1979: The Spy Chief Who Shot His Own President at a Blue House Dinner
Kim Jae-kyu was no outsider. As head of South Korea’s Central Intelligence Agency, he had spent years enforcing President Park Chung-hee’s authoritarian rule, even as protests against it grew and corruption allegations mounted. On this day in 1979, during a private dinner at a KCIA safe house near the Blue House, South Korea’s equivalent of the American White House, Kim turned on the man he served and shot him dead at the table.
The killing sent shockwaves through the nation and exposed the deep fractures within Park’s own inner circle. Kim and several others implicated in the assassination were tried and executed in 1982, closing a case that marked the violent end of nearly two decades of authoritarian rule.
