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On August 8, 1973, the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) kidnapped South Korean dissident leader and future president of South Korea Kim Dae-jung from a conference of Korean anti-authoritarian reformers in Tokyo, Japan.
In the 1971 South Korean presidential election, Kim represented the New Democratic Party, challenging incumbent President Park Chung Hee of the Democratic Republican Party. Kim won 45.3% of the popular vote but narrowly lost to Park's 53.2%, by about 900,000 votes. Following the election, Kim was involved in a car accident which left him with a permanent injury on his hip joint.
Believing the accident to be an attempt on his life, Kim fled to Japan where he eventually began an exile movement for democracy in South Korea, following Seoul's declaration of the Yushin Constitution in October 1972 while seeking medical treatment. [1] With widespread allegations of corruption and manipulation of the results, Park turned his regime into a military dictatorship.
Around 11 AM of August 8, 1973, Kim was attending a meeting with the leader of the Democratic Unification Party held in the Room 2211 of the Hotel Grand Palace in Tokyo. [2] At around 13:19, Kim was abducted by a group of unidentified men as he walked out of the room after the meeting. The entire rest of the floor of that hotel was rumored to have been rented out by a notorious yakuza syndicate run by the South Korean national Machii Hisayuki, a man long known to have extensive ties to the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA). [3] He was then taken into the next door empty Room 2210 where he was drugged and fell unconscious. Kim was later moved to Osaka and later to Seoul, South Korea.[ citation needed ]
Kim's hands and feet were tied with weights while aboard the boat heading toward Korea, indicating that the kidnappers had intended to drown him by throwing him into the Sea of Japan. [4] They were, however, forced to abandon this plan as the Japan Coast Guard began a pursuit of the kidnappers' boat, and they fired an illuminating shell just when the kidnappers brought Kim on the deck. Subsequently, Kim was released in Busan. He was found alive at his house in Seoul five days after the kidnapping. [5]
According to some reports, Kim was only saved when U.S. Ambassador Philip Habib found out the KCIA was involved and intervened with the South Korean government. [6] He mobilized senior embassy personnel to go around Seoul and speak to prominent Koreans who may have an idea on what happened to Kim Dae-jung without waiting for authorization from Washington, D.C., since doing so could get Kim killed before Habib was allowed to intervene. [5]
On October 24, 2007, following an internal inquiry, South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS) has admitted that its precursor, the KCIA, undertook the kidnapping, saying it had at least tacit backing from then-leader Park Chung Hee. [7] [8]
The history of South Korea begins with the Japanese surrender on 2 September 1945. At that time, South Korea and North Korea were divided, despite being the same people and on the same peninsula. In 1950, the Korean War broke out. North Korea overran South Korea until US-led UN forces intervened. At the end of the war in 1953, the border between South and North remained largely similar. Tensions between the two sides continued. South Korea alternated between dictatorship and liberal democracy. It underwent substantial economic development.
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Kim Jong-pil, also known colloquially as JP, was a South Korean politician and the founder/first director of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency. He served as Prime Minister twice, from 1971 to 1975 during the presidency of Park Chung Hee (1961–1979) and from 1998 to 2000 during the presidency of Kim Dae-jung (1998–2003). He was a nine-term National Assembly member.
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Chun Doo-hwan was a South Korean army general and military dictator who ruled as an unelected strongman from 1979 to 1980 before replacing Choi Kyu-hah as president of South Korea from 1980 to 1988.
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