KIM DAE JUNG

'Kim Dae-jung' (Born December 3, 1925) is a former South Korean president and the 2000 Nobel Peace Prize recipient. He is the first Nobel laureate from Korea.^[1] A Roman Catholic since 1957, he has been called the "Nelson Mandela of Asia"^[2] for his long-standing opposition to authoritarian rule. Kim Dae-jung was the President (succeeding Kim Young-sam) from 1998 to 2003.

Contents

Early Life

Road to the Presidency

Presidency

Post-Presidency

Criticisms of Kim Dae Jung

References

See also

External links

Early Life

He was born in Haui-do, Jeollanam-do, an island off the South Korean Coast.
Kim first entered politics in 1954, opposing the policies of Syngman Rhee. Although he was elected as a representative for the National Assembly in 1961, a military coup led by Park Chung Hee made it void. 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, which culminated in running a presidential campaign in 1971. He managed a close race against Park despite several handicaps imposed by the ruling regime. He proved to be a supremely talented orator who 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. (See 1973 Kidnapping of Kim Dae-Jung.) 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.
Kim was reinstated in 1979 after Park Chung-hee 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. With the intervention of the United States government, the sentence was commuted to 20 years in prison and later he was given exile to the U.S. Kim temporarily settled in Boston, Massachusetts 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. During his period abroad, he authored a number of opinion pieces in leading Western newspapers that were sharply critical of his government.

Road to the Presidency

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 after the 1961 coup, Kim Dae-jung and Kim Young-sam both ran. The result was a split the opposition vote, 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.
He made yet another failed bid for the presidency in 1992, this time solely against Kim Young-sam, who won as a candidate for the ruling party. Many thought his political career was effectively over when Kim took a hiatus from politics and departed for the United Kingdom to take a position at Clare Hall, Cambridge University as a visiting scholar. 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. 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[1]. 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 College 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's inauguration marked the first time in Korean history that the ruling party peacefully transferred power to a democratically elected opposition victor.

Presidency

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. 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 administration is credited by some with overseeing a recovery from the Asian Financial Crisis although many believe that a recovery was inevitable and he actually hampered a full recovery (See below).
His policy of engagement with North Korea has been termed the Sunshine Policy. 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. 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. Kim was criticized for not demanding an apology from North Korea and going to Japan to attend a World Cup soccer match in the wake of the gunbattle between the two Koreas.
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.

Post-Presidency

Kim has 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.

Criticisms of Kim Dae Jung

Kim hardly enjoys universal admiration in Korea. His election in 1998 occurred in part because the ruling party fielded two candidates, splitting the conservative vote. The second reason was a backlash against the financial crisis. There remain to this day many Koreans who feel that Kim did not deserve to win and his presidency was a disaster for the country. Kim has always enjoyed an extremely high level of support in the Southwestern Jeolla province, where he has routinely received over 90% of the popular vote in elections, a figure unsurpassed in Korean politics since 1945. Many believe that he was able to successfully exploit the deep-seated feelings of suspicion and grievances Jeolla residents had towards the central government, to the detriment of national unity and reconciliation. He was accused of instigating the Gwangju armed uprising and found guilty of sedition charges for the Kwangju uprising, although it is not clear if he received a fair trial. He was pardoned later.
On at least three occasions over two decades, he publicly renounced any further interest in politics, only to come back and run for the Presidency once more. He was finally elected President on his fourth attempt.
Kim's populist stance has also angered many Koreans. Kim has to his name numerous books and publications ghost-authored by socialist intellectuals, which he never acknowledged. These include contributions in the Western press that belittled the Korean government as being primitive and backwards, with parallels often drawn with the Philippines ruled by dictator Marcos. He is also the sole author of economics books, although he lacks any formal training in economics, that come quite close to endorsing Marxism. During the 1960s, Kim was an extremely vocal opponent of economic development by President Park Chung-Hee, which ultimately lifted the nation out of poverty. In one famous instance, he staged a demonstration against highway construction by laying himself on the road and physically blocking construction. His anti-capitalist stance softened gradually over decades but he remained hostile to large conglomerates, which were the engines for economic growth in the 1960s to 1980s. While Kim credits himself with recovery from the Asian financial crisis, others point out that the recovery was only partial and was most likely inevitable given the underlying strength of the Korean economy. It has been argued by prominent economists, such as Martin Feldstein of Harvard University, that the crisis was largely financial in nature, not arising from a fundamental defect in the growth-oriented market economy propelled by large corporations. Indeed, as the head of the main opposition party that repeatedly thwarted the Kim Young Sam government's attempts to pass finance reform laws, Kim Dae Jung may have contributed to the crisis, as some Koreans believe. By blaming and suppressing the large corporations, Kim Dae Jung's administration may have sapped the country of potential for sustained high-rate growth. Other scholars have argued that Kim's action to reform and tighten the Chaebol made many Korean companies competitive in the international market. However, with the exception of a few notables, such as Samsung, Hyundai, and LG, most conglomerates perished under Kim's rule. Newspapers critical of the administration, including the Chosun Ilbo, Donga Ilbo, and Korean Central Daily, were targeted for tax audits and the owners jailed for tax evasion. Of note, other newspapers with pro-government leanings were not targeted.
Kim has also been accused of illegally funneling state funds to the North Korean leader Kim Il Sung to make possible a historic North-South summit in Pyongyang during Kim's administration. Kim's so-called sunshine policy has been widely credited with bringing about a reduction in tensions between North and South Korea. Most scholars do not believe, however, it has produced a fundamental change in the aggressive policies of the North towards South Korea or that it has resulted in any appreciable improvement in living conditions or human rights in North Korea. Indeed, his monetary aid to North Korea may have helped that state pursue the development of nuclear weapons. In his attempts to appease North Korea, Kim tended to ignore provocations by the North. For example, when North Korean naval vessels fired upon a South Korean ship without warning and sank it, killing South Korean servicemen, Kim not only declined to mount a protest but went to Japan to watch a football game, infuriating the conservatives and veterans groups. His opponents have long vowed to investigate the circumstances behind the arrangement of monetary aids to North Korea during his administration, which has so far been cloaked in secrecy, once the conservatives regain control of the Presidency.

References

1. Kim Dae-Jung (Short Asian Week biography)
2. Kim Dae-Jung (Short CNN biography)

See also

★ Liberalism in South Korea

★ 1973 Kidnapping of Kim Dae-Jung

★ North-South presidential summit corruption allegations

★ South Korean Presidential Election, 1997

External links

★ Official Nobel page for Kim

★ Kim Dae-jung Presidential Library

★ BBC article on his legacy

★ CNN Profile of Kim Dai Jung