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Kim Hyun-hee, the surviving bomber of Korean Air flight 858, has claimed that the National Intelligence Service under the Roh Moo-hyun administration plotted to spread a suspicion that the bombing was fabricated by mobilizing the three terrestrial TV networks. Kim made the claim last week in a 73-page letter to Lee Dong-bok, the head of the North Korean Democratization Forum. She claims she was thrown out of her house after refusing NIS requests to give interviews to the networks and has been living "a refugee's life" for five years.
Beginning with MBC's notorious "PD Diary" current affairs program in November 2003, SBS in the same year and KBS the following year aired programs suggesting that Kim was a foil for South Korean secret services. Civic groups like the Catholic Priests Association for Justice held press conferences raising the same suspicion.
In October 2003, the first year in office of the Roh administration, "an NIS official said I would have to emigrate because I was causing controversy in the NIS," Kim writes. "My NIS handler repeatedly asked me to appear on 'PD Diary,' and I strongly declined each time, and that caused my trouble. Reporters for the three networks began to besiege my house, eventually exposing my whereabouts. As a consequence, I had to flee from the house at the crack of dawn one day, carrying my children on my back."
With a program on Nov. 18, 2003, "PD Diary" exposed Kim to the ire of millions of viewers who now felt she had never been a North Korean agent. It was much the same modus operandi as when, in April, MBC misled the public about the danger of mad cow disease from American beef. On Nov. 23, the Catholic Priests' Association for Justice held a press conference to vent the so-called "seven suspicions." SBS aired the same story on Nov. 29, and KBS in May the next year, broadcast an expanded version. The NIS, the three networks and assorted civic groups launched a total offensive.
"MBC and SBS, perhaps outraged by my rejection of their requests for appearance in their programs, filmed and exposed my whereabouts," Kim said. Once they were made public, she was vulnerable to an attack from North Korea. Lee Han-young, the nephew of Song Hye-rim, the late wife of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, who fled to the South and openly denounced the North Korean system, was assassinated in 1997 by a suspected North Korean agent.
Nor did the truth commissions formed by the Roh administration leave Kim alone. The NIS' in-house panel attempted to question Kim in 2005, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission made a similar attempt in 2007, only to be rebuffed. Kim says subjecting a case already tried three times by the judiciary to a fourth and fifth trial by these commissions reminded her of the show trials in North Korea.
The secret service conducted an in-depth investigation of Kim in the wake of the 1987 bombing and subsequently protected and monitored her, but in a bid to please the Roh administration, it acted as though it had no idea what was what. That is the shameful legacy of the fad for digging up past wrongs that swept the nation under the Roh administration.
We should urgently find out whether Kim is telling the truth. Is it true that the NIS, which has a massive state budget, and the truth commissions that sprang up like so many mushrooms on the soft bed of taxpayers' money, leaned heavily on this poor woman to please the government? Whatever the truth of the matter, the three networks that stirred up this whole sorry business must admit the truth and apologize.
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