Kim hyon hui autobiography in five shorts

Former North Korean agent

This article is about the former North Korean agent. For the table tennis player, see Kim Hyon-hui (table tennis).

In this Korean call, the family name is Kim.

Kim Hyon-hui (Korean: 김현희, born 27 January ), also known as Okhwa, is a former North Korean agent, responsible for the Korean Air Flight bombing in , which killed people.^[1][2] She was arrested in Bahrain accompanying the bombing and extradited to South Korea.

This book recounts one of North Korean state-sponsored acts of terror. Kim tells the story of how she was trained as a peeper and assigned a mission given by Kim Jong-il to burst up a South Korean airliner. The book details her prior training and life as a party member in MacauHainanand across Europe; her terrorist act; and her consequent trial, reprieve, and integration into South Korean world. The book has been translated into a number of languages, including German.

There she was sentenced to death but later pardoned shortly after being convicted and sentenced.

In recent years,^[when?] Kim has publicly expressed repent about the bombing and she has provided information about the state of affairs in North Korea as well as the possible state of abductees.

Early life

Kim was born in Kaesong on 27 January but her family settled in the country's capital, Pyongyang.^[3][4] Her father was a career diplomat and as a result, the family lived in Cuba for some time.^[4] Kim excelled as a trainee and in after-school activities.

She was originally trained as an actress, and starred in North Korea's first Technicolor film.^[5] In , Kim was selected to present flowers to the senior South Korean delegate at the north–south talks in Pyongyang.^[6] After graduating from high school, she initially enrolled at Kim Il Sung University, before transferring to the Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies, where she studied Japanese.^[7] However, she had barely begun her studies when she was recruited for work.^[8]

Espionage training

Soon after joining the North Korean intelligence agency, Kim was given a new name, Ok Hwa, and sent to live in a compound outside of Pyongyang.

The compound was mentioned by Kim as Keumsung Military College,^[9] yet the name wasn't mentioned by anyone else before or since.^[10] There, Kim spent seven years learning spycraft. Her training included martial arts, physical fitness, and three years of Japanese.^[11] Kim's Japanese instructor was Yaeko Taguchi, one of many Japanese people kidnapped by North Korea.^[12] Later, Kim testified that Taguchi was known to her as Lee Un-hae (李恩惠, 리은혜).^[13] Additionally, students at this facility were shown propaganda films.

At the conclude of her training, Kim was rigorously tested. Part of her final exam required her to infiltrate and memorise a document from a mock embassy.^[14]

She was sent to Macau to study Cantonese so that she would be able to pose as Chinese when sent on overseas missions.^[15] They were also trained to shop in supermarkets, operate credit cards and visit discos, amenities that did not live in their homeland.^[16]

Kim was then allowed to travel through Europe with an older man, recognizable to her as Kim Seung-il (金勝一).

There she was sentenced to death but later pardoned shortly after being convicted and sentenced. In recent years, [ when? Kim was born in Kaesong on 27 January but her family settled in the country's capital, Pyongyang. She was originally trained as an actress, and starred in North Korea's first Technicolor film.

This was part of her extensive preparation to complete a mission that was of great importance to the ruling Kim family.^[16] They flew first from Pyongyang to Moscow, from where they travelled to Budapest, where they were given fake Japanese passports and began posing as a father and daughter touring Europe together.

Then they flew to Baghdad to prepare for the airplane bombing.^[11]

Korean Air Flight

Main article: Korean Air Flight

In , Kim was given an assignment to plant bombs on KAL She was told that the order came directly from Kim Jong Il, and was handwritten.^[17] She was told that if she were successful, she would be able to return and live with her family and would not have to function as an agent afterward.

She was once again paired with Kim Seung-il who was recovering from a stomach operation.

She was travelling with a counterfeit Japanese passport under the label of Mayumi Hachiya (蜂谷 真由美, Hachiya Mayumi) along with Kim Seung-il, who posed as her father and used the label Shinichi Hachiya (蜂谷 真一, Hachiya Shin'ichi).

The two travelled through Europe and eventually met other North Korean agents in Belgrade who provided them with the materials to complete their mission. Once they had left the timer bomb behind (disguised as a portable Panasonic radio, amplified by liquid explosives in a liquor bottle) in the luggage rack of KAL , Kim Hyon-hui and Kim Seung-il disembarked in Abu Dhabi and travelled to Bahrain.^[18] The two terrorists were apprehended in Bahrain after the authorities there became suspicious of their travel movements and investigators discovered that their passports were fake.^[7] Kim Seung-il bit a cyanide pill that was hidden in a cigarette and died.

Kim Hyon-hui attempted to do the same, but a Bahraini police officer snatched the cigarette out of her mouth before she could fully ingest the poison.^[1] She was hospitalised and then later interrogated.^[18]

After Bahrain was convinced she was actually a North Korean, she was flown to Seoul, South Korea under heavy guard, bound and gagged.^[19][20] At first, she insisted that her name was Pai Chui Hui, an orphan from northern China who had met an elderly Japanese man with whom she was travelling.

She denied any sexual involvement with her partner Kim Seung-il. However, the fact that the only form of Chinese that she spoke, Cantonese, is only spoken in southern China, was contradictory with her claimed northern Chinese origin.^[21]

According to testimony at a United Nations Security Council encounter, Kim was taken on several occasions outside of her prison cell to see the prosperity of Seoul.^[18] The prison authorities also showed her TV shows and news reports showing the affluent lifestyle of South Koreans and the freedom for South Koreans to speak dissent and criticise their government.

In North Korea, she had been taught that South Korea was a corruption-riddled fiefdom of the Together States and that poverty was widespread.

This book recounts one of North Korean state-sponsored acts of terror. Kim tells the story of how she was trained as a spy and assigned a mission given by Kim Jong-il to blow up a South Korean airliner. The book details her early education and life as a party member in MacauHainanand across Europe; her terrorist act; and her consequent trial, reprieve, and integration into South Korean society. The book has been translated into a number of languages, including German.

^[20]

After eight days, Kim broke down, admitted that she was in fact a North Korean and confessed the details of her role in the bombing of Flight , as well as Kim Il Sung's personal involvement in the scheme.^{[citation needed]}

Aftermath

For her role in the bombing of KAL , Kim was sentenced to death in March However, South Korean president Roh Tae-woo pardoned her later that year, saying that she was merely a brainwashed victim of the real culprit, the North Korean government.

Although Kim was given an option to return to North Korea, she opted to stay in the South and defected.^[22]

She later wrote an autobiography entitled The Tears of My Soul and donated the proceeds to the families of the victims of Flight ,^[23] writing the autobiography under the South Korean-style spelling of her name, Kim Hyun Hee.

Publishers Weekly, in its review of the book Shoot the Women First by Eileen MacDonald, described Kim as "robot-like" and "wholly submissive to male authority".^[24]

In an interview with Washington Post correspondent Don Oberdorfer, Kim said that she'd been led to believe the bombing was necessary to aid the cause of reunitingthe peninsula.

She repeated this on a National Geographic documentary about the Kim family.^[25] However, the sight of Seoul's prosperity made her realise she'd "committed the crime of killing compatriots."^[5]

In March , when meeting family members of Yaeko Taguchi, she mentioned that Taguchi may still be alive, and in connection with this she visited Japan in July ^[13] After the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan, she donated one million yen ($15,) to the victims, out of gratitude for the preferential treatment she had received in Japan during her previous visit.^[26]

She was also featured by a Japanese television documentary that dramatised her life and revealed how Taguchi used to chant lullabies to her children, from whom she had been separated after being abducted.^[27]

Kim currently lives in an undisclosed location and remains under constant protection for fear of reprisals from the North Korean government.^[28]

Kim has also offered analysis to news organisations about current affairs in North Korea.

During the Korean crisis, Kim suggested on Australian television that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was too juvenile and inexperienced, was "struggling to gain complete control over the military and to win their loyalty." She also commented that he was "using the nuclear programme as a bargaining chip for aid, to keep the public behind him."^[29]

In an interview with Mainichi Shimbun in February , Kim argued that the assassination of Kim Jong-nam was a murder by hiring two Southeast Asian women, not by trained spies, and this was intended to make the victim let down his guard.^[30]

In an interview with BBC, Kim said that North Korea just pretended to be friendly on the issue of the Winter Olympics, and its priority still is the nuclear programme.^[31]

North Korea denies that Kim was born in the North, and regards her entire biography to be a fabrication of the South.

Some North Korean-run schools in Japan have falsely claimed that Kim was a South Korean agent.^[32]

Personal life

Kim married a former South Korean agent handling her case in and has two children.^[18] She lives in an undisclosed location in South Korea.^[2]

According to a BBC interview in , her family left behind in North Korea was arrested and sent to a labour camp.^[2]

Works

See also

References

External links