North Korea’s Operation to Sabotage South Korea

A Cold War-era incident between the North and the South

Kim Il-Sung (Left) and Park Chung-Hee (Right) (Fortuna’s Corner)

This story is based on the testimonial of Kim Shin-Jo, the sole survival of the operation to assassinate president Park Chung-Hee

On January 22, 1968, the South Korean military surrounded an abandoned house in Seoul. They demanded a man to surrender, in which the man responded by walking out with his two hands raised. Kim Shin-Jo, the sole survivor of the operation to assassinate president Park Chung-Hee was arrested.

Kim Shin-Jo (second from the left) (NamuWiki)

The Operation

On January 15, a special force unit of 31 men crossed the demilitarized zone separating North and South Korea. The unit hid in a mountain near the city of Goyang, just north of Seoul. While discussing the plans, the unit receives a coded instruction through their radios. However, no one in the unit knew how to decipher the code. It was later revealed that the code instructed the unit to abort the mission.

The mission given to the unit was to assassinate president Park Chung-Hee of South Korea. Park was a military dictator who many credit for the rapid economic growth…