South Korea’s NIS says misunderstanding resolved after exclusion from cyber talks

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service said in Seoul on October 8 that a past misunderstanding with Washington had been resolved, responding to a report that it was excluded from June talks in Washington on North Korean cyber threats. The response raises questions about the agency’s participation in trilateral security cooperation, while official records show South Korea remained represented.

Yonhap described the statement as effectively acknowledging the exclusion. The new development is the intelligence agency’s response about the June meeting; the talks themselves took place months earlier. The agency said it continued to work closely with the United States on cyber and North Korean security matters.

What the NIS said about its exclusion

According to Yonhap’s October 8 report, a local newspaper had reported that the NIS was barred from the fifth meeting of the Trilateral Diplomatic Working Group at the request of the United States. Yonhap did not name the newspaper, and the alleged U.S. request is not independently corroborated by the ministries’ meeting accounts.

“There had been some misunderstanding several months ago, but it is now a thing of the past,” the NIS said, according to Yonhap. The agency did not explain in the quoted response exactly what the misunderstanding involved or how it had been settled.

Those assurances represent the NIS’s account. Yonhap’s report does not include a direct U.S. response confirming the explanation or describing the current relationship. It also does not establish what operational effect the agency’s absence had on the June discussions.

South Korea remained represented in Washington

South Korea’s foreign ministry dates the fifth working-group meeting to June 25–26 in Washington, D.C. Its June 27 release says more than 60 participants attended from relevant ministries and agencies of South Korea, the United States and Japan.

Baek Yong Jin, the ministry’s director-general for Korean Peninsula policy, led the South Korean side. The reported exclusion therefore concerns the intelligence agency, rather than South Korea’s entire delegation or its participation in the diplomatic working group.

The other meeting leaders were David Wilezol, the U.S. State Department’s deputy assistant secretary responsible for Korea, Japan and Mongolia, and Miyake Fumito, Japan’s ambassador in charge of cyber policy, according to the South Korean release.

Neither the Japanese nor South Korean foreign ministry’s June account names the NIS, discusses its exclusion or provides a complete agency-by-agency attendance list. The releases establish the meeting’s participants at leadership level and its agenda, but do not verify why the intelligence agency was absent.

Cryptocurrency theft and North Korean IT workers

Participants exchanged assessments of North Korean cryptocurrency theft and laundering, as well as malicious activities carried out by North Korean IT workers, South Korea’s foreign ministry said. They discussed strengthening trilateral cooperation to counter those threats.

Japan’s foreign ministry said the three governments expressed serious concern that cryptocurrency theft and North Korean IT-worker activities finance the country’s unlawful weapons-of-mass-destruction and ballistic-missile programmes. That is the governments’ assessment of the connection between cyber activity and weapons funding.

The working group first met in December 2023, following the leaders’ August summit at Camp David, Maryland, where they agreed to strengthen security cooperation, Yonhap reported. The agency described the June session as believed to be the first without NIS participation.

The explanation and next steps remain incomplete

Yonhap suggested the reported U.S. request may have followed Unification Minister Chung Dong-young’s March parliamentary remarks identifying Kusong as a third North Korean uranium-enrichment location alongside Yongbyon and Kangson. That causal connection is unconfirmed. Chung has said he shared only information already in the public domain; the report does not establish that he disclosed classified information.

South Korea’s foreign ministry said the three countries remained committed to implementing the cooperative measures discussed and continuing dialogue. Its release did not specify a next meeting date or demonstrate that the measures had been completed.

The NIS’s October response likewise leaves open whether it subsequently resumed attendance at the working group. Its assurance of close cooperation does not supply a timeline for resolving the misunderstanding or establish the practical consequences of its reported absence.