By Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporter
Former President Kim Young-sam directed a military action against North Korea in retaliation for the North’s submarine infiltration into the South in 1996, a former interpreter of the U.S. State Department said Monday.

In a lecture at John Hopkins University in the United States, Tong Kim (Kim Dong-hyun), 69, said the former president vowed to attack military targets in the communist regime, but the plan was suspended after then U.S. President Bill Clinton advised against it.

The senior interpreter retired last June from the U.S. State Department, ending 27 years of service.

``After a North Korean U-boat was discovered in the waters off the East Coast of Kangwon Province, President Kim (Young-sam) selected targets to attack in the North, but he did not coordinate the plan with the U.S.,’’ said Tong Kim.

On Sept. 18, 1996, a North Korean U-boat carrying 26 North Korean agents was stranded in the waters off Kangnung. Twenty-five of the agents were shot dead and one was captured. During the skirmish, 18 South Korean soldiers and police officers were killed and 27 others injured.

High-ranking U.S. officials, including then U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher and CIA director John Deutch, tried to dissuade the Korean president, but failed, he added.

It was not until the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in the Philippines in November 1996 that Clinton was able to persuade Kim Young-sam not to implement the attack plan.

During a one-on-one meeting with Kim Young-sam on the sidelines of the APEC summit, the U.S. president expressed concern that any military action against North Korea by South Korea could lead to a war on the peninsula, with the involvement of the United States Forces Korea (USFK), he recalled.

Since starting his job for the U.S. government, Tong Kim has sat in on not only South Korea-U.S summits, beginning from the one between former U.S. President Ronald Reagan and former South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan in 1983, but has been a witness to almost every high-level U.S.-North Korea meeting.

Tong Kim, who graduated from Korea University in Seoul in 1961, is about to join his old school and the Johns Hopkins University soon as a research professor.

gallantjung@koreatimes.co.kr