N Korean spy Kim Hyun-hee: 'I was plucked by regime to bomb S Korean plane'
A former North Korean spy has recalled her role in blowing up a civilian
South Korean jet in 1987 - killing all 115 passengers - after being
"plucked" from her schoolyard to work for the regime.
North Korean spy: 'I was plucked by regime to bomb South Korean plane'
Ms Hyun-Hee said she was first 'chosen' to become a spy by party officials
who turned up at her school in a black sedan Photo: AFP
By Jonathan Pearlman in Sydney
3:07PM BST 10 Apr 2013
Kim Hyun-hee, who was later captured and tried to kill herself by swallowing
cyanide, has come out of hiding to shed light on the regime's warmongering
and the desperate attempts by its "inexperienced" leader, Kim Jong-un, to
shore up control over the military.
The 51-year-old was given a death sentence after the 1987 attack, in which
she and an accomplice managed to plant a bomb on a plane travelling from
Baghdad to Seoul via Abu Dhabi.
Despite the death of all 115 passengers on board, she was later pardoned
after the South Korean government decided she had been brainwashed.
In an interview from an undisclosed location in South Korea where she lives
in fear for her life with her husband and two children, she provided a rare
insight into the inner workings of the secretive state and its young leader.
"He's struggling to gain complete control over the military and to win their
loyalty," she told Australia's ABC Television.
"That's why he's doing so many visits to military bases, to firm up support.
He's also using the nuclear program as a bargaining chip for aid, to keep
the public behind him." She added: "North Korea is a not a state, it's a
cult."
"North Korea is using its nuclear programme to keep its people in line and
to push South Korea and the United States for concessions," she told the
Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Ms Hyun-Hee said she was first "chosen" to become a spy by party officials
who turned up at her school in a black sedan. They told her to pack and gave
her one last night with her family before she was given a new name and taken
to a mountain spy school to be trained in martial arts, weapons and
languages.
"I wasn't even allowed time to say goodbye to my friends," she said.
"In North Korea, I was taught that our [founding] leader Kim Il-sung was a
god. You were taught to put him before your own parents. You learn from
early childhood to say 'Thank you, Great Leader' for everything. And if you
said the wrong thing, even if it was a slip of the tongue, you'd end up in
the gulag." She said that after eight years of training she was picked for
the mission to blow up the Korean Air jet - a plot devised by the present
leader's father, Kim Jong-il, who hoped it would scare foreigners away from
the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul.
Ms Hyun-hee teamed up with another North Korean spy, Kim Seung-il, and the
two disguised as a Japanese father-and-daughter tourists. They boarded a
flight in Baghdad, planted the bomb in a transistor radio and set it to
explode nine hours later.
The pair alighted in Abu Dhabi and the bomb went off while the plane was
flying to Seoul. All 115 passengers died, with the bombing prompting the
United States to list North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism.
She and her accomplice were arrested as they tried to leave Bahrain after
authorities realised they were travelling on fake passports. While they were
being searched, Kim Seung-il told her they should each swallow cyanide
hidden in a packet of cigarettes. He died; she was revived.
He died but she was revived. She was tried and sentenced to death in South
Korea. After driving through the streets of Seoul, she began to realise she
had been brainwashed in North Korea. She was later pardoned.
"I saw how modern it was," she said. "I listened to how the agents around me
spoke so freely. This contradicted everything I'd been told in North Korea."
She was pardoned after the South Korean government decided she was a victim
of the Kim cult.
"I regret what I did and am repentant," she said. "I feel I should not hide
the truth to the family members of those who died."
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