I've mentioned this horror before, but what really caught my eye was a bit about the circumstances of the capture, which was achieved after she and a fellow spy blew up a South Korean plane in 1987:
She told investigators she and a male North Korean agent, posing as a Japanese father and daughter, boarded the Korean Air flight from Baghdad to Seoul on Nov. 28, 1987. They planted a time-bomb on the plane after getting off in Abu Dhabi. The plane exploded the next day over the Andaman Sea near Burma, now Myanmar, according to a South Korean investigation.
They got on the plane in Baghdad, huh? It made no sense to me that they'd plant the bomb after getting off in Abu Dhabi, so I looked for details about Korean Air Flight 858:
Korean Air Flight 858 was en route from Abu Dhabi to Bangkok on 29 November 1987 when it exploded over the Andaman Sea, killing all 115 on board. Two North Korean agents had boarded the plane in Baghdad and departed during its stopover in Abu Dhabi having left a time bomb in an overhead compartment. The agents were arrested when they attempted to leave Bahrain using fake Japanese passports, and both immediately swallowed cyanide capsules. The male, later identified as 70-year-old Kim Sung Il, died almost instantly, but the female suspect, 26-year-old Kim Hyon Hui, survived.
Well there you go. They didn't get off the plane and then jam the bomb into the wheel well or something. They left it on the plane after carrying it on in Baghdad.
Given Saddam's history of dabbling in terrorism, I have to wonder whether Saddam's intelligence people helped them. At the very least, I guess they didn't worry too much about the repercussions of being caught in Iraq planting a bomb.
