North Korea's erased killer

Business Standard has the story of Kang Min-chul, a North Korean assassin disowned and ignored by North Korea after his mission failed. It's only a short piece and worth reading, if only to highlight the lengths to which some North Koreans must go to mitigate the lethal consequences of failing the regime.

On October 9, 1983, Kang Min-chul and two other North Korean agents bombed the Martyrs' Museum in Rangoon, Burma, in a plot to kill the South Korean president, who was to have laid a wreath there. The bomb missed its mark - the president's car had been delayed - but 17 South Koreans, including four cabinet ministers, were killed.

Kang was consigned to oblivion. North Korea denied any connection with the attack. In South Korea, where the bombing was declared a North Korean atrocity, few cared to remember that a North Korean was languishing in a Burmese prison for it. In 2008, Kang died at 53. During 25 years in prison, he received not a single visitor from his homeland.