Leading Marxist economist dies at 73
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Kim Soo-haeng
By Park Si-soo
Korea’s leading Marxist economist Kim Soo-haeng, who translated the legendary economic book “Capital: Critique of Political Economy” into Korean in 1990, died of a heart attack in the United States, Saturday, his associates said Monday. He was 73.
“He left for the U.S. on July 28 to see his two sons who lived there and died of heart attack on Saturday,” said the Korean Association for Political Economy in a statement. The late scholar served as the association’s chairman. “He was healthy. So his death was unexpected.”
A memorial service took place, Monday, in Moab, Utah State, according to the statement.
Kim is widely known to have played an important role in promoting Marxism in Korea. In the 1980s when the government cracked down on left-leaning economists, Kim and his peers committed themselves to promoting Marxism to ensure academic diversity and above all, to keep the government’s growth-oriented economic policy in check.
His academic peer Chung Woon-young, a Kyunggi University professor who died in 2005, first translated the German version of Capital into Korean in 1987. Chung published the book with his name withheld to avoid any persecution by the government. Three years later, Kim translated the book’s English version into Korean.
The two translated books were distributed widely, offering an “eye-opening” experience for many economists and students here, said Prof. Kim Hyung-gi at Kyungpook National University.
The late scholar was born in Fukuoka, Japan, in 1942. He graduated from primary and secondary school in Daegu and entered Seoul National University’s department of economics in 1961. He earned a master’s degree in the same subject from the same school and a doctorate from the University of London in 1982.
The following year, he started his career as a professor at Hanshin University but was sacked for engaging in the pro-liberation movement that provoked the authoritarian regime of that time.
He was appointed as an economics professor at Seoul National University in 1989 and retired in 2008. He has since served as a chair professor at Sungkonghoe University, publishing books based on Marxism and writing columns for newspapers. He is survived by his wife and two sons.