Bid To Assassinate Chung-Hee Park

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31585, 24 January 1968, Page 16

Bid To Assassinate Chung-Hee Park

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter— Copyright) SEOUL, January 23. A North Korean agent arrested by the South Korean police told a televised press conference that he had "come to chop off the head off President Chung-Hee Park.

The agent, who identified himself as 2nd Lieutenant Shin-jo Kib, aged 27, of the North Korean Army, was seized by police near the Presidential residence. He appeared before reporters with his hands tied behind his back and said his group of 31 Communist Army officers had infiltrated into the South “ready to die.” The group expected no trouble in reaching the Presidential residence in Seoul. They each carried a ma-chine-gun, a pistol, an antitank grenade and eight handgrenades with which to raid the Presidential residence at the foot of a mountain in the northern part of the city. Shin-jo Kim said the group’s members left their unit at Yonsan, in the province of Hwanghaedo, which borders the western portion of the demilitarised zone, last Tuesday and crossed the zone into South Korea two days later.

Before Kim was presented to the press conference, the commander of the South Korean Army Counter-Intelli-gence Corps (Major-General Pil-yong Yun) said the agents had been trained at a simulated Presidential residence in North Korea during the last two years. When they reached the real Presidential residence they were to split up into five

teams and attack different buildings in the compound. General Yun said the agents were members of a North Korean Army group which was 2400 strong and divided into eight groups trained for subversion in eight South Korean provinces. The general said five Com- • munist agents were killed in , last night’s clash between the North Korean agents and ■ South Korean troops and 1 police, and Kim was the only ' agent arrested. United States officials in Washington today described • the attempted attack as the • most serious violation of the ! Korean armistice agreement : since fighting stopped there : in 1953. A vigorous protest will be made at Panmunjom i when a special session of the ' Korean Military Armistice • Commission is convened, it is understood.