Former MP named S Korea’s spy chief

South Korea appointed a former lawmaker who was jailed for sending $450mn to the North as its new spy chief yesterday, as President Moon Jae-in seeks to improve ties with Pyongyang. Moon, who has been on the receiving end of vitriolic criticism from the nucleararmed North, reshuffled his security team and top officials at the unification ministry, which handles inter-Korean relations.

Park Jie-won is a former fourterm lawmaker and confidante of the late Nobel Prize-winning president Kim Dae-jung. He played a crucial role in organising the first inter-Korean summit in 2000, was named to lead the National Intelligence Service.

Park is known to have a network of contacts in the North as a result of his role in Kim’s “Sunshine Policy” of engaging with Pyongyang.

But it later emerged that Park played a key role in secretly funnelling $450mn from South Korea’s Hyundai group to the North ahead of the meeting between the former president and Kim Jong-il, the father of current leader Kim Jong-un. The revelation tarnished Kim Dae-jung’s legacy and Park was sentenced to three years in prison. He later returned to parliament and served three more terms before losing his seat in April’s legislative election.

Political heavyweight Lee Inyoung, who earned his spurs as a student democracy activist in the 1980s and rose to become the parliamentary floor leader of the ruling Democratic Party, was named unification minister. Analysts say Lee’s appointment will give the ministry more sway in policy towards the North. Moon has promoted engagement with the North and was instrumental in arranging the first US-North Korea summit in Singapore two years ago.

The reshuffle comes after his call for another meeting between US President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un before the US presidential election in November — even though the process is currently deadlocked. “South Korea will be making its utmost efforts to arrange a meeting between the North and US before the US election,” Moon said Tuesday. The South’s outgoing spy agency chief Suh Hoon was named national security adviser, replacing Chung Eui-yong — who first told Trump in March 2018 that Kim wanted to meet and was willing to denuclearise.