South Korea National Intelligence Service (NIS)

History

2022: South Korea becomes a member of NATO Cyber Defense Center

On May 5, 2022, the South Korean intelligence agency became the first member of the NATO cyber defense group in Asia, which, according to Yonhap, is fraught with increased tension in relations with China.

In a statement, the South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) reported that it had been accepted as a contributor to the NATO Joint Cyber Defense Center of Excellence (CCDCOE), a cyber defense center established in May 2008 in Tallinn, Estonia, dedicated to cybersecurity research, training and training.

South Korea becomes a member of NATO cyber defense center

Cyber threats cause great damage not only to individuals, but also to individual states, as well as transnational countries, so close international cooperation is crucial, the NIS said. We plan to strengthen our cyber response capabilities to the world class level by increasing the number of our staff assigned to the center and expanding the scope of joint training.

If South Korea embarks on a path of hostility to its neighbors, then the end of this path may be what is happening now in Ukraine, "he wrote.

Against the backdrop of the start of Russia's special operation in Ukraine, South Korea's admission to the organization seems to reflect the tightening determination of US allies in response to growing threats from, in principle, Moscow and Beijing. On April 29, a representative of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs called relations with Russia "a new model of international relations."

However, whether NATO motivated the events in Ukraine to finally sign the membership of South Korea is unclear. NIS applied for membership in 2019 and took part in the last two Locked Shields, the world's largest international cyber defense exercises. The CCDCOE consists of 27 NATO member countries and five non-NATO participants.

Professor Sean O'Malley, a political scientist at Dongseo University in Busan, says South Korea's membership is the culmination of a very slow evolution over the past decade when the threat of cybersecurity has been recognized as a really serious problem.

Despite the fact that some of the world's leading technology companies, such as LG and Samsung, are located in South Korea, it was surprisingly slow in relation to cybercrime and only in 2018, under the administration of Moon Jae-in, launched the National Cybersecurity Strategy.

And this is despite the fact that South Korea is the main target of increasingly frequent cyber attacks. According to the Korean Institute for Liberal Democracy in Seoul, a group of 6,800 North Korean agents is engaged in fraud and blackmail in the country. Many attacks also come from China.^[1]

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