Forty years after South Korea’s spy boss was executed for shooting dead his boss, then-South Korean president Park Chung-hee, the assassin’s sister is seeking to clear him of treason, saying that the killing was in service to the country.
However, she is not seeking to overturn his murder conviction or death sentence — a reflection of how South Korea still grapples with Park’s complex legacy.
“A person needs to be punished for killing,” said 81-year-old Kim Jung-sook, sister of South Korean Army lieutenant general Kim Jae-gyu.
“My brother did not kill the president so that he could become president or to commit treason,” she added.
Park, a general, took power in a 1961 coup and established a regime that transformed South Korea into a manufacturing powerhouse, but that ruthlessly crushed opposition.
He hand-picked Kim Jae-gyu, a friend from military academy, to head the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA).
In October 1979, major rallies against Park’s rule in Busan and Masan infuriated the dictator.
Park’s chief bodyguard, Cha Ji-cheol, urged a merciless crackdown, a move that the spy boss opposed, but that the leader preferred.
Questions over Kim’s motives persist, but there is no doubt that he stepped away from the trio’s private, Chivas Regal-fueled dinner at the KCIA compound in Seoul, fetched a handgun from his office and shot both men dead.
He fled, but was soon arrested.
Then-domestic security chief Chun Doo-hwan was appointed to investigate the assassination, announcing a week later that a “delusional” Kim had been driven by a “vain desire to become president.”
Within two months, Chun took power in his own coup.
At his trial, Kim Jae-gyu told the court that Cha had suggested that “1 to 2 million casualties” in Busan “shouldn’t be an issue.”
Kim Jae-gyu said that he acted “to restore democracy and save lives.”
Convicted of murder and conspiracy to commit treason, he was hanged on May 24, 1980.
Recordings of the proceedings were revealed earlier this year — the security official who made them disobeyed orders to destroy the tapes and kept them hidden.
Kim Jung-sook’s legal representatives have sought a new treason trial from the Seoul High Court, which has yet to make a decision.
“He was executed without telling his side of the story — on why he had to do what he did,” Kim Jung-sook said.
The grave of Kim Jae-gyu symbolizes the conflict: It has been vandalized, with the word “General” scratched off, but it is also a place of pilgrimage for liberals, who leave offerings on Kim’s birthday and the assassination anniversary — including bottles of Chivas.
James Watson — the Nobel laureate co-credited with the pivotal discovery of DNA’s double-helix structure, but whose career was later tainted by his repeated racist remarks — has died, his former lab said on Friday. He was 97. The eminent biologist died on Thursday in hospice care on Long Island in New York, announced the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was based for much of his career. Watson became among the 20th century’s most storied scientists for his 1953 breakthrough discovery of the double helix with researcher partner Francis Crick. Along with Crick and Maurice Wilkins, he shared the
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
TOWERING FIGURE: To Republicans she was emblematic of the excesses of the liberal elite, but lawmakers admired her ability to corral her caucus through difficult votes Nancy Pelosi, a towering figure in US politics, a leading foe of US President Donald Trump and the first woman to serve as US House of Representatives speaker, on Thursday announced that she would step down at the next election. Admired as a master strategist with a no-nonsense leadership style that delivered for her party, the 85-year-old Democrat shepherded historic legislation through the US Congress as she navigated a bitter partisan divide. In later years, she was a fierce adversary of Trump, twice leading his impeachment and stunning Washington in 2020 when she ripped up a copy of his speech to the
RSS