Rightist group seeks to lead unification drive

Kim Kyung-jae, new president of the conservative civic group Korea Freedom Federation (KFF), holds an interview with The Korea Times at the KFF headquarters in central Seoul on April 25. / Korea Times photo by Jun Ji-hye

By Jun Ji-hye

The new president of the conservative civic group, Korea Freedom Federation (KFF), said the group, which has some 5 million members nationwide, will lead the preparations for the unification of the two Koreas.

During a recent interview with The Korea Times, Kim Kyung-jae, who was inaugurated on April 28, said he will do his best to attract centrists as well as conservatives to help push the KFF’s initiatives.

Kim’s election as the president of the far-right civic group on Feb. 25 for a three-year term came as a surprise, given that he was one of the closest confidants of late liberal President Kim Dae-jung.

The 73-year-old served as a two-term lawmaker from 1996 to 2004, representing the liberal Suncheon district in South Jeolla Province.

The group usually holds the inauguration ceremony around March 10, but Kim postponed it to April 28 this year, out of concern that the ceremony, which invites a number of influential politicians, may affect the April 13 general elections.

“I think I was elected as the president because the KFF wanted a change,” he said. “I want the KFF to embrace a broad range of forces, from conservatives to centrists.”

He said he decided to run for the presidency of the KFF with the belief that the conservative forces would not be enough to achieve the national task of the unification of South and North Korea.

He believes his background as a former aide to the liberal president could considerably help the KFF, which was established in June 1954 with the initial aim of rejecting communism, expand its horizons and move toward national integration.

“Progressive forces can also be integrated once they strip their bloc of North Korean sympathizers,” he said, noting that the recent political trend, in which the conservative party recruits liberal leaders and vice versa, seems to be a good idea.

To overcome ideological divide

As part of efforts to overcome the deepening division between ideologies, which Kim cited as a major obstacle to the unification, Kim called for erecting statues of four former Presidents ― Syngman Rhee, Park Chung-hee, Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung ― at Gwanghwamun Square in central Seoul.

This is an artist’s conception of the statues of four former Presidents, from left, Syngman Rhee, Park Chung-hee, Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung, which Korea Freedom Federation President Kim Kyung-jae wants to erect at Gwanghwamun Square in an effort to address an ideological divide in Korean society. / Graphic by Cho Sang-won

“Syngman Rhee founded the country, and Park Chung-hee achieved industrialization and spectacular economic growth, while the two Kims contributed a lot to achieving the nation’s democracy,” he said. “Today’s Republic of Korea would have never existed without the four. The people should embrace them all.”

Kim said the lower portion of the statues should be attached to each other in order to prevent critics from destroying the statue of the president whom they do not respect.

“When all the statues are attached, the people will have to show respect to all of them even if they want to do so to only one,” he said. “By doing so, Gwanghwamun Plaza will be a place that brings national harmony.”

Kim made the proposal because the conservative Syngman Rhee and Park Chung-hee have been criticized by liberals for holding back democracy, while Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung have been cited as symbols of the nation’s struggle for democratization.

Despite the criticisms against Rhee and Park, the father of incumbent President Park Geun-hye, Kim stressed that their respective roles in laying the constitutional and economic foundations of the country should never be ignored.

Kim said achieving national harmony first in South Korea will help lay the ground work for the unification of the Korean Peninsula, and eventually give freedom to the people of North Korea.

“The terrible living conditions of North Korean people are unimaginable. We are focusing on unification to alleviate their sufferings as soon as possible,” he said. “A dictator like Kim Jong-un never existed in the past and will never exist in the future. He has viciously killed his people.”

He also believes a big change in the North Korean regime will happen in three or four years, as complaints among its people have been significantly increasing.

Kim said he was once a supporter of the so-called “Sunshine Policy” of late President Kim Dae-jung that called for active engagement and reconciliation with the North. However, his thoughts changed after he visited the communist state as the then president’s secret emissary.

“I visited the North for eight days. At the time, Kim Jong-un’s father, Kim Jong-il, was in power. I was treated really well there,” he said. “During the visit, I wanted to check whether the enormous amount of rice that the Kim administration sent to the regime was delivered to the ordinary people, but the North did not allow me to do so.”

Kim said he thought the rice was not sent to the people, but to the North Korean People’s Army, noting that he asked the late president to make a change in his Sunshine Policy in accordance with the situation, rather than providing whatever the regime wanted.

“I was so angry and asked the president, ‘What kind of country starves its people?’” he said. “My thoughts about the North changed at this time, and I decided to do something to save those people.”

He recalled how his decision to join the presidential campaign of the conservative Saenuri Party’s Park Geun-hye in 2012 surprised the public.

“Park called and asked me to help her in the lead-up to the presidential election,” he said. “I told her my ideas regarding North Korean policy and said I was going to partner with her if she agreed with my ideas. And she did.”

Among the ideas Kim suggested was constructing a peace park in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), a four-kilometer-wide arms-free buffer running between the two Koreas, which have been under a cease-fire since after the 1950-1953 Korean War.

President Park has been indeed pushing for the project since her inauguration, saying it will serve as the first step toward inter-Korean rapprochement.

“The unification of the two Koreas should not be a topic in which only the government is interested,” said Kim, who became a special aide to President Park in 2015. “It should become a national topic, and all people should unite.”