Raid Ends Moscow Hostage Drama : Russia: Gunman seizes bus full of Koreans outside Kremlin. Commandos kill hijacker, free captives.

A masked man hijacked a busload of 27 South Korean tourists outside the Kremlin on Saturday, threatening to blow up the bus unless he received million and a getaway plane, witnesses and released hostages said.

Early this morning, Russian commandos stormed the darkened bus in which a handful of tourists were still being held along with their bus driver and tour guide, both Russian, after the hijacker had released all the other hostages. A flash of light--apparently a stun device--was followed by a burst of gunfire that killed the attacker, Moscow’s mayor said. The hostages were rescued unharmed.

The hijacking began with an audacity that shocked even the crime-racked Russian capital. The lone gunman waited until the tourists had finished visiting Red Square and St. Basil’s Cathedral. About 5:30 p.m., he hopped aboard the bus parked just yards from Spassky Gate, one of the main entrances to the Kremlin.

“The funny thing is, these poor guys were supposed to go from Red Square to the circus,” said an officer from a commando unit who declined to give his name. “Well, they will see a circus of a different sort tonight.”

Released hostages described the hijacker as a Russian speaker who held a gun in one hand and kept his other hand inside a large shoulder bag he said contained a bomb.

Rita A. Zhuravlyova, who sells postcards and prints in Red Square, said she approached the bus to peddle her wares and immediately noticed that none of the passengers were smiling.

“I came up to the door, but the door wouldn’t open,” she said. “I looked at the driver. He was sitting there like a stuffed mummy, not even looking at me.”

Inside, one woman held an index finger to her temple, Zhuravlyova said. Then she noticed “a very strange face in a mask” behind the bus driver.

At that point, she said, police officers approached the bus, apparently to chase away the illegal street vendors. Then two tourists leaped off the bus, and Zhuravlyova heard a gunshot inside.

The bus then moved about 500 yards from the Kremlin and parked in the middle of the Kammeny Most Bridge, which spans the Moscow River. There the bus was quickly surrounded by police vehicles, whose flashing blue lights contrasted weirdly with the serene golden onion domes of the Kremlin churches.

Next, the hijacker released a third man to go fetch the two escapees. Instead, the tourist returned to the bus with a South Korean diplomat in tow. Later, the gunman released most of his hostages.

By midnight Saturday, the gunman had released about 20 hostages, including all nine women, but the bus was still stranded on the bridge and negotiations appeared to have reached a deadlock. The gunman’s identity and motive were still unknown early today.

One of the first hostages to gain freedom did not appear to have been traumatized by the experience.

“This is my first trip to Russia,” said Yun Dong Hung, 30, an electrical engineer for Hyundai, speaking through a translator. “I expected many things from this trip, most of them very pleasant. But never did I expect to be captured by a terrorist! You know, it’s not even scary--it’s kind of thrilling. It’s like an adventure. I wish I could go back to the bus, but they won’t let me.”

Preliminary police reports suggested that the hijacker might be a North Korean pursuing a political agenda, but South Korean Consul General Soo Dong Chay said the man appeared to be a native Russian speaker making financial demands.

“It was just bad luck that our Korean tourists happened to be in the terrorist’s way,” the diplomat said. “You see, there were very few other tourists tonight near the cathedral.”

Russian security forces have been on heightened alert since a rebel Chechen commander stormed the southern Russian town of Budennovsk in June. At least 140 people died during the ensuing siege, which became Russia’s worst hostage crisis.

Airplane and bus hijackings have become relatively common in Russia since the breakup of the Soviet Union, but most have occurred in southern Russia and the volatile Caucasus region. The hijacking of foreign tourists in downtown Moscow, where the daily police presence ranges from extremely heavy to oppressive, came as a jolt to the incredulous crowd of evening strollers in Red Square who gathered to gawk at the scene.

The hijacking occurred in the same area of Red Square where German pilot Mathias Rust landed his Cessna airplane in 1987. The teen-ager created an international sensation by flying solo from Germany through the Soviet Union’s vaunted air defense system to descend in the historic heart of Moscow.