Kim Shin-jo, a notorious former North Korean commando who moved to South Korea and became a pastor after a failed attempt to assassinate then-President Park Chung-hee in 1968, has died at 81.
Mr Kim died of natural causes and his funeral is scheduled for Saturday, according to his Songrak Church in Seoul.
The statement said Mr Kim is survived by his wife, whom he met after moving to South Korea, and two children, a son and a daughter.
Mr Kim was part of a team of 31 North Korean special forces that tried to seize South Korea's mountainside presidential palace in an attempt to eliminate Mr Park, the authoritarian leader who has ruled the country since 1961.
The North Koreans secretly crossed the well-guarded border and came within reach of the palace.
After two weeks of fighting in the surrounding mountains, all but three of the violators were killed.
Two survivors are believed to have returned home, with Mr Kim the only one captured alive by South Korean forces.
At a news conference organised by South Korean authorities, Mr Kim stunned the country by declaring that his mission was to “cut Park Chung-hee's throat”.
The infiltration, which killed about 30 South Koreans, occurred at the height of the Cold War between the two Koreas, which split in 1945 at the end of World War II into a U.S.-backed south and a Soviet-backed north.
Following the incident, Mr Park's government activated reserve forces, created a military unit tasked with attacking North Korea, introduced military training in schools and introduced a residential registration system.
In media interviews, Mr Kim said he was pardoned because he did not fire a shot during the clashes and South Korean officials persuaded him to renounce his communist beliefs.
He said South Korean intelligence services later forced him to travel around the country to speak critically about the North Korean regime at schools, companies and other institutions.
Mr Kim said he later learned of his parents' execution in North Korea. He was ordained as a pastor in 1997.
He noted that the 1968 attack was carried out on the orders of North Korea's founder and then-leader Kim Il Sung, the late grandfather of current ruler Kim Jong Un. Kim Il Sung died of a heart attack in 1994, handing over power to his son Kim Jong Il, the father of current North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
“I didn't understand before why Kim Il Sung wanted to eliminate President Park,” Kim Shin Jo said in a 2009 interview with the South Korean newspaper JoongAng Ilbo.
“But I realized the reason after spending time here. Kim was probably afraid that a poor country like South Korea could become rich. With an improving economy, South Korea would have more money to buy weapons.
“From Kim Il Sung's point of view, he could not help but eliminate President Park in order to achieve the communization of South Korea.”
However, in her 2007 autobiography, Park Geun-hye, the daughter of Park Chung-hee, who became South Korea's first female president in 2013, said that when she met Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang in 2022, the younger Kim said the 1968 incident was orchestrated by “extremists” and apologized for it.
Park Geun-hye said Kim Jong-il told her that they all received unspecified, deserved punishments.
It was impossible to independently verify Kim Jong-il's claims about his remarks. Kim Jong-il died of a heart attack in late 2011.
Sourse: breakingnews.ie
