서강대학교

초록/요약

The reason why parliamentary oversight of intelligence is important is that intelligence agencies are serving the nation as a public institution rather than serving narrow political or sector interests. Korea has established the National Assembly Intelligence Committee in 1994 but the parliamentary oversight for the intelligence agencies has not exercised its authorities substantially and efficiently. Thus, the aim of this thesis is to compare and analyze the parliamentary oversight system over the national intelligence agencies among Korea, United States of America and Germany, and to present implications to improve parliamentary oversight authority. As a result, since the oversight system of Korea and Germany was patterned on the system of America, most parts of the system are similar with each other. Nevertheless, there are several differences in some parts of the system and its operation due to their own political and social circumstances. This study concludes, particularly, that parliamentary oversight in Korea have been ineffective compared to America and Germany, because the National Assembly Intelligence Committee is operated by political scheme and the operation of the Committee has dependent upon just the National Assembly Act and on traditional practices without any concrete regulation for it. Consequently, for the improvement of effective oversight, National Assembly must have sufficient power to obtain information and documents from the intelligence agencies, to actually control budget of the intelligence services, and to hold investigative hearings if necessary. Trust-building measures such as harsh penalties for illegal information leaks should also be enacted.