Korean Air Flight 858 - Investigation

Investigation

According to testimony at a United Nations Security Council meeting, on 15 December 1987, Kim was transferred to Seoul, where she recovered from the poison and, initially, said she was a Chinese orphan who grew up in Japan, and said that she was not connected to the attack. Authorities grew more suspicious when, while being questioned in Bahrain, she attacked a police officer and attempted to grab his firearm, before being apprehended. At the hearing, the main evidence against Kim was the cigarettes, which, analysis showed, were the type used by a number of other North Korean agents apprehended in South Korea.

Speaking at the United Nations Security Council, Choi Young-jin, representing South Korea, said that after eight days of interrogation in South Korea, she was permitted to see a film of life in the country on a television screen, and realized that "life ... on the streets of Seoul was entirely different from what she had been led to believe. She began to realize that what she had been told while living in the North was totally untrue." Kim then "threw herself into the arms of a female investigator" and confessed to the bombing. In Korean, she said, "Forgive me. I am sorry. I will tell you everything," and said that she had been "exploited as a tool for North Korean terrorist activities", and made a detailed and voluntary confession.

The escape route, she said, was to be from Abu Dhabi via Amman to Rome, but the pair were diverted to Bahrain due to visa complications. She added that she had been travelling undercover with Kim Sung Il for three years preparing for the attack. Aged sixteen, Kim told investigators, she was chosen by the North Korean Communist Party, and trained in a number of languages. Three years later, she was educated at a secret and elite espionage school run by the North Korean Army, where she was trained to kill with her hands and feet, and taught how to use rifles and grenades. Training at the school involved enduring several years of gruelling physical and psychological conditioning. In 1987, aged 25, Kim was ordered to detonate a bomb aboard a South Korean jetliner, an attack that she was told would reunify her divided country forever.

In January 1988, Kim announced at a press conference held by the Agency for National Security Planning, the South Korean secret services agency, that both she and her partner were North Korean operatives. She said that they had left a radio containing 350 grams of C-4 explosive and a liquor bottle containing approximately 700 ml of PLX explosive in an overhead rack in the passenger cabin of the aircraft. Kim expressed remorse at her actions and asked for the forgiveness of the families of those who had died. She also said that the order for the bombing had been "personally penned" by Kim Jong-il, the son of North Korean President Kim Il-sung, who had wanted to destabilize the South Korean government, disrupt its upcoming elections and frighten international teams from attending the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, later that year. "It is natural that I should be punished and killed a hundred times for my sin," she said. Writing in The Washington Post on 15 January 1988, journalist Peter Maass stated that it was not clear to him if Kim was coerced in her remarks or was motivated by remorse for her actions. Kim was subsequently sentenced to execution for the bombing of KAL 858, but she was later pardoned by the President of South Korea, Roh Tae-woo. “The persons who ought to be on trial here are the leaders of North Korea," he said. "This child is as much a victim of this evil regime as the passengers aboard KAL 858.”