The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [81]
A year before the Rangoon bombing, in 1982, North Korea's clandestine foreign operations had been placed under the control of Kim Jong 11, the eldest son of Kim 11 Sung, who had emerged as his father's anointed successor two years earlier, according to American terrorism expert Joseph Bermudez. In the fall of 1982, plans had been made to kill Chun in Gabon while the South Korean president was on a state visit to Africa. According to Koh Yong Hwan, a North Korean diplomat who took part in the plot but later defected to the South, the operation had been called off at the last minute on the personal instructions of the younger Kim. Koh, a sophisticated man who later became the Great Leader's French-language interpreter, said he believed the cancellation was ordered because the assassination of the South Korean president in an African country could have devastated North Korea's important African support in the UN General Assembly.
South Korea did not know of the Gabon plot at the time, but concerns about Chun's safety in his overseas travels probably saved his life in Rangoon in 1983. Asked to provide surveillance of Chun's plane by airborne radar (AWACS) aircraft during his trip, U.S. experts suggested that the route be moved farther away from the Vietnamese and Chinese coastlines, causing a change in the ROK president's planned schedule. Instead of arriving at four P.M. and going by motorcade directly to the ceremony at the Martyr's Mausoleum, where the North Korean agents doubtless would have been waiting, Chun arrived after 6 P.M., putting off the ceremonial visit to the following morning. Chun was still on his way from the ROK ambassador's residence, about a mile away from the mausoleum, when the powerful bomb went off.
The sudden deaths of South Korea's leading high officials caused a new outpouring of anger and grief in Seoul, and much of the same in official Washington, where the Rangoon victims were all well known. As a show of resolve and warning to North Korea, the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson and its battle group were kept in Korean waters beyond their scheduled departure date, and heightened security measures were taken along the DMZ. No unusual North Korean troop movements were observed, but a few weeks later South Korean officials charged that Pyongyang had planned to launch commando raids after Chun's expected assassination. Kang Myung Do, a well-connected North Korean who defected in 1994, told me that a mass insurrection on the order of the 1980 Kwangju uprising had been anticipated if Chun had been killed. He said discharges from the North Korean army had been slowed or stopped in the months preceding the Rangoon bombing, apparently in preparation for what might occur.
A shaken Chun flew home with what was left of the elite governmental team he had taken to Rangoon. He traveled directly from the airport to a meeting of the surviving members of his cabinet and security team at the Blue House. At the meeting, Minister of Defense Yun Song Min proposed that the South Korean air force bomb the North in retaliation, but Chun rejected the proposal. U.S. intelligence learned that a senior South Korean commander at the DMZ was also advocating a punitive response. Chun said later he met with commanders who were eager to attack the North and declared that only he would decide whether to take military action-and that anyone who jumped the gun would be guilty of disloyalty. In a visit to Chun, Ambassador Richard Walker prepared to make a strong argument against retaliation, even though he said the United States had no doubt that North Korea was behind the attack. Chun responded,