Agent in KAL Jet Blast ‘Hates’ Leaders

A woman who claims to be a North Korean agent said today that she hates North Korean leaders for ordering her to blow up a South Korean jetliner last year with 115 people aboard, according to news reports.

Kim Hyon Hui, 26, made the comment when government prosecutors questioned her behind closed doors to determine her role in the destruction of a Korean Air Lines Boeing 707 that disappeared near Burma on Nov. 29, 1987.

She has said she planted a bomb aboard the plane.

Hundreds of students demanding a parliamentary inquiry into Kim’s case battled riot police today at Seoul’s Yonsei University. Students hurled firebombs and rocks at riot police, who retaliated with tear-gas grenades, but there were no immediate reports of injuries.

Government prosecutors, who must determine whether to file formal charges against Kim, said she admitted most allegations against her and apologized for what she had done. They declined to elaborate on their interrogation.

Local newspapers said Kim’s voice cracked when she told prosecutors that she had killed many people and must be punished.

Kim strongly denounced North Korea President Kim Il Sung and his son and heir apparent Kim Jong Il, Yonhap, the South Korean news agency, said. “Now, I hate them most,” she was quoted as saying.

It was Kim’s first public appearance since Jan. 15, when she confessed in a televised news conference to having been trained and ordered by North Korean leaders to bomb the plane to disrupt this year’s Olympic Games in Seoul.

Kim and a male companion, traveling on forged Japanese passports, were among passengers aboard the KAL flight from Baghdad, Iraq, to Seoul. The couple, posing as father and daughter, left the plane during a stopover in Abu Dhabi. They took poison when police tried to question them at Bahrain Airport. The man died.