Kim Dae-jung leaves legacy as champion of human rights

SEOUL, Aug. 18 (Yonhap) -- The election of Kim Dae-jung, a tireless fighter
against military rule, as president in 1997 was viewed as a turning point for
South Korean human rights.

Handing down his convictions to his immediate successor, the late Roh Moo-hyun,
Kim laid the groundwork for a decade of liberal rule that focused on eradicating
the vestiges of authoritarianism and stabilizing democracy.
As if to prove their strong and uncommon bond, Kim died less than three months
after Roh leaped to his death.
"I feel like half of my body has crumbled," Kim told his aides after learning
that Roh took his own life on May 23 after a pressing corruption probe tarnished
his legacy of clean politics.
Choosing the restoration of justice as one of his policy priorities after
inauguration in 1998, Kim launched an independent panel to unveil violations of
human rights that had gone unnoticed under previous military regimes.
The panel uncovered several cases that included the collective execution of
student activists in 1975 accused of carrying out North Korea's directives after
forming an underground network. Their speedy execution, under the then
dictatorial Park Chung-hee government, just 18 hours after the court ruling had
raised public furor and unanswered questions about the veracity of the charges.
The truth commission concluded in 2003 that the charges had been fabricated as an
excuse for the security agency to get rid of dissident activists who were
challenging Park's authority.
Throughout his life, Kim stood firmly before the international community on
issues of human rights and rapprochement with North Korea. He believed in
engaging the isolated state rather than pressuring it, an approach that sometimes
ran counter to the United States.
For such effort, Kim became Korea's first and so far the only Nobel Peace Prize
winner in 2000. His so-called "sunshine" police of engaging North Korea was also
supported by the Roh government but abandoned by the incumbent government of
President Lee Myung-bak.
After receiving the Nobel prize, Kim said, "In my life, I've lived with the
conviction that justice wins. Justice may fail in one's lifetime, but it will
eventually win in the course of history."
Having once been sentenced to death by the authoritarian government, Kim
virtually put an end to capital punishment in South Korea after he took office.
There has not been an execution in the country since he was elected president.
A devout Catholic, Kim once wrote how horrifying it was to face death as a
political prisoner, and how the experience shook his faith.
"I used to believe until now that I have a certain amount of faith. But now in a
situation where I am close to death, I experience everyday how fragile my
existence is...I get angry about my lack of faith," he wrote in a postcard to his
family on Nov. 21, 1980 while imprisoned.
Two months prior, he had been convicted of sedition under the administration of
Chun Doo-hwan. Chun, who seized power in a coup after Park Chung-hee was
assassinated by his intelligence aide in 1979, accused Kim of being a communist
and arrested him along with other dissident writers, scholars and religious
leaders.
Chun then used Kim as a bargaining tool in his relations with Washington, as
suggested in declassified U.S. documents. Then U.S. President Ronald Reagan,
concerned by the social unrest Kim's death could unleash, made a clandestine deal
to recognize Chun's new government in return for Kim's release.
Kim's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 1981 and he was released a
year later. He received treatment in the U.S. for a leg injury sustained during a
suspected assassination attempt.
Kim also established the first human rights watchdog in Korea to protect people
whose rights had been trampled on by the government.
hayney@yna.co.kr
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