The Business Insider internet magazine posted an interesting article about assassinating the Grandfather of Kim Jong Un. It presented the kind of story that could have been mistaken for a fictional action/adventure film of international intrigue. This factual story could have been written, produced and directed in Hollywood... but it wasn't.
The true story was hidden and denied for 49 years, by the South Korean government. It began January 21, 1968 when 31 North Korean commando's were caught attempting to assassinate the South Korean President Park Chung Hee. One commando escaped capture and returned to North Korea and became a General. The other commando was captured, tried and pardoned to live. He subsequently, became a Presbyterian Minister in South Korea.
In retaliation, South Korea began plotting an assassination of President Kim Il Sung. Seoul's Unit 684 was also comprised of 31 recruits, from prisons and street gangs, in exchange for promised wages and jobs once the mission was accomplished. 20% of the recruits died before completing the brutal and intense 3 year training regimen on an isolated island in the Yellow Sea.
Relations between the North and South Korean nations became more amicable through diplomatic negotiations and the mission of the government sanctioned mercenaries, was aborted. The recruits got drunk and angry, one night fearing they were never going to be released and went on a killing rampage targeting their expert military trainers. In the aftermath, there were only 4 recruits left alive. They were found guilty in a military trial and executed.
The South Korean government continued to hide the truth and blatantly denied the secret mission of Unit 684 for 49 years. The surviving families of the recruits sued the government for damages and won, forcing the government to release the official military reports as evidence.
I wonder, if South Korea did have a plan now, to assassinate Kim Jong Un and successfully accomplish the deed, would China retaliate? What would be the world-wide ramifications?Should Kim Jong Un, be assassinated for the good of mankind?
"Good Night, Shalom and Sweet Dreams!"
"Boner Appertite!"
South Korea once trained a secret unit to assassinate the North Korean president — but it backfired completely
The reception center of the "Blue House," the South Korean presidential residence in Seoul.Wikimedia Commons
Although North Korea may bear the brunt of the jokes on the international stage, it wasn’t always like this.
On January 21, 1968, 15 years after the Korean War, North Korean commandos were caughtattempting to assassinate South Korean President Park Chung-hee.
Dressed as South Korean soldiers, these operators managed to cross the border and come a few hundred yards shy of the Blue House, the traditional residence of South Korea’s presidents.
After an intense firefight with US and South Korean troops, 29 of the 31 commandos were either killed or took their own lives.
Of the surviving two, one escaped back to North Korea to eventually become a general, while the other one was captured, pardoned, and eventually became a Presbyterian minister in South Korea.
In retaliation for North Korea’s attempts, South Korea devised their own assassination plot three months later. After assembling 31 of their own recruits, most of them petty criminals, Seoul created Unit 684. The unit was reportedly tasked with traveling to Pyongyang to kill North Korean President Kim Il Sung.
The rag-tag band of recruits, who were taken from prisons and the streets, were shipped off to the island of Silmido in the Yellow Sea after being promised wages and jobs should they accomplish their mission, sources claimed.
''They were the kind who would get into street fights a lot,'' explained Yang Dong Su, one of the guards, in a New York Times interview from 2004.
The unit's training regimen was supposedly intense: Over 20% of the recruits died during training, and South Korean courts later ruled that it had “violated their basic human rights.”
However, all that training eventually came to naught. After warming relations between the two Koreas, the mission was aborted.
Former North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, right, clinks glasses with former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung during a farewell luncheon in Pyongyang, after holding landmark talks.Reuters
Frustrated after three years of training and no authorization to leave the isolated island, the recruits revolted. Yang claims that in the morning of the mutiny, much of the training cadre were still intoxicated from drinking for the first time in three years on the island.
"For the first time, the night before the uprising, about 10 of us left the island and brought large quantities of alcohol back to the military compound," he said in The Korea Herald. "And we drank with ... permission."
After breaking into a captain's room, the recruits killed their officer by hitting his forehead with a hammer before continuing to kill all but six of the training officers.
Eventually, the renegade unit got off the island and hijacked a bus to head towards Seoul; however, after being stopped by authorities, they blew themselves up with hand grenades.
''They revolted because they felt that they were never going to get the chance to go to North Korea and that they would never be allowed to leave the island,'' said Yang, who was shot in the neck during the revolt. ''They were in despair.''
Four of the recruits that managed to survive were found guilty by a military trial and then executed.
South Korea's Special Warfare Command (SWC) soldiers conduct a training exercise from a frozen river in Pyeongchang, South Korea, January 8, 2015.Ahn Young-joon/AP
Transparency surrounding Unit 684 has been an issue. For decades, South Korea has denied claims of the unit’s existence and there were even reports that the government labeled the recruits "armed communist agents" after their revolt.
It was not until 2006 that the government finally released an official report of the unit and their training program. And it wasn’t until 2010 that the Seoul Central District Court ruled that the family members of Unit 684’s recruits were entitled to an equivalent of $217,000 in damages, down from their original claim of $574,000, for the deaths of the recruits and the subsequent emotional suffering.
“The Silmido agents were not informed of the level of danger involved with their training …” the ruling stated.
But there exists some skepticism behind the alleged harsh treatment of the recruits. Kim Yi-tae, the longest serving platoon leader at Silmido, recounts his tenure on the island.
"We never treated [them] badly," Kim said to The Korea Herald. "They were not there by force. They applied to join to be trained."
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