- Established in 1961 following Park Chung-hee’s coup
- Organized like Soviet KGB
- Foreign and domestic intelligence agency
- Given criminal investigation powers
- Can label political activity
- No oversight, unchecked power
- Report to President
- Immune to National Assembly Board of Audit
- Created climate of fear
- Upheld authoritarian rule
- Arbitrary censorship
- Always questioning
- More intense self-censorship
- ~40,000 regular employees
- ~1 million correspondents
- Primary targets
- Striking workers
- Protestors
- Petition signers
- Journalists
- Intelligentia
- Leftists
- Anyone with connections to these groups
- Used
- Torture
- Imprisonment
- Intimidation
- Corruption and bribery scandals
- Systems of control based on loyalty
- In danger of getting purged once power changes
- Loyalty to individual, not state
- 300 personnel purged after Park’s assassination
- Renamed to National Security Planning Agency (1981)
- Now called National Intelligence Service (1999)