At about 10 p.m. on January 21, 1968, patrol officers patrolling near the South Korean presidential residence, the Blue House, spotted six young soldiers in military uniforms walking toward the Blue House.
There are troops stationed near the Blue House, and there are often soldiers passing by here, and even in and out of the Blue House, which is a very common scene, and there is nothing worth noting.
But after these six people approached, the patrol police always felt that something was wrong, a little awkward. At this time, a very careful patrolman suddenly said, "Their shoes are not right!" ”
Although the military uniforms worn by these people are no problem, the soles of the shoes are black-soled rubber shoes, which are only equipped by the North Korean army!
The patrolmen immediately shouted warily, "Stop! ”
Figure 1 Film and television reference
Then they stepped forward and tried to interrogate them, but as they approached, the men suddenly took out their guns from their clothes and shot the patrol officers, and then rushed towards the Blue House.
There were heavy guards outside the Blue House, and the guards rushed to stop them, and the two sides engaged in a fierce gun battle.
The Blue House is in the center of Seoul, the neighborhood is very bustling, there are many pedestrians, and passers-by passing by here are very unlucky.
The six fake soldiers not only opened fire on the guards, but also fired indiscriminately at pedestrians and threw grenades at passing buses, killing and injuring many civilians.
Figure 2 The Blue House, Presidential Office of the Republic of Korea
These six people were very powerful, and although there were many guards in the Blue House, they could not stop them, and they kept rushing forward, almost really rushing into the Blue House.
Fortunately, there was a garrison near the Blue House, which soon arrived, and the situation was quickly reversed under the suppression of fire, and 5 of the six people were killed and 1 was seriously wounded and captured.
But the captives soon committed suicide on their way to their escort.
Before the 6 people were killed, they rushed to a distance of less than 100 meters from the Blue House, and there are still bullet holes left by the gun battle in a tree near the Blue House.
Figure 3 Bullet holes left by the Blue House incident
The incident left 88 civilians dead, 22 soldiers and 2 police officers killed in South Korea, one of whom was the chief of police, and even the U.S. military killed two.
In addition, 4 civilians, 47 South Korean soldiers, 16 U.S. troops, and 6 police officers were wounded.
So what are the identities of these six people who want to rush into the Blue House? Why are they acting so brutally and fiercely?
This was the 1.21 Blue House attack that shook South Korea in 1968. But it is not the subject we are going to talk about today, it is only a fuse for subsequent events.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="9" > assassinate Park Chung-hee</h1>
In the late 1960s, the situation between North and South Korea was particularly tense, and both sides conducted frantic espionage and assassination operations against each other.
On June 27, 1967, a small force of 31 people was assembled at the sixth base of the 124th Army of the DPRK at Yeonsan, North Hwanghae Province, northern Korea.
These men were carefully selected soldiers from various units, with extremely high combat quality and absolute political loyalty.
They underwent rigorous, secret training for six months at the Sixth Base.
The training is divided into two stages, the first stage of training is shooting, judo, taekwondo, assassination, swordsmanship, fighting, terrain analysis, and general tactics courses.
Figure 4 Film and television reference
The second stage is to familiarize yourself with the terrain, the location of the guards, and the location of important people in a replica building exactly the same as the Blue House, and conduct field simulation training in preparation for the assassination of the then South Korean President Park Chung-hee.
They planned to cross the mountains without army defense on January 16, 1968, taking advantage of the freezing of the river during the cold winter.
Cross the frozen Imjin River on foot, pass through the more lax-guarded camp of the U.S. Second Division, and change into a prepared South Korean uniform.
Wearing the badges of captain, lieutenant and second lieutenant of the 26th Division of Korea, he disguised himself as a South Korean soldier and infiltrated south Korea and mixed into the Blue House.
They will storm the presidential palace at 8 p.m. on January 21 and assassinate Park Chung-hee.
Park Chung-hee
After completing the mission, they seized three military vehicles, turned on the sirens, fled north to Wenshan via Gwanghwamun and Lingquan, and then returned to Korea from the nearby border area.
If the vehicle cannot be captured, it is returned to North Korea by stealth into South Korea.
The purpose of the operation appears to be to assassinate Park Chung-hee, but the real purpose is to rescue North Korean agents held in a prison in Seoul.
Therefore, after entering South Korea, the 31 people should be divided into 6 groups, and at the same time, they should attack important locations such as the US Embassy in Seoul and the headquarters of the US 8th Army in Seoul to cover the real purpose.
As mentioned earlier, the situation in North and South Korea was very tense at that time.
Park Chung-hee staged a military coup in 1961 to seize the throne as South Korea's president, followed by an 18-year dictatorship.
During his tenure, he created the world-renowned "Miracle of the Han River", which increased South Korea's GDP from $32 million in 1960 to $175 million in 1965, a growth rate of 550%, and the domestic economic situation is very good.
A street view of Seoul, South Korea, 1965
But in fact, North Korea was more developed than South Korea at that time.
Because they received great assistance from China and the Soviet Union during the Korean War.
From 1958 to 1963, during the most difficult period, China also provided free aid to the DPRK with a lot of grain and war materials, and gave the DPRK many interest-free loans to assist the DPRK in building many factories.
The Soviet Union even gave north Korea all the aid it had intended to give to China and traded with it.
After the end of the Korean War, North Korea's annual economic growth rate reached 25% in 10 years, which was the highest in the world at that time, and it was called the two major economic miracles after the war together with Japan.
North Korea is stronger than South Korea, so the North Korean leaders at that time very much wanted to unify North and South Korea, and there were constant frictions between the two sides, large and small, and the confrontation was very fierce.
In 1967, important North Korean spies were captured by South Korea and held in a prison in Seoul.
In order to rescue these spies, the North Korean authorities formulated this plan to attack the east and the west.
At exactly 2:00 p.m. on January 16, 1968, under the leadership of Captain Kim Jong-woong, a 31-man squad set off from the Guest House of the Sixth Base of the 124th Army in Pyongyang.
As planned, they crossed the Imjin River, crossed the defense area of the US Second Division, and changed their gear and sneaked into the city of Seoul.
Due to some large or small conditions on the road, I was unable to reach the vicinity of the Blue House before 8 p.m. as originally planned.
That's why the action was postponed to 10 p.m., which is the very beginning of the article.
Immediately after the attack, south Korean military police launched a large-scale search in the Seoul area, and the remaining five squads were quickly searched.
Figure 10 Arrested
Of the remaining 25, 1 was captured, 1 fled back to North Korea, two were missing, and all the rest were killed.
The man who fled back to North Korea was named Park Jae-kyung, and when he was shot in the abdomen, he stuffed the intestines that flowed out of his body with his hands, pressed his hands on the wounds and escaped the heavy round-up, and after returning to North Korea, he became a big hero and is now the deputy director general in charge of propaganda in the General Political Bureau of the Korean People's Army.
After the assassination, the entire South Korean government was very angry, and the authorities were determined to retaliate, and also formed a 31-person assassination squad to assassinate the North Korean leader.
South Korea's CIA developed a detailed assassination plan, and the Air Force was responsible for recruiting and training daredevils, code-named "Badger Operations."
Figure 11 Member training (film and television reference)
They plan to use hot air balloons to send the death squad members over the residence of the North Korean leader in Pyongyang, let the daredevils land with parachutes, and then carry out the assassination operation.
The U.S. Air Force used reconnaissance planes to photograph the structure and surrounding terrain of the North Korean leader's residence from a high altitude and handed it over to the South Korean CIA.
But unlike North Korea, the Air Force, which recruits death squads, doesn't know what to think.
Instead of selecting assassins from the army, they found out of nowhere some truck drivers who had fled the scene, scalpers who reselled tickets, counterfeit monks, wandering singers, fraudsters, drunkards, circus leaders, downcast boxers, homeless people sleeping in tunnels, and other hooligans.
South Korean Death Squad
In addition, 5 ordinary Koreans were kidnapped and forced to become death squad members.
For the sake of secrecy, they chose the training site on Shio Island.
The area around Shio Island is deserted, and there is only one resident on the island, so they drove that family away and converted it into a training base.
In late April 1968, 31 daredevils arrived on Shio Island, where they were trained by 30 officers and men of the Air Force's Special Operations Unit.
On Shio Island, the death squad members are called trainers, and the officers and men of the Air Force responsible for training them are called cadets.
Figure 13 Delivery of materials to Shiwei Island
At the beginning of the training, the trainers were very uncooperative, because most of them did not come voluntarily.
For example, the 5 ordinary people were even kidnapped.
But they could not resist, and after a long and arduous training and patriotic brainwashing, the hooligans gradually developed a patriotic consciousness and accepted their tasks.
He also expressed his willingness to sacrifice for the country, and established a deep relationship between the training soldiers and the basic soldiers.
After seven months of training on Shio Island, a 31-man assassination squad was secretly transported by warships to Baekjee Island, which is very close to North Korea, and waited for the mission order to be issued before entering North Korea to carry out the assassination.
But a month later, in March 1969, the South Korean military gave them orders to halt the plan.
It turned out that the situation between The Two Koreas and north Korea had begun to ease, and the two sides were preparing for the first South-North Red Cross talks since the split.
The players train
In order not to undermine the trend of peace talks, the South Korean government decided to stop the assassination plan.
The assassination squad was dumbfounded.
However, the assassination squad was not disbanded after the assassination plan was canceled, and they were ordered to return to Shio Island to continue their training.
But not long after they returned to Shio Island, the supply they were given on the island was almost canceled.
Their daily food is getting worse and worse, only some pasta that is not enough to eat, and in winter, even the fuel for heating is not distributed to them, and Shio Island seems to be forgotten.
But under such harsh supply conditions, the rigorous training of the 31-man assassination squad had to continue. Every day, there was not enough food and clothing, and there was also a hard physical training, and two members of the team could not stand it and fled.
They fled to a small island adjacent to hide there, where they were later shot for assaulting women on the island.
The rest of the trainers continued their training on the island, and their treatment became so poor that 5 of the remaining 29 died of severe malnutrition and overtraining.
The remaining 24 people waited and looked forward to the difficult and desperate situation, hoping that the country would one day remember them again, let them go, or give them some other way out.
They may even expect to be reused again and serve the nation.
But the death squads were disappointed.
Their squad was so classified that very few people knew of their existence, and they didn't know whether they had forgotten or couldn't make up their minds about what to do with them.
It was not until 1971, when the Chief of Staff of the Air Force was replaced, that the new Chief of Staff was informed that such a team existed.
The new Chief of Staff ordered their immediate dissolution, but the arrangements for where they went became problematic.
The authorities did not want the outside world to know that South Korea had trained such an assassination squad, fearing that they would not be strict after they were disbanded, and told the story of Shio Island, they actually issued an order: "Destroy all traces."
Although this order does not explicitly say that it will "kill all the team members", it is actually the meaning.
Worse still, this order had not yet been communicated to the basics of training the death squad members, but somehow it was known to the death squad members first.
Figure 18 Attacks
They were thoroughly enraged.
Because they were not originally soldiers, they were forced to participate in hellishly harsh training and forced to perform mortal tasks.
They had made up their minds to sacrifice their lives for their country, but now the country did not need them, and they wanted to erase their existence like something dirty.
Inevitably, a riot broke out.
At 5:20 a.m. on August 23, 1971, they took advantage of the opportunity of the standing cadets to go to the toilet and raided the cadets' dormitories.
The cadets had drunk a lot of wine the night before and were still asleep.
They first touched the dormitory of Kim Soon-woong, the leader of the basic cadres, and smashed Kim Soon-woong's head with a hammer, and Kim Soon-woong was smashed to death on the spot.
They then broke into the communications room and destroyed the island's external communication equipment, followed by a massacre on the island.
There were 30 basic soldiers, 12 of whom were killed in this massacre, the rest escaped because of a temporary accident, and some escaped because they hid in rock caves or even dung pits and were not found by them.
One person from the death squad also died in this massacre.
Figure 20 Hijacking a bus
After the bloodbath of Shio Island, the remaining 23 daredevils snatched the fishermen's fishing boats from the adjacent Mai Island and took them to Incheon.
They landed at Incheon Pier and hijacked several buses to Seoul, preparing to storm Seoul and negotiate with the South Korean government.
When they reached Yeongdeungpo-gu, the entrance to Seoul, they were stopped by the army and rushed into Jieshu Road after killing 12 ordinary citizens and policemen in succession.
On the street tree road, the army engaged them in a fierce gun battle, and finally the death squad was defeated.
By 2:40 p.m., most of the daredevils had gone out of their way to detonate themselves, and only 4 escaped, but they were later caught and sentenced to death.
After cleaning up the scene afterwards, the bodies of 15 trainers and 3 passengers were found in the hijacked bus on Street Tree Road.
In response to the rebellion, the South Korean government initially said that it was carried out by a group of unidentified militants, implying that it was a North Korean guerrilla organization.
Now that both the two Koreas are now working for peace, this squad rebellion is caused by the high-level failure to clean up the situation in order to maintain the situation.
So 3 hours later, he changed his speech and said: "There is a rebellion in the special forces of the Air Force."
The Rokk Minister of Defense and the Chief of Staff of the Air Force can only carry this pot and "resign" in order to take responsibility.
On July 4, 1972, the ROK and the DPRK formally signed the Joint Declaration on Peace between the South and the North, agreeing not to provoke each other through clandestine military operations.
After that, the smell of gunpowder on both sides dropped a lot, and the situation of peace was generally maintained until now. It's just pity for those soldiers and innocent civilians.