Kim Hyon Hui - Aftermath

Aftermath

In 1990, her life was turned into a 1990 movie Mayumi which was directed by Shin Sang-ok, who was also a kidnapped victim like her teacher.

For her role in the bombing of KAL 858, Kim Hyun Hui was sentenced to death in March 1989. However, South Korean president Roh Tae-woo pardoned her in 1998, taking the view Kim was merely a brainwashed victim of the real culprit, the North Korean government. She later wrote an autobiography entitled The Tears of My Soul and donated the proceeds to the families of the victims of Flight 858.

In an interview with Washington Post correspondent Don Oberdorfer, Kim said that she'd been led to believe the bombing was necessary to aid the cause of reuniting the peninsula. However, the sight of Seoul's prosperity made her realize she'd "committed the crime of killing compatriots."

Publishers Weekly, in its 1992 review of the book Shoot the Women First by Eileen MacDonald, described Kim as "robot-like" and "wholly submissive to male authority".

In December 1997, Kim married a former South Korean intelligence agent who also served as her bodyguard, with whom she has a daughter.

In March 2009, when meeting family members of Yaeko Taguchi, she mentioned that Taguchi may still be alive, and in connection with this she visited Japan in July 2010. After the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, she donated 1 million yen ($15,600) to the victims, out of gratitude for the preferential treatment she had received in Japan during her previous visit.

She was also featured by a Japanese television documentary that dramatized her life and revealed how Yaeko used to sing lullabies to her children, from whom she had been separated after being abducted.

Kim currently lives in an undisclosed location and remains under constant protection for fear of reprisals, from either victims' families or the North Korean government which has branded her a traitor.