NIS Gets Assignments From President Yoon Dealing With Tensions With North Korea, Don't Leave Small Gaps In National Security Affairs

JAKARTA - President Yoon Suk Yeol asked South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS) to show its ability to deal with tense situations with North Korea, which is considered to be routinely provoking.

Yoon made the statement at NIS headquarters accompanied by NIS Director Kim Kyou-hyun and other senior agency officials.

"I want you to demonstrate the ability to neutralize the North Korean regime's miscalculations and provocations, and bravely compete in the global information war," Yoon said as quoted by Yonhap News, Friday, February 24.

There, Yoon is explained in detail about the overall work of the NIS. Including foreign and North Korean intelligence, counter-espionage, counterterrorism, and cyber security operations.

It was here that Yoon asked the NIS to carry out its role perfectly as the country's main intelligence agency responsible for maintaining national security.

"The reason for the existence of an organization called the National Intelligence Service – in other words, its basic job – is to defend our freedom," he said.

"Just as a great levee collapses from a tiny ant tunnel, we must not allow the slightest loophole in maintaining national security," he said.

Yoon urged NIS to work closely with the private and public sectors and the military to strengthen their cyber capabilities, and actively apply advanced technology to analyze North Korean, foreign, and counter-espionage intelligence.

Yoon also quoted Gina Haspel, the first woman appointed as director of the US Central Intelligence Agency in 2018, as saying that her life as an intelligence agent was not just a "career" but a "vocation".