North Korea Contracted Abu Nidal Organization for the 1986 Kimp'o Airport Terrorism Incident?

Here's a very interesting report I found yesterday while doing research on North Korea.

Chosun Ilbo (original in Korean)

02/19/2009

The March 2009 edition of Monthly Chosun reported the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO) committed the 1986 bombing of Kimpo Airport, and received 5 million USD from North Korea. The Monthly Chosun said, "A record showing that Abu Nidal confessed to have executed the terrorist plot upon a contract with North Korea" was discovered.

Abu Nidal, who died in Iraq in 2002, was known to be the most brutal terrorist among the Islamic circles, before figures like Osama Bin Laden made their appearances.

The Kimpo Airport bombing was an incident in which an explosive device was detonated a week (14 Sep 86) before opening ceremonies of the 1986 Asian Games was to take place in Seoul, leaving five dead and 29 wounded. At that time, the South Korean government was not able to catch the culprit, but announced that a North Korean agent probably had committed the act in order to interfere with the Asian games with the ultimate end-state of thwarting the 1988 Olympics.

According to the Monthly Chosun, a reporter of a newspaper outlet in Bern, Switzerland, Murata, discovered a "STASI (former East Germany's governmental organ) records" on the investigations into the Kimpo Airport bombing among the Special Federal Government Records Management Center archives. This report is about how one of the sections (22nd Bureau) under the STASI, commanded by an East German colonel by the name of Franz, investigated the Kimpo Airport bombing incident. The report contained the interrogation records of internationally infamous terrorist Abu Nidal by one of the staff members of the 22nd Bureau, as well as Abu Nidal's confession during the interrogation process -- that he ordered a member to commit the terrorist act based on a contract with North Korea.

According to the STASI investigation, the ANO received the "Kimpo Airport contract" from North Korea at the end of 1985, Abu Nidal ordered his second-in-command, Sulaiman Samrin to carry out the plot. Samrin, in turn, ordered Abu Ibrahim, an expert bomb-maker [and the leader of the "15 May" Organization] for terror purposes, and Ibrahim entrusted the transport of the bomb to his live-in girlfriend Frederika Krabbe, an agent of the Red Army Faction.

Krabbe entered Kimpo Airport posing as a British citizen. She placed the bomb in a garbage can between gates 5 and 6 and departed for Hong Kong. After the successful bombing at the airport, the North Korean government wired five million USD to Abu Nidal's secret account in a bank in Vienna, Austria, from one of its accounts in Switzerland.

This kind of contractual transaction was possible due to Abu Nidal's acquaintance with Kim Il Song [Kim Il-so'ng]. Born in 1937 near Tel Aviv, Israel, Abu Nidal's birth name was Hasan Sabri Khalil al-Banna. While working for the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) under Yasser Arafat, he met Kim Il Song sometime between 28 Mar and 08 April 72, following Arafat's orders to solicit support from communist nations.

The two became close due to their similar views on "partizan"; thereafter, Kim Il Song supported the PLO and believed Abu Nidal as his "vicar planted in the middle east." Their friendship was to the point that Nidal had an office in Pyongyang and sent terrorists to North Korea to receive military training.