Defense Security Command broached idea of campaign to manipulate public opinion

A cover of the DSC report submitted to the Lee Myung-bak Blue House on June 4, 2008 which proposed a campaign to manipulate public opinion. (provided by Rep. Lee Cheol-hui)

Proposal by the DSC was provided to the Blue House during the first year of the Lee Myung-bak administration

The campaign to manipulate public opinion that was carried out during the nine years of Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye’s presidencies can be traced back to a report given to the Blue House on June 4, 2008, by the South Korean military’s Defense Security Command (DSC). The Hankyoreh was given this report on Apr. 11 by Democratic Party lawmaker Lee Cheol-hui.

Until now, it had been believed that the public opinion campaign waged by state institutions had been a collaboration between the Blue House under Lee Myung-bak and the National Intelligence Service (NIS), but in light of this document’s timing and content, the “original author” may have been the DSC, which is primarily charged with military security and counter-espionage activities.

A section of the DSC report proposing the creation of a “non-exposed special team of civilians” who could respond to anti-government propaganda and agitation. (provided by Rep. Lee Cheol-hui)

When the DSC submitted the idea of operating a “non-exposed special team of civilians” on June 4, 2008, it was a critical moment for the Lee administration. Candlelight protests by citizens protesting the government’s decision to import US beef were in their second month and were moving toward a climax, while Lee’s Grand National Party (today the Liberty Korea Party) had suffered a landslide defeat in the by-elections held that day, winning only one of nine seats for local government offices.

Lee was strongly suspicious of the motivations of the thousands of protesters taking part in the candlelight rallies, and he ordered his staff to find out who had paid them to show up and who was leading the protests. It is also widely known that Lee castigated the NIS and the prosecutors for their “incompetence” in failing to bring the rallies under control for more than a month.

This was the moment when the DSC briefed the Blue House on the idea of a “non-exposed special team of civilians” that could “respond to the anti-government propaganda and agitation by forces on the left and increase public support for the government.” Given Lee’s frustration, this briefing warmly received. The DSC also specified the duties of the team of civilians, which included monitoring broadcasts critical of the government from KBS, MBC and left-leaning media; developing arguments to use against the left wing; spreading those arguments both online and offline; running articles and columns in right-wing media; distributing those materials under the name of right-wing organizations; and reprocessing those materials as various media (such as videos, music and comics) to be disseminated – and added a yearly budget for each stage.

This document pushes the beginning of the Lee administration’s plans for manipulating public opinion 20 days earlier than previous estimates. Investigations by the prosecutors and internal probes at various organizations had traced the beginning of this criminal campaign back to June 24, 2008, when offices for a public relations strategy officer and a public communications secretary were established at the Blue House.

There is also testimony that the manipulation of public opinion by state organizations began with an online commenting operation voluntarily conducted by the DSC.

“The DSC was posting comments on its own during the 2008 candlelight rallies. When a Blue House secretary visited the DSC and was briefed on this, he praised the command highly and said he would ‘brief the VIP’ [the president] upon his return to the Blue House,” said a source in the military who is familiar with affairs at the DSC. It is likely that the subsequent document was produced and submitted to the Blue House amid these developments.

“At this point, we have to suspect that the DSC’s political meddling was not simply behavior by a few staff members but was written into the organization’s DNA. There needs to be sweeping reform of the DSC to prevent this from happening again, including punishment of the people involved and a reshuffle of personnel,” Lee Cheol-hui said.

By Kim Tae-kyu, staff reporter

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