In South Korea the summer of 2024 has been marked by a series of spy scandals, which vividly illustrate a number of the country’s domestic and foreign policy problems. In this article we will look at a scandal involving the US and South Korean intelligence agencies.

On July 16, 2024, the US federal prosecutor’s office has charged Sue Mi Terry, a prominent US expert on North Korea and a former CIA officer and analyst, with acting on behalf of the South Korea and violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). She was arrested but was released on $500,000 bail the same day.

Who is Sue Mi Terry?

She is an ethnic Korean (Korean name Kim Su Mi), who was born in South Korea in 1972, and moved to the US when she was 12. She holds a B.A. in political science from New York University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

She worked for the CIA from 2001 to 2008, after which she transferred to the White House where she served on the National Security Council. After leaving government service in 2010, she held an academic position at Columbia University, and worked as a senior fellow in the Korea office of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, then at the National Intelligence and National Security Council. In 2021, she became director of the Hyundai Motor-Korea Foundation Center for Korean History and Public Policy at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC. Most recently, she was a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in New York, where her husband Max Boot, a conservative foreign policy observer and Washington Post columnist, works in the same capacity.

Often quoted in the expert community as an expert on North Korea she has regularly appeared as such on US news programs. In 2023, she featured prominently in the documentary Beyond Utopia, which chronicles “the perilous journeys of North Koreans looking to escape to freedom.”

Of course, after the indictment, many of the author’s articles in the The Washington Post or Foreign Affairs have been labeled with a note that the text was written by a foreign agent.

What is she being accused of?

Contrary to what was expected, the main charge against Terry’s is not espionage, although some news outlets initially reported just that. In a press release, United States Attorney Damian Williams stated Terry allegedly “subverted foreign agent registration laws in order to provide South Korean intelligence [NIS] officers with access, information, and advocacy.”

Terry is charged with conspiracy to violate the FARA, and failure to register under the FARA, both of which offences carry a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment.

According to the indictment, after leaving US government service, Terry worked as an agent for the South Korean government without registering with the Attorney General as a foreign agent, as required by law. The FARA, which was passed in 1938 to combat Nazi propaganda, requires any person who........

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