2023-10-12 23:19:00
Forty years ago, Dar San Ye arrested a North Korean agent in a river in Yangon – a scenario worthy of a spy novel, which gave this Burmese waitress an unexpected role in the tormented history of the peninsula Korean.
On Sunday, October 9, 1983, a North Korean commando attempted to assassinate South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan during his visit to Rangoon, then the capital of Burma.
Some 21 people, including 17 South Koreans, died in a bomb blast that destroyed the mausoleum dedicated to Aung San, the father of Burma’s independence.
But President Chun, who was late, was not there and escaped the attack.
The massacre reignited threats of reprisals between the two enemy Koreas.
One of the heroines of this episode now lives in the suburbs of Rangoon, where she survives thanks to local solidarity, to the tune of around fifteen euros per day.
“I’m 87 years old… I don’t want money. At my age, all I want is to meditate at home, run a small shop and stay at home,” confided to AFP Dar San Ye.
She is the last living member of the improvised commando of four people who risked their lives to arrest a North Korean agent involved in the attack.
Dar San Ye was working in a bar on the banks of the Pazundaung River when news of an explosion at the mausoleum reached his ears.
“I told myself that those responsible would be captured because we are in a Buddhist country and we are protected by good spirits,” she remembers, between puffs of the traditional Burmese cigar she smokes.
“Are you my friend ?”
In the evening, while the manhunt is in full swing to find the perpetrators of the attack, on the run, she hears cries alerting of the presence of a thief in the river.
“The man had water up to his waist. I called him with a wave of my hand: +mg lay+ (+little brother+ in Burmese), +come here, come here!+,” says Dar San Ye.
“He was staring at me. I then remembered that he couldn’t understand Burmese. So I used a phrase I used to say to make fun of the English. I asked him: +Are you my friend?+ (+Are you my friend?+).”
“He said to me ‘yes, yes. Are you Chinese?’ and he held out his hand.”
Three men from the crowd of around a hundred onlookers then intervene to help him get out of the water. But when he returns to the bank, he begins to defend himself.
After trying to run away, he pulls out a grenade. “But the grenade was wet, it exploded in his hand. He no longer had a left hand. On his right hand, only his thumb remained.”
“After that, he jumped back into the water and I followed him… When he appeared on the surface, I hit him on the back of the neck,” said Dar San Ye, whose courage made the subject of numerous Burmese media documentaries.
Clothes and money
The man in question was Kim Jin Su, one of three members of the team sent to kill President Chun.
He was hanged in prison after refusing to answer during interrogations.
Kang Min Chol, a captain in the North Korean People’s Army, was also arrested after attempting suicide with a grenade. He died in prison in Yangon in 2008.
The last member was killed in a shootout with Burmese security forces.
A CIA report noted that there was “very strong evidence” linking Pyongyang to the assassination attempt.
Pyongyang rejected the accusations and assured that Seoul was behind all this.
Shortly after the arrest, the Burmese government offered clothes and money to Dar San Ye and the three men who helped her.
“Since then, they have never come to see me again,” says Dar San Ye, who keeps the weather-damaged copy of a certificate of honor as the last trace of his act.
Burma and North Korea, two countries notoriously isolated on the international scene, renewed their diplomatic ties in 2007, more than 20 years after the attack.
Aung San’s mausoleum has been rebuilt, but the current junta has closed it since the 2021 coup that toppled Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and Aung San’s daughter.
12/10/2023 23:18:01 – Rangoun (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
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