Democratic Party officials agreed the comments didn't have straightforward, bold criticism on Moon but rather tried to derogate him and support Park by slightly tweaking the spelling of their names. For instance, in their postings they called Moon Jae-in "Moon Joein," which means "Moon, the criminal," while calling Park Geun-hye "Geun-hye, jjang," which means "Geun-hye, the best, "according to party officials.

The NIS has defended itself, saying the two agents were only engaged in missions to cope with North Korea's cyberwarfare by posting comments countering messages praising the North's system and spreading groundless rumors about South Korean government policies.

Opposition lawmakers and activists suspect a broader, systemic operation than has been revealed so far, involving a far larger number of NIS agents.

A nonprofit organization called Lawyers for a Democratic Society conducted an independent investigation and said NIS agents also tried to vote down posts unfavorable to Park at Today Humor, which selects the daily top comments based on votes from users.

At least four individuals created 73 IDs at the Today Humor forum since August and cast more than 1,100 votes against the posts that depicted Park unfavorably, according to Park Jumin, an attorney of the organization. They collectively expressed opposition to the posts that depicted Moon favorably, he said.

Critics attacked what they see as an attempt to affect the election, and said the work had little to do with the spy agency's job.

"How much effort had been needed to make the spy agency commit itself to its main duty? What's happening now is like having backtracked in those efforts," said Lee Cheol-hee, head of the private Doomun Political Strategy Institute in Seoul. "It's a very serious matter."

"They did something that they shouldn't do .... while little achievement on one of its main duties — North Korea intelligence — are seen," said analyst Paik Hak-soon at Sejong Institute in South Korea. "Unless it places its priority on something, that cannot help being neglected."

The NIS has been criticized for failing to learn of Kim Jong Il's death before Pyongyang announced, and for failing to predict the North Korean shelling of a South Korean island that killed four people in 2010. According to a lawmaker who attended a closed door parliamentary committee meeting, Won told lawmakers his agency had intercepted North Korean communication indicating such an attack two months before the strike, but he thought it was routine rhetoric.

In May 2011, the NIS reportedly gave an inaccurate briefing to the presidential Blue House saying Kim's son Kim Jong Un had taken a trip to China, then was slow in correcting itself to say it was Kim Jong Il making the trip, even after South Korean media picked up on the story. Kim Jong Un is North Korea's current leader.

Critics say a key reason for those alleged intelligence blunders was that former President Lee gave top NIS posts to close associates who had little intelligence expertise. Won, the former director, spent most of his career in Seoul city government.

In a recent statement, the NIS said no intelligence agency in the world knew about Kim Jong Il's death before the North's state media announced it, and that the deaths of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin and Chinese leader Mao Zedong became known in similar fashion. In the case of Kim Jong Il's 2011 China trip, the agency said it was aware that the senior Kim was solely traveling, but that it didn't do anything for about the inaccurate reports because it had to protect its source of the information and was considering ties with China.

Park Geun-hye has not been accused of wrongdoing in the Internet pοstings scandal.

Her father was not her only predecessor to use the spy agency to meddle in politics.

Under the government of President Kim Dae-jung, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and a longtime opposition leader who was kidnapped by the elder Park's agents in 1973, spy agents wiretapped the phone conversations of high-ranking officials. Two of Kim's spy masters were later convicted over the scandal and received suspended prison terms.

Some South Korean intelligence chiefs suffered worse fates. Park Chung-hee's former spy director Kim Hyung-wook, who had criticized his authoritarian leadership, mysteriously disappeared in France in 1979. In 2005, a government fact-finding commission said he had been assassinated by Eastern Europeans hired by the spy agency. Kim Jae-kyu, the spy chief who gunned down Park Chung-hee during an October 1979 drinking party, was hanged the following year.
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AP writer Youkyung Lee contributed to this report.

윤창중 때문에 국격이 제대로 한번 멘붕되었습니다.

그런데 국정원 대선개입 문제는 윤창중 추문과는 비교할수 없을 정도로 심각한 사안입니다.

나라망신의 차원을 넘어 민주주의국가 대한민국의 정체성 자체를 뒤흔드는 심각한 사안이기 때문이지요.

여러분! 정신 바짝 차려야 합니다!

윤창중이 아니라 대한민국 민주주의의 현실을 직시해야 할 때입니다!