The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [26]
Security organs worked hard to stifle the Korean press. For more than a year following the yushin decree, KCIA operatives came daily to major Korean newspapers and broadcast stations to tell them what news they could or could not report, at times specifying the size of the headlines and the prominence of the display to be given to particular items. Due to this system, Park's picture and activities dominated the news. If Korean editors or reporters resisted, they were called in for grilling and often beaten.
Not all dissent was silenced. The most articulate, authoritative, and unbridled voice of opposition was Kim Dae Jung, Park's opponent in the hotly contested 1971 presidential race and a favorite son of the rebellious southwestern provinces of Cholla, where long ago an independent Korean kingdom had existed. Before the voting Kim accurately predicted that if Park won, he would become a "generalissimo" and arrange to be in office forever. Kim escaped being silenced with other political leaders in October 1972, because he happened to be in Japan when martial law was imposed. He immediately condemned the action as dictatorial, unconstitutional, and unjustified. Rather than return home to be arrested, Kim kept up his caustic criticism from abroad.
On August 8, 1973, Kim was lured to a luncheon meeting with two visiting Korean parliamentarians in a suite at a Tokyo hotel. As he said good-bye in the corridor, he was shoved into a nearby room by three men in dark suits, then punched, kicked, and anesthetized. He was taken by car down an expressway to a port and placed aboard a motorboat and then a large ship, where he was tightly trussed and weights placed on his hands and legs.
Kim's abduction was sensational news in Japan, where externally directed political violence was rare and, coming from Korea, a particularly painful affront to Japanese sovereignty. In Seoul, Ambassador Habib decided that strong and immediate action was necessary to save Kim's life and avert a serious crisis within South Korea and between South Korea and Japan. Calling in senior embassy officials, Habib instructed them to find out within twenty-four hours who had kidnapped Kim. U.S. intelligence officers quickly identified the KCIA as the culprit, whereupon the ambassador, in his characteristically blunt and salty language, laid down the law to the high command of Park's government, declaring that there would be grave consequences for relations with the United States if Kim did not turn up alive.
Habib's quick action probably saved Kim's life. After a few hours at sea, the weights were suddenly taken off Kim's body, and his bonds were loosened. Five days after his abduction, he was released, battered and dazed, a few blocks from his residence in Seoul. After thirty-six hours during which Kim was permitted to speak publicly of his ordeal, he was placed under house arrest. Park's government made no effort to identify or penalize his abductors.
Three weeks after Kim's kidnapping, North Korea suspended both the North-South political-level talks and the Red Cross talks, invoking the kidnapping of the popular opposition politician as the reason for its action. However, Pyongyang had been losing interest in the dialogue even in the months before the kidnapping. It was increasingly clear that the inter-Korean talks were not leading to the withdrawal of U.S. military forces. Moreover, the exposure of North Korean delegates to the more prosperous South was making Pyongyang's leaders uncomfortable.
Park's regime, which had used the North-South