Spy claims won’t hurt Korea ties: Carr

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Spy claims won’t hurt Korea ties: Carr

May 2nd, 2013

Peter Nolan

Allegations of a South Korean spy ring operating in Australia will not damage relations between the two countries, Foreign Minister Bob Carr says.

Fairfax Media reported on Thursday that previously suppressed information revealed South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) was trying to “cultivate Australian officials and public servants to obtain sensitive information” on bilateral trade negotiations.

Senator Carr declined to confirm or deny that report.

“In line with the longstanding practice in Australian governance, I cannot comment on matters of security or intelligence,” he told reporters in Sydney.

But Senator Carr said the claims were unlikely to affect relations between Canberra and Seoul.

“I believe the relationship with the Republic of Korea is so strong, so robust, that this will have no effect on it,” he said.

The Fairfax report said ASIO had alleged that Yeon Kim, a senior agricultural trade specialist, was involved in “foreign interference” by the Korean spies.

Dr Kim has lost his job with the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences.

No South Korean spies were expelled, despite ASIO describing their actions as “inappropriate activities” harmful to Australia’s interest, Fairfax said.

It also said that in an effort to maintain good relations, ASIO took legal action to try to prevent public disclosure of the incident and protect the identities of the Korean agents.

In 2010, ASIO had learnt that Dr Kim had been meeting a South Korean diplomat who was declared to the Australian government as an NIS liaison officer.

Dr Kim was the principal author of an ABARES study of the Korean beef market and had participated in the third round of the Australia-South Korea free trade agreement negotiations in late 2009.

Dr Kim had been interviewed by ASIO officers in October 2010, Fairfax said.

About 11 months later, ASIO director-general David Irvine had issued an adverse security assessment of Dr Kim “after finding that he had had contact with successive NIS officers who he had not reported, as required by Australian government policy”.