When it comes to spying on North Korea, rival South Korea seems to be wrong almost as much as it's right.
Seoul's intelligence agents get battered in the press and by lawmakers for their gaffes, including one regarding Ri Yong Gil, the former head of North Korea's military. Officials in Seoul's National Intelligence Service, the country's main spy agency, reportedly said Ri had been executed, but at this month's ruling-party congress, he was seen not only alive but also in possession of several new titles.
While spying on perhaps the world's most cloistered, suspicious, difficult-to-read country is no easy task, repeated blunders raise questions about whether South Korea's multibillion-dollar spying apparatus is broken.
Knowing what's happening in North Korea is crucial for the South, whose capital city, Seoul, is within easy striking range of thousands of North Korean missiles bristling along the world's most heavily armed border. But it's also important for the United States and Japan, who rely in part on South Korean spies for details about the North and its push for nuclear-armed missiles.
There's no single answer for what's going wrong, but the mistakes have been linked to the closed nature of North Korea, the way information is verified and disseminated, and agents' alleged penchant for playing politics and for choosing face-saving over gathering solid information.
Internal South Korean politics and the near-constant state of animosity between the Koreas also play a part.
