Washington Is Holding Up Visas for South Korea’s Spies — and Won’t Let One Leave

Here is a small bureaucratic fact with a large amount of diplomacy packed inside it: the United States government is holding up visa issuance and approval of diplomatic status for National Intelligence Service officers South Korea wants to post to its embassy in Washington, the Chosun Ilbo reported on Monday, citing multiple ruling-party officials and diplomatic sources. Meanwhile, a senior NIS officer already serving at the embassy has been ordered home but cannot leave, because consultations with the US side over the handover are unfinished. So the incoming spies can’t get in, and the outgoing one can’t get out.

The arrangement itself is standard practice, and it’s worth being clear about how it works. Intelligence services around the world station officers abroad under diplomatic titles — the NIS’s people serve as ministers, counsellors and secretaries — and the host country formally approves each one. That approval is exactly the point of leverage: the United States doesn’t have to accuse anyone of anything or break off intelligence cooperation; it just doesn’t stamp the paperwork. Seoul’s working assumption, a government source said, is that “once the incumbent completes his duties normally and returns to Korea, the issue of the successors’ entry into the US and approval of their diplomatic status can also be resolved,” adding that the government is “watching the situation.”

Why is the paperwork sitting in a drawer? Nobody will say. It isn’t known whether the holdup concerns the activities of the NIS officers already in the United States or something about the incoming batch — many of whom, according to a National Assembly Intelligence Committee source, have worked on North Korea operations and intelligence. If the delay drags on, the source warned, it could disrupt South Korea–US intelligence exchanges, since the NIS works closely with the CIA. Some observers go further and treat it not as an intelligence-agency problem at all but as a sign of eroding trust between the two governments.

There’s a precedent pattern. Diplomatic circles say Washington has previously slowed or denied visas to Korean officials when sensitive issues flared, and the Trump administration in particular has restricted or abruptly cancelled visas for foreign officials it deems at odds with US foreign and security policy. Which turns the question into: which of the accumulated grievances is this visa drawer about? There are several candidates.

Candidate one is Coupang. After a massive personal data breach at the US-headquartered, Korea-operating e-commerce giant, Harold Rogers, the interim head of Coupang’s Korean unit, testified at a National Assembly hearing last December that the investigation of the leak and contacts with the suspect were conducted at the NIS’s direction. The NIS immediately rejected that as false — “we gave Coupang no instructions whatsoever” — and asked parliament to indict Rogers for perjury. The science and ICT committee duly referred Rogers and others, police summoned him, and then last month the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency’s anti-corruption unit dropped the perjury case against Rogers for lack of evidence — while sending three other former and current Coupang executives, including former CEO Park Dae-joon, to prosecutors on perjury allegations.

Washington’s read of the same saga runs the other way. Some in Congress see the Coupang affair as discrimination against an American company. In July the House Judiciary Committee issued an interim report on what it called South Korea’s “discriminatory attacks on US companies,” and Representative Michael Baumgartner, a Republican, introduced an amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act making foreign officials who discriminate against US firms inadmissible and deportable; it passed the Judiciary Committee on September 16. “The point of this law,” Chairman Jim Jordan said at the time, invoking Coupang, “is that if a foreign official who is participating in discrimination against an American company applies for a visa to come to the United States, the State Department can refuse it.” A bill about refusing visas, passed by Congress weeks ago, and now visas are being refused. Draw your own conclusions — carefully, since the actual reason remains unknown.

Candidate two is old-fashioned intelligence friction. Sue Mi Terry, a former CIA North Korea analyst, was indicted by US federal prosecutors in 2024 for acting on behalf of the South Korean government without registering as a foreign agent; the indictment made an issue of her contacts with NIS officers holding diplomatic titles at the Washington embassy. And in March, Unification Minister Jeong Dong-young named Kusong, North Pyongan Province, in the National Assembly as the site of a North Korean uranium enrichment facility — after which the US restricted some North Korea-related intelligence sharing with Seoul. Military authorities confirmed at the time that the US had indeed limited sharing of some satellite-gathered technical information.

Candidate three is the top of the org chart. Multiple sources told the Chosun Ilbo that distrust inside the Trump administration of NIS chief Lee Jong-seok’s views on North Korea and China is considerable. “There’s even talk,” one ruling-party official said, “that the US CIA has effectively pegged Director Lee as pro-China, which could affect South Korea–US cooperation.” The wariness is now public: on September 30, Representative John Moolenaar, chair of the House select committee on US-China strategic competition, wrote to Secretary of State Marco Rubio urging close scrutiny of possible “structural changes” in Seoul’s foreign policy, citing South Korea–China summitry, Korean semiconductor investment in China, and differences in how Korean regulators treat American versus Chinese firms.

The NIS itself confirmed on the 6th that visas for some employees bound for Washington have been delayed and that it is in consultations with the US, the Kyunghyang Shinmun reported. Officials in Seoul say the answer is to settle the alliance’s accumulated grievances quickly and normalize the intelligence and diplomatic channels, especially with talk of a possible Trump–Kim Jong-un summit in the air. In the meantime Washington has produced a genuinely novel sanction: an allied intelligence officer it won’t let into the country, paired with one it won’t let leave.