(…) A commission charged with reforming the NIS announced on Aug. 3 that a task force investigating the NIS comment scandal, ahead of the 2012 presidential election, recently confirmed that the NIS had operated 30 teams of civilians working to manipulate public opinion and that the agency was spending between 250 and 300 million won a month in worker compensation. That adds up to 3 billion won spent just on hiring civilians to manipulate public opinion on the Internet just in 2012. This essentially confirms allegations that the NIS systematically hired civilians to work for a “comment squad.”

It had already been established that the comment work of Kim Ha-yeong, a former agent with the NIS’s psychological operations division, had been aided by a civilian surnamed Lee and that Lee had been paid 2.8 million won a month for 11 months, but the full scale of the operation had never been revealed until now. It now turns out that the NIS was engaged in manipulating public opinion by organizing these civilians into groups like the “Part-time Crusaders” and “Alpha Team” to post comments that supported the conservative government and criticized the liberal opposition.

Another revelation was that Alpha Team, which was set up in the spring and summer of 2008, was led by Kim Seong-wook, the current director of the Korea Liberty Union. Kim received instructions from the NIS about manipulating public opinion by defending the administration and attacking its critics on a number of online forums, including Daum’s Agora, which have a major influence on forming public opinion. Since the NIS allocated a large amount of its taxpayer money to manipulating public opinion, the NIS reform commission believes that these illegal activities were carried out with the approval of then-NIS director Won Sei-hoon.

Investigators have also learned that the NIS used its “special activity budget” to carry out a public opinion poll designed to help the administration of former president Lee Myung-bak (2008-13). In Feb. 2011, the NIS hired a polling organization to conduct a poll asking people in their twenties, thirties and forties why they feel dissatisfied with the current administration. “Our support base is defecting in every major election, with people in their twenties, thirties and forties tilting sharply toward opposition candidates.

We will be carrying out a poll to assess the cause of this accelerating generational alienation and to devise ways to regain their support,” the NIS said at the time about a poll that included a total of 1,200 respondents in their twenties, thirties, forties and fifties. The Segye Ilbo newspaper reported that the NIS prepared an elaborate seven-page brief about why younger generations were supporting the opposition parties and what points the Lee administration ought to consider in order to deal with this problem.