Jeolla President: unlikely election of Kim Dae-jung

By Michael Breen

If democracy is measured by the simple yardstick of the ability of government opponents to win elections, the victory of the longtime opposition leader Kim Dae-jung in the president vote in December 1997, confirmed South Korea’s emergence as a new and vibrant democracy.

But it took a nation-rocking financial crisis to make it possible.

Kim had no time to enjoy the moment ― his fourth run at the presidency ― as even in the transition period before the February 1998 inauguration, the country looked to him for immediate leadership.

The International Monetary Fund had already agreed on a bailout package to prevent default, but during the election campaign Kim Dae-jung had indicated he would renegotiate the deal. Washington sent undersecretary of the U.S. treasury, David Lipton, to assess Kim’s intentions firsthand.

Four hours before the meeting, the president-elect was briefed by Kim Ki-hwan, a former head of the Korea Development Institute and the outgoing government’s economic “ambassador.” Kim Ki-hwan had been in the United States to seek US government support to save the country from bankruptcy.

The key concern of the Americans was whether Korea would introduce “labor flexibility,” in other words, allow companies to fire workers to maintain financial health.

Kim Dae-jung, well briefed, rose to the moment. “What I consider most important is the ability to compete,” he said. “To have that ability, flexibility is critical. It is only when we are competitive that jobs and income will be guaranteed.”

Two days later, the IMF and 13 major economies, including the United States, announced an emergency bailout package of $10 billion. Even before taking office, he saved the country from default.

That calm decision amidst crisis typified Kim’s public life. A thoughtful and rather distant man, who by his own admission lacked courage, Kim never lost his focus. As a result, he was so gored and tossed by dictators that he came, for the international community, to personify Korea’s struggle for democracy.

This perception, it must be said, was rather unfair to other figures in the democracy movement, most notably the outgoing president, Kim Young-sam. A lifelong opposition leader, this Kim had contributed as much if not more, but he had crossed over to join the ruling party, a strategy for the top job that diluted his “democratic” credentials.

Kim Dae-jung also suffered in Korean perception because of regionalism. It is a notable and disappointing trait of the citizens of this country that, as nothing substantial in terms of religion or values distinguishes them, they line up on opposing sides over non-issues, such as school and hometown ties.

Thus in the Jeolla region, whose worthies had been denied powerful positions for decades by dictators from rival provinces, Kim Dae-jung regularly earned over 90 percent of the vote. Indeed, in earlier elections, it was said that the 10 percent who voted against him, were Jeolla residents born elsewhere, and that votes from Seoul and other provinces for him were from the Jeolla Diaspora.

In such a political culture, when a man from a new region can be expected to sweep the establishment clean, the far-fetched claims that Kim was actually a communist seemed perfectly reasonable if they worked to turn voters away.

Kim came, it may be said, from Jeolla’s Jeolla ― the islands whose people were looked down upon by other Jeolla residents. Records show he was born in January 1925, but an examination of his school documents indicates that this is a “correction” and that his original birth registration was December 1923. (The most likely explanation for this change, made when he was around 19 or 20, was to avoid conscription into the Japanese army after graduation from high school during the Second World War).

Over the years, political opponents exploited the fact that he was the son of a concubine to spread doubt among conservative voters. For this reason, Kim was never clear about his early family life. His mother, Jang Ro-do, was a young, childless widow who had chosen to strike out on her own after her first husband died rather than spend the rest of her life alone, as would have been expected in Confucian Korea. She took up with a married man, Kim Un-shik, the son of an oriental medicine practitioner and had three children in a not-uncommon arrangement as the concubine. Kim Dae-jung, her eldest son, grew up with his mother and siblings, less than a mile away from the house where his father lived with his other wife and children.

When he was seven, Kim Dae-jung started attending a privately-run village school. Here he began his study of Chinese classics, calligraphy and mathematics. When he came top in the exams, his mother was elated. He also won the approval of the most respected man in the village. “My father used to say, ‘Look at this boy. He is going to be important,’” said Kim Chun-bae, the son of the teacher, in a 2001 interview.

And so he discovered, through study and achievement, his path to affirmation.

In 1939, he entered the prestigious Mokpo Public Commercial School after coming top in the entrance exam. The following year, all Koreans were required to adopt Japanese names. Kim Dae-jung became Toyota Hiroshi. (Years later, Seoul newspapers pounced on Kim when they discovered that on a trip to Tokyo, he had called his old teacher and said, “Sir, this is Toyota-san.”)

In his last year at school, like many young Korean intellectuals at that time, he had started studying banned Marxist texts. He joined an underground communist group, and his main activity seemed to be to surreptitiously paste anti-Japanese posters in the city. He married Cha Yong-ae, gave up his communist activities at the urging of his father-in-law, a businessman, and began working in the Mokpo Marine Transportation Co. With the departure of the Japanese from Korea at the end of the Second World War, he and other employees took over the company. In 1947, he bought a ship and started his own company. In that same year, he was arrested after a local detective, who did not like him, claimed he was a communist. A colleague took the policeman responsible for the case out drinking and paid a bribe to have him released.

He was on a business trip to Seoul when the North Koreans invaded the city at the start of the Korean War. He escaped back to Mokpo, but was then arrested and jailed by North Korean troops who occupied most of the South for a few months in 1950 before being routed by U.N. forces.

He was soon drawn to politics and ran unsuccessfully for election. He caught the attention of John Chang Myon, the Catholic politician who became prime minister in 1960 after President Syngman Rhee was toppled. After his wife died unexpectedly, leaving him to care for their two boys, Kim converted to Catholicism and took the name Thomas. He won his first election in 1961, but before he arrived to take his seat in the National Assembly in Seoul, General Park Chung-hee staged a military coup and closed the parliament.

He later married Lee Hee-ho, a Christian activist, and had another son. He became the assemblyman for Mokpo and spokesman for John Chang’s democratic party. In 1971, Park held a presidential election and opposition party elders decided that it was time to field a younger candidate. Kim Dae-jung was the surprise winner of a run-off vote.

Kim was now suddenly one of the country’s most prominent politicians. During the campaign, his car was driven off the road by a truck in what he believes was an attempt on his life. His injuries left him with a permanent Charlie Chaplin-type waddle. Despite an enormous disadvantage as an opposition candidate running against an incumbent dictator, Kim Dae-jung only narrowly lost. This near-victory stunned Park and the ruling camp and Kim thereafter became a marked man.

On a trip to Japan in 1973, Kim was kidnapped by South Korean agents, and bundled aboard a boat. Blindfolded and trussed, he believed that he was going to be thrown overboard. At that moment, he had an experience of Christ, the inspiration of which remained with him all his life. An aircraft buzzed the boat and, without explanation, Kim was returned to Korea and dropped off outside his home. The American CIA, tipped off to the kidnapping, had intervened to save his life.

In 1980, Kim was arrested by the new authorities, under Chun Doo-hwan, and found sentenced to death on charges of sedition, arising from protests against martial law in Gwangju which occurred while he was behind bars.

Saved again by U.S. intervention ― the incoming government of Ronald Reagan made it very clear to Chun that it would view Kim’s execution as a crime ― Kim suffered through the 1980s in exile, under house arrest, until finally he was freed to run in the democratic election of 1987. He lost and then again in 1992 before the victory of 1997.