Guess Who's Shooting at Dinner [1]
"...under the relevant articles of the Constitution of the Fourth Republic of Korea, the city of Busan and the city of Masan are hereby officially under martial law. A strict curfew will be enforced, and any resistance to said curfew will not be tolerated..."
- KBS Announcement of martial law in response to Bu-Ma Protest Movement
South Korean President Park Chung-hee was, for the first time since he narrowly won the 1963 Presidential elections, truly politically endangered. A siege mentality had descended over the Blue House; not only were protests spreading in Busan and Masan over the expulsion of opposition leader Kim Young-sam from the National Assembly, but now sympathy protests seemed to be emerging across the country, even in Seoul. Thousands had been arrested, and dozens wounded in the ensuing crackdown. The mood within Park's inner circle was funereal, divided between the more moderate and accommodationist KCIA Director Kim Jae-gyu and the fierce hardline chief security advisor/head bodyguard for President Park, Cha Ji-chul.
Park was not well served by either of his close subordinates; the dispute between Kim and Cha had become so toxic they refused to work together, and Cha's Rasputin-like influence over the President to Kim seemed to be doing nothing but destabilizing the situation. Cha controlled almost an entire division of the army in Seoul personally; Kim the entire security apparatus. As the paranoia set in, something had to give - the United States' warning about Kim Young-sam was sternly worded and tensions in the alliance could not become more fraught with the events in the southwest of the country.
Kim finally decided that the ROK needed a savior - him, in other words. At a dinner on October 26, 1979, he brought with him a gun. Korean historians have debated to this day what Kim's intentions were with his weapon. Had he premeditated the attack with other co-conspirators, as Park would later allege? Or was it a snap decision in the heat of the moment? Whatever the case, Kim drew the gun and opened fire while at the dinner table in the Blue House's safe house, striking President Park in the upper right chest and Cha in the arm, before he was wrestled to the ground by Chief Secretary Kim Gye-won. Outside, Park's bodyguards heard the shots and got into a shooting match with two KCIA men Kim had stationed outside; all four died of gunshot wounds sustained. Cha, outraged, rounded the table, snatched the loose gun from the floor and shot Kim Jae-gyu twice in the head at point blank range, killing him instantly.
Park was rushed to a hospital and the regime plunged into chaos. Army Chief of Staff Jeung Seung-hwa, dining in an adjacent room, ordered his guards to seize KCIA Deputy Director Kim Jeong-seop after hearing angry shouts that "the KCIA is murdering the President!" The swift move may have been decisive in securing his survival in the ensuing purge; despite suspicions from other corners of the Army that he may have been involved, Jeung's show of loyalty and quick radioing to his army units to impose martial law on Seoul and mobilize in case of "instability" (read: a North Korean attack once their spies inevitably learned of Park's wounding) kept him out of Park and Cha's immediate suspicions, which would prove a grave mistake.
Cha mobilized his own units while stubbornly accepting medical attention at the Blue House; for several hours on the evening of October 26, it was unclear who, exactly, was in charge of the Republic. Security Command chief Chun Doo-hwan, recently installed and ever-ambitious, ordered an immediate review and telephoned Cha throughout the night to draw up a list of potential co-conspirators, all of them incidentally their enemies within the national security establishment. Cha reassured Chun that he would immediately suggest their mutual friend Roh Tae-woo for the next director of the KCIA and expand their mutual influence to that body as well; Jeong, aware that both Chun and Roh were members of the secretive and exclusive (and quite political) Hanahoe faction of the ROK Army, needed a plan of his own as it became clear that Park's wounds were severe and though he seemed likely to survive, the power vacuum that could ensue and the groundswell of support that it would provide the democracy movement potentially would create chaos.
The 27th brought the first leak that Park was in distress; incidentally, the United States found out about it from a well-placed mole in Pyongyang before they heard about it from Jeong, who had established backchannels with Secretary of State Bush earlier in the year as they discussed ways to work around Park to try to suspend South Korea's nuclear weapons program. Fearing that North Korea might try to take advantage of the assassination attempt and Park's lengthy surgery to save his life, US forces in South Korea, Okinawa and the Japanese Home Islands were mobilized, and naval assets in the area placed on high alert. Late October of 1979 was, in East Asia, one of the tensest times in recent memory, and nobody quite knew what would come next once Park emerged from the barricaded wing at the army hospital where Kim Gye-won ordered him taken...
[1] Not to toot my own horn too much, but this may be the best chapter title I've ever come up with