Assassination of Park Chung-hee


, the third President of South Korea, was assassinated on October 26, 1979, during a dinner at the Korean Central Intelligence Agency safehouse inside the Blue House presidential compound in Jongno District, Seoul, South Korea. Kim Jae-gyu, the director of the KCIA and the president's security chief, was responsible for the assassination. Park was shot in the chest and the head, and died almost immediately. Four bodyguards and a presidential chauffeur were also killed. The incident is often referred to as "10.26" or the "10.26 incident" in South Korea.
There is a great deal of controversy surrounding Kim's motives, as it remains uncertain whether the act was part of a planned coup d'état or was merely impulsive. The chief investigator Yi Hak-bong famously concluded that the assassination was "too careless for a deliberate act and yet too elaborate for an impulsive act."

Background

President Park's dictatorship

By the time of his assassination, Park had exercised dictatorial power over South Korea for nearly 18 years.
The Korean Central Intelligence Agency was created in 1961 to coordinate both international and domestic intelligence activities, including those of the military. Almost immediately following its creation, the KCIA was used to suppress any domestic opposition to Park's regime: wiretapping, arresting, and torturing without court order. The KCIA was heavily involved in many behind-the-scenes political maneuvers aimed at weakening the opposition parties through bribing, blackmailing, threatening, or arresting opposing lawmakers. Nevertheless, President Park nearly lost the 1971 presidential election to Kim Dae-jung, despite spending ten percent of the national budget on his election campaign. Park therefore established the Yushin Constitution in 1972 to ensure his perpetual dictatorship. The new constitution replaced direct voting in presidential elections with an indirect voting system involving delegates; allotted one third of the National Assembly seats to the president; repealed presidential term limits; and gave the president the authority to suspend the constitution and issue emergency decrees, appoint all judges, and dismiss the National Assembly. When opposition to the Yushin Constitution arose, Park issued a number of emergency decrees, the first of which made any act of opposition or denial of the Yushin Constitution punishable by imprisonment for up to 15 years.
Despite this, opposition towards Park's rule persisted, and in the 1978 South Korean legislative election, despite Park's Democratic Republician Party maintaining a majority, the New Democratic Party won the popular vote by a narrow margin, further emboldening them. In September 1979, the courts nullified Kim Young-sam's chairmanship of the NDP and the DRP expelled Kim from the National Assembly in a secret session on October 5, which led all 66 NDP lawmakers to submit their resignations to the National Assembly in protest. The Carter administration in the U.S. recalled its ambassador from Seoul in protest as well. On October 16, when it became known that the government was planning to accept the resignations selectively, democracy protests broke out in Kim's hometown of Busan, the second largest city in South Korea, resulting in arson attacks on 30 police stations over several days. The demonstrations, the largest since the days of President Syngman Rhee, spread to nearby Masan and other cities on October 19, with students and citizens calling for repeal of the Yushin Constitution. The KCIA director, Kim Jae-gyu, went to Busan to investigate the situation and found that the demonstrations were not riots by some college students, but more like a "popular uprising joined by regular citizens" to resist the regime. He warned Park that the uprisings would spread to five other large cities, including Seoul. Park said that he himself would give direct orders to the security forces to fire upon demonstrators if the situation got worse.

Rivalry between Kim Jae-gyu and Cha Ji-chul

While Park faced an increasing opposition to his dictatorship outside Blue House, another kind of conflict was intensifying inside Blue House, between Kim Jae-gyu, who was appointed KCIA Director in December 1976, and Chief Bodyguard Cha Ji-chul, who was appointed to his position in 1974 after Park's wife Yuk Young-soo was killed in an assassination by Moon Se-gwang, an ethnic Korean from Japan.
The rivalry stemmed largely from Cha's increasing encroachment onto KCIA turf and Cha's belittlement of Kim in public. Almost universally disliked yet feared, Cha served Park in close proximity and became his favorite and most trusted advisor. Cha appropriated tanks, helicopters and troops from the Republic of Korea Army, so that the presidential security apparatus essentially had a division under Cha's direct command.
The rivalry between Cha and Kim, whose KCIA was until then the most feared government apparatus, was heightened further by a series of political crises in late 1979, as the two rivals clashed over how to deal with growing opposition to the regime. In the NDP's election of its chairman in 1979, KCIA backed Yi Chul-seung to prevent the election of hardliner Kim Young Sam, but Cha interfered in KCIA's political sabotage with its own behind-scene maneuverings. When Kim Young Sam was elected as the NDP chairman, Cha laid the blame on the KCIA, which infuriated Director Kim.
Later, when Kim Young Sam called on the U.S. to stop supporting Park's regime, in an interview with The New York Times reporter Henry Stokes, Cha pushed for Kim's expulsion from the National Assembly, which Director Kim feared to be a disastrous development,. Cha easily bested his opponent as his hardline approach was favored by Park, and he blamed worsening developments on Director Kim's weak leadership of the KCIA at every opportunity. As Cha came to control the scheduling of Park's meetings and briefings and thus access to the president, KCIA briefings, which were usually the first business in the morning, were pushed back to afternoons. By October, there were widespread rumors that Kim would soon be replaced as KCIA director.

Assassination

On the day of the assassination, Park and his entourage attended ribbon-cutting ceremonies for a dam in Sapgyo and a KBS TV transmitting station in Dangjin. Director Kim was expected to accompany him since the TV station was under KCIA jurisdiction, but after Cha blocked him from riding in the same helicopter as Park, Director Kim angrily excused himself from the trip.
After the trip, according to KCIA Chief Agent Park Seon-ho, one of the assassination conspirators, Park instructed the KCIA to prepare for one of his numerous banquets, which were held, on average, ten times per month. The banquet was held at a KCIA safehouse inside the Blue House presidential compound.
The banquet was to be attended by Park, Director Kim, Cha, Chief Secretary Kim Gye-won, and two young women – rising singer Shim Soo-bong and a college student named Shin Jae-soon. After Director Kim was notified of the banquet, he called Army Chief of Staff Jeong Seung-hwa 15 minutes later to invite him to the KCIA safehouse and arranged to have him dine with KCIA Deputy Director Kim Jeong-seop in a nearby KCIA building in the same compound.
Just before the dinner, Director Kim told Chief Secretary Kim Gye-won that he would get rid of Cha. It is not clear whether Kim Gye-won misheard, misunderstood, or ignored Kim's words.
During the dinner, volatile political issues, including demonstrations in Busan and the opposition leader Kim Young Sam, were discussed, with Park and Cha taking a hardline, Director Kim calling for moderate measures, while Chief Secretary Kim Gye-won was trying to steer the topic of the discussion to small talk.
Park rebuked Director Kim for not being repressive enough in dealing with protesters and Kim Young Sam, whom Park wanted to have arrested. Each time discussion drifted to other subjects, Cha continued to bring up the inability of KCIA to end the crisis and suggested that demonstrators and opposition lawmakers should be "mowed down with tanks".
The rebukes from Park, and especially Cha, riled Kim, who left the dining room to meet with his closest subordinate: former Marine colonel and KCIA Chief Agent Park Seon-ho and Army colonel, and Director Kim's secretary, Park Heung-ju. Kim said to them: "Chief of Staff and Deputy Director are here as well. Today is the day."
Kim reentered the meeting room with a semi-automatic Walther PPK pistol and opened fire, shooting Cha in the arm and Park in the left chest before the PPK jammed as he attempted to kill Cha, who fled to a bathroom adjacent to the dining room. Kim came back with his subordinate Park Seon-ho's Smith & Wesson Model 36 Chief Special revolver and killed Cha with a shot to the abdomen before speaking to Park and shooting him in the head execution-style.
Upon hearing the initial shots, Park Seon-ho held two bodyguards in the waiting room at gunpoint and ordered them to put their hands up, in hope of preventing further bloodshed, especially since he was a friend of one of the bodyguards. When the other bodyguard attempted to reach for a gun, Park shot them dead as Park Heung-ju and two other KCIA agents stormed the kitchen area and killed the remaining bodyguard.
In all, six people were killed: Park, Cha and three presidential bodyguards in the safe house, as well as a presidential chauffeur outside.

Aftermath

After killing Park, Director Kim asked Chief Secretary Kim to secure the safe house and ran to the nearby KCIA building, where Army Chief of Staff Jeong Seung-hwa was waiting. Jeong had heard the shootings and was discussing them with KCIA Deputy Director Kim Jeong-seop when Director Kim came in to tell them that an emergency situation had arisen.
Later, in a car with Jeong Seung-hwa, Kim notified Jeong that Park had died, but without explaining how. Kim hoped that Jeong and Chief Secretary Kim would support him in the coup, as both had been appointed to their positions on his recommendation and Chief Secretary Kim was especially close to him. The car initially headed to KCIA Headquarters, in Namsan district, but eventually went to army headquarters, in Yongsan district, since the army would have to be involved in declaring emergency martial law.
Many historians believe that Kim made a critical mistake in not going to KCIA headquarters, where he would be in control; however, his failure to gain Jeong's support sealed the fate of the conspirators.
Meanwhile, Chief Secretary Kim took Park's body to the Army hospital and ordered doctors to save him at all costs. He then went to Prime Minister Choi Kyu-hah to reveal what happened that night.
When Chief of Staff Jeong learned of what happened from Chief Secretary Kim, he ordered Major General Chun Doo-hwan, commander of Security Command, to take Director Kim into custody and investigate the incident.
Director Kim was arrested after he was lured to a secluded area outside army headquarters on the pretext of meeting with the Army Chief of Staff. Eventually, everyone involved in the assassination was arrested, tortured and later executed. In the process, Chun Doo-hwan emerged as a new political force by investigating and subordinating KCIA under his Security Command and later by arresting Jeong Seung-hwa, who had become the chief martial law administrator and Chief Secretary Kim on suspicion of conspiring with Director Kim, when Chun Doo-hwan seized power in the Coup d'état of December Twelfth 1979.

Theories regarding motive

Kim Jae-kgyu's motive in killing his long-time benefactor President Park has been controversial and the subject of much discussion. There are many theories on Kim's true motive of killing Park. The following are just some of these theories.

On the killing being unplanned

Except for Kim Jae-gyu, Park Heung-ju and Park Seon-ho, the co-conspirators followed their superior's order without knowing whom they were shooting and why.

Witnesses