Late Cardinal Kim central force in Korea`s democratization

SEOUL, Feb. 16 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's Cardinal Stephen Kim Sou-hwan passed
away on Monday, leaving behind a towering legacy in Korea's modern history that
transcends religious boundaries. He was 86.
Kim, who was South Korea's first cardinal to the Vatican, retired in 1998 after
serving as archbishop of Seoul for 37 years, a period that marked the country's
turbulent transition from dictatorship to democracy.
Kim was consistently at the forefront of the pro-democracy movement. His often
scathing criticism of political and social events had an explosive impact on an
increasingly restive general public.
As the leader of 2.5 million Korean Catholics, Kim enjoyed high respect at home
and abroad, attracting leading figures from Korean society, including presidents,
who often sought him out for advice.
Born the youngest son of a poor merchant in the southeastern provincial city of
Daegu in May 1922, Kim was ordained in 1951. After assisting parishes in his
hometown during the 1950-1953 Korean War, he was named bishop of Masan, a
neighboring city, in 1966.
Kim was later promoted to Archbishop of Seoul and was then ordained cardinal by
Pope Paul VI in 1969. He was the world's longest-serving cardinal in the Roman
Catholic Church, and under his leadership the Korean Catholic community grew
three-fold to 2.5 million in a country of 48 million people.
In his first memoir, published in 1998, Kim said South Korea's modern history had
been distorted by power-hungry politicians who shamelessly trampled upon the
human rights of the citizens.
He was a strong advocate of pro-democracy activists and the underprivileged, many
of whom sought refuge at his church in downtown Seoul.
That church, known as Myungdong Cathedral, served as a haven for pro-democracy
leaders who took refuge from police. In 1987, as the student-led pro-democracy
movement reached its peak, Kim defied a government order by refusing to hand over
student leaders who were hiding there.
"If you want to take the students away, arrest me first and then the nuns and
then the students," he writes in his memoir, recounting confrontations with the
then military-backed government of President Chun Doo-hwan who had seized power
in a coup.
The decades of military rule between the 1970s and 1980s, during which Korea was
governed by successive military leaders, including Chun and his mentor Park
Chung-hee, comprise one of the darkest periods in modern Korean history.
According to published reports, the cardinal once quipped in a personal meeting
with Chun, "I feel like we're watching a Western cowboy movie. Whoever grabs the
gun first wins the game."
In his second memoir, published in 2004, the cardinal says he lamented his
inability to stop the military from ruthlessly cracking down on a pro-democracy
uprising in the southern city of Gwangju in 1980 that left hundreds of people
dead.
"When someone asks me if I did all I could at that time, I don't have the
confidence to say I did. If I'm then asked if I did nothing, I want to say I
worked in my own way to try to stop what happened," Kim writes of the Gwangju
killings.
With extraordinary candor, Kim confesses in his memoirs that he was occasionally
unable to feel the divine sense of "love" one assumes to be the core of a
priest's calling.
"I used to ask myself if my faith and life were blessings. I came close to
answering 'No,'" he says.
Kim lived a blessed life in many respects, but he often said he was unsatisfied
with himself. "I always wanted to run away, and there were many times when I
wanted to put down my cross," he writes.
The pressure that came with his position as the leader of the Korean Catholic
Church affected him deeply, so much so that he often relied on medication to
sleep.
In the forward to his 2004 memoir, Kim writes, "Through this book, readers might
be able to guess to a certain extent what kind of life I have led. My life will
only be perfectly revealed, however, when my existence in this world ends and I
stand before God."
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