Assassin of Kim Gu Had Links Both to U.S. and to Terror Unit

Social Affairs

Published: 05 Jan. 2003, 20:08

Assassin of Kim Gu Had Links Both to U.S. and to Terror Unit

Ahn Doo-hee, who assassinated Kim Gu, president of Korea's Interim Government in Shanghai during Japanese colonial rule, was an agent for both the U.S. Counter Intelligence Corps and an ultra-right terrorist group known as "Baekuisa," a declassified document of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration showed.

The document turned up Tuesday in the course of the National Institute of Korean History's project to have overseas historical documents brought to South Korea.

Mr. Ahn was bludgeoned to death Oct. 23, 1996, at his residence in the western port city of Inchon. He remained silent till his death about why he sniper-shot Kim Gu on June 26, 1949.

The document titled "Kim Gu: Background Information Concerning Assassination" was dated three days later, on June 29. It was registered in the U.S. archive as RG 319, Entry 85A.

The document was drawn up by George E. Cilley, a major with the U.S. Army, who served in Korea after liberation. It was classified as A2, indicating that its account was regarded as highly authentic.

The document does not have details concerning Kim Gu's assassination. But Mr. Cilley, a well-known acquaintance of Ahn Doo-hee, said that Mr. Ahn served as an informant for the CIC before becoming a legitimate agent. The CIC at the time was a sub-agency of Army intelligence, not connected with the Central Intelligence Agency.

Mr. Cilley also asserted that Mr. Ahn swore to be loyal to death to Yom Dong-jim, the leader of the ultra-rightist group "Baekuisa." Mr. Cilley depicted the group as denouncing "Kim Gu as a big tree being eaten into by the worm of communism," suggesting that Kim Gu may have been assassinated in the process of ideological struggle that pervaded on the Korean Peninsula in the period between 1945 and 1950.

Kim Gu led negotiations with Communist-dominated North Korea to set up a joint election under UN auspices, to take place in both South and North in 1947. The negotiations failed, but he continued to protest the UN-sponsored elections held unilaterally in the South.

Another document revealed that some CIC agents were core members of the southern branch of the Korean Communist Party, including Lee Kang-kuk, the first North Korean foreign minister.

by Jung Chang-hyun