Korean intelligence faces its ambiguous past

Have not heard much about it, ex KCIA spin-doctors
or simple house cleaners?

Quotes :

Former Spy Chief Murdered at Chicken Farm in France

A former South Korean intelligence agency chief who
disappeared in 1979 was killed at a chicken farm in the
suburbs of Paris by a team of South Korean agents, a
weekly news magazine here reported Monday.

Sisa Journal quoted a former agent who allegedly led the
team at the time as saying that his team abducted Kim
Hyung-wook, who was then chief of the Korea Central
Intelligence Agency (KCIA), at a restaurant near a
casino in downtown Paris on Oct. 7, 1979.

``We were waiting at the entrance of the restaurant at a
time when Kim was supposed to meet a South Korean
actress and succeeded in kidnapping him by disguising
ourselves as a guide sent by the actress,'' the man,
identified only by his family name Lee, told the
magazine.

``We then anesthetized him inside a Cadillac and pushed
his body into a grinder at a chicken farm located 4
kilometers northwest of Paris at about 11 p.m., to feed
chickens.''

Lee said he killed Kim in a team with an agent called
Kwak, who was sent to Israel's Mossad intelligence
agency and trained to be a special assassin.

The former spy chief's purpose of the visit to Paris was
to meet the actress, and the team prepared for the
assassination for one year, he added.

The actress mentioned by the agent, however, denied
involvement in the case, saying that the person Kim was
supposed to meet that day was not her, the magazine
said.

Kim served as an intelligence chief for six years,
beginning in 1969, under the former Park Chung-hee
administration. After Kim's dismissal, he became an
outspoken critic of the dictator while living in exile
in the United States.

The KCIA was later replaced by the National Intelligence
Service.

Kim went missing while traveling in Paris, only weeks
before the assassination of former President Park on
Oct. 26, 1979, by Kim's replacement.

There has been mounting suspicions that the spy agency
was behind Kim's disappearance.

The agency has already formed an investigation team to
shed light on the disappearance, along with a number of
other cases in its murky past. They include the 1973
kidnapping of former President Kim Dae-jung and the 1987
bombing of a Korean Air passenger jet.

04-11-2005 21:50 Yonhap agency
end of quotes