Kim Dae-jung [2]; died he was 85. Dae-Jung was President of South Korea from 1998 to 2003, and the 2000 Nobel Peace Prize recipient. He is the first and only Nobel laureate from Korea.[3] A Roman Catholic since 1957, he has been called the "Nelson Mandela of Asia"[4] for his long-standing opposition to authoritarian rule.(6 January 1924[1] (o.s. 3 December 1925) – 18 August 2009)
The son of a middle-class farmer, Kim was born in Mokpo in what was then the Jeolla province; the city is now in South Jeolla province. Kim graduated from Mokp’o Commercial High School in 1943 at the top of the class. After working as a clerk for a Japanese-owned shipping company, he became its owner in 1945 and became very rich. Kim escaped Communist capture during the Korean War.[5]
Kim first entered politics in 1954 during the administration of Korea's first president, Syngman Rhee. Although he was elected as a representative for the National Assembly in 1961, a military coup led by Park Chung-hee, who later assumed dictatorial powers, voided the elections.[5] He was able to win a seat in the House in the subsequent elections in 1963 and 1967 and went on to become an eminent opposition leader. As such, he was the natural opposition candidate for the country's presidential election in 1971. He nearly defeated Park, despite several handicaps on his candidacy which were imposed by the ruling regime.[6] Park never forgot or forgave Kim for making the race such a close one.
A very talented orator, Kim could command unwavering loyalty among his supporters. His staunchest support came from the Jeolla region, where he reliably garnered upwards of 95% of the popular vote, a record that has remained unsurpassed in South Korean politics.
Kim was almost killed in August 1973, when he was kidnapped from a hotel in Tokyo by KCIA agents in response to his criticism of President Park's yushin program. Although Kim returned to Seoul alive, he was banned from politics and imprisoned in 1976 for having participated in the proclamation of an anti-government manifesto and sentenced for five years in prison, which was reduced to house arrest in 1978.[6]
Kim was reinstated in 1979 after Park was assassinated. However in 1980, Kim was arrested and sentenced to death on charges of sedition and conspiracy in the wake of another coup by Chun Doo-hwan and a popular uprising in Gwangju, his political stronghold.[7] With the intervention of the United States government,[8] the sentence was commuted to 20 years in prison and later he was given exile to the U.S. Kim temporarily settled in Boston and taught at Harvard University as a visiting professor to the Center for International Affairs, until he chose to return to his homeland in 1985.[9] During his period abroad, he authored a number of opinion pieces in leading Western newspapers that were sharply critical of his government.
Pope John Paul II sent a letter to then-South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan on December 11, 1980, asking for "clemency" for Kim, a Catholic, who had been sentenced to death a week before. The National Archives of Korea revealed the contents of the letter at the request of the "Kwangju Ilbo," the local daily newspaper in Gwangju (Kwangju). [10]
Kim Dae-jung took the name Thomas More as his Christian name at his Baptism. Thus, his name is most correctly written as Thomas More Kim Dae-jung.[11]
Kim was again put under house arrest upon his return to Seoul, but resumed his role as one of the principal leaders of the political opposition. When Chun Doo-hwan succumbed to the popular demand in 1987 and allowed the first democratic presidential election to take place since the 1972 coup, Kim Dae-jung and Kim Young-sam both ran. As a result, the opposition vote was split in two, with Kim Young-sam receiving 28% and Kim Dae-jung 27% of the vote. The ex-general Roh Tae-woo — Chun Doo-hwan's hand-picked successor — won easily with 36.5% of the popular vote.
In 1992, Kim made yet another failed bid for the presidency, this time solely against Kim Young-sam, who won as a candidate for the ruling party.[5] Many thought Kim Dae-jung's political career was effectively over when he took a hiatus from politics and departed for the United Kingdom to take a position at Clare Hall, Cambridge University as a visiting scholar.[9] However, in 1995 he announced his return to politics and began his fourth quest for the presidency.
The situation became favorable for him when the public revolted against the incumbent government in the wake of the nation's economic collapse in the Asian financial crisis just weeks before the presidential election. Allied with Kim Jong-pil, he defeated Lee Hoi-chang, Kim Young-sam's successor, in the election held on December 18, 1997, and was inaugurated as the fifteenth President of South Korea on February 25, 1998. This inauguration marked the first time in Korean history that the ruling party peacefully transferred power to a democratically elected opposition victor.[5][12] The election was marred with controversy, as two candidates from the ruling party split the conservative vote (38.7% and 19.2% respectively), enabling Kim to win with a 40.3% of the popular vote.[13] Kim's chief opponent, Lee Hoi Chang, was a former Supreme Court Justice and had graduated at the top of his class from Seoul National University School of Law. Lee was widely viewed as elitist and his candidacy was further damaged by charges that his sons dodged mandatory military service. Kim's education in contrast was limited to vocational high school, and many Koreans sympathized with the many trials and tribulations that Kim had endured previously.
The preceding presidents Park Chung Hee, Chun Doo-hwan, Roh Tae-woo, and Kim Young-sam all came from the relatively wealthy Gyeongsang region. Kim Dae-jung was the first president to serve out his full term who came from the Jeolla region in the southwest, an area that traditionally has been neglected and less developed, at least partly because of discriminatory policies of previous presidents. Kim's administration was in turn overrepresented in individuals from the Jeolla province, leading to charges of reverse discrimination.
Kim Dae-jung took office in the midst of the economic crisis that hit South Korea in the final year of Kim Young-sam's term. He vigorously pushed economic reform and restructuring recommended by the International Monetary Fund, in the process significantly altering the landscape of South Korean economy.[5] After the economy shrank by 5.8 percent in 1998, it grew 10.2 percent in 1999.[4] In effect, his policies were to make for a fairer market by holding the powerful chaebol (conglomerates) accountable, e.g., greater transparency in accounting practices. State subsidies to large corporations were dramatically cut or dropped.
His policy of engagement with North Korea has been termed the Sunshine Policy.[4] In 2000, he participated in the first North-South presidential summit with North Korea's leader Kim Jong-il, which later led to his winning the Nobel Peace Prize. This was later determined to have occurred after alleged payment through directing payments of $500 million for Kim Jong Il.[7] The North Korean leader, however, never kept his promise to reciprocate by visiting South Korea. North Korea has not reduced the heavy presence of troops in the DMZ and has continued to work on developing nuclear weapons, which it tested in October 2006. During Kim's administration, North Korean naval vessels intruded into South Korean waters and fired upon a South Korean naval vessel without warning, killing and wounding South Korean sailors.[citation needed] Citing security concerns, Kim skipped the historical soccer match between the US and South Korean teams in the 2002 World Cup.[14]
Kim completed his 5-year presidential term in 2003 and was succeeded by Roh Moo-hyun. A presidential library at Yonsei University was built to preserve Kim's legacy, and there is a convention center named after him in the city of Gwangju, the Kim Dae-jung Convention Center.
Kim actively called for restraint against the North Koreans for detonating a nuclear weapon and defended the continued Sunshine Policy towards Pyongyang to defuse the crisis. [15] He also received an honorary doctorate at the University of Portland on April 17, 2008 where he delivered his speech, "Challenge, Response, and God."
Kim's presidential legacy is mixed. Although commentators have frequently given him credit for forwarding de
mocratic reforms and navigating Korea through the 1997-1998 financial crisis, his policies attracted widespread charges that he had sold out the nation's economic assets to foreign firms or private equity firms, which certainly made enormous profits from these deals. The most controversial case involved the Korea Exchange Bank, which went on sale when the transfer of power was taking place from Kim's administration to Roh's administration. Kim was also criticized for favoring his home province, Jollah Province, which had been historically neglected by previous administrations. In addition Kim was widely blamed for releasing a credit card bubble in order to boost the economy during the final years of presidency, this bubble bursting in 2003, causing the collapse of one of the largest credit card companies in Korea, namely LG Card. Also, his treatment of the financial crisis in general has often been censured for its political motivations; many accuse him of intentionally not bailing out Daewoo because the company did not undertake the restructuring his government demanded of it.
Kim died on August 18, 2009 at 13:43 KST, at Severance Hospital in Seoul. The cause of death was given as multiple organ dysfunction syndrome.[16]
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