Kim Jae-gyu

Kim Jae-gyu (, April 9, 1924 – May 24, 1980) was a South Korean politician, army lieutenant general and the director of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency.

He is the 27th generation descendant of Kim Moon-gi (김문기;金文起) who was the civil minister (문신;文臣), the loyalist (충신;忠臣) of King Danjong, and the one of Samjungsin (삼중신;三重臣) during the Joseon period.

He graduated from Gyeongbuk University in 1945 and became a middle school teacher until the newly independent South Korean government established its military and created the Korea Military Academy, then called Joseon Defense Academy.

He graduated from the Joseon Defense Academy in December 1946, the same year as Park Chung Hee, and from Army College in 1952.

He served as a regimental commander in 1954 and as vice-president of the Army College in 1957, where Kim Gye-won was the president at the time.

Later Kim Gye-won became Chief Presidential Secretary to President Park and was present at the scene of assassination.

In 1961, when Park Chung Hee staged a military coup to seize power, Kim did not participate in the coup and was suspected of being a counterrevolutionary.

He was temporarily detained until he was released on Park's order.

During Park's dictatorship, Kim was appointed as the commander of 6th Division in 1963.

When there was a widespread demonstration against the Korean-Japanese treaty in 1964, which Park pursued in secret and was widely regarded to be disadvantageous to Korean fishermen, Kim's Division was dispatched to Seoul to subdue student demonstrations.

Kim's handling of the situation was said to have earned Park's trust and favor.

On the other hand, it is also said that Kim refused to involve the Army in arrest of civilians and left the task to the police while instead ordering his troop to occupy itself with clean-up of streets and university campus.

Afterward, he commanded Sixth Military District in 1966, Army Security Command in 1968 and the Third Army Group in 1971.

While he was the commander of Army Security Command, a military organ whose chief function was to safeguard the dictatorship, Park ran for a third term in the 1971 presidential election.

Kim persuaded Park to promise to voters that it would be his last term.

He also opposed the formation of Hanahoe, a secret organization formed by Chun Doo-hwan and other young officers who took personal oaths of loyalty to Park and the group itself above all else, and criticized it as a private army.

Eventually, Hanahoe staged a military coup under Chun's leadership after Park's assassination to seize power and drove out older generation of military generals.

In the 1971 election, Park had nearly lost to opposition leader Kim Dae-jung despite spending ten percent of the national budget on his reelection campaign.

The Yushin Constitution was designed to guarantee his dictatorship for life.

Indeed, Park was later re-elected as the president by a unanimous vote of approximately 2,000 delegates, who all became delegates themselves with Park's approval.

According to Kim's subordinate officers at Third Army Group, Kim did not hide his displeasure at learning of the Yushin Constitution.

After his arrest, Kim wrote in Chinese calligraphy that it took seven years to accomplish his resolution, suggesting that the Yushin Constitution turned him against Park.

In his trial, he claimed that he planned to detain Park if the latter were to visit the Third Army Group base on his annual tour of army groups and force his resignation.

According to Third Army Group operations chief of staff Oh Soo-choon, who was also Kim's brother-in-law, Kim installed fences around a small building in the base and set it up so that it would prevent exit from within rather than entry from outside.

More significantly, Kim appears to have had a close relationship with Jang Jun-ha, widely respected leader of the democracy movement as a former Liberation Army officer, opposition lawmaker, and publisher of the monthly journal World of Ideology.

According to Jang Ho-kweon, Jang's eldest son and current publisher of the journal, Jang told him that Kim was a patriotic soldier whom he would one day work together with for democracy.

While Kim was the commander of the Third Army Group in Kang-won Province, Park declared national emergency and martial law, dismissed the National Assembly and prohibited all political activities in October 1972.

The purpose was to ratify the Yushin Constitution of 1972, which (a) abolished direct vote for presidential election and replaced it with indirect voting system involving delegates, (b) allotted one third of the National Assembly seats to the president, (c) gave the president the authority to issue emergency decrees and suspend the Constitution, (d) gave the president the authority to appoint all judges and dismiss the National Assembly and (e) repealed a term limit to presidency.

In 1979, Kim claimed to his lawyer that his first attempt to assassinate Park was on September 14, 1974, when he was appointed to be Construction Minister.

A newsreel of this event shows something protruding in Kim's pocket when he shook hands with Park.

According to the Reverend Yi Hae-hak, who was imprisoned with Jang Jun-ha when Jang was sentenced to fifteen years for creating a petition campaign against the Yushin Constitution, Jang knew of Kim's plan to assassinate Park and was very disappointed when it did not take place, uttering to himself, "Is it that great to be a minister?".

After Jang died under suspicious circumstances while climbing a mountain in 1975, Kim secretly provided financial assistance to Jang's family.

In 1975, he asked Cardinal Kim to speak with President Park to come up with the "third way," that is, to somehow amend the Yushin Constitution in a way that was acceptable to Park.

When Kim later became KCIA director in 1976, he told Jang's son with deep regret that Jang's death was not accidental as officially announced, but that the regime was involved.

According to Cardinal Kim Sou-hwan, another leading figure in democracy movement, Kim (then KCIA deputy director) came to see him whenever there was political crisis.

He assassinated South Korean President Park Chung Hee—who had been one of his closest friends—on October 26, 1979, and was subsequently executed by hanging on May 24, 1980.

He remains a controversial figure with many contradictions: he is regarded by some as a patriot who ended Park's 18-year military dictatorship, and by others as a traitor who killed his long-time benefactor out of personal grievance.

He served Park's military dictatorship from then until his assassination of Park in 1979.

For many years, the latter was the prevailing view, but later revelations in the early 2000s about Kim's relationship with some leaders of the democracy movement prompted a re-evaluation in some circles.

Kim was born in Gumi, Keishōnan-dō (North Gyeongsang Province), Korea, Empire of Japan.