Kim Jae-gyu, who assassinated then-President Park Chung Hee while serving as director of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA), appears at the first hearing of his trial over the Oct. 26, 1979, assassination.JOONGANG ILBO FILE PHOTO
Roh Jeong-tae
The author is a writer and senior fellow at the Institute for Social and Economic Research.
At approximately 7:40 p.m. on Oct. 26, 1979, gunshots rang out at a Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) safe house at 55-3 Gungjeong-dong, Jongno District, Seoul. KCIA Director Kim Jae-gyu shot and killed President Park Chung Hee with a handgun.
Presidential Security Service chief Cha Ji-chul, responsible for protecting Park, was shot in his right arm and fled into a bathroom. Kim pursued and fatally shot him. KCIA agents under Kim's command also opened fire, killing four presidential bodyguards and critically wounding another. The incident became known as the Oct. 26 assassination.
Kim, the presidential assassin, appeared indecisive immediately afterward. Instead of returning to KCIA headquarters, which he controlled, he went to Army Headquarters, insisting that the military maintain security and declare emergency martial law following the president's death.
At approximately 10:30 p.m., Cabinet ministers gathered in an Army Headquarters bunker asked who had killed Park. Kim evaded their questions, angrily warning them against acting rashly.
Army Chief of Staff Jeong Seung-hwa and Defense Minister Roh Jae-hyun grew suspicious. After receiving information from presidential chief of staff Kim Gye-won, who had witnessed the incident at Gungjeong-dong, they arrested Kim Jae-gyu and took him into custody at a safe house at 12:40 a.m. on Oct. 27.
During his trial, Kim claimed his actions constituted a movement for democratization. This justification, offered after the fact, lacks credibility. Kim belonged to the highest ranks of the authoritarian Yushin regime and had never participated in the democracy movement.
It is true that Kim had a heated confrontation with Cha over proposals to forcibly suppress the Busan-Masan Democratic Protests that day, eventually drawing his handgun.
Yet the prevailing interpretation is that his actions cannot be explained without considering personal resentment over losing Park's favor.
Park's leadership strategy encouraged loyalty by fostering rivalry and mutual surveillance among senior officials. Combined with inadequate presidential security, that approach produced disastrous consequences.
Korea emerged from the extreme poverty following liberation from Japanese colonial rule to become one of the world's 10 largest economies. Without Park's leadership, that transformation might have taken considerably longer or perhaps never occurred.
Yet economic development came at the cost of postponing democratization and economic equality.
As disputes over modern Korean history intensify again, we should examine Kim's impulsive assassination and the historical developments that followed with greater objectivity and restraint.
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
