The country has kicked off a retrial for its former spy chief, Kim Jae-gyu, over the 1979 assassination of then-president Park Chung-hee, Kim’s family said.
Park had ruled the country with an iron fist for more than 15 years when he was shot and killed by his head of intelligence and trusted aide Kim at a dinner in 1979.
Kim was subsequently sentenced to death by a military court for killing the head of state with the goal of “insurrection”, and was hanged shortly after.
But his family appealed to South Korean courts to revisit the case in 2020, claiming that while Kim had killed the president, he did so seeking to end a dictatorship, not for personal gain.
“In my brother’s final testimony, he said: ‘The purpose of the Oct 26 revolution was to restore democracy and prevent the tremendous sacrifices of the people,’” Kim’s sister, Jung-sook, 85, told the court.
The family said that they wanted to set the historical record straight, and hoped that in the future people “will come to associate the word ‘democracy’ with the name ‘Kim Jae-gyu’.”
In the final months of Park’s rule, major protests against his dictatorship broke out in the second-largest city of Busan and surrounding areas, which had traditionally been his support base.
At his trial after the assassination, Kim told the court Park’s security chief Cha Ji-chul had said “the deaths of up to two million people would not matter” to stop the demonstrations.
Kim killed both Park and Cha at a private dinner featuring expensive whiskey in Seoul. — AFP
