KAL기사건 진상규명 시민대책위원회

An Open Letter to National Information Board (KNIB)

The KAL(858) plane was lost in mystery 14 years ago, allegedly exploded. North Korea was held responsible for that catastrophic event and, for that reason, was named a rogue country. Today, not a few Koreans consider that the North Korean Defense Chairman Kim Jung Il must express apology for those victims of the event before his visit to Seoul is realized. So it is not a past event but it is a current problem that affects the peace and reconciliation on this peninsula.

The Korean National Security Planning Agency (KNSPA), which is now KNIB, was in charge of the investigation of the event. But the findings from their investigation, which was published on January 15, 1988, were full of suspicions. We the families of those 115 passengers and flight crew members then aboard the KAL-858, joined by various citizens groups, have protested and called for a thorough new investigation, during the past 14 years. Our cry for seeking a true cause of the event has never been responded with proper treatment by our governments so far, regretfully.

Most south Korean people believe in the theory that the KAL(858) plane was sent into explosion by North Korean spies, one of them named Kim Hyunhee, as much as they believe in the theory of our planet earth orbiting the sun. But what if the true cause of the event were found to be in someplace else? If so, though hope not, the Korean people must have believed, consciously or unconsciously, in something basically wrong that would have led them to a poor, abnormal state of mentality, overly sensitive and unduly hostile to anything and everything that have something to do with the North.

Undoubtedly, the revelation of a true cause denying the existing knowledge will generate a great shock to the general public again as did the news about the tragedy 14 years ago. So, it is understandable that the government does not want to get their feet hurt by stepping into the hot boiling water. But the issue is so important and serious that it cannot be silenced for political reasons. We therefore insist that steps be taken as soon as possible by the concerned government authority so that the 14-year old pains and sorrows of the bereaved families may be soothed.

A new investigation that may be undertaken must answer several important questions if it were aimed at removing the public suspicion about the cause of the event. We have a number of questions in the following that look forward to your honest answer.

1. At the January 15, 1987 press interview, the NSPA took out an old picture showing a teenaged Kim Hyunhee holding flowers in her hands, apparently being prepared to present the flowers to Jang Kiyong, then visiting Pyongyang leading a delegation to a South-North Coordination Committee meeting, in 1972. The Agency's intention of doing so was to support its own allegation that Kim Hyunhee was a North Korean spy agent. But you know that Kim Hyunhee has a sharp-angled and rather thin earlobe whereas the flower-girl in the picture has a round and rather thick earlobe. If you accept the theory that the human ear does not change its shape lifelong, you cannot insist that the girl in the picture was Kim Hyunhee. More surprising was a dialogue between one of NSPA investigators and Kim Hyunhee, sitting side by side at the press interview, which was obviously, but poorly, intended to address the likeness of their earlobe shapes. According to Hankuk-Ilbo's January 16, 1987 issue, the investigator, showing the picture to Kim Hyunhee, asked, "The girl doesn't look like you...." Then, she pointed her finger at one of her ears, saying, "We have ears of same shape, don't we?" Do you(NIB) think that the flower-girl's earlobe looks like Kim Hyuhee's? Anyway, your(NSPA's) interrogation with Kim Hyunhee led to identifying her with the girl in the picture, in spite of different shapes of their earlobes. Whose idea was it, the investigator's or Kim Hyunhee's?

2. A Japanese reporter, named Hagiwara, had a picture of flower-girls he had taken at the same welcoming ceremony in Pyongyang in 1972. According to NSPA, Mr. Hagiwara was 99 percent confident that one of those girls in his picture was Kim Hyunhee; so one day in March 1988, he had a meeting with Kim Hyunhee, assisted by NSPA, where he gave her the picture to have a close look at it; and, finally, Mr. Hagiwara was delighted that Kim Hyunhee had also confirmed that the girl was herself. But the Japanese reporter personally denied the NSPA's story about the picture he had; he says he did not see the least possibility from the beginning and told them that they were not the same person, referring specifically to their earlobes of different shapes. What is NIB's formal position now between Kim Hyunhee/NSPA and Mr. Hagiwara?

3. At its first press interview of January 15, 1987, NSPA said that Kim Hyunhee's father was in Angola, as Fishery Representative with "North Korean Trade Delegation" to Angola. But the Japanese Bunggei Shunshu's March, 1988 issue carried an article in which NSPA was quoted as saying that the information about her father was still under checking and whether he was in Angola was yet to be confirmed. All this means that NSPA was lying the Korean public with a false story based on false information. Why was NSPA so eager and hasty to publicize its story about the Kim Hyunhee's connection with the KAL plane event, which was full of false information? Do you have the file of information about Kim Hyunhee's father that was made available as the result of NSPA's checking under way as of March, 1988?

4. Kim Hyunhee had a personal instruction of Kim Jung Il in his own handwriting, according to NSPA. But another NSPA staff later said that the indtruction was not in writing but was verbal. How was the NSPA so careless in mentioning about an important material evidence which would be useful to defend itself at the court if Kim Hyunhee had reversed her earlier statement?

5. NSPA argued about those poison ampules which were used by Kim Hyunhee and her partner to kill themselves in Bahrein, saying that the same methods had been used by North Korean spy agents and that the usage of poison ampules was the proof that Kim Hyunhee had been in the center of the KAL(858) plane event, as she had so confessed. But we like to remind you that, in 1972, head of KCIA Lee Hurak took the same type of poison ampule with him on his secret mission to Pyongyang. Then the same method had been in use already in the South by 1972, fifteen years earlier than Kim Hyunhee. How do you explain the NSPA's position in this respect?

6. At its press interview, NSPA stressed that Kim Seungil, Kim Hyunhee's partner, was a hardcore spy trained in high-tech electronics and speaking four foreign languages fluently, including English. But according to studies made in Japan, he did not speak English at all. And his autopsy at the Korean National Institute of Scientific Investigation (KNISI) revealed that he was a 70-year-old patient, removed of most of his stomach, l71 centimeters tall, and weighing 49.95 kilograms. First of all, we want you(NIB) to confirm which one was the true Kim Seungil. Were the Japanese studies correct, and his autopsy at KNISI reliable, then a serious question should arise how on earth such an old man, the dying patient, could have been chosen for such a sophisticated international terrorist mission, which would anyhow be discovered and have an enormous negative effect on the image of North Korea as a state, among other disadvantages. How do you comment on this view?

7. NSPA publicized: Kim Hyunhee and the old man Kim, facing police check at the airport of Bahrein on December 1, 1987, took poison; the old man died there, at once, but Kim Hyunhee came alive thanks to her under-dosage of poison. Later, the doctor, who first examined and treated Kim Hyunhee at the hospital in Bahrein, told the press that she did not have any trace of poison in her stomach. How do you explain this mystery?

8. According to NSPA, faked passports got delivered to those Kims by a North Korean spy in Japan. But according to Japanese intelligence sources, the person referred to as North Korean spy was known to have died of liver cancer two years earlier than the event of KAL(858) plane. Did those Kims say that they had met with the dead person to get their false passports delivered?

9. Kim Hyunhee and partner had the explosives hidden in a vinyl shopping bag, and they placed it inside the overhead bin while they were leaving the cabin, according to NSPA. But according to the KAL plane's purser, Park Gilyong, the old man had carried nothing with him and the young woman had carried a shoulder bag, only. This means that neither of them had a vinyl shopping bag carried in by their hands. What is your comment on this witness by Mr. Park?

10. The KAL(858) airplane, after an alleged crash by explosion, did leave no pieces of its wreckage, nor one single body of passengers, nor a single piece of personal effects of those who were aboard the plane, some of which at least would normally have been found somehow and somewhere. It was a mystery of the kind that had no comparable instance in the world aviation and international air transportation history. How do you explain this mysterious peculiarity with the event of the KAL(858) plane?

11. NSPA, and Kim Hyunhee, said at the press interview that she entered Austria by leaving the train at Vienna's South Railroad Station and lodged in the Room Number 603 at Ampa Kling hotel. But the station she left the train was Vienna's West Station, and the Room Number 322, according to the findings by Japanese reporters. And in this connection curiously, Kim Hyunhee herself admitted that the Japanese reporters were correct, in her book published in 1991. So she had changed her original statements. You must have known that her and NSPA's statements and reports had 80-odd such disparities and contradictions. What is your comment on these phenomena?

12. The Monthly Chosun's August 1990 issue carried an article by reporter Cho Kapje relating to the KAL plane event. His article included a few lines explaining how the NSPA was occasioned to find a clue to comprehending what the event was all about: "After the KAL event, NSPA was chasing the route a false passport had been supplied to Kim Seungil. One day it came across an information that a spy of Jochongryon (pro-North federation of Korean residents in Japan) line, Lee Kyongwoo, was engaged in the business. This information strengthened NSPA's confidence that North Korea had been actively engaged in the event. Then, with the death of Kim SeungIl, who had killed himself using(biting) the poisonous acid ampule, the NSPA made an urgent dispatch of Mr. Han, a 30-year-career veteran in the intelligence services, to Bahrein." Here, Cho Kapje says that the Korean intelligence services had information about Lee Kyongwoo from before the death of Kim Seungil, but the press reports of those days suggest Lee was brought on stage after Kim's death. How do you comment on the sources of information that Cho Kapje used for his article?

Date: November 2001, Seoul