SEOUL – South Korea has kicked off a retrial for the country’s former spy chief, Kim Jae-gyu, over the 1979 assassination of then-president Park Chung-hee, Kim’s family told AFP on July 17.
Mr Park had ruled the country with an iron fist for more than 15 years when he was shot and killed by his head of intelligence and trusted aide Kim at a dinner in 1979.
Kim was subsequently sentenced to death by a military court for killing the head of state with the goal of “insurrection”, and was hanged shortly after.
But his family appealed to South Korean courts to revisit the case in 2020, claiming that while Kim had killed the president, he did so seeking to end a dictatorship, not for personal gain.
“In my brother’s final testimony, he said: ‘The purpose of the Oct. 26 revolution was to restore democracy and prevent the tremendous sacrifices of the people,’“ Kim’s sister, Ms Jung-sook, 85, told the court.
The family told AFP that they wanted to set the historical record straight, and hoped that in the future people “will come to associate the word ‘democracy’ with the name ‘Kim Jae-gyu’”.
In the final months of Mr Park’s rule, major protests against his dictatorship broke out in the second-largest city of Busan and surrounding areas, which had traditionally been his support base.
At his trial after the assassination, Kim told the court Mr Park’s security chief Cha Ji-chul had said “the deaths of up to two million people would not matter” to stop the demonstrations.
Kim killed both Mr Park and Mr Cha at a private dinner featuring expensive whiskey in Seoul.
Kim’s sister told the court on July 16 that “more than one million would have died had my brother not prevented it”.
Kim’s actions left three of Mr Park’s children orphaned – they had already lost their mother to an assassin who had tried to kill Park but mistakenly shot her instead in 1974.
One of the three children, Park Geun-hye, was elected president in 2012, but was impeached over a corruption scandal and later imprisoned.
Multiple films and television dramas have centred around the killing of Mr Park Chung-hee, with enduring mystery and public fascination over what motivated his once-trusted aide to pull the trigger.
One of the most well-known films about Kim Jae-gyu is “The Man Standing Next”, in which Kim was portrayed by “Squid Game” actor Lee Byung-hun. AFP
