2025-08-17

The Strange Espionage Case of Sue Mi Terry

The Strange Espionage Case of Sue Mi Terry

foreign affairs

The Strange Espionage Case of Sue Mi Terry
How a high-flying former CIA analyst was charged with being an unregistered foreign agent.


By Suki Kim, an investigative journalist and a novelist.
Aug. 14, 2025


Photo: Yonhap News Agency


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On September 12, 2024, about a hundred people gathered at a rooftop party in Tribeca where lines of servers held platters of palomas and tables were strewn with gleaming copies of a new book about Ronald Reagan. At the center was the author, Max Boot, a sharp-suited Russian American who was also celebrating his 55th birthday, in honor of which the hostess wheeled out a surprise: a cake shaped like the Gipper. In one corner, a guest whispered to another that they had wondered whether the party would be canceled. The other person nodded, adding that public opinion about “the incident” seemed to be shifting. They were referring to the recent arrest of the author’s wife, Sue Mi Terry, for allegedly being a spy. Now she was out on bail, standing next to Boot in a sleek white pantsuit.

Terry, a former CIA analyst and Korea expert, was indicted on July 16, 2024, by the Southern District of New York on charges of acting as an unregistered foreign agent for South Korea’s government for more than a decade. The news was met with shock in the rarefied foreign-policy circles in which Terry moved. Since leaving the CIA in 2011 she has been a private citizen without a security clearance, working for prestigious think tanks, writing for the New York Times and Foreign Affairs, testifying before Congress, and appearing as a commentator on cable television. I’ve known Terry professionally for years, both of us members of a small group of North Korea watchers who sit on the same policy panels. As one of the few Korean-born women in the field, she stood out for her fluency in both the language and geopolitics of the peninsula. I found her disarmingly charming in a down-to-earth way that made it easy to forget she was former CIA.


With Boot by her side, she cut a glamorous figure in foreign-policy spheres stretching from New York to Washington, impeccably dressed and surrounded by cultural and political elites. Both Boot and Terry were immigrants who had risen against the odds to the highest echelons of the American meritocracy — both intellectuals, both experts on countries central to U.S. foreign policy. Boot is a best-selling author and columnist for the Washington Post, a conservative who opposes Vladimir Putin’s regime and has suggested Donald Trump could be a Russian asset. He even co-wrote op-eds with his wife — one of which the indictment now claims was part of a campaign directed by the South Korean government.

In June 2023, three FBI agents arrived unannounced at their Manhattan apartment while Boot was at the gym. According to Terry, they forbade her from changing out of her pajamas, and questioned her without informing her of her right to counsel, and one female agent watched her as she eventually changed clothes with their permission. They surveilled her husband’s movements and arranged with the New York Police Department to block him from entering the apartment. When he returned, she says, she was instructed to lie to him about the nature of the interrogation. The agents then brought her to a nearby hotel where the questioning continued for several hours. There, she says, they pushed her to admit she had been operating under the direction of South Korea’s National Intelligence Service. They told her to “come clean,” said she “was close to saying” what they needed, and that she “was not sorry enough” and “needed to retire,” she wrote in a sworn affidavit. “They kept insisting that I needed to state that ‘I was under the “direction” or “control” of the NIS’ … I consistently said that was false.”

Apparently, the government has been surveilling Terry since 2013, two years after she left the CIA. Prosecutors claim she accepted luxury gifts — two handbags and a coat — from South Korean diplomats who were later identified as NIS agents. They say she published op-eds and articles using talking points provided by her South Korean contact and that, at that contact’s request, she allegedly organized a happy hour for U.S. congressional staffers, which he funded. She allegedly shared notes from an off-the-record State Department meeting with him and allegedly failed to disclose that he was the source of more than $37,000 in donations to the Wilson Center, the think tank where she served as the director.

Though a violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act is not technically an espionage charge, the indictment’s language — especially its references to Terry’s “handlers” and the “direction” she received from them — suggests otherwise. Other people who have been charged with violating FARA include former senator Robert Menendez, who was convicted of accepting gold bars and other bribes to further the interests of the Egyptian government; Paul Manafort, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government at the behest of the Ukrainians; and Linda Sun, a former aide to New York governor Kathy Hochul who has been accused of being a Chinese secret agent. Terry has now joined this illustrious company to the bewilderment of many of her friends, colleagues, and associates.

Her former husband, the venture capitalist Guy Vidra, said the charges were ludicrous, describing her as “rah-rah American. Loyal patriot. Hawkish.” Moon Chung-in, an adviser to former South Korean president Moon Jae-in, said he long saw Terry as an adversary rather than a secret ally — one of those “Washington hard-liners” opposed to warmer relations between South and North. Her defenders also note that it strains credulity that Terry, who lives a life of relative luxury, would sell out her adopted country and jeopardize her career and reputation for a couple of handbags and a donation to her think tank. They say the case essentially criminalizes the routine networking that occurs between think-tank officials and representatives of foreign governments.

Of course, if you were to construct a credible spy, you might make them a patriotic neocon who charms people with her approachable demeanor and is married to Max Boot. And Terry’s critics say that, if the indictment is to be believed, she crossed clear ethical and legal lines, even while her motives remain hazy. The case is so confounding, so resistant to neat explanation, that it has spawned several equally plausible narratives. Is Terry the victim of a government panic about the infiltration of foreign agents that stretches back to the Mueller investigation in 2017? Did she grow blithe about maintaining ethical standards the longer she remained ensconced in the high-flying world of international diplomacy? Is her case a warning for any immigrant serving as an expert of their country of origin? Or is she a model for a 21st-century secret agent?


Born in 1969 as Sue Mi Kim in Busan, South Korea, and raised in Seoul, she moved to the U.S. at age 12 after her mother married a U.S. Army officer. She took her stepfather’s surname and became a U.S. citizen in 1985. “I taught her ABC on the plane over,” said her mother, now a volunteer principal at a Korean-language school in McLean, Virginia. Owing to her lack of English, she was placed in the fifth grade instead of sixth. Yet not only did Terry master English and graduate from New York University with a degree in political science in 1993, she also eventually earned a Ph.D. in 2001 from the Fletcher School at Tufts University — the oldest graduate school of international affairs in the U.S. and a training ground for foreign diplomats.

At Fletcher, she met Vidra, who described her as strong-willed, independent, and very patriotic even then. He got a job in New York as an operator for a software company, but when Terry moved to Washington, he followed, working remotely from their home in Falls Church, Virginia; they married in 2003. Terry joined the CIA shortly before 9/11, which Vidra says intensified her sense of mission to protect the country from foreign threats. For an immigrant, entering that organization was a profound source of pride — for both her and her mother, who says that Terry is someone “who could die for America.”

This was the era of hypervigilant counterterrorism and controversial CIA tactics such as the torture programs. Terry quickly rose to become a senior analyst, earning the nickname “Tsunami” for her unstoppable drive. Jung Pak, a former colleague at the CIA, said, “When you’re writing the President’s Daily Brief, you’re working until 11 p.m. or midnight, and back in the office by 5 a.m. for pre-briefs. It didn’t happen every day but often enough that I still feel the muscle memory.” Another former colleague described the situation similarly: too many hours for not enough money. But Terry was obsessed with the integrity of the work, with getting it right, and she was excellent at it.

When I asked what it was like being married to someone in the CIA, Vidra first clarified, “She was an analyst, not a spy,” assessing America’s adversaries’ intentions, capabilities, and motivations. But he added that she shared little about her work: “At the end of the day, you ask how was your day, and all you get is, ‘It was good.’ Not much more. That was challenging.”

Between 2005 and 2007, Terry gave birth to their two sons. Her career was thriving, according to her colleagues and Vidra; she was getting coveted rotations (temporary assignments to other departments as part of a career-development plan) to serve the National Security Council and the White House under the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Yet the work took a toll on her marriage, and by 2010 the couple had separated and Vidra wanted to move back to New York. They agreed that the family should stay in the same city for the sake of their children, so Terry worked out a rotation to be a visiting intelligence fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (which publishes Foreign Affairs). It was there that Terry met Boot, who was also a fellow. The two were assigned to take a group of CFR members overseas on a trip to South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines, and by the end of the trip, they had fallen in love. In 2011 she left the CIA, and later she and Boot moved in together in New York.


The Foreign Agents Registration Act was introduced in 1938 to counter Nazi and Communist propaganda, the intention being to control foreign-sponsored information disseminated in the U.S. The statute remained largely dormant in subsequent decades — unearthed for a mere seven prosecutions between 1966 and 2017 — until the Mueller investigation, which used FARA to target Manafort and his associate Richard Gates for lobbying on behalf of the pro-Russian former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych. Since then, there have been at least 21 criminal FARA cases, including several members of Trump’s circle, while FARA-based investigations have targeted everything from environmental groups and pro-Palestinian activists to human-rights organizations and churches.

The expansion of FARA’s dragnet has drawn critics from across the ideological spectrum. In 2022, a group of nonprofits led by the ACLU warned that “FARA’s overbreadth and vagueness can undermine and chill First Amendment rights to speech and association and the statute has a history of being used to target undesirable expressive conduct.” In January, the national security publication Lawfare, part of the centrist Brookings Institute, said FARA “functions increasingly like a sword of Damocles hanging over broad sections of U.S. civil society, the business community, and the country’s political class, with no one being quite sure if — or when — it might drop on them.” And in February, Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that the Department of Justice would begin limiting the criminal enforcement of FARA to prevent “further weaponization and abuse of prosecutorial discretion.”

One FARA lawyer told me the government has a history of pursuing high-profile but weak cases, often driven by prosecutorial ambition. One such example is the case of former Obama White House counsel Greg Craig, who had been indicted on lobbying for Ukraine; he was eventually found not guilty. Brandon Van Grack, former chief of DoJ’s FARA unit, told me: “What you’re seeing is a pattern of elected officials who are being investigated. It’s not just about what did the person do — it’s about what access did this person have.” Such was the case, says Van Grack, with the casino mogul and Trump supporter Steve Wynn, who was accused by the DoJ in a FARA case of acting as an agent for China; the case was eventually dismissed. Would they have gone after Wynn without his high-level access? And Terry, as a former CIA analyst who also worked at the White House and is married to Max Boot, had access to numerous people in the U.S. government.

Many of Terry’s alleged actions — courting sources, sharing talking points, engaging with embassy officials — are routine in the think tank world. “The foreign-lobbying-registration system is a joke. Half of the foreign lobbyists in Washington don’t register because they can get away without doing it. Of the half that do many don’t provide the information they’re supposed to, or they provide deliberately misleading information so it’s still often hard to figure out who’s actually paying them or what they’re doing in exchange for the money, so it defeats the whole purpose of disclosure anyway,” said Ken Silverstein, a journalist who has covered FARA for decades. Several organizations — the ACLU, the Knight First Amendment Institute, and the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press — have filed amicus briefs in her defense. “The allegations appear to criminalize the kind of meetings and outreach that are typical and routine with embassy officials of allied nations,” said Peter Bergen, an executive at New America.

Some critics have pointed to the sensational way in which Terry has been portrayed. Headlines emphasized the designer handbags she allegedly received and the “Michelin-starred” dinners her alleged handler treated her to. One outlet ran red-carpet images of Terry in a skimpy dress, portraying her as a luxury-loving spy. “It feels racialized,” said Mimi Alemayehou, a Fletcher classmate. “Would she face the same scrutiny if she were Sue Smith from Ohio?”

The indictment against Terry claims she “resigned in lieu of termination” from the CIA owing to “problems” in her interactions with South Korean officials. Her legal team and former colleagues dispute this. They say she left voluntarily after her separation from Vidra to raise her children in New York and that her career ended in good standing. No public evidence appears to support the government’s version. Still, one former counterintelligence officer told me the length and intensity of the surveillance, which may have begun as early as 2011, suggest this is more than just a FARA case. “It reads like a full-blown counterespionage investigation,” he said. But he acknowledged this remains conjecture — no classified leaks from her time at the CIA have been alleged.

Despite the fact that the scope of the law has grown in recent years, at its heart it remains about disclosure — it is not an espionage or bribery statute, even if espionage and bribery are often featured. In May 2020, the DoJ published “The Scope of Agency Under FARA,” which provides insight into how they determine that an individual is an agent who acts “at the order, request, or under the direction or control, of a foreign principal.” So the core question for Sue Mi Terry is agency: Did she act under the direction of a foreign government?

Critics of the case note that Terry often acted in opposition to the government in Seoul, which regularly switches between liberal and conservative regimes that have opposing goals. “Her position hasn’t changed across liberal and conservative administrations in Seoul,” Moon said. “Logically, that makes no sense.” Terry was known as a North Korea hawk, the type of figure who would frustrate liberal governments seeking greater engagement with the Hermit Kingdom. “After all, Bush’s ‘Axis of Evil’ came from the CIA,” he said. “Sue Mi Terry is very well versed in the sociology of CIA intelligence analysis. Her views have been consistent.” Though he disagreed with her approach to North Korea, he found it implausible that she was ever an agent for South Korea.

Her lawyers furthermore argue that South Korea is one of the U.S.’s closest allies. Most recent FARA prosecutions have involved the governments of China, Iran, Russia, or Venezuela. The last major South Korea–related case was “Koreagate” in the 1970s, when a George Town Club founder named Tongsun Park was charged with bribing U.S. congressmen to sway American foreign policy. Intelligence professionals use the acronym MICE — money, ideology, coercion, ego — to describe why someone might become a spy. Park might have fit that profile. But with Terry, it’s harder to identify a potential motive.


Unless, that is, she did it all for the gifts
. According to the indictment, one of Terry’s alleged handlers in 2019 gave her a $2,845 Dolce & Gabbana coat he had purchased from a store in Chevy Chase, Maryland, which she then returned for a $4,100 Christian Dior coat, paying the difference out of her own pocket. That same month, according to the indictment, the alleged handler bought her a $2,950 Bottega Veneta handbag from a store in Washington; video footage appears to show the pair at the register with Terry walking away with the bag in hand. Two years later, according to the indictment, another alleged handler bought Terry a $3,450 Louis Vuitton handbag from a store in Washington, again confirmed by surveillance footage showing both of them at the register. In addition, Terry was seemingly regularly going to dinner with her handlers at “upscale restaurants” in the capital.

The government’s indictment includes images of Terry allegedly receiving a luxury handbag from her handler. Photo: Department of Justice

What the South Koreans received in exchange for these gifts is unclear. Ostensibly the most serious charge — sharing notes with her alleged handler after a meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken — looks less serious upon inspection: the meeting was for the State Department to converse off the record with policy experts on North Korea, including Terry and four others, in a “discreet setting.” It is not uncommon for government officials to provide such information to reporters and other interested parties, and prosecutors have not claimed that any classified secrets were shared. (According to Terry’s attorneys, “The notes that Dr. Terry shared were written by her prior to the unclassified meeting between Secretary Blinken and several non-governmental Korean policy experts.”)

There are two instances in which the indictment claims that Terry was encouraged by her handlers to write columns in Foreign Affairs and other places, in which the line between Terry doing basic reporting and sourcing is blurred with smuggling Korean talking points into the niche world of foreign-policy journals. At one point a South Korean official allegedly asked Terry to write an article for a Korean newspaper for a fee of $500 — just about what the average beleaguered freelancer might make for a short column. Unlike the average freelancer, though, Terry once shared a draft of a Foreign Affairs column with a purported South Korean intelligence agent.

In exchange for organizing an event at the Wilson Center celebrating the U.S.’s long-standing partnership with South Korea — called “70 Years of the U.S.-ROK Alliance: The Past and the Future” — the South Koreans allegedly donated $25,418.70 to a gift account at the think tank that was controlled by Terry. In exchange for organizing a happy hour with congressional staffers, the same account received a check for $11,000. (“In fact it is a common practice among think tanks to receive funding from the ROK and other governments,” Terry’s attorneys say.) Prosecutors say such events were an occasion for Korean spies to “spot and assess” congressional staffers as potential sources and recruits. At the happy hour, the staffers received gift bags “containing Yeti-brand tumblers and pamphlets with the logo” of the South Korean Embassy.

Moon, the former South Korean official, acknowledged it was imprudent for Terry to accept the gifts. But he also argued that after years of acting as a liaison, the boundary between diplomacy and friendship can become murky. And unlike many Korean American experts, Terry was the most Korean of them all in manner and tone, which may have put her South Korean counterparts at ease. The fact that she went shopping with her contact to pick out a designer bag — those moments could be read as excursions with a friend rather than acts of bribery.

But another former South Korean government official says it was clearly a bribe. She added that, in Seoul, there has been no mention of Terry since the indictment. It is as if Terry has been completely forgotten or erased, which is the equivalent of calling her guilty.

If prosecutors are to be believed, there is certainly a case to be made that Terry was, in a sense, working for a client as a consultant and fixer, much in the same way she worked for the Wilson Center, drawing income from both streams. Whether that suggests she was working on behalf of the South Korean government to further its geopolitical ends is another matter. And it all suggests that the work of a foreign agent these days, at least among allies, is pretty mundane, a game played for the smallest stakes.

In February, Terry’s lawyers filed a motion to dismiss the case, disputing both the charges and the legality of the investigation itself, and the case is pending. Meanwhile, the personal and professional toll on Terry has already been immense. “There’s a crushing weight of suspicion,” one former FARA-investigation subject told me. “You wake up every day wondering what the DoJ will do next.” Whether she is found guilty or not, Terry’s life and career remain in limbo. At the top of every article she wrote for Foreign Affairs is a disclaimer that cites the FARA case against her and asserts that the publication “requires all contributors to disclose any affiliation or activity that could present a genuine or perceived conflict of interest or call into question the integrity of their work. We take these allegations very seriously.” When I saw Terry at that Tribeca party, she said only one thing to me: “I don’t need any favors. I just want to tell the truth.”

===

Sue Mi Terry Espionage Case - 200단어로 코멘트 해주세요.
ChatGPT의 말:

Sue Mi Terry 사건은 외교·정보·학계의 경계가 얼마나 모호해졌는지를 드러낸다. 전 CIA 분석가이자 한반도 전문가인 그녀가 남한 정부를 위한 ‘미등록 외국 대리인(FARA 위반)’ 혐의로 기소된 것은 충격적이다. 검찰은 명품 가방·코트 수수, 남한 외교관(실제는 NIS 요원)과의 교류, 국무부 회의 메모 공유, 싱크탱크 기부금 연결 등을 제시하지만, 이는 워싱턴 정책 네트워크에서 흔히 있는 일이라는 반론도 강하다.

이번 사건은 ‘스파이’와 ‘정책 네트워커’의 경계가 무너지는 지점을 비춘다. 특히 남한처럼 동맹국과의 관계에서 FARA가 적용되는 것은 드물며, 과잉 기소라는 지적도 많다. 동시에, 고급 인맥과 영향력에 접근할 수 있는 인물에게는 늘 ‘외국 영향력 행사자’라는 의심이 따라붙을 수 있음을 보여준다.

결국 핵심 쟁점은 그녀가 남한 정부의 ‘지시·통제’를 받았는가, 아니면 단순한 외교 네트워킹이었는가이다. 이번 사건은 워싱턴 싱크탱크 문화의 구조적 취약성, 그리고 이민자 전문가들이 직면하는 잠재적 이중 시선(애국심 vs. 출신국 연계)을 드러내며, 동맹과 정보정치 사이의 불안정한 경계를 선명히 부각시킨다.


This case illustrates the blurred boundaries between diplomacy, lobbying, and espionage. Terry’s indictment raises questions not only about her individual conduct but also about how foreign policy elites routinely interact with allied governments in Washington.

나의 말:
<테리는 10년 이상 국가정보원(NIS) 요원으로 확인된 한국 외교관들로부터 핸드백과 코트 같은 고가의 선물을 받았습니다.> 이것은 아시아의 전통적인 선물문화일까요? 아니면 그 브라이브 문화인ㄹ까요?
ChatGPT의 말:

좋은 질문입니다. 이 사안을 두 가지 맥락에서 볼 수 있습니다.

1. 아시아 전통의 선물 문화

  • 한국, 일본, 중국 등 동아시아 사회에서는 오랜 세월 관계(관시, 인맥)를 유지하고 신뢰를 표현하는 수단으로 선물이 중요한 역할을 해왔습니다.

  • 외교·비즈니스 현장에서 술자리, 식사, 기념품 교환은 흔히 “예의와 존중”의 표시로 이해됩니다.

  • 그러나 이런 전통적 선물은 대체로 소박한 기념품, 지역 특산물, 상징적인 물품에 가까웠습니다. 즉, 문화적 맥락 속에서 ‘의례적 행위’였지, 고가의 사치품은 아니었습니다.

2. 브라이브(뇌물) 문화와의 차이

  • Sue Mi Terry 사건에서 언급된 수천 달러대의 명품 가방과 코트는 전통적 선물의 범위를 훨씬 넘어섭니다.

  • 국제 규범상, 이런 고가의 선물은 **이해관계 대가성(quid pro quo)**이 의심되는 ‘뇌물’에 가깝게 분류됩니다.

  • 특히 서구 사회, 특히 미국의 법 체계에서는 공직자·싱크탱크 연구자에게 주어진 고가 선물은 ‘관계 형성의 문화’라기보다 영향력 행사(lobbying) 혹은 부적절한 inducement로 간주됩니다.

3. 중간지대의 해석

  • 한국 외교관·정보기관 입장에서는 ‘친밀감을 강화하는 선물 교류’였을 수 있으나, 미국 법과 문화의 잣대에서는 부적절한 영향력 행사로 규정될 수밖에 없습니다.

  • Moon Chung-in 같은 한국 인사도 “외교적 네트워킹과 우정의 경계가 모호해질 수 있다”고 지적했지만, 결국 ‘명품’이라는 구체적 성격 때문에 전통적 선물이라기보다 뇌물성 제공에 가까운 해석이 설득력을 얻습니다.


✅ 정리하면: 문화적 맥락에서는 선물일 수 있으나, 국제 규범과 법적 맥락에서는 뇌물로 간주될 소지가 크다고 보는 것이 균형 잡힌 해석입니다.

세진님께 질문: 혹시 이 문제를 미·한 간의 문화 충돌 사례로 더 확장해서 비교 분석해드릴까요?

나의 말:
Sue Mi Terry는 뇌물을 받아서 그 대가로 뭔가를 해준 것이라고 판단돠는가요?
ChatGPT의 말:

좋은 질문이십니다. 이 부분이 Sue Mi Terry 사건의 핵심 쟁점입니다.

1. 검찰의 주장

  • 미국 검찰은 Terry가 NIS 요원들로부터 명품 선물과 식사 대접을 받고 그 대가로:

    • 국무부 회의(안토니 블링컨 장관 참석) 후 작성한 메모를 공유,

    • 싱크탱크(윌슨센터) 행사에 한국 정부 자금을 연결,

    • 한국 측이 원하는 논조의 기고문 작성·초안 공유,

    • 의회 보좌진 네트워킹 행사 개최
      등을 했다고 기소했습니다. 즉 quid pro quo(대가성 거래) 구조를 주장합니다.

2. 방어 측 반론

  • Terry와 변호인단은 대가성 관계를 부정합니다.

    • 국무부 회의 메모는 이미 비밀이 아닌 사전 준비 자료였다고 주장.

    • 싱크탱크 기부금과 행사는 워싱턴에서 흔히 있는 외교관–싱크탱크 협력이었다는 점을 강조.

    • 기고문 역시 개인의 일관된 대북 강경 입장과 부합하며, 한국 정부의 지시에 따른 것이 아님을 강조.

    • 그녀의 일상적 정치적 성향(북한 강경파) 때문에 오히려 진보 정부의 서울과는 입장이 맞지 않았다는 증언도 있습니다.

3. 애매한 지점

  • 고가의 명품 선물은 변명하기 어려운 약점입니다. 단순한 ‘기념품’ 수준을 넘어서는 사치품이라 미국 법에서는 뇌물성으로 인식됩니다.

  • 그러나 검찰이 제시한 “대가”는 대부분 비밀 정보 제공이 아니라, 공개적 행사·기고문·네트워킹 같은 애매한 외교 네트워킹 활동이어서 “스파이 행위”로 단정하기 어렵습니다.


✅ 결론적으로:

  • 검찰의 논리: Terry는 선물과 돈을 받고 한국 정부 이익을 위해 행동했다 → 뇌물과 대가성 존재.

  • 방어 측 논리: 이는 워싱턴 싱크탱크 세계에서 흔히 일어나는 일이며, 특정 정책 입장을 대가로 바꾼 증거는 없다.

즉, “뇌물을 받고 그 대가로 행동했다”는 검찰 주장과, “문화적·네트워킹 차원의 활동일 뿐”이라는 방어가 맞서는 상황이며, 뚜렷한 smoking gun(비밀 정보 제공 등)은 아직 없습니다.


세진님, 제가 보기에는 이 사건을 “법적 FARA 위반인가, 정치적 과잉기소인가”라는 두 가지 프레임으로 분석할 수 있



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Sue Mi Terry Espionage Case - 200단어로 코멘트 해주세요.

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전직 CIA 분석가이자 한국 전문가인 수미 테리(Sue Mi Terry)가 2024년 7월 16일 한국 정부를 위한 미등록 외국 대리인으로 활동한 혐의로 기소되었습니다. 기소 내용에 따르면, 테리는 10년 이상 국가정보원(NIS) 요원으로 확인된 한국 외교관들로부터 핸드백과 코트 같은 고가의 선물을 받았습니다. 검찰은 또한 그녀가 연락책이 제공한 요점을 사용하여 기고문을 게재하고, NIS가 자금을 지원하는 행사를 조직했다고 주장합니다.
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테리의 변호인과 전직 동료들은 정부가 그녀가 "문제"로 인해 사임했다고 주장하는 것과 달리, 그녀가 아이들을 뉴욕에서 키우기 위해 CIA를 자발적으로 떠났으며 좋게 마무리했다고 반박합니다. 지지자들은 이 사건이 싱크탱크 관계자와 외국 정부 대표들 간의 일상적인 네트워킹을 범죄화하는 것이라고 주장합니다. 테리의 전 남편인 가이 비드라(Guy Vidra)와 전 한국 정부 관료인 문정인(Moon Chung-in)은 그녀를 "충성스러운 애국자"이자 "북한 강경론자"라고 묘사하며, 그녀의 행동이 종종 한국 정부의 목표와 상반되었다고 주장합니다. 이 사건은 현재 계류 중이며, 테리는 기각 신청을 제기했습니다.

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질문: <테리는 10년 이상 국가정보원(NIS) 요원으로 확인된 한국 외교관들로부터 핸드백과 코트 같은 고가의 선물을 받았습니다.> 이것은 아시아의 전통적인 선물문화일까요? 아니면 그 뇌물 문화일까요?

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수미 테리가 한국 외교관들로부터 고가의 선물을 받은 행위가 한국의 전통적인 선물 문화인지 뇌물 문화인지에 대해서는 의견이 엇갈리고 있습니다.

테리의 변호인과 지지자들은 이 사건이 싱크탱크 관계자와 동맹국 정부 관계자 간에 이루어지는 통상적인 네트워킹을 범죄화하는 것이라고 주장합니다. 전직 한국 정부 관료였던 문정인 씨는 오랜 기간 연락을 주고받으면서 외교와 우정의 경계가 모호해질 수 있다고 언급했습니다. 또한 테리가 자신의 접촉 상대와 함께 디자이너 핸드백을 고르러 쇼핑한 것은 뇌물 수수가 아닌 친구와의 외출로 해석될 수도 있다고 말합니다.

반면, 검찰은 테리가 한국 정보 기관의 "지시" 또는 "통제" 하에 행동했다고 주장하며, 그녀의 핸들러들이 제공한 "고급 레스토랑"에서의 식사나 선물(핸드백, 코트 등)이 그 증거라고 보고 있습니다. 또 다른 전직 한국 정부 관료는 테리가 선물을 받은 행위가 명백한 뇌물이라고 단언했습니다. 기소 내용에 따르면, 테리는 2,845달러짜리 돌체 앤 가바나 코트를 받은 후 4,100달러짜리 크리스찬 디올 코트로 교환하고 차액을 지불했으며, 2,950달러짜리 보테가 베네타 핸드백과 3,450달러짜리 루이비통 핸드백을 받은 것으로 되어 있습니다.

Sue Mi Terry는 뇌물을 받아서 그 대가로 뭔가를 해준 것이라고 판단돠는가요?

수미 테리가 뇌물을 받고 그 대가로 뭔가를 해주었다고 단정하기는 어렵습니다. 검찰 측은 그녀의 행위가 뇌물과 관련이 있다고 주장하지만, 그녀의 지지자들은 이와 같은 주장에 대해 반박하고 있습니다.

검찰 측의 주장:

  • 검찰은 테리가 "핸들러"로부터 "지시"를 받았다는 점을 들어 그녀의 행위가 단순한 네트워킹을 넘어선다고 보고 있습니다.

  • 기소 내용에는 테리가 2019년에 핸들러로부터 약 2,845달러 상당의 코트를 선물 받고, 이후 4,100달러짜리 코트로 교환했으며, 같은 달 2,950달러짜리 핸드백을 받았다고 명시되어 있습니다. 또한, 2년 뒤에는 또 다른 핸들러로부터 3,450달러짜리 핸드백을 받았다고 합니다. 이러한 선물 수수 행위는 뇌물 수수의 가능성을 시사합니다.

  • 한 전직 한국 정부 관계자는 테리가 선물을 받은 것이 명백한 뇌물이라고 말했습니다.

  • 검찰은 한국 측이 윌슨 센터에 37,000달러 이상을 기부한 것도 테리가 관여한 행사 대가라고 주장합니다.

테리 측의 반론:

  • 테리의 전 남편인 가이 비드라(Guy Vidra)는 뇌물 수수 혐의가 "터무니없다"고 말했습니다.

  • 문정인 전 한국 대통령 외교안보 특보는 테리가 남북 관계 개선에 반대하는 "워싱턴 강경론자"로서 오히려 한국 정부의 상대였다고 말했습니다.

  • 지지자들은 테리가 몇 개의 핸드백과 싱크탱크 기부금 때문에 자신의 명성과 경력을 위태롭게 할 정도로 궁핍한 생활을 하는 것이 아니라는 점을 지적하며, 뇌물 동기에 의문을 제기합니다.

  • 그녀의 변호인은 국무부 장관과의 비공개 회의록을 공유했다는 혐의에 대해, 공유된 내용이 그녀가 회의 전에 작성한 것이고 기밀 정보가 포함되지 않았다고 주장했습니다. 또한, 싱크탱크가 한국 정부로부터 자금을 받는 것은 "흔한 관행"이라고 말했습니다.


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