Kim Hyon-hui
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Kim Hyon-hui (born January 27, 1962) is a former North Korean agent who was convicted of bombing Korean Air Lines Flight 858 under orders from the North Korean government, in an act of state terrorism. Hyon-hui was later pardoned by South Korea in recognition of her having been brainwashed by North Korea into believing her actions were right.
Espionage career edit
Kim was recruited by North Korean intelligence while studying at the Pyongyang University of Foreign Studies. She was given the codename Ok Hwa and sent to a compound outside Pyongyang, where she studied espionage for seven years. Although her language instructor was known to her as Lee Un-hae, Kim later realised that she was in fact a kidnapped Japanese woman named Yaeko Taguchi. The culmination of Kim's training was to infiltrate a fake embassy and memorise a document without being caught; she was also taught Cantonese to let her pose as a Chinese woman while abroad, and how to use a credit card and attend a disco (both of these do not exist in North Korea).
In 1987, Kim was given an order, handwritten by Kim Il-sung himself, to plant a bomb on KAL 858. Under the name Mayumi Hachiya, she was dispatched to Europe alongside another agent named Kim Seung-il and travelled to Belgrade, Serbia, where she was given the explosives used in the attack. The two agents then boarded the flight in Baghdad on November 29 and planted the bomb, leaving it in a bag in a storage bin, before disembarking during a stopover in Abu Dhabi. The bomb exploded at 2:05 pm as the plane flew over the Andaman Sea, killing 115 people. Most of the victims of the bombing were South Koreans.
Hyon-hui and Seung-il attempted to return to North Korea after planting the bomb, but were arrested in Bahrain after immigration officials realised their passports were forged. Hyon-hui attempted suicide with a cyanide pill disguised as a cigarette, but an officer snatched it out of her mouth before she could fully ingest the poison and she was hospitalised for several days. Officials in Bahrain later became convinced that she was a North Korean agent due to her cover story being unconvincing. She claimed to be a woman from northern China named Pai Chui Hui, but her dialect of Cantonese is only spoken in southern China.
Kim was transferred to South Korea, where she was repeatedly taken outside and shown news reports criticising the country's government. She had been told by the North Korean government that South Korea was just as poor as the North and essentially controlled by the United States of America, and that criticism of the government was illegal. On seeing that everything she had been told was a lie, Kim broke down and admitted being a Northern agent who had destroyed KAL 858. In 1989 she was sentenced to death for her involvement, but South Korean president Roh Tae-woo pardoned her, citing the fact that she was a victim of brainwashing by Kim Il-sung.
Following her release, Kim published an autobiography entitled The Tears of My Soul in which she expressed remorse for her actions, donating all profits to the families of those who were killed in the bombing. She has also stated that she had believed in 1987 that the bombing was necessary, but on seeing the prosperity of South Korea realised she had committed "the crime of killing compatriots". Kim currently lives in an undisclosed location and remains under constant protection for fear of reprisals from the North Korean government.