The Incredible Story of Mr. President

Domestic crimes are registered in the reports almost daily. Just now citizens were peacefully drinking, and then one of them comes to the conclusion that his interlocutor is a complete scoundrel and off it goes: “murder on the basis of suddenly arising hostile relations”, Severa, midge, krypton, fierce faces.

And once, a president was killed using this scheme. It happened like this.

On October 26, 1979, the meeting with Mr. President dragged on for a while and turned into a friendly dinner in a small circle. In addition to Mr. President, the dinner was attended by the head of Mr. President's security, the head of the secretariat of Mr. President's apparatus, and the chief of intelligence. They were accompanied by a singer of not the most difficult behavior, accustomed to such events, and a girl guitarist, her accompanist.

As usually happens, the table talk quickly turned to service matters, and from there to the issue discussed at the meeting. The reason for the meeting was popular unrest in the south of the country, caused by the fact that a local politician called Mr. President a fascist and was jailed for it. Mr. President reproached the chief of intelligence for not foreseeing anti-government demonstrations and not nipping the sedition in the bud. The chief of security for Mr. President, who had long been intriguing against the chief of intelligence, supported Mr. President and suggested “crushing the protesters with tanks.” The chief of intelligence responded by saying that a nationwide uprising could be made out of the demonstration. The chief of security for Mr. President responded by reminding everyone that it was he who had suggested shooting down demonstrations with airborne troops, and in general, the Khmer Rouge had killed a couple of million people, and nothing happened, and here was some demonstration. The intelligence chief responded by reminding the head of security about how he had missed an assassination attempt on the president a couple of years ago, during which the president's wife and some other little schoolgirl were shot, and that there were far more bullet casings from the presidential guard's pistols at the scene of that incident than there were bullets fired by the attacker, who was actually shooting from a revolver, so the head of security would do well to keep an eye on his department.

One word led to another, the argument grew, and at the moment when the chief of intelligence began to demand that the chief of security be removed from the table and from all the posts he held, the president removed the chief of intelligence from the table so that he could breathe, touch the grass and calm down.

The indignant intelligence chief went out into the corridor, still going over arguments in his head, and found a very successful one – he went to his office and took his service “Walter” out of the safe. The intelligence chief ordered his security, together with the president's bodyguards providing security for the friendly dinner, to shoot down all the presidential bodyguards after the first shot and strode firmly into the banquet hall.

There he sat down at the table, then took out a pistol, stood up, and shouting “What kind of whores are you?” opened fire, shot the head of Mr. President's security in the arm, put two bullets in Mr. President's chest, and at that the “Walter” jammed. The intelligence chief threw away the jammed pistol and went out to look for something else that could shoot. At that time, in the corridor, the intelligence chief's security was making a sieve out of the three presidential bodyguards. The driver of Mr. President was also shot, just in case.

In the banquet hall, the singer and her accompanist rushed to Mr. President, who was still sitting at the table, to help him. The head of Mr. President's security, with a shot arm, tried to run off to the toilet to lock himself there and wait out this whole horror. Mr. President managed to assure the beautiful ladies that he was okay, and then the chief of intelligence returned, having borrowed a revolver from his subordinates. With several shots to the chest and stomach, he interrupted the suffering and career of the head of Mr. President's security, and then shot Mr. President behind the left ear. After this, the chief of intelligence ordered his security to take Mr. President to the hospital, give the girls money and take them to the hotel, and one of his subordinates was instructed to arrange shooting from an automatic rifle in the hall to disguise what had happened as an ambush by enemy commandos. Having given the necessary orders, the chief of intelligence left.

The residence of Mr. President was a whole complex of buildings, and it was in the neighboring building that the Chief of the General Staff was having dinner with the Deputy Chief of Intelligence. At first they heard shooting somewhere outside the window, and after a while their solitude was interrupted by the Chief of Intelligence, covered in blood, for some reason barefoot and in socks, who declared that an emergency had arisen, that our beloved leader had just been killed by enemies, and if friendly neighbors found out about it, there would be a lot of bloodshed, and therefore it was necessary to declare martial law and assume leadership of the country. Here it must be said that the Chief of the General Staff was appointed to the post on the patronage of the Chief of Intelligence, who was therefore confident in his loyalty, perhaps that is why they went to the army headquarters and not to the intelligence headquarters.

Well, at the army headquarters it turned out that the head of the secretariat of the President's office, whom everyone had long forgotten about and who had been sitting quietly under the table during the entire shootout, had already called the entire leadership of the country and reported what had happened. At half past twelve at night, the chief of intelligence was arrested in the General Staff bunker.

At eight o'clock in the morning, the radio officially announced that Park Chung-hee, who was called the “South Korean Stalin,” had tragically died in the prime of life from a stray bullet.

The commission investigating the circumstances of the death of Mr. President was headed by General Chun Doo Hwan, a Vietnam veteran, a stern man who was not afraid of blood. As a result of its work, the commission made an unambiguous decision – the chief of intelligence Kim Jae Gyu intentionally killed the president in order to seize power. The chief of intelligence himself said at the trial that he committed the murder for the sake of democracy. Some saw the machinations of the CIA in the murder, and the most originals explained the incident by hepatic colic, from which the chief of intelligence had a temporary attack of idiocy.

The prime minister was appointed acting president of the country, for which they even held elections, where he was the only candidate. And six days after the elections, General Chun Doo-hwan arrested the Chief of the General Staff as a protégé of intelligence chief Kim Jae-gyu and an accomplice in the plot to assassinate the president. On this occasion, urban battles began in Seoul between the units that came under the control of Chun Doo-hwan and the troops that were still subordinate to the Chief of the General Staff. By the morning of December 13, Chun Doo-hwan's units managed to take control of the Ministry of Defense, the main television and radio stations, and the print media. Chun and his associates quickly changed the top of the country's military command and seized power.

The prime minister was given another eight months in charge, and in August, General Chun Doo-hwan became the new president of South Korea.

The intelligence chief, Kim Jae-gyu, and four people who helped him in the assassination of Park were hanged on May 24, 1980. Kim Kye-won, the head of the secretariat of the presidential office, was also sentenced to death, just in case, but a few days later the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, and he was released in 1982. The ladies present at the dinner were ordered to forget their names and henceforth use only pseudonyms.

The idea of ​​“crushing protesters with tanks,” voiced at the memorial dinner, was implemented by General Chun Doo Hwan in the same May of 1980, but that’s another story.

Author: Alexey Chizhov

Original