Kim Hong-il (general)
Kim Hong-il (23 September 1898 – 8 August 1980) was a Korean independence activist and a general of the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Korean War, who later became a diplomat and politician in South Korea. Born in North Pyongan, he did his early schooling in China and Korea, and had a brief career as a teacher before his connections with the nascent Korean independence movement led to his imprisonment. He fled into exile in China in 1918, and served in the Kuomintang's National Revolutionary Army from 1926 to 1948, following which he moved to the newly-independent South Korea to join the Republic of Korea Army. He commanded South Korea's I Corps during the first year of the Korean War, and was then sent to Taipei as South Korea's ambassador to the Republic of China, which by then had retreated to Taiwan. His assignment there ultimately lasted nine years. He returned to South Korea in 1960 following the April Revolution which ended the rule of Syngman Rhee, and served briefly as Minister of Foreign Affairs under the Park Chung-hee junta. He ran for the National Assembly, first unsuccessfully in 1960 and 1963, and was then elected in 1967 and became a major figure in the opposition New Democratic Party.
Kim Koo
On June 26, 1949, Kim was assassinated by Lieutenant Ahn Doo-hee. Ahn burst in and shot him four times while he was at home, reading poetry. Ahn stated that he killed Kim because he saw him as an agent of the Soviet Union. On April 13, 1992, a confession by Ahn was published by Korean newspaper Dongah Ilbo. In the confession, Ahn claimed that the assassination had been ordered by Kim Chang-ryong, who served as the head of national security under the Rhee administration. Ahn was murdered by Park Gi-sheo (박기서; 朴琦緖), a follower of Kim's, in 1996. According to Bruce Cumings in his 1981 books, another possible motive for the assassination was Kim's alleged connection to the assassination of Song Jin-woo, a leader of the Korean Democratic Party (KDP) who had chosen to work closely with the American military government. In 2001, declassified documents revealed that Ahn had been working for the U.S. Counter-Intelligence Corps, leading to suggestions of US involvement in the assassination. However, some have questioned the evidence for these accusations.