South Korea's Murky Political Intrigues

[PeterRS]

If there is one thing I recall from my early years in Hong Kong it is the tensions between North and South Korea. Having to visit Seoul many times in the 1980s meant coping with martial law, the worst effect of which was the midnight curfew. Be on the streets thereafter could - and for some did - mean being shot. Martial Law had been declared in 1960 by President Syngman Rhee, the strongman hated anti-nationalist imposed on South Korea by the United States. 

Since the end of the Korean War, the North had constantly taunted South Korea with endless illegal provocations. One of the most aggressive was the downing of a South Korean airliner en route from Baghdad with an intermediate stop in Bangkok in 1987. A bomb placed in the luggage racks caused the 707 to crash into the Andaman sea with the loss of 125 lives.

But the most shattering event for South Koreans had nothing to do with North Korea. It occurred on 29 November 1979, my first year in Asia. At a cabinet meeting, Rhee's successor, the equally strong-man repressive dictator Park Chung-hee who had been in power for 18 years was holding a cabinet meeting. During the meeting, the Chief of his Presidential Security Guard shot and killed him. The assassin, Kim Jae-gyu, had grown up with Park in the same town and was a long time friend. He had even helped Park seize the Presidency in a coup and supported measures to enable him to abolish elections and tighten his grip on power. The reasons for the murder have never been entirely clear.

Along with some others, Kim was quickly found guilty and hanged. Even though South Koreans are split on Park's legacy - the dictator who jailed, murdered and tortured to stay in power or the initiator of South Korea's economic miracle - the man who assassinated him is still regarded as a traitor. Now 46 years later Kim's family wants a retrial. Like Park, he is a polarising figure. Some see him as a ruthless killer blinded by power and ambition; others as a patriot who sacrificed himself to get rid of a dictator.

Ironically, his retrial started yesterday, the same day as recently impeached President Yoon Suk-yeol went on trial on the same charge that sent Kim to the gallows.

Much longer story here - https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr5vp4q59lgo