Kim Jae-gyu (, April 9, 1924 – May 24, 1980) was a South Korean politician, army lieutenant general and director of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency. He assassinated South Korean President Park Chung Hee on October 26, 1979, and was executed by hanging on May 24, 1980.
He remains a controversial figure with many contradictions: he is regarded by some as a patriot who ended Park's 18-year military dictatorship, and by others as a traitor who killed his longtime benefactor out of personal grievance. For many years, the latter was the prevailing view, but later revelations in the early 2000s about Kim's relationship with some leaders of the democracy movement prompted a reevaluation in some circles.
Early life
Kim was born in Gumi, North Gyeongsang Province, Korea. He is the 27th generation descendant of Kim Moon-gi (김문기;金文起) who was the civil minister (문신;文臣), the loyalist (충신;忠臣) of King Danjong, and the one of Samjungsin (삼중신;三重臣) during the Joseon period. He graduated from Gyeongbuk University in 1945 and became a middle school teacher until the newly independent South Korean government established its military and created the Korea Military Academy, then called Joseon Defense Academy. He graduated from the Joseon Defense Academy in December 1946, the same year as Park Chung Hee, and from Army College in 1952. He served as a regimental commander in 1954 and as vice-president of the Army College in 1957, where was the president at the time. Later Kim Gye-won became Chief Presidential Secretary to President Park and was present at the scene of assassination. In 1961, when Park Chung Hee staged a military coup to seize power, Kim did not participate and was suspected of being a counterrevolutionary. He was temporarily detained until he was released on Park's order. He served Park's military dictatorship from then until his assassination of Park in 1979.
Park's dictatorship During Park's dictatorship, Kim was appointed as the commander of 6th Division in 1963. When there was a widespread demonstration against the Korean-Japanese treaty in 1964, which Park pursued in secret and was widely regarded as disadvantageous to Korean fishermen, Kim's Division was dispatched to Seoul to subdue student demonstrations. Kim's handling of the situation was said to have earned Park's trust and favor. On the other hand, it is also said that Kim refused to involve the Army in the arrest of civilians and left that task to the police, ordering his troops to occupy themselves with the cleanup of streets and the university campus.Sound of Seoul, Reevaluation of Kim Jae-kyu Who Shot the Heart of Yushin, May 19, 2011 Afterward, he commanded the Sixth Military District in 1966, the Army Security Command in 1968, and the Third Army Group in 1971. While he was the commander of Army Security Command, a military organ whose chief function was to safeguard the dictatorship, Park ran for a third term in the 1971 presidential election. Kim persuaded Park to promise voters it would be his last term. He also opposed the formation of Hanahoe, a secret organization formed by Chun Doo-hwan and other young officers who took personal oaths of loyalty to Park and the group itself above all else, and criticized it as a private army. Eventually, Hanahoe staged a military coup under Chun's leadership after Park's assassination to seize power and drove out the older generation of military generals.
While Kim was the commander of the Third Army Group in Kang-won Province, Park declared national emergency and martial law, dismissed the National Assembly and prohibited all political activities in October 1972. The purpose was to ratify the Yushin Constitution of 1972, which (a) abolished direct vote for presidential election and replaced it with an indirect voting system involving delegates, (b) allotted one third of the National Assembly seats to the president, (c) gave the president the authority to issue emergency decrees and suspend the Constitution, (d) gave the president the authority to appoint all judges and dismiss the National Assembly and (e) repealed a term limit to presidency. In the 1971 election, Park had nearly lost to opposition leader Kim Dae-jung despite spending ten percent of the national budget on his reelection campaign. The Yushin Constitution was designed to guarantee his dictatorship for life. Indeed, Park was later reelected president by a unanimous vote of approximately 2,000 delegates, who all became delegates themselves with Park's approval. According to Kim's subordinate officers at Third Army Group, Kim did not hide his displeasure at learning of the Yushin Constitution.MBC TV, Why Did Kim Jae-kyu Shoot? Now We Can Tell the Story, April 4, 2004
Yushin Constitution After his arrest, Kim wrote in Chinese calligraphy that it took seven years to accomplish his resolution, suggesting that the Yushin Constitution turned him against Park. At his trial, he claimed that he planned to detain Park if he were to visit the Third Army Group base on his annual tour of army groups and force his resignation. According to Third Army Group operations chief of staff Oh Soo-choon, who was also Kim's brother-in-law, Kim installed fences around a small building in the base and set it up so that it would prevent exit from within rather than entry from outside.
More significantly, Kim appears to have had a close relationship with Jang Jun-ha, widely respected leader of the democracy movement as a former Liberation Army officer, opposition lawmaker, and publisher of the monthly journal World of Ideology. According to Jang Ho-kweon, Jang's eldest son and current publisher of the journal, Jang told him that Kim was a patriotic soldier whom he would one day work with for democracy.KBS 1 TV, Jang Jun-ha, Part 2, Modern History in Biography In 1979, Kim told his lawyer that his first attempt to assassinate Park was on September 14, 1974, when he was appointed Construction Minister. A newsreel of this event shows something protruding in Kim's pocket when he shook hands with Park. According to the Reverend Yi Hae-hak, who was imprisoned with Jang Jun-ha when Jang was sentenced to 15 years for creating a petition campaign against the Yushin Constitution, Jang knew of Kim's plan to assassinate Park and was very disappointed when it did not take place, saying to himself, "Is it that great to be a minister?" After Jang died under suspicious circumstances while climbing a mountain in 1975, Kim secretly provided financial assistance to Jang's family. When Kim became KCIA director in 1976, he told Jang's son with deep regret that Jang's death was not accidental as officially announced, but that the regime was involved.
According to Cardinal Kim Sou-hwan, another leading figure in democracy movement, Kim (then KCIA deputy director) came to see him whenever there was political crisis. In 1975, he asked Cardinal Kim to speak with President Park to come up with the "third way," that is, to somehow amend the Yushin Constitution in a way acceptable to Park. According to Cardinal Kim, Kim compared President Park to "a sick patient" who needed weak medicine initially. Kim believed that the Catholic cardinal was the only person who could speak frankly to Park without repercussion and was disappointed when the talk was essentially fruitless. Kim's association with two key figures of the democracy movement, Jang Jun-ha and Cardinal Kim Sou-hwan, led some to reconsider Kim's motive in assassinating Park.
As Construction Minister (1974–1976), Kim promoted the entry of Korean construction companies into Saudi Arabia, increasing South Korean exports to the Middle East twenty-fold, from $45 million in 1973 to $900 million in 1976, making Saudi Arabia the fourth most important overseas market,Nigel Disney (1977), South Korean Workers in the Middle East, Middle East Research and Information Project(MERIP) Reports and helping South Korea weather the 1973 oil crisis.
KCIA Director On February 4, 1976, Kim was summoned by Park and was appointed as the director of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA), one of the most powerful and feared positions under Park's dictatorship. The KCIA was created in 1961 to coordinate both international and domestic intelligence activities including those of the military with primary aim of combating communism and North Korea. Since then, it was also used to suppress any domestic opposition to Park's regime using its broad powers to wiretap, arrest, and detain suspects without a court order. The KCIA was responsible for widespread violations of human rights in South Korea, engaging in torture, political murder, and kidnapping. It was also heavily involved in behind-the-scene political maneuverings to weaken the opposition parties using bribery, blackmail, threats, arrest, and/or torture of opposition lawmakers. Later Kim claimed that he did not want the position but thought that it would give him the best chance to persuade President Park and reform the Yushin system.
Kim's tenure as the KCIA director has many contradictions. On one hand, Kim asked Park to lift the Ninth Emergency Decree at least three times, which punished any criticism of the Yushin Constitution with a prison term of at least one year, until it was finally replaced with the Tenth Emergency Decree, which relaxed many restrictions of the Ninth Decree. He also released many activists and students who had been arrested under the Ninth Decree. Declassified U.S. diplomatic cables revealed that Kim was considered an unusual KCIA director who often spoke of democracy, and one of the more approachable figures who often carried Washington's messages on human rights to Park.MBC TV, Why Did Kim Jae-kyu Shoot? Now We Can Tell the Story, April 4, 2004
On the other hand, Kim was responsible for KCIA activities that took place during his tenure including the assassination of former KCIA director Kim Hyong-uk, political sabotage of the opposing New Democratic Party (NDP)'s internal election and the violent arrest of female workers of a wig company YH Trade. Nearly 200 women who worked for YH Trade held a sit-in demonstrations at the NDP headquarters when 2,000 policemen stormed the NDP headquarters on August 11, 1979. In the process, one female worker fell to her death and 52 people including 10 workers, 30 NDP members, and 12 journalists were injured, some requiring hospitalization. Furthermore, KCIA Deputy Director Kim Jeong-Seop and Kim Gye-won testified in their trial after Park's assassination that Kim pursued firm action in the YH case, over the objection of subordinates, and that Kim wanted stronger measures than the Ninth Decree allowed. However, their claims are not thought to be credible since some other testimonies are demonstrably untrue and they needed to distance themselves from Kim.
1979 regime troubles