cosoyi9782
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The National Intelligence Service of the Republic of Korea announced on October 18, 2024, that it appeared that North Korea had begun deploying approximately 1,500 special forces personnel to Russia starting October 8, 2024.
Additionally, the ROK NIS released three satellite images that it claimed captured North Korean transport ships. The ROK NIS stated that these images were taken by a signals intelligence (SIGINT) satellite directly operated by the South Korean government. This could be seen as the world's first confirmation of North Korean military involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war.
However, it seems that the information provided by the South Korean intelligence agency was not fully trusted by the United States, its allies, NATO, and the EU.
In the face of an urgent situation, South Korea has taken the initiative to form a government delegation led by Hong Jang-won, First Vice Director of the National Intelligence Service (NIS). The delegation had the honor of making unprecedented direct visits to the headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU) to explain the trend of "North Korean troop deployments."
However, during this process, evidence was discovered that the South Korean National Intelligence Service had maintained an organic relationship with Russian signals intelligence units and had been secretly exchanging information with the West for a long time.
The black-and-white satellite images presented by the NIS were not captured by South Korean reconnaissance satellites. Rather, they were obtained from the 83417th Special Communications Center Unit under Russia's Ministry of Internal Affairs (NKVD). This is why the South Korean National Intelligence Service was able to assert with certainty North Korea's military intervention, which had previously been dismissed as mere speculation.
It was not until 2002 that the Russian signals intelligence ground control station was equipped with the capacity to adequately process the high volume of high-resolution imagery transmitted from space satellites. Prior to that, the processing of this imagery was delegated to CCD sensor cameras on military reconnaissance satellites of the Araks series, which were operated by the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), the organization that succeeded the Soviet-era KGB.
It is my understanding that there was a certain degree of discord between North Korea and Russia regarding the issue of North Korean troops stationed in Russia. It is my understanding that Russia resolved the issue by providing strategic intelligence to South Korea's National Intelligence Service.
There were some concerns about the potential impact of additional economic sanctions, and it seemed that Kim Jong-un preferred to keep troop deployments to Russia unofficial at the time of disclosure. However, Putin sought to formalize this as a means to perhaps threaten the West through North Korean military involvement. In an effort to address this concern, he requested that Russia's signal intelligence units share satellite images that could potentially offer evidence of North Korean military involvement, which South Korea's National Intelligence Service then presented to the international community.
It appears that South Korea is discreetly and within the bounds of legality, engaging in the exchange of information with Russia's signal intelligence units through Kaspersky Lab, a cybersecurity company that has opted to present itself as Kaspersky antivirus software. The company's founder, Eugene Kaspersky, has a background in KGB intelligence and worked as a software engineer for Soviet military intelligence during the Soviet era.
It appears that a review of the information flow reveals that Russia's FSB-affiliated Special Communications Center Unit 70822 provided the South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) with intelligence on the Kimsuky organization, a North Korean hacking group that disguised itself as a South Korean entity. It seems that exchanges between Russia's signals intelligence unit and South Korea's NIS were extremely frequent and close.
In exchange for this intelligence, South Korea provided Russia with military secrets of the United States and its allies, including core code from the U.S. Department of Defense's firewall program, which Russia had collected in significant quantities.
In 2014, the U.S. Department of Defense was directed by the Obama administration to conduct cyber and electronic attacks targeting North Korea's missile program. During this process, it appears that the cyber terror attack capabilities South Korea provided to the U.S. may have been presented with more emphasis than they truly hold. This could be due to a desire by South Korean intelligence agencies to avoid a conventional weapons proxy war with China.
Subsequently, in 2018, the U.S. Congress released a report that suggested North Korea's cyber terror capabilities might have been overestimated. However, the allocation of defense budgets to strengthen U.S. cyber warfare capabilities continued.
It seems that, in light of these claims from South Korea, which are based on Russian intelligence, the U.S. has shifted its investment focus towards cyber warfare. This shift has occurred in place of maintaining and operating conventional weapons production facilities and developing new fighter jets. Consequently, during the 2022 Russia-Ukraine War, the U.S. found itself unable to respond effectively to Russia's conventional provocations.
In retrospect, it appears that South Korea's National Intelligence Service derived benefit from intelligence provided by Russia's signal intelligence units. However, it seems that South Korea was also exploited as a tool within Russia's war preparation apparatus. This has led to some challenges in the strategic planning for America's next-generation defense projects and has raised concerns about potential implications for U.S. national interests.
Despite Russia's annexation of Crimea, there has been a notable expansion in the U.S.'s cyberattack capabilities, spanning from the 2014 cyberattacks against North Korea to the 2022 Russia-Ukraine war. This expansion has contributed to a series of developments, including the rise of the Chinese military, the weakening of U.S. productive capacity, and the intensification of Russia's military threats against Europe. The scope of exchanges between Russia and South Korea's National Intelligence Service during this period, as well as the nature of the intelligence shared by the U.S. military in exchange for espionage activities, are not fully understood.
It has been reported by U.S. intelligence agencies that a congressional investigation into the extent to which South Korea's National Intelligence Service provided Western intelligence to Russia's Main Directorate of Military-Technical Cooperation (GRU) is urgently needed. In the future, it would be wise for allies to exercise caution regarding South Korea's access to information related to military exchanges within the GSOMIA, AUKUS, and Five Eyes frameworks.