Kim Hyon Hui - Korean Air Flight 858

Korean Air Flight 858

In 1987, Kim was given an assignment to blow up KAL 858. She was told that the order came directly from the "Dear Leader himself, Kim Jong-Il. Handwritten, that is..." She was told that if she was successful, she would be able to return and live with her family and would not have to work as an agent afterward. She was once again paired with Kim Seung Il who was recovering from a stomach operation.

She was traveling with a fake Japanese passport under the name of Mayumi Hachiya (蜂谷 真由美, Hachiya Mayumi?) along with Kim Seung Il, who posed as her father and used the name Shinichi Hachiya (蜂谷 真一, Hachiya Shin'ichi?). The two traveled through Europe and eventually met other North Korean agents in Budapest who provided them with the materials to complete their mission. Once they had left the bomb behind (hidden in a radio device) in a luggage rack of KAL 858, Kim Hyon Hui and Kim Seung Il disembarked in Abu Dhabi and traveled to Bahrain. The two terrorists were apprehended in Bahrain after investigators discovered that their passports were fake. Kim Seung Il bit a cyanide pill that was hidden in a cigarette and died. Kim Hyun Hui unsuccessfully attempted to do the same, but a Bahraini policewoman snatched the cigarette out of her mouth just as she started to ingest the poison. She was hospitalized and then later interrogated.

At first, she insisted that her name was Pai Chui Hui, an orphan from Northern China who had met an elderly Japanese man with whom she was traveling. She denied any sexual involvement with her partner Kim Seung Il. However, her accent did not sound like she came from northern China. After Bahrain was convinced she was actually a North Korean, she was flown to Seoul, South Korea under heavy guard.

According to testimony at a United Nations Security Council meeting, Kim was taken on several occasions to see the prosperity of Seoul outside of her prison cell. The prison authorities also showed her TV shows and news reports showing the affluent lifestyle of South Koreans. She had been taught that the South was a corruption-riddled fiefdom of the United States and that poverty was widespread. She'd also been told that if she were ever captured, she'd be subject to hideous torture. However, her captors treated her with great sympathy.

For eight days, Kim insisted that she was a Chinese native living in Japan. However, after realizing that all she'd been taught about South Korea was a lie, she broke down, admitted that she was in fact a North Korean, and confessed the details of her role in the bombing of Flight 858, as well as Kim Jong-il's personal involvement in the scheme.