Kim Dae-Jung, the tireless force for democracy in South Korea who overcame kidnapping, prison and a commuted death sentence to win his country’s presidency and a Nobel Peace Prize, died in Seoul on Tuesday of pneumonia. He was 85.
As president, Kim reached out to North Korea with a “Sunshine Policy,” flying to its capital for the first North-South summit with communist leader Kim Jong-Il. He helped cement young institutions of democracy in South Korea and restore its economy after a 1997 financial collapse.
His later years, though, brought some frustration. Despite the summit’s pledges of detente, tensions rose as the North detonated two nuclear test bombs and the Bush administration rejected the outreach policy. Kim’s own standing suffered with disclosure of secret payments to the North before the summit and a corruption conviction of his two sons.
Throughout his life, Kim pursued his goals with a single-mindedness that could startle enemies and friends alike. Over and over, he surmounted the insurmountable, only to be undone by arrest or military coup, then picked himself up and went back for more.
“The people must be treated as masters and must act like masters,” he once said.
As a dissident, Kim was aided at particular danger points by the U.S. government, which maintained tens of thousands of troops in the country, a Cold War flashpoint, and exercised strong influence in its capital, Seoul. U.S. officials stepped in to shield Kim from military officers who viewed him as a dangerous, disloyal radical and wanted him dead.
Once the tables were turned and he entered South Korea’s presidential mansion, known as the Blue House, he displayed a remarkable ability to make peace with former adversaries. Among the parade of South Korean dignitaries who called on him during his final illness in a Seoul’s Severance Hospital was retired general and former president Chun Doo-Hwan, whose military court had sentenced Kim to death in 1980.
Inside.
