By Seo Dong-shin
Staff Reporter

Kim Hyung-wook, a former South Korean spy agency chief, was shot to death by two Eastern Europeans commissioned by South Korean agents under the command of Kim Jae-kyu, one of his successors, a fact-finding committee said Thursday.

The committee failed, however, to confirm whether former President Park Chung-hee ordered the assassination. It did not rule out the possibility of his direct or indirect involvement.

Lee Sang-yul, who led the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) commission in France at the time, tasked two KCIA agents who were learning French in Paris with the killing in September 2003, the committee said.

Lee had received the direct order from Kim Jae-kyu, according to the committee. Kim Jae-kyu assassinated former President Park on Oct. 26, 1979.

But it remains uncertain whether Kim Jae-kyu was acting under the command of then President Park, said Ahn Byung-wook, a history professor and member of the National Intelligence Service Development Committee for Clarifying the Past (NISDC).

The panel’s inspectors conducted an independent investigation into the case over the past five months based on the direct testimonies from those involved and government documents.

``Although we don’t have the final results yet, we felt the need to make them public, seeing the mounting speculations on this issue recently,’’ Ahn said at a press conference at the NIS headquarters in southern Seoul.

The local media has been publishing interviews with self-proclaimed participants in the scheme, including the one where an alleged agent said he murdered Kim Hyung-wook at a chicken farm near Paris and incinerated the dead body through a chicken feed machine.

But the NISDC members rebuffed such speculations.

Kim Hyung-wook, once a right-hand man of former President Park, fled to the United States in 1973 after the dictator lost confidence in him. He mysteriously disappeared in Paris in 1979.

Park sent several high-ranking agents to coax him back to South Korea, as Kim criticized him and attempted to disclose confidential information in interviews, memoirs and hearings at the U.S. House of Representatives in 1977.

According to the committee’s investigation, Lee Sang-yul, who maintained friendly relations with Kim Hyung-wook, lured him to Paris, pretending to lend him money.

Kim Hyung-wook seemed to be addicted to alcohol and gambling at that time, a committee member quoted Shin Hyun-jin (not his real name), who allegedly played a major role in the killing, as saying.

Shin also told the committee that he gave $100,000 to his two Eastern European acquaintances in return for killing Kim Hyung-wook in a small forest located in the suburbs of Paris, urging them to leave France. Shin said he drove the car, but did not participate in the killing.

Members of the committee said that Shin’s testimony should be investigated more thoroughly, especially because he has not mentioned the exact place of the killing, saying that he does not remember.

Shin and Lee Man-soo (not his real name), another KCIA agent who reportedly played a minor role in the scheme, returned to Seoul soon after the killing and received financial rewards and compliments from Kim Jae-kyu.

While Shin left the KCIA soon after, Lee Man-soo remained and retired as a high-ranking official at the intelligence agency, the NISDC said.

The NISDC urged Lee Sang-yul, who remains tightlipped, to come clean on the issue. Lee, 76, who later served as ambassador to Libya and Iran, has said he will take the secret to his grave, the committee members said.

But he did not deny having been involved in the case, they said.

Asked about the possibility of diplomatic tensions with France with the disclosure of the case, the NISDC said that the French government understands the committee’s activities and agreed to make the results of the investigation public.

saltwalll@koreatimes.co.kr