Bizarre Homecoming

When Dae Jung Kim, a South Korean politician living in Japan, was Shanghaied from a crowded hotel in downtown Tokyo, his friends were convinced that they had seen the last of him. Kim's own hopes were dashed at one point when he overheard his abductors discuss the voracity of sharks as he lay in a ship, his wrists and ankles weighed down for quick immersion. As it turned out, a bruised but very much alive Kim resurfaced near his home in Seoul last week as mysteriously as he had disappeared five days earlier, to tell a tale straight from Ian Fleming's You Only Live Twice.

His unwilling homecoming, Kim recounted, began in Tokyo's Hotel Grand Palace when he was grabbed by five men, drugged and whisked to a waiting car. There followed a five-hour, highspeed automobile dash to the southern coast of Japan where Kim was taken to a large cargo ship for the three-day crossing to South Korea. After two more days spent locked up in downtown Seoul, Kim was driven near his home, where his wife and two children lived, and set free.

Kim, 48, and his supporters accused the South Korean Central Intelligence Agency of masterminding the kidnaping. They pointed out that Kim, as leader of the New Democratic Party, polled 46% of the vote for president against Chung Hee Park in 1971. Kim went into exile when martial law was declared in October 1972, and in appearances in Japan and the U.S. has been criticizing Park's strongman rule.

The Japanese tend to agree with Kim's theory about CIA involvement.

Who else, they pointedly observed, has the resources to get a man out of Japan and smuggle him past South Korean coast guards on the lookout for Communist infiltrators from the north?

In the U.S. too acts of harassment and intimidation of South Koreans critical of their government by Korean CIA agents are not uncommon. Last April, for example, the South Korean consul in New York City, who is suspected of being a South Korean CIA operative, followed anti-Park demonstrators and had them photographed. In May, in San Francisco, the South Korean consul in Los Angeles attended a rally for Kim and caused a disturbance. Concern over such activities has prompted the State Department repeatedly to warn the South Korean embassy that its intelligence agents are interfering with the civil rights of Koreans living in the U.S.

If the abduction made little sense, Kim's subsequent release was even more puzzling. He says that he owes his survival to two things: his fervent praying and the furor his kidnaping raised in the Japanese and American press. Kim plans to accept a fellowship at Harvard this fall, but he may not be allowed to leave Seoul again. He is currently confined to his house.

Just how tight Kim's police protection was became apparent when TIME Correspondent S. Chang, a longtime friend, tried to deliver a bouquet of flowers to Mrs. Kim and was told by police he could no longer visit them. An obliging officer, however, delivered the flowers and brought back a note scribbled in English: "I'm sorry to let you know we're confined at home. My heart is filled with sorrow. Please pray for my husband's safety again."

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