1973 Kidnapping of Kim Dae-Jung

From Freepedia

1973 Kidnapping of Kim Dae-Jung refers to the incident that occurred on 8 August, 1973 in Tokyo, Japan, which involved the kidnapping of Kim Dae-Jung, a South Korean politician and later President of South Korea.

Background

In the 1971 presidential election, Kim represented the Democratic Party to challenge the then-imcubent President Park Chung Hee from the Democratic Republic Party, only to be defeated by a small margin of 970,000 votes. Despite the victory, Park, who was then operating a military junta, saw Kim as a threat to his dictatorship for his call for democracy. Following the election, an assassination attempt disguised as a car crash was made on Kim, leaving him with a permanent injury on his hip joint. He exiled himself to Japan and began activities aimed at bringing democracy to South Korea based mainly in Japan and the United States.

Kidnapping

Around the noon on 8 August, 1973, Kim attended a meeting with the leader of the Democratic Unification Party held in the Room 2212 of the Hotel Grand Palace in Tokyo.

At around 13:19, Kim was apprehended by a group of unidentified agents as he walked out of the Room 2212 having finished the meeting. He was then taken into the empty Room 2210 where he was anaesthetised into unconsciousness before he was moved to Osaka, Japan and later to Seoul, South Korea.

Kim was later quoted as saying that a weight had been attached to his feet aboard the boat heading toward Korea, indicating that the kidnappers had intended to drown Kim by throwing him into the sea. They were, however, forced to abandon this plan as the Japan Self-Defense Forces launched pursuit of the kidnappers' boat. Subsequently Kim was released in Pusan, South Korea, and was found alive at his house in Seoul five days after the kidnapping.