Posted on Mon, Nov. 2, 2009
Former South Korean spy chief Lee Hu-rak, 85, who brokered the signing of a historic 1972 peace document with North Korea after a secret trip to Pyongyang, died Saturday of a brain tumor in Seoul.
Mr. Lee, a retired army major general, was a close associate of former President Park Chung-hee, who ruled South Korea with an iron fist for 18 years after a coup in 1961.
While serving as Park's top intelligence officer, he traveled to Pyongyang in 1972, met then-leader Kim Il Sung and helped broker a joint statement in which the two Koreas agreed to work toward peacefully reunifying their divided peninsula. The July 4 joint communique was hailed as the first major accord between the Koreas on unification since the Korean War ended with a fragile truce in 1953.
However, it was thrown into limbo a year later when Pyongyang cut off ties with Seoul, criticizing it for having agents kidnap a South Korean opposition leader in Japan. - AP
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