Tempus Fugit

반공 열기로 한국 이승만 정권은 1950년에만 10만 명이 넘는 공산주의 동조자로 추정되는 사람들을 처형한 것으로 알려져 있다.

최근 공개된 문서에 따르면, 김 씨 처형을 이끌었던 시기에 대한 공식적인 미국 조사가 있었다.

이러한 결정은 그녀의 주장에 반대하는 증거나 증인 없이 내려진 것으로 보인다. 재판관이 가진 모든 것은 고문으로 인한 것일 수 있는 막판 자백이었다.

3개월간의 조사 이후 나온 200페이지짜리 “베어드 보고서”는 “한국판 마타하리”라는 신화의 양상을 급격히 바꾼다.

김 씨는 매력적인 사회계 명사였으며, 미국 고위 관계자와의 관계는 “부적절했다”. 그러나 이 보고서는 그녀가 북한의 미인계도 아니었으며, 김수임이 그녀의 미국인 애인이었던 존 베어드 대령은 베어드 대령으로부터 빼냈다고 생각되었던 민감한 근서정보에 접근할 수 없었다고 결론지었다.

그녀가 이러한 기밀을 주었다고 주장되었던 “최고위 공산주의자” 이강국은 CIA 요원이었을 수도 있다. 이강국은 1953년 종결된 한국전쟁 직후 북한에 의해 미국 스파이라는 혐의로 처형되었다.

김 씨 조작사건은 그 당시의 편집증에 뿌리를 둔 것으로 보인다.

고등 교육을 받았으며, 정치적으로 복잡한 친구들 모임의 일부였던 김 씨는 지적인 사회주의자였던 이 씨에게 매력을 느꼈다.

공산주의자들에 대한 한국 정부의 탄압이 강해지면서, 이 씨는 애인인 김씨를 남쪽에 남겨두고 북한으로 도망갔다.

김 씨는 베어드 대령의 보좌관으로 일하기 시작했다. 베어드 대령은 일본으로부터 한국을 해방시킨 미국 점령군의 고위 인물이었다.

그러나 베어드 대령이 재배치되었을 때 미국인 부인이 한국에서 그와 합류했고, 김 씨는 방어자 없이 남겨지게 되었다.

한국정부가 주도한 좌파세력에 대한 “마녀사냥”은 베어드 전 대령의 애인인 김 씨를 포위해 들어왔다. 재판에서 김 씨를 변호해 줄 수 있었던 사람이었던 베어드 대령은 “더 이상의 수치를 면하기 위해” 한국에서 급히 빠져나갔다.

베어드 대령과 김 씨와의 관계는 아들인 김원일 씨를 낳을 만큼 충분히 길었다.

이제 59세의 캘리포니아 신학대학 교수인 원일 씨는 자신의 어머니를 둘러싼 대중적인 신화를 없애기 위해 자신의 삶을 바쳐왔다. 그는 어머니가 그 시대의 결백한 희생자이며, “삶에 대한 열정이 있었고, 역사적인 혼란의 급류에 빠져 익사한 강인한 여성이었다.”고 말한다.

For decades she has swum in the public memory as the irresistible Mata Hari of Korea — a dastardly seductress who played both sides, charming military secrets out of an American colonel and feeding them to her lover in the communist North.

In 1950, three days after conflict broke out on the Korean peninsula, Kim Soo Im was executed by the Seoul regime: a mysteriously hasty killing, the real motive of which was lost as the country descended into the bloody chaos of war.

Nearly 60 years later, the official story surrounding one of Korea's most infamous women agents has been exposed as a farrago of lies and cover-ups. The truth — and a very different Kim — have now emerged from declassified US National Archives.

Executed at the age of 39, she was not, as the South Koreans dubbed her, a “malicious international spy” or a pawn in the Soviet Union's so-called Operation Sex, but the victim of crude fabrication by a paranoid South Korean Government and a cover-up by the Americans.

The period immediately preceding the outbreak of war on the peninsula continues to intrigue historians and horrify modern South Koreans.

In its anti-leftist fervour, the Seoul regime of Syngman Rhee is now thought to have put more than 100,000 supposed communist sympathisers to death in 1950 alone.

According to the newly available documents an official, US-led inquiry was launched into the days that led up to Kim's execution.

The decision appears to have been made without any evidence or witnesses against her: all that her judges had was a last-minute confession that may well have been elicited by torture.

The documents — the 200-page “Baird Report” representing three months of investigation — further explode the “Korean Mata Hari” myth.

Kim was an attractive socialite and her relationship with a senior US officer was “inappropriate”. But the report concluded that she was no North Korean honey trap and her American lover, Colonel John E. Baird, could not have had access to the kind of sensitive military information that she was supposed to have charmed from him.

The “top communist” to whom she allegedly gave the secrets, Lee Gang Kook, may have been a CIA agent; he was executed as an American spy by the North Koreans just after the fighting ended in 1953.

The framing of Kim appears to have had its roots in the paranoia of the day. Highly educated and part of a circle of politically sophisticated friends, she was attracted to the intellectual socialist Lee.

As Seoul's crackdown on communists gathered pace he fled to the north, leaving his lover.

Kim began work as an assistant to Colonel Baird, a senior figure in the US occupying forces who liberated Korea from the Japanese.

But when Colonel Baird was redeployed and his American wife joined him in Korea, Kim was left without a protector.

A Seoul-led “witch-hunt” for suspected leftists closed in on the Colonel's former lover and Baird — the one man who might have defended Kim at her trial — was hurried out of the country “to avoid further embarrassment”.

Their relationship was long enough to produce a son — Wonil Kim.

Now a 59-year-old professor of theology in California, he has devoted himself to eradicating the popular myth that surrounds his mother: an innocent victim of her times, he says, who had “a passion for life; a strong woman caught up in the torrent of historical turmoil and drowned”.

The Korean War

— The end of Japanese occupation in Korea in 1945 resulted in Soviet troops occupying the north and US troops the south

— In June 1950 North Korean troops invaded the south

— The following day the UN Security Council condemned the invasion

— The Soviet Union was unable to wield its veto because its delegates boycotted meetings in protest against China's lack of representation at the UN

— President Truman sent US troops into Korea immediately but Seoul fell to North Korea and most of the South Korean army was destroyed

— A UN Command under General Douglas MacArthur engaged North Korean and Chinese forces

— In mid-1951, with the land battle in stalemate, armistice talks began They dragged on for two years, largely because of disagreements over the future of tens of thousands of communist prisoners

— In 1953 thousands of former prisoners from each side were returned and a demilitarised zone was established at the border. A UN commission was set up to supervise the armistice

Source: www.britannica.com