'Intelligence collection, security and counterintelligence functions must be integrated'

'If illegal, investigate — disbandment is a political frame'

People Power Party lawmakers, including Han Ki-ho, Kang Seon-young and Yoo Yong-won, announce a joint statement at the National Assembly's media center on Thursday condemning the planned disbandment of the Defense Counterintelligence Command. [Provided by Rep. Kang Seon-young's office]
People Power Party lawmakers, including Han Ki-ho, Kang Seon-young and Yoo Yong-won, announce a joint statement at the National Assembly's media center on Thursday condemning the planned disbandment of the Defense Counterintelligence Command. [Provided by Rep. Kang Seon-young's office]

People Power Party lawmakers strongly criticized the Ministry of National Defense's plan to disband the Defense Counterintelligence Command and urged the government to reverse course.

Eleven PPP lawmakers — Han Ki-ho, Seong Il-jong, Kim Seong-won, Kang Dae-sik, Kim Eun-hye, Lee Seong-kwon, Kang Seon-young, Yoo Yong-won, Im Jong-deuk, Ko Dong-jin and Kim Min-jeon — issued a joint statement Thursday condemning what they called "the self-destructive disbandment of the Defense Counterintelligence Command, which harms national security." They called on Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-baek to withdraw the plan immediately.

"On Wednesday, Minister Ahn finally declared the disbandment of the Defense Counterintelligence Command," the statement said. While the government cited blocking the military's political interference as its rationale, the lawmakers said "this will seriously undermine national security."

The lawmakers said the command carries out military security, counterintelligence and the collection and processing of military-related intelligence under presidential decree, describing it as "the military's sole intelligence and investigative agency in both name and substance, which has safeguarded South Korea's liberal democracy."

They criticized the Defense Ministry's reorganization plan, which would transfer the command's security functions to a new Defense Security Support Group, its investigative functions to the Defense Ministry Investigation Headquarters and its intelligence-collection functions to a counterintelligence headquarters — scattering the command's core counterintelligence capabilities across separate bodies.

"Counterintelligence encompasses all countermeasures to detect and block the intelligence activities of foreign individuals, foreign organizations, transnational actors and domestic individuals linked to them who act against national security and the national interest," the statement said. "Integrating intelligence collection with security and counterintelligence functions is the very essence of how such an organization must operate."

The lawmakers said claiming the reorganization would "further strengthen counterintelligence functions" was entirely unconvincing, arguing it would sever accumulated counterintelligence expertise, weaken the specialization of unit personnel and cut off operational links between functions.

They also pointed to what they described as a cautionary precedent: after the National Intelligence Service's security investigation functions were transferred to police in 2024, those functions had effectively become paralyzed.

On the command's recent history, the statement noted that the organization had undergone a series of reforms — the dissolution of the Defense Security Command in 2018, the creation of the Security Support Command and a renaming to the Defense Counterintelligence Command in 2022. It also said that during the Dec. 3 emergency martial law incident, not a single member of the command entered any constitutional institution and that the unit had upheld the principle of political neutrality.

The lawmakers also took issue with the Defense Ministry's choice of language. They said the ministry was using terms such as "trend monitoring," "personnel intelligence" and "reputation gathering" — none of which are officially recognized — to mischaracterize the command as an organization engaged in illegal intelligence collection. "If it is illegal, the answer is to investigate — not to disband the unit," they said.

They further argued that the disbandment was not a simple organizational restructuring but part of a broader pattern of weakening national security, tied to moves such as restoring the Sept. 19 inter-Korean military agreement and accelerating the early transfer of wartime operational control. "This is a clear act of security self-harm that shakes the very foundation of national security," the statement said.

Earlier, Minister Ahn had announced the plan to disband and restructure the Defense Counterintelligence Command, citing the need to prevent the military's political interference.


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