South Korean spy chief Cho Tae-yong appears at a meeting of the National Assembly intelligence committee on July 29. (Yonhap)

A series of bills targeting foreign espionage were floated in a rare show of bipartisan lawmaking in the National Assembly in the past week, following recent allegations of identity leaks of covert military agents.

The bills seeking to expand the scope of punishable foreign espionage here have been proposed by lawmakers from both ruling and main opposition parties, according to the Assembly website on Tuesday.

Under the existing laws, foreign espionage is restricted to that perpetrated by an “enemy country,” referring solely to North Korea. This excludes individuals or groups working for any other country such as China from being punished for spying on South Korea.

The move to broaden the punishable range of foreign espionage came after allegations surfaced last week that a Defense Intelligence Command official provided military secrets to Chinese hackers believed to be linked to North Korea earlier this year.

The secrets leaked by the South Korean official allegedly included classified information of South Korean agents such as their names and where they are stationed abroad.

The bills against foreign espionage echo calls for similar legislative efforts from Cho Tae-yong, the director of South Korea’s National Intelligence Service.

Cho asked a July 29 meeting of the Assembly intelligence committee for what he called a “South Korean version of the US’ Foreign Agents Registration Act,” to increase transparency of the presence of foreign agents and their activities in the country.

In June last year, a similar “South Korean FARA bill” was introduced by former lawmaker Choe Jae-hyung but never passed.

Rep. Jang Dong-hyeok, on the ruling People Power Party’s supreme council, told a meeting of the party leadership Monday that a swift passage of the bills relating to foreign espionage was “key to preventing a repetition.”

Vice chair of the Assembly intelligence committee Rep. Park Sun-won told The Korea Herald on Tuesday that the support for the anti-foreign espionage bills was “largely bipartisan.”

He said that the alleged leak concerned “not just a single military official,” arguing that a scrutiny of the intelligence community at large may be necessary.

The main opposition Democratic Party of Korea has characterized the alleged leak as a case of a national security failure on part of the Yoon Suk Yeol administration.

“The extent to which military discipline is being undermined under the Yoon administration is appalling,” the Democratic Party said in a statement Tuesday. The party called for a “thorough investigation” of “the national security disaster unleashed by the conservative administration in charge.”

The Democratic Party said it could “take decades before South Korea’s network of spies and informants can be restored.”