North Korean commando involved in plot to kill South Korean president dies at 82

A former North Korean commando who took part in a failed 1968 mission to assassinate the then South Korean president has died at the age of 82.

Kim Shin-jo, the only North Korean to be captured alive during the raid, famously admitted that he and his colleagues had come “to slit the throat” of Park Chung-hee, South Korea’s authoritarian leader.

In later life, Kim, who was pardoned by Seoul, reinvented himself as a Christian pastor in the South.

He died at a nursing home from old age, according to the Sungrak Church in Seoul.

In January 1968, Kim and 30 other North Korean soldiers managed to cross the heavily militarised border between the two Koreas, before getting within striking distance of Park’s presidential palace.

All but a few of the North Korean commandos died in a series of gun battles with South Korean forces over a two-week period.

One or two survivors were believed to have escaped back to the North, but Kim was the only person to surrender.

The assassination attempt came at the height of the Cold War rivalry between the two countries, some 15 years after they split into the US-backed South and the Soviet-supported North at the end of the Korean War.

Following the daring North Korean raid, Park’s government introduced military training at schools and a residential ID system that is still in place today.

Kim claimed he was pardoned because he did not fire any bullets during the shootouts.

After disavowing communism, the former Pyongyang soldier, toured South Korea giving speeches that were critical of life in the North.

He later learnt through North Korean defectors that his parents had been executed.

The ex-commando said the 1968 attack was ordered by Kim Il-sung, the grandfather of current North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

“I earlier didn’t know why Kim Il-sung wanted to kill President Park,” Kim Shin-jo said in a 2009 interview with the JoongAng Ilbo newspaper.

“But I came to know the reason as I spent time here. Kim must have been afraid of a poor country such as South Korea becoming rich.”

Kim is survived by his wife, whom he met after resettling in South Korea, and by a son and a daughter.