South Korean Service Member Sentenced for Passing U.S.-South Korea Exercise Information to China

South Korea’s Supreme Court has sentenced a military service member who passed classified military information to China in exchange for money.

South Korean news agency Yonhap reported this.

The service member was sentenced to four years in prison and fined $14,430 (20 million won). The court also ordered him to forfeit about $13,708 (19 million won) that he received as part of the illegal activity.

According to investigators, the service member met a Chinese national through social media. The individual’s identity has not been disclosed.

In August 2024, they met in Beijing, where the Chinese national identified himself as a person linked to a Chinese intelligence organization and offered to pay for classified military materials.

From August 2024 to February 2025, the service member passed classified materials seven times and received about $12,481 (17.3 million won) in return.

The information he passed included materials related to joint South Korean-U.S. military exercises, documents related to the United Nations Command in Korea, and materials concerning individual exercises conducted by South Korean forces.

The service member initially used an iPhone to copy the documents. After telling his handler that he was having difficulty photographing classified materials with a phone, he was given a camera disguised as a wristwatch. He then continued photographing military documents with it.

A lower court sentenced the service member to five years in prison. The appeals court reduced the sentence to four years, but South Korea’s Supreme Court rejected the appeal and upheld the ruling.

At the same time, the court noted that there was no direct evidence that the Chinese national who recruited the service member and gave him instructions was directly an employee of Chinese intelligence.

However, based on the established circumstances, the court concluded that the intermediary passed the classified military materials to a Chinese intelligence organization.

On July 27, France launched a judicial investigation into a former Rafale pilot from the French Navy’s carrier-based aviation wing over the transfer of sensitive defense-related information to China.