of tasks – reporting, representation, negotiation, and taking care of nationals in the host country.
Intelligence officers essentially undertake the same two tasks, albeit from a different angle. While diplomacy operates openly under international law and diplomatic convention, intelligence pays less attention to those norms.
The ambiguity lies in actions that, while part of diplomatic duties, might involve information or methods that cross into the intelligence realm. This overlap challenges the thin line between diplomatic practice and intelligence. The easiest way to distinguish the two is to understand the process of recruiting agents.
The recruitment process
Recruiting agents is a core aspect of intelligence. When agencies seek to enlist individuals to gather and relay sensitive information, the process is complex.
Requirements for success include a deep understanding of human psychology, strategic planning and careful execution. All states (and individuals within states) have distinct approaches, with repetition borne of prior successful approaches. Broadly speaking, there are four stages:
- Identification: The first step in recruitment is identifying individuals who have access to valuable information or have the capacity to exert influence. These targets could be government officials, military personnel, corporate executives or even individuals with access to influential networks. Intelligence agencies often look for people with specific vulnerabilities. The second step is determining whether these individuals have any weaknesses – such as financial difficulties, ideological discontent or personal grievances – that would make them easier to recruit.
- Relationship building: Once a potential recruit is identified, the next step is to build a relationship. It involves subtly befriending targets, learning more about their motives and determining how they might be persuaded to cooperate. The recruiter might pose as a fellow sympathizer, a potential business partner or even just a helpful acquaintance. The goal is to build trust and gradually introduce the idea of collaboration. This is often undertaken in a way suited to the target’s psychological profile.
- Recruitment: When the time seems right, the recruiter makes the pitch. This is the most delicate stage of the process. The approach can be direct or indirect, depending on the target’s personality and the relationship that has been developed. Depending on the target, the recruiter may offer money, protection or even simply appeals to ego. In some cases, threats or blackmail may be used, though these tactics require more attention and care.
- Management: Once recruited, careful management is need to make sure the agent continues providing valuable intelligence. This involves maintaining regular communication, offering rewards or reassurances, sometimes manipulating emotions to keep the agent loyal and even supporting an agent’s move into more useful positions.
South Korea’s espionage activities demonstrate modes of identification, relationship-building, recruitment and management processes that are similar to those employed across all Five Eyes countries. The vast majority of cases never reach the public eye.
Public revelations of espionage between allied states can lead to diplomatic tensions, erode mutual confidence and damage public perceptions of the alliance. Accordingly, governments prefer to handle such matters discreetly to avoid breakdowns in cooperation, which could weaken their collective security and strategic objectives.
Suppressing reporting on spying among allies helps to maintain stability and trust within their relationships. It prevents unnecessary escalation and allows diplomatic channels to manage issues quietly, often leading to behind-the-scenes negotiations or apologies that preserve the broader relationship.
Public acknowledgment of spying can also undermine ongoing intelligence operations, revealing methods, sources and vulnerabilities that could be exploited by the partner or third parties. By keeping these incidents out of the spotlight, allies can continue to collaborate on shared goals without the distraction or fallout of a public scandal.
In essence, suppression is a pragmatic approach to managing the delicate balance between national security interests and the necessity of maintaining strong, cooperative international partnerships.
But we know it does go public. There are several well-known cases of South Korean espionage and a number of less well-known cases where the potential damage outweighed the perceived benefits of media exposure.
So, why does it go public? There are three broad reasons for counterintelligence agencies to make a case public: strategic (to cover other operations); operational (to reduce the effectiveness of the “sending” state organization that has dispatched diplomats or spies) or political/bureaucratic (to satisfy broader objectives within the “host” or “receiving” state bureaucracy or political environment).
Similarly, it is also the case that the sending state will allow an asset or agent to be compromised for broader strategic, operational or bureaucratic/political rationales.
It’s hard to categorize and generalize intelligence processes, practices and cases because of the very distinct nature of what is at the heart of all human intelligence collection – the individuals themselves. That raises a question: Why do individuals engage in espionage? (Read why in the next post.)
The fact is, most don’t know they’re engaged in espionage until it’s too late. The better the recruitment process, the less likely it is that the agent is even aware of being recruited.
A free trip and more money. But then you realize, when Mr Kim tells you he’s willing to pay more and fly you to Korea, that it’s already too late: There’s no free lunch in this world. You’re now an intelligence asset!
Jeffrey Robertson is an academic, consultant and writer focusing on foreign affairs, diplomacy and the Korean Peninsula. This article was originally published on his Substack newsletter, Diplomatic Seoul, and is republished with permission. Read more here.