The South Korean presidential office commented on the indictment of Sue Mi Terry, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, by U.S. prosecutors for allegedly working for the Korean government without reporting to the U.S. government. President Yoon Suk-yeol’s office stated, “The situation calls for an inspection of the former Moon Jae-in administration.” A senior official said, “The activities [of the National Intelligence Service] captured on camera occurred during the Moon administration,” suggesting that the former administration replaced seasoned NIS agents with less experienced operatives.
Terry, a former CIA analyst and U.S. foreign policy expert, was recently charged with acting as a foreign agent for South Korea after leaving the intelligence agency. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan accused her of disclosing information to Seoul’s intelligence officers in exchange for luxury goods and dinners at Michelin-starred restaurants in Manhattan.
The Moon administration’s ambitious diplomacy with the U.S. from 2019 to 2021, aimed at declaring the end of the Korean War, may have contributed to this incident, according to the indictment and sources familiar with the matter on July 18.
U.S. prosecutors allege that Terry arranged an “intimate roundtable” with several current and former senior U.S. national security officials in January 2019 at the request of the NIS during then-NIS director Suh Hoon’s visit to Washington, D.C. This meeting, held a month before the second U.S.-North Korea summit in Hanoi, was part of the Moon administration’s intensive efforts to declare the end of the Korean War. A former senior U.S. intelligence official at the meeting later told FBI agents that he considered the meeting to be highly abnormal and could not think of another instance in which he was invited to a think tank and met with the head of a foreign intelligence agency.
Terry did not always agree with Moon’s policies. In February 2019, she wrote that “declaring an end to the Korean War could open the door for Pyongyang and Beijing to demand the dismantling of the UN mission and eventually the withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Korea.” Despite opposing views, her interactions with the NIS continued. In November 2019, an NIS agent gifted her a luxury coat and handbag, a practice continued by the agent’s successor in April 2021.
Around this time, Moon’s college acquaintance, a Korean-American known as Mr. C, spearheaded lobbying efforts for the end-of-war declaration on Capitol Hill. Mr. C, who connected Democratic Party of Korea members with the U.S. Congress, became the Vice-Chairperson for Americas at the Peaceful Unification Advisory Council(PUAC) in 2021. The Peaceful Unification Advisory Council(PUAC) is a constitutional institution of South Korea. Concerns arose within the Korean-American community about the potential violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) by a U.S. national working as a bridge between the Korean and U.S. political spheres.
The U.S. Department of Justice sent a “warning” to the South Korean government. “The department sent an advisory letter to the Korea Foundation (KF), which supports think tanks, advising them to register as a foreign agent if they wished to work for the South Korean government” said a source with knowledge of the situation. This occurred when Terry took on the role of ‘KF Korea Director’ at a Washington-based think tank funded by KF.
KF claimed it was an independent organization engaged in “cultural and academic exchanges exempt from FARA.” But the Department of Justice noted that KF’s director discussed “public diplomacy” and “promoting peace in the region,” making it subject to FARA. The Moon administration did not register KF as a foreign agent.
The fact that the U.S. Department of Justice sent an advisory warning to the KF was not well communicated to the Yoon administration, which took office in May 2022. The NIS agent who purchased luxury gifts for Terry was not replaced.
