S Korea's top spy under fire for Taliban mission

SEOUL, Sep 3 (Reuters) South Korea's spy chief is under fire for a high-profile mission to Afghanistan to negotiate the release of hostages which critics said violated the agency's motto to ''work in the shade in pursuit of light''.

National Intelligence Service (NIS) Director Kim Man-bok brought home 19 hostages yesterday after their six weeks in captivity and said on arrival he had spent 11 days in Kabul orchestrating South Korea's negotiations with the Taliban.

South Korean media said Kim's conduct in Kabul and Seoul made no secret of the agency's role in the talks and went beyond what was necessary, particularly in the face of international criticism for striking a deal with the Taliban.

Mainstream Chosun Ilbo daily said in an editorial the NIS may have been the appropriate unit to deal with the Taliban.

''The problem is Chief Kim's conduct was such that he could not help exposing his identity.'' Arriving yesterday at Incheon airport near Seoul, Kim denied his role included handover of a ransom to the Taliban. A senior Taliban leader has told Reuters that Seoul paid 20 million dollars.

''Exhibitionist spy chief?,'' read a Dong-a Ilbo newspaper headline. ''Kim has in effect greatly raised the expectations of terrorists,'' it said in an editorial.

On the flight back from Dubai, Kim invited reporters to his first-class seat for an interview and distributed photographs of himself taken with the hostages and also with an unidentified man believed to have been South Korea's hostage negotiator.

The agency said Kim had made a strategic decision to direct the mission to rescue lives from the field and there was no lapse of sensitive intelligence.

Kim has been a career-agent who in the first case of internal promotion rose to the top rank in November.

In a rare show of confidence by President Roh Moo-hyun, he made two secret trips to Pyongyang in August to strike a deal with North Korea on holding the second only summit between the two Koreas since their war more than half a century ago.

Reuters GL GC0909