[KS] NK room 35

[Andrei.Lankov]

> Written by Andrei Lankov (are you out there? thanks!), the piece 
> is in 
> Russian and titled "Intelligence Agencies in North Korea". It 
> indicates 
> that in addition to the two institutional frameworks for 
> intelligence 
> gathering (military and political), which were the standard in 
> socialist 
> countries, North Korea has a third one (party). The latter's 
> existence has 
> historical reasons due to the connections with the South Korean 
> branch of 
> the KWP. Room 35 is the alias for this service, i.e. a kind of the 
> KWP CC's 
> Intelligence Agency. It is described as the smallest, but most 
> influential 
> among the four major services.

Dear Dr.Frank,

Thank you for your kind words. The DPRK is quite unique in having three 
branches of intelligence service (instead of nrmal two - military 
intelligence and political intelligence). This resulted from their 
history. Once upon a time (more precisely, in 1949), The Korean 
Workers' Party was established as an all-Korean institution, which 
operated both in the South and North. Since its southern cells, quite 
numerous in the late 1940s, were operating underground, the Party (in 
close cooperation with 'convenient' intelligence agencies) developed an 
infrastructure to support such underground activities – and guerrilla 
operations when necessary. By the mid-50s, the Communist underground 
had been wiped out, but the KWP retained the structure. It was charged 
was all kinds of subversion in the South, with an ultimate strategic 
goal of a successful communist revolution there. Thus, the system which 
has been known under many names (among others, the 'third building' - 
sam ch'Ongsa) has survived until now.

But we do not know much about NK secret services - not least because 
the their SK colleagues are not very talkative. This is a major 
difference with the Cold War era when both KGB and CIA published a 
number of mutual denunciations, and it was possible to get some 
substance from their propaganda.

The above-mentioned article of myself definitely belongs to the realm 
of journalism (as opposed to academia). It was based on few available 
publications by North Korean defectors to the South.

Regards

Andrei Lankov