Two gunshots.
That is how Yoo Seok-sul begins recounting the night of Friday, 26 October, 1979.
A former security guard in the Korea Central Intelligence Agency, or KCIA, as the South’s spy division was known, Yoo has many stories to tell. But this is perhaps the most infamous.
He remembers the time – nearly 19:40 – and where he had been sitting – in the break room. He was resting after his shift guarding the entrance to the low-rise compound where President Park Chung-hee entertained his most trusted lieutenants. They called it the “safe house”.
In his 70s now, wiry with sharp eyes, Yoo speaks hesitantly at first – but it comes back to him quickly. After the first shots, more gunfire followed, he says. The guards were on high alert but they waited outside for orders. The president’s security detail was inside, along with the KCIA’s top agents.
Then Yoo’s boss, a KCIA officer who oversaw security for the safe house, stepped outside. “He came over and asked me to bury something in the garden.” It was two guns, bullets and a pair of shoes. Flustered, Yoo followed orders, he says.
He did not know who had been shot, and he didn’t ask.
“I never imagined that it was the president.”
The guns Yoo buried were used to assassinate Park Chung-hee, who had ruled South Korea for the previous 18 years, longer than any president before or since. The man who shot him was his long-time friend Kim Jae-gyu, who ran the much-feared KCIA, a pillar of Park’s dictatorship.
That Friday shook South Korea, ending Park Chung-hee’s stifling rule and ushering in another decade under the military. Kim was executed for insurrection, along with five others.
Now, 46 years later, that night is back in the spotlight as a court retries Kim Jae-gyu to determine if his actions amounted to treason. He has remained a deeply polarising figure – some see him as a killer blinded by power and ambition, others as a patriot who sacrificed himself to set South Korea on the path to democracy. The president he killed is no less divisive, lauded for his country’s economic rise and reviled for his authoritarian rule.
Kim’s family fought for the retrial, arguing that he cannot be remembered as a traitor. They will now have their day in the Seoul High Court – hearings began on Wednesday – just as impeached president Yoon Suk Yeol goes on trial for the same charge that sent Kim to the gallows.
Yoon’s martial law order last December was short-lived but it threw up questions about South Korean democracy – and that may influence how the country sees a man who shot dead a dictator he claimed was on the brink of unleashing carnage.
Was Kim trying to seize power for himself or to spark a revolution, as he claimed in court?
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