A former North Korean spy has recalled her role in blowing up a civilian South Korean jet in 1987 - killing all 115 passengers - after being ‘‘plucked’’ from her schoolyard to work for the regime.

Kim Hyun-hee, who was later captured and tried to kill herself by swallowing cyanide, has come out of hiding to shed light on the regime’s warmongering and the desperate attempts by its ‘‘inexperienced’’ leader, Kim Jong-un, to shore up control over the military.

The 51-year-old was given a death sentence after the 1987 attack, in which she and an accomplice managed to plant a bomb on a plane travelling from Baghdad to Seoul via Abu Dhabi.

Despite the death of all 115 passengers on board, she was later pardoned after the South Korean government decided that she had been brainwashed.