Seoul: South Korea's spy agency said today that then-president Park Chung-Hee had approved the infamous 1973 kidnapping in Tokyo of dissident Kim Dae-Jung, who later ruled the country and won the Nobel Peace Prize.

The National Intelligence Service (NIS) also said a 1987 mid-air airplane explosion was committed by North Korean agents.

The NIS was announcing the result of a three-year investigation into two of the most notorious incidents in South Korea's turbulent history. The probe was ordered by current President Roh Moo-Hyun and carried out by a civilian-led "truth committee."

Kim Dae-Jung, a Nobel laureate in 2000, was kidnapped by agents of the NIS's predecessor, the Korean Central Intelligence Agency, from a Tokyo hotel in August 1973. He was taken to a ship and was about to be thrown overboard before his life was dramatically spared with the intervention of US government authorities.

The dissident was brought back to Seoul and put under years of house arrest.

It has long been a mystery who was behind the abduction, with fingers of blame pointed at either Lee Hu-Rak, Korean CIA head at the time, or President Park himself. "Alongside the possibility that ex-President Park might have ordered it in person, he must have given at least a tacit approval," the NIS said in a six-volume, 3,300-page report into these and other historical incidents. 

Source : PTI