South korea: South Korea's military counterintelligence command will be dismantled over its alleged role in former President Yoon Suk Yeol's botched martial law bid in 2024, the defense ministry said Wednesday, marking its dissolution 49 years after its establishment.

According to Yonhap News Agency, the Defense Counterintelligence Command will be disbanded and its core functions dispersed to new and existing bodies, in a move aimed at curbing what has been criticized as the command's unchecked authority. The move came as the command is suspected of having played a key role in Yoon's failed martial law declaration on December 3, 2024.

Under the overhaul plan, a new Defense Counterintelligence Headquarters will be established under the defense ministry to take over the command's core tasks, including anti-espionage, defense industry intelligence, counterterrorism, and cybersecurity. Another key pillar of its missions, such as running background checks on people of interest and gathering personnel intel, will be completely abolished.

Those highly clandestine activities have been seen as a factor that contributed to the accumulation of its political power, which critics say falls outside the scope of its duties as a military intelligence agency. A new body, tentatively named the Agency for Defense Security Support, will be created to handle military security functions, such as conducting security inspections and investigating related breaches or incidents at corps-level units and larger formations.

The authority to conduct national security-related investigations, including the power to conduct joint probes in the event of martial law, will be transferred to the ministry's existing investigation headquarters.