By Kim Rahn
Staff Reporter
Former President Park Chung-hee was suspected of being behind the 1973 kidnapping of former President Kim Dae-jung, then opposition party leader. The spy agency led the abduction and attempted to cover up the truth, according to a fact-finding body.
The bombing of a Korean Air flight in 1987 was committed by North Korea, and there was no evidence to back the suspicion that the South's intelligence agency was involved.
The National Intelligence Service (NIS) Development Committee for Clarifying the Past issued a final report of its re-investigation of the two major past incidents Wednesday.
But Choi Kyung-hwan, spokesman for Kim, expressed regret that the fact-finding committee was ambiguous about Park's role in the case.
He said it is clear that Park approved the abduction to kill his political opponent. He said the Korean and Japanese governments committed grave errors in their hesitancy to bring to light the truth behind the abduction. The spokesman said former President Kim will have to continue to wait until the truth behind the abduction is fully accounted for, adding that the victim has already waited for the past 34 years.
Lawyer Hahn Seung-hun, who has campaigned for the protection of human rights of Kim, also said the team did not interview American, Japanese figures and other locals who should know the full picture of the kidnapping. He said despite the insufficient investigation, the fact-finding team secured evidence that Park pre-ordered the abduction and killing of Kim. But the team issued an ambiguous conclusion on the incident.
The committee did not rule out the possibility that Park directly ordered the kidnapping of Kim. It said that although Park apparently did not, he was very likely to have given implicit approval of the abduction.
Kim was abducted by South Korean intelligent agents in Tokyo in August 1973, five days before the establishment of an anti-Park organization of overseas Koreans in the Japanese capital. He was released near his residence in Seoul after 129 hours of confinement.
Having secured the relevant evidence, the Japanese government summoned South Korean diplomats there, but the Korean government denied its involvement in the case, which resulted in diplomatic tension between the two countries.
Kim was elected president in 1998.
The committee said it obtained different testimonies on whether Park directed the kidnapping and it has not secured direct evidence to prove it. But it concluded that Park may have ordered it or at least given implicit approval for the kidnapping operation, based on facts that: Lee Hu-rak, then spy agency chief, told his junior that he abducted Kim although he did not want to; and Park did not punish involved agents after the case and dispatched then Prime Minister Kim Jong-pil to settle the tension with Japan.
About whether the spy agency aimed at just kidnapping Kim or killing him, the committee weighed on the former, but did not make clear conclusion.
``The government should officially apologize to the victim Kim for the threat to his life and human rights infringement and restore his honor,'' the committee said.
For the bombing of KAL 858 flight, the committee confirmed it was a North Korean spies' operation.
The plane from Abu Dhabi to Seoul exploded near Myanmar in 1987 as a result of bomb detonation, killing 135 passengers and crew. The spy agency said two North Korean agents, including Kim Hyon-hee, did so under a direct order from North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. The female agent was brought to Seoul a day before the presidential election, and there has been suspicion that some spy agents loyal to Roh Tae-woo, then the ruling party's candidate, had plotted the bombing to win back the popularity of the then ruling camp.
``The incident was a serious threat to national security ahead of the Seoul Olympic Games the next year, but the spy agency announced the investigation result hastily based on Kim Hyon-hee's testimony. It resulted in some errors in the probe result, and thus made suspicions grow,'' the committee report said.
The committee said it failed to clarify several allegations that can be confirmed only through Kim Hyun-hee's testimony because she refused to be interviewed.