Assassination of Park Chung-hee

Park Chung-hee, president of South Korea, was assassinated on Friday, October 26, 1979 at 7:41pm during a dinner at a Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) safehouse inside the Blue House presidential compound, in Gungjeong-dong, Seoul by Kim Jae-kyu, who was the director of KCIA and the president's security chief. Park was shot in the chest and head, and died almost immediately. Four bodyguards and a presidential chauffeur were also killed. It is simply known as "10.26" or the "10.26 incident" in South Korea.

There is still a great deal of controversy on Kim's motive and whether it was a planned act as part of a coup d'état or was an impulsive, spur-of-the-moment act. The chief investigator Yi Hak-bong famously concluded that it was too careless for a deliberate act and yet too elaborate for an impulsive act.

By the time of his assassination, President Park had exercised dictatorial power over South Korea for nearly 18 years.

The Korean Central Intelligence Agency was created in 1961 to coordinate both international and domestic intelligence activities, including those of the military. Almost immediately following its creation, the KCIA was used to suppress any domestic opposition to Park's regime using its broad powers to wiretap, arrest, and torture anyone without a court order. KCIA was heavily involved in many behind-the-scene political manoeuvrings aimed at weakening the opposition parties through bribing, blackmailing, threatening, or arresting opposition lawmakers. President Park nevertheless nearly lost the presidential election to Kim Dae-jung in 1971 despite spending ten percent of the national budget on his election campaign. Park therefore established the Yushin Constitution in 1972 to ensure his perpetual dictatorship. This abolished the direct vote in presidential elections and replaced it with an indirect voting system involving delegates, allotted one third of the National Assembly seats to the president, gave the president the authority to issue emergency decrees and suspend the Constitution, gave the president the authority to appoint all judges and dismiss the National Assembly, and repealed a term limit to presidency. When opposition to the Yushin Constitution arose, Park issued a number of emergency decrees, the first of which made any act of opposition or denial of the Yushin Constitution punishable by imprisonment for up to 15 years through a military tribunal.

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Wikipedia