Kim Shin-jo

Kim Shin-jo (; 2 June 1942 – 9 April 2025) was a North Korean soldier and defector who was one of two survivors of the 31-man team of North Korean commandos, known as Unit 124, sent to assassinate the then-president of South Korea and military dictator, Park Chung Hee, in the Blue House raid in January 1968. Kim was captured and during a year-long detention and interrogation divulged information on the raid to the South Korean authorities, before being released. He became a South Korean citizen and spent the rest of his life there.

Biography

Born on 2 June 1942, Kim Shin-Jo joined the North Korean forces and was integrated into a new unit of elite North Korean commandos, known as Unit 124, created to infiltrate South Korea and assassinate its leader, the military dictator Park Chung Hee, as part of a plan for socialist revolution and reunification of Korea under the North Korean government. This plot later became known as the Blue House raid, named after the Blue House, the residency of the president of South Korea. Kim described himself as being deeply communist in ideology to a "fanatical" level during that period of his life.

Kim was ordained as a pastor in 1997 and worked at Sungrak Sambong Church in Gyeonggi Province. He had a wife and two children. Kim met his wife as a penpal during his detention, and initially feared she was a North Korean assassin and sleeper agent coming after him.

Legacy The hiking trail from Yeoraesa Temple to Samcheonggak on Bugaksan mountain, Seoul, is named the Kim Shin-Jo Trail and was part of the route used by Unit 124 in the Blue House Raid.