Records Reveal Truth Behind Death of Female Spy
By Kim Tae-jong
Staff Reporter
Confidential U.S. records have revealed that espionage charges against South Korean Kim Soo-im, which led to her execution in 1950, were fabricated, the Associated Press reported Saturday.
Kim was the lover of an American colonel and allegedly ``charmed'' secret information out of him which she passed on to a top communist in North Korea with whom she also apparently had a liaison. These supposed indiscretions led her to be hastily executed by the South Korean military.
But records from a confidential 1950 U.S. inquiry and other declassified files from the U.S. National Archives show that Kim was forced to confess in a military court to things that she had not done, the news agency said.
It said Col. John E. Baird was in a relationship with Kim but had no access to the supposed sensitive information and Kim had no secrets to pass on.
Kim's Korean lover, Lee Gang-kook, who was later executed by North Korea, may actually have been an American agent, AP said.
Baird and fellow Army officers could have defended her but instead the colonel was rushed out of Korea to ``avoid further embarrassment,'' and she was left to be tortured by South Korean police into confessing to things she hadn't done, it reported.
Quoting other sources, it also backed up suspicions that Kim was a victim at a time when the Seoul regime secretively executed at least 100,000 leftists and their supposed sympathizers.
Kim Won-il, the unfortunate woman's surviving son from her relationship with the colonel, has been trying to dig up the truth about the death of his mother, AP said.
The son, a theology professor at California's LaSierra University, was the first to discover the declassified U.S. documents, it added.