SEOUL, South Korea — Intelligence leaks from Washington have generated global headlines, but nowhere have the fallout and embarrassment been more explosive than here, with the government of President Yoon Suk Yeol forced on the defensive and even the firebrand opposition leader expressing some sympathy for Mr. Yoon.
The disclosures are generating crimson faces and political consternation in the Biden administration, which has been forced — again — to explain why the U.S. is spying on some of its closest allies, including Canada, Israel and Britain.
For multiple reasons — domestic politics, timing, location and the personnel involved — the leaks have been particularly damning for the conservative Mr. Yoon, who has been in office less than a year.
They pile pressure onto the embattled president, who in March ventured onto a political limb to upgrade relations with former colonial master Japan — a policy strongly approved by Washington but one that aroused painful and divisive memories at home.
The timing of the revelations — which includes details of a recent U.S. campaign to pressure Seoul to supply weapons to Ukraine — could not be worse for the president, who makes a high-profile state visit to Washington this month. The leaks involve some of his highest-level officials, and even the alleged location is intimately connected with Mr. Yoon’s policies.
The government has tried to limit the damage on two fronts.
First, the government insisted — after discussions with the Pentagon — that some of the leaks were not true. Second, it insisted that the idea that a foreign intelligence service could breach South Korea’s watertight presidential facilities was simply not feasible.
“The defense ministers of the two countries agreed on the fact that a large number of these documents have been falsified,” the presidential office said in a message sent to foreign reporters Tuesday.
Citing the solid security status of the presidency, the message said, “The suspicion of wiretapping … the Presidential Office is an absurd allegation.”
The conservative president and the liberal opposition leader, Lee Jae-myung, are often at daggers drawn. But speaking to foreign reporters Tuesday, Mr. Lee sounded almost sympathetic to his reeling rival.
“The current issue is a matter of eavesdropping or forgery. … There is no way for us to [yet] know the facts,” said Mr. Lee, adding that his party would conduct a probe.
“It is kind of disappointing to me if it is true,” he said. “I do hope this can be an issue of forgery, as announced by the South Korean government.”
South Korea’s leading media outlets were less restrained.
“If the CIA has indeed succeeded in wiretapping areas around the [National Security Office], which operates within South Korea’s presidential office, this represents a serious infiltration of the country’s main diplomatic and security command tower,” wrote the Hankyoreh, a daily newspaper.
Sensitive location
For two allies who talk endlessly about their “ironclad” alliance and standing “shoulder to shoulder,” the leaks — top secret documents apparently collected from the Pentagon and multiple agencies and posted online — are enormously embarrassing.
They imply that U.S. intelligence eavesdroppers were able to penetrate South Korea’s supposedly most secure location — a location that itself represents a political Achilles’ heel for Mr. Yoon.
In one of its earliest policies, the Yoon administration shifted the president’s executive offices from the iconic Blue House to the building housing the Ministry of National Defense in Seoul’s Yongsan district.
The move was controversial. Critics charged that Mr. Yoon feared supposedly bad “feng shui” hanging over the Blue House. The new president defended the move in part on security grounds.
The Yongsan compound “is a military facility,” the presidential message to reporters read. “Unlike [the Blue House] where the presidential office, secretarial office and security office were scattered, we now maintain ‘tight security’ through an integrated security system and dedicated personnel.”
The statement glides over the fact that the compound’s security has already been found wanting. In December, a North Korean drone loitered overhead, returning to the North in defiance of all South Korean efforts to down it.
Sensitive timing
Beyond location, the timing of the leaks strains U.S.-South Korean ties at an extremely awkward moment.
Mr. Yoon is slated to meet with President Biden during a pomp-and-circumstance state visit on April 26, in part as a celebration of 70 years of ties between the two allies. That visit was announced immediately after Mr. Yoon took the biggest risk of his presidency thus far with an effort to improve ties with Japan, badly frayed over a wartime forced labor controversy that is deeply emotional for many Koreans.
His initiative pleased Washington, which has long sought better ties between its two critical Northeast Asian allies to counter rising threats from China, North Korea and Russia.
Amid domestic criticisms that Mr. Yoon had made all the concessions and Japan had offered none, the initiative did not please the South Korean public.
After the March 16 Tokyo summit, Mr. Yoon saw his approval rating drop to just 30%, according to a Gallup Korea poll.
Sensitive personnel, sensitive issue
Moreover, the leaks suggest that Washington listened in on prickly discussions conducted by high-profile officials: the heads of Seoul’s National Security Office, its Presidential Affairs Office and its Presidential Secretary for National Defense.
The documents leaked online suggest that South Korean officials were concerned that the public might believe that Washington was pressuring a reluctant Seoul to provide weapons to Ukraine in defiance of long-standing national policy.
South Korea, a manufacturing powerhouse, is supplying a massive tranche of tanks, self-propelled artillery, multiple-launch rocket systems and combat aircraft to Poland. It has also supplied 200,000 155 mm artillery shells to the U.S.
It has not armed Kyiv as it battles a Russian invasion force.
Under South Korea’s Foreign Trade Act, the country does not supply arms directly to nations engaged in war, giving the nation’s trade minister the power to curb military exports.
Mr. Lee, the opposition leader, noted that Mr. Yoon and Mr. Biden already have contentious issues to discuss, including South Korean semiconductor supply links to China and tax breaks for South Korean manufacturers under Mr. Biden’s new industrial policies designed to bolster American competitors.
With the intelligence leaks raising political temperatures, Mr. Lee said his party will conduct fact-finding at the National Assembly. He also suggested that if the leaked documents prove accurate, both parties must act.
“If this is proven true, we would like to ask for an apology for this issue from parties involved and should put in place actions to prevent any repetition,” he said.
