Kim Shin-jo, the only captured member of the 31 North Korean Commandos team who came within an offensive distance from the South Korean Presidential Palace in central Seoul in 1968, died Wednesday. He was 82 years old.
Kim's death at a nursing hospital in Seoul was confirmed by his Sungrak church on Thursday. No cause was specified.
In January 1968, Kim and his colleagues did something unimaginable – trekking to Seoul on a mission to assassinate Park Chung-hee, then a South Korean military commander, through the heavily strengthened border between North Korea and South Korea. They were within hundreds of yards of Park's Presidential Blue House, but were stopped by South Korean troops in a shootout.
All but two of the North Korean assassins were shot or killed. One of the two was believed to have returned north. The other was Mr. Kim, who surrendered and later reinvented himself to a fiery anti-communist lecturer and Christian pastor in the capitalist South.
“We've come to Slight Chung Hee's throat,” he said shortly after his capture.
The raid on the heart of Seoul on January 21, 1968, and the seizing of North Korea two days later on the US reconnaissance ship USS Pueblo, marked one of the peaks of Cold War tensions on the divided South Korean Peninsula.
Stung by the attack, Park's government secretly trained its own assassins for precise revenge against Northern leader Kim Il Sung, the grandfather of current leader Kim Jong-un. (The unit disbanded after the Korean commander rebelled in 1971.)
South Korea also established Reserve Army and introduced military training in high schools and universities. The 13-digit housing ID cards introduced at the time to assist in security from North Korean spies remain mandatory to this day for all Koreans over the age of 17.
Kim's raid party, which had infiltrated the South Korean capital, part of the mountain path behind the Blue House, remained closed to the public for security reasons until a few years ago.
“If our mission was successful, Koreans would now live under communism,” Kim said in a 2008 interview.
At the end of World War II, South Korea was divided into the northern Soviet Union and the southern American. Their three-year Korean war was stopped at a ceasefire in 1953, and since then the two South Koreas have technically left in war. になったんです。 English: The first thing you can do is to find the best one to do.
In the next decades, both sides fought secret wars, with thousands of commands and spies penetrating each other's territory. Kim's fallen comrades remain buried in the “enemy cemetery” north of Seoul and are not billed by their government.
In 1968, Kim's team violated parts of the Nishino border protected by the US military. As they rushed down the hill towards Seoul, the North Koreans met four Korean brothers and gathered fires. After much discussion, they made the Koreans live and warned them not to contact the police. That was their fatal mistake.
The villagers warned the police and the police were waiting for them to arrive in Seoul before becoming an assassin.
A fierce gun battle broke out around the Burkaksan. On the rugged hill behind the Blue House, he was in the South Korean presidency until former President Yuk Yeol moved his office to another government building in 2022. More than 30 Koreans were killed.
Kim was hiding in an abandoned hut surrounded by South Korean troops, ready to commit suicide with a hand-held bullet. He changed his mind and surrendered.
“I was single, a young man. I wanted to save myself,” he said in a 2010 interview.
North Korean spies caught up in the South often spent decades in solitary confinement in South Korean prisons. Some of them refused to dismiss the ideology of communism. However, after two years of questioning, Kim was forgiven. He claimed he did not kill the Koreans, and also denied communism.
He is survived by Choi Jung-Huwa, whom he met in Korea. Kim was appointed pastor in 1997. He was also survived by a son and daughter.
South Korea saw the value of propaganda in converts like Kim. Shortly after his release, he traveled to South Korea with anti-intelligent officials, giving lectures in military facilities, churches and workplaces, where he opposed the North Korean government. He said an exile in his North Korean hometown of Jungjin told him that his parents had been executed and his brother had disappeared.
“In North Korea, my dead colleague is a hero,” he said in a 2008 interview, “And I am a traitor.”
