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| DATE | 2009-08-21 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [NYLXS - HANGOUT] Democratic Leaders dieing away
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Kim Dae Jung's Lesson
Engaging dictatorships is risky business.
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By SETH LIPSKY
The life of free Korea's ex-president, Kim Dae Jung, which came to an
end this week, gives new meaning to the phrase "sunshine soldier." In
some respects he was like Corazon Aquino of the Philippines, who died
last month, a hero of the struggle for democracy in Asia. In other
respects, however, Kim had a story that was more complex and
dangerous—one that stands as a cautionary tale for Mr. Obama.
I met Kim in 1979, when he was being held under house arrest at Seoul
and I was the managing editor of the Asian edition of The Wall Street
Journal. I'd been told that if I went to his neighborhood, Dong-gyo Don,
in the western section of South Korea's capital, and telephoned him from
a pay phone, I would receive instructions. They were to walk down a
nearby alley and, whatever happened, to avoid stopping, or talking, when
approached by government security agents.
Sure enough, the moment I ducked into the alley I was swarmed by them.
When I declined to speak and kept walking briskly, they fell away. One
of Kim's aides waved me on from his gate, which, as soon as I scrambled
inside, closed behind me with a welcome clink. Then I was ushered into
the modest bungalow of the man who once marshaled crowds of half a
million Koreans and nearly toppled the presidency of the country's
strongman, Park Chung Hee.
Kim had left the country after losing the 1971 election. When President
Park declared marshal law in 1972, Kim began criticizing him from
foreign soil, and in 1973, he was kidnapped from a hotel in Tokyo and
brought back to his country. He was arrested in 1976 after he signed a
manifesto against the president and drew a sentence of five years. His
country was then, as now, in one of the most dangerous military
standoffs on the planet.
In a living room lined with hundreds of books in Korean, Japanese and
English, along with busts of Lincoln and Kennedy and a painting of Jesus
Christ, Kim lit a pipe and began to sketch his goal—which was for
what he called a "democratic reunification" with North Korea. He made
the point, over and over again, that the democratization of the South
would have to precede any reunification, and that any reunification
would have to be done democratically.
Government agents, including some who were once friends and admirers,
set Kim down as not just naïve but vain. I tended to discount that kind
of talk, for dissidents or exiles often can seem flaky. But I did find
it hard to believe that there was much hope for his vision. Any visitor
to the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea gets a visceral
feel of how explosive and dangerous is the peninsula, where millions
died during the 1950-53 war.
Kim didn't deny the extraordinary economic gains that Korea was starting
to show under Park Chung Hee. He argued that the recent economic growth
in non-Communist countries in Asia demonstrated "the advantage of the
Free World compared to the communist countries." He also said it was no
coincidence that the success was coming in Confucian countries. Yes,
under Park there had been what Kim called "brilliant" economic growth.
But he predicted that the more economic growth there was, the more
social unrest there would be absent a democratic system.
The meeting with Kim was one of the most memorable in a long newspaper
career, even though, I don't mind saying, I emerged highly doubtful that
he had a future. I couldn't have been more wrong.
Only months later, Park Chung Hee was having dinner with several of his
closest cronies when the chief of his intelligence service pulled out a
pistol and shot him to death, an assassination that rocked the world. A
new strongman, Chun Doo Hwan, eventually emerged and martial law was
again declared.
This was followed by riots in the city of Kwangju, an uprising that was
brutally suppressed with some 200 people, maybe more, were killed. Kim
himself ended up being prosecuted, if that is the word, for his alleged
role in the rebellion, even though he was in custody at the time. He was
sentenced to death. The sentence was commuted and he was later exiled to
the U.S. He returned to Korea in 1985. Then, in 1988, the year in which
Korea hosted the Olympics, democratic elections were held—and they
have been held ever since.
In 1997, Kim Dae Jung became the first opposition leader to be elected
president, one of the most astounding comebacks in political history,
entering office as a liberal after decades of conservative rule. He
stepped into a sharp economic downturn, as well, but he got the chance
to try the theories that he had expounded to me through the clouds of
pipe-smoke nearly 20 years before.
Kim's "sunshine policy," as it was called—détente and economic
engagement with the North—gained him a meeting with the North Korean
communist dictator, Kim Jong Il. It took place in 2000, and Kim himself
was promptly awarded the Nobel Prize for peace. A period of détente,
replete with various economic projects, followed.
Yet eventually scandal erupted, when it turned out that Kim had
apparently steered hundreds of millions of dollars to the North Korean
dictator to facilitate the summit. It seems he'd attempted his
"democratic reunification" with democracy in only one of the two halves
of Korea. South Koreans grew sick of it, abandoning the policy as a
failure and bringing in a conservative in 2007.
This is something for Barack Obama, who praised Kim after his passing as
a "champion of democracy and human rights," to study—not only with
respect to Pyongyang but also the other regimes with which he seeks
engagement before they have had their own democratic revolutions.
Mr. Lipsky, a former member of the Journal's editorial board, is
founding editor of the New York Sun.
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