The Defense Counterintelligence Agency, located in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi Province. [DCIA website]
The Defense Counterintelligence Agency, located in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi Province. [DCIA website]

The Ministry of National Defense's investigation headquarters is considering taking over the existing Defense Counterintelligence Agency infrastructure as it prepares to assume security investigation functions, military sources said Monday. The plan has practical merit in terms of investigative efficiency, but critics say it could significantly undermine both the symbolic weight of dissolving the DCIA and the reform goal of dispersing its authority.

Military sources said Monday that the Defense Ministry's investigation headquarters is reviewing a plan to continue using the DCIA's existing buildings and facilities in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi Province.

The move appears aimed at avoiding the time and upfront cost of rebuilding equipment and re-obtaining security certifications by making immediate use of the DCIA's existing cyber and digital forensics infrastructure, secure facilities, servers and document storage.

The transfer of the DCIA's extensive security investigation and forensic records to the investigation headquarters is already underway, sources said. Retaining the existing site and facilities would reduce security risks and administrative burdens involved in moving, storing and retrieving those materials.

Despite those practical justifications, critics say a decision to keep using the DCIA's headquarters building and site would contradict the reform goal — championed by the government and its civilian-military advisory committee — of dismantling the military's core power institutions and dispersing their authority.

The government has said it plans to dissolve the DCIA and redistribute its security investigation, counterintelligence and security support functions across separate agencies — a new Defense Ministry investigation headquarters, a tentatively named Defense Counterintelligence Headquarters and a Defense Security Support Group — to address the excessive concentration of military intelligence and investigative power.

Even so, concerns have been raised that if the investigation headquarters remains in the DCIA's Gwacheon building, successor organizations of the old DCIA could end up operating alongside the newly established Defense Counterintelligence Headquarters in the same building and on the same site.

In that scenario, with the physical space and its symbolism largely preserved, the public may view the "dissolution and dispersal" reform — pursued in the wake of controversy over political interference — as largely hollow.

Housing policy adds another complication. If the investigation headquarters and other agencies continue to occupy part of the site after the DCIA's dissolution, detailed coordination between the government's housing supply plans and the military's use of the land will be unavoidable.

In January, the government announced plans to relocate and jointly develop the DCIA site in Gwacheon (280,000 square meters) and the nearby Let's Run Park horse racing track (1.15 million square meters) to supply 9,800 housing units.

With two policy goals — stable operation of military security investigation functions and expanded housing supply in the greater Seoul area — potentially colliding on the same piece of land, observers say the government needs to clarify how much military use of the site it will permit and when it plans to move forward with the housing development.


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