Kidnapping of Kim Dae-jung

On August 8, 1973, South Korean opposition politician Kim Dae-jung was kidnapped in Tokyo, Japan, by a group of unidentified men. Kim, a leading dissident against the government of President Park Chung Hee, had run against Park in the 1971 South Korean presidential election as the New Democratic Party candidate, winning 45.3% of the vote to Park's 53.2%. After the election, Kim was involved in a car accident that left him with a permanent hip injury, which he believed to be an assassination attempt. He subsequently went into exile in Japan, where he began organizing a pro-democracy movement following Seoul's declaration of the Yushin Constitution in October 1972.

On the day of the kidnapping, Kim was attending a meeting with the leader of the Democratic Unification Party in Room 2211 of the Hotel Grand Palace in Tokyo. At around 1:19 pm, as he left the room, he was abducted. The rest of the hotel floor was reportedly rented out by a yakuza syndicate run by South Korean national Machii Hisayuki, who was known to have extensive ties to the KCIA. Kim was taken to the adjacent Room 2210, drugged, and rendered unconscious. He was then moved to Osaka and subsequently to Seoul.

While aboard a boat bound for Korea, Kim's hands and feet were tied with weights, indicating the kidnappers intended to drown him in the Sea of Japan. This plan was reportedly abandoned when the Japan Coast Guard began pursuing the kidnappers' boat and fired an illuminating shell as Kim was being brought onto the deck. Kim was later released in Busan and was found alive at his house in Seoul five days after the kidnapping.

Some reports indicate that Kim's life was saved through the intervention of U.S. Ambassador Philip Habib, who learned of the KCIA's involvement and mobilized senior embassy personnel to inquire about Kim's whereabouts among prominent Koreans, acting without waiting for authorization from Washington due to the urgency of the situation.

Decades later, on October 24, 2007, South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS), the successor agency to the KCIA, admitted following an internal inquiry that the KCIA had carried out the kidnapping, and stated that the operation had at least tacit backing from then-President Park Chung Hee.

Kim Dae-jung went on to survive further threats to his life and was later elected President of South Korea. The 2007 NIS admission remains the primary official acknowledgment of state involvement in the case.