Terror

Committee for Human Rights in North Korea
In 2008, Rev. Kim’s widow told a Washington Post reporter that she had sent Assistant Secretary
Christopher Hill a letter, pleading for him to raise her husband’s case with the North Koreans. 233
In the Post’s story, Hill claimed to have “no memory” of receiving the letter; however, a former
congressional staffer provided the author of this report a photograph of what he represents to
be Hill receiving the letter directly from Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, then the Ranking
Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. 234
Having failed to obtain meaningful assistance from the political branches of her government,
in 2009, Mrs. Kim sued the North Korean government for the abduction, torture, and murder
of her husband in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. 235 Mrs. Kim’s suit was
only possible because of an amendment to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act that allowed
for suits against a foreign government, for damages arising from acts of terrorism and torture,
committed while the government was listed as a state sponsor of terrorism (supra Section
II.F.2). 236 A District Court dismissed the suit in 2013, finding that the plaintiffs had failed to
plead direct evidence that Rev. Kim was tortured. 237 The District Court’s decision, nonetheless,
disclosed evidence that the U.S. State Department also believed that North Korea was behind
Rev. Kim’s kidnapping:
A recently declassified internal State Department cable dated February
3, 2000, from representatives stationed in Seoul communicating
with headquarters in Washington, D.C., states that a local Chinese
paper reported that Chinese investigators had “strong evidence” that
Reverend Kim was kidnapped from China by DPRK agents who had
crossed over into China in late December to plan the abduction. Id.
26, Ex. G. The cable—authored a mere two weeks after Reverend
Kim’s abduction—further reported that ten people were involved in
Reverend Kim’s kidnapping, including a couple posing as North
233 Glenn Kessler, “N. Korea’s Abduction of U.S. Permanent Resident Fades From Official View,” The Washington
Post, 19 June 2008.
234 See http://freekorea.us/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/img_0249.JPG.
235 First Amended Complaint, Kim v. Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Civil Action No. 09-648 (RWR) (D.D.C.
Nov. 24, 2009).
236 28 U.S.C. § 1605A.
237 Kim v. Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, 950 F. Supp. 2d 29 (D.D.C. 2013).
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