Late in the evening on Jan. 21, 1968, the inhabitants of downtown Seoul were woken by the sound of intense gunfire from the Blue House, South Korea’s presidential residence.

The “January 21 Incident,” also known as the “Blue House Raid,” refers to when North Korean special forces attempted to assassinate President Park Chung-hee with the hope this would spark revolution in the South.

Starting in late 1966, tensions began to mount on the Korean Peninsula, following a decade of relative quietness after the armistice of July 1953.

Kim Il Sung’s thinking at the time was very much influenced by developments