Kim Dae Jung

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Kim Dae-jung
Kim Dae-jung during a visit of George W. Bush in Seoul, February 20, 2002.
15th President of South Korea
In office February 25, 1998 – February 25, 2003
Preceded by	Kim Young-sam
Succeeded by	Roh Moo-hyun
Born	January 6, 1926 (age 80) Haui-do, South Jeolla

Kim Dae Jung
Hangul:	김대중
Hanja:	金大中
Revised Romanization:	Gim Dae-jung
McCune-Reischauer:	Kim Taejung

Kim Dae-jung (born January 6, 1926) is a former South Korean president and the 2000 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, the first winner of a Nobel to hail from Korea ^[1]. A Roman Catholic since 1957, he has been called the "Nelson Mandela" of Asia ^[2] and was a symbol of democratic opposition to the dictatorial government. Kim Dae Jung was the President (succeeding Kim Young-sam) from 1998 to 2003. He was born in Haui-do, South Jeolla Province, an island off the South Korean Coast.

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 Cholla 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. [1] 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 stayed in Harvard University as visiting fellow 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.

Contents 1 Road to the Presidency 2 Presidency 3 Post-Presidency 4 Criticisms of Kim Dae Jung 5 See also 6 External links

[edit] 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 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[[2]]. 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 a ruling party peacefully transferred power to a democratically elected opposition victor. This is because the leftists have never been in power in Korea until Kim's administration. Kim's successor, Roh Moo Hyun, is also a leftist and is the current President.

[edit] 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. 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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] Criticisms of Kim Dae Jung

Kim is by no means universally admired. He enjoys an extremely high level of support in the Southwestern Jeolla province, where he routinely received close to 100% of the popular vote in elections. In the rest of the country, he is often a target of scathing criticism by the conservatives, who constitute the majority of the population. Kim is known for his superb oratorial skills and is often characterized as a demagogue and a populist rabblerouser. To rally support, he has often resorted to inflammatory rhetoric pitting the Jeolla province against the wealthier Gyeonsang Province and has also been accused of instigating the Kwangju armed uprising, which led to a bloody suppression by the military. He was tried and found guilty of sedition charges for the Kwangju uprising, although 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 Presidency once more. He was finally elected President on his fourth attempt.

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 Felstein 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, which resembled the Japanese economy from two decades earlier. By blaming and suppressing the large corporations, Kim Dae Jung's administration may have sapped the country of potential for sustained high-rate growth. Numerous corporations which had enjoyed robust growth went under during Kim's Presidency, particularly the ones whose owners publicly disagreed with Kim's business policies. 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.

His Sunshine Policy is today considered by many to be a glaring failure, having only provided sufficient cash for North Korea to maintain its totalitarian regime and develop nuclear weapons. There has been little factual evidence that the North Korean regime has made any progress in human rights, about which Kim has been notoriously silent. Indeed, Kim may have committed illegal acts while funneling large sums of state money to North Korea without the knowledge of the National Assembly or the Korean public. While many have called for a special prosecutor to investigate the charges, no extensive formal investigation has taken place with the leftists remaining in power in the executive and legislative branches of the government. This may change in the subsequent administration as the level of support for both the current President and the ruling party have dropped well below 15% while the conservatives have enjoyed an upsurge of support to nearly 50%.

[edit] See also

• Liberalism in South Korea
• 1973 Kidnapping of Kim Dae-Jung
• North-South presidential summit corruption allegations

[edit] External links

• Official Nobel page for Kim
• Kim Dae-jung Presidential Library
• BBC article on his legacy

Preceded by Kim Young-sam

President of South Korea 1998-2003

Succeeded by Roh Moo-hyun

Presidents of South Korea
Provisional Government: Rhee Syng-man* | Park Eunsik* | Yi Sang-ryong* | Hong Jin* | Yi Dong-nyung* | Kim Gu*
Rhee Syng-man | Yun Bo-seon | Park Chung-hee | Choe Kyu-hah | Chun Doo-hwan | Roh Tae-woo | Kim Young-sam | Kim Dae-jung | Roh Moo-hyun

Persondata
NAME	Dae-jung, Kim
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	김대중 (hangul); 金大中 (hanja); Gim Dae-jung (Revised Romanization); Kim Taejung (McCune-Reischauer)
SHORT DESCRIPTION	South Korean president
DATE OF BIRTH	January 6, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH	Haui-do, South Jeolla, South Korea
DATE OF DEATH	living
PLACE OF DEATH