By Nam Sang-so
She was an 18-year-old girl learning Japanese at Pyongyang Foreign Language School. One day in 1980, she was asked to get some new training to become a spy and she went through training on the rifle range, throwing grenades, fighting with a trench knife and other combat skills, all of which she excelled.
In 1987, now a well-trained terrorist, she was ordered to destroy a South Korean airliner in the air. She together with an old man, also a spy, left Pyongyang for Moscow, Budapest and Belgrade where they received a time bomb disguised as a radio from another North Korean mole.
They boarded the targeted Korean Air flight 858 at Baghdad. The old man set the timer on the bomb and put it into a plastic bag and placed it in the ceiling bin in the cabin. The timer was set for a nine-hour delay and they disembarked from the airliner at Abu Dhabi and transferred to Gulf Air heading for Bahrain. It was a holiday in Bahrain and the plane to Rome was fully booked and they had to wait for two days to get out Bahrain. "Idiot! They failed to see this in advance!" the old man terrorist cursed his Pyongyang head office.
On Nov. 29, 1987, two Japanese Embassy officials in Bahrain knocked on their hotel door. "KAL 858 is missing just before its arrival at Bangkok. You were on that plane. May we see your passports," they said. Shinichi Hachiya and Mayumi Hachiya as his daughter each produced their passports.
On Dec. 1, the Japanese father and his daughter were checking in at Bahrain airport to go to Rome on their way back to Pyongyang. The Japanese officials materialized again and said, "Shinichi san, Mayumi san, your passports were found to be counterfeits. We must take you back to Japan for further investigation." The pair of terrorists from Pyongyang immediately pulled out poison ampoules hidden in pieces of cigarettes, pushed them between their teeth and chewed, cursing Pyongyang again for doing a sloppy job on their passports. In a few seconds, the old man and beautiful woman fell to the marble floor.
The woman, against her wishes, opened her eyes in a hospital and realized her mouth was gagged by South Korean agents to prevent her from biting her tongue. In the course of a long interrogation by the Korean Central Intelligence Agency, she realized she had been deceived by Pyongyang about South Koreans being cruel. Still she wanted to die as she knew what she had done was an unforgiveable crime, and she accepted her death sentence willingly.
She was happy and miserable when she was given a presidential pardon in 1990. She decided to live to let the world know that the barbarous act was manipulated by the North Korean government. She is now 55 years old and lives with her two children. Her Korean name is Kim Hyun-hee. On Nov. 17, the United States put her name on the terrorism blacklist again.
The writer (sangsonam@gmail.com) is a translator.
She was an 18-year-old girl learning Japanese at Pyongyang Foreign Language School. One day in 1980, she was asked to get some new training to become a spy and she went through training on the rifle range, throwing grenades, fighting with a trench knife and other combat skills, all of which she excelled.
In 1987, now a well-trained terrorist, she was ordered to destroy a South Korean airliner in the air. She together with an old man, also a spy, left Pyongyang for Moscow, Budapest and Belgrade where they received a time bomb disguised as a radio from another North Korean mole.
They boarded the targeted Korean Air flight 858 at Baghdad. The old man set the timer on the bomb and put it into a plastic bag and placed it in the ceiling bin in the cabin. The timer was set for a nine-hour delay and they disembarked from the airliner at Abu Dhabi and transferred to Gulf Air heading for Bahrain. It was a holiday in Bahrain and the plane to Rome was fully booked and they had to wait for two days to get out Bahrain. "Idiot! They failed to see this in advance!" the old man terrorist cursed his Pyongyang head office.
On Nov. 29, 1987, two Japanese Embassy officials in Bahrain knocked on their hotel door. "KAL 858 is missing just before its arrival at Bangkok. You were on that plane. May we see your passports," they said. Shinichi Hachiya and Mayumi Hachiya as his daughter each produced their passports.
On Dec. 1, the Japanese father and his daughter were checking in at Bahrain airport to go to Rome on their way back to Pyongyang. The Japanese officials materialized again and said, "Shinichi san, Mayumi san, your passports were found to be counterfeits. We must take you back to Japan for further investigation." The pair of terrorists from Pyongyang immediately pulled out poison ampoules hidden in pieces of cigarettes, pushed them between their teeth and chewed, cursing Pyongyang again for doing a sloppy job on their passports. In a few seconds, the old man and beautiful woman fell to the marble floor.
The woman, against her wishes, opened her eyes in a hospital and realized her mouth was gagged by South Korean agents to prevent her from biting her tongue. In the course of a long interrogation by the Korean Central Intelligence Agency, she realized she had been deceived by Pyongyang about South Koreans being cruel. Still she wanted to die as she knew what she had done was an unforgiveable crime, and she accepted her death sentence willingly.
She was happy and miserable when she was given a presidential pardon in 1990. She decided to live to let the world know that the barbarous act was manipulated by the North Korean government. She is now 55 years old and lives with her two children. Her Korean name is Kim Hyun-hee. On Nov. 17, the United States put her name on the terrorism blacklist again.
The writer (sangsonam@gmail.com) is a translator.
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