Kim Dae-jung

Kim Dae-jung (2001)
Korean spelling
Hangeul	김대중
Hanja	金大中
Revised Romanization	Gim Dae-jung
McCune- Reischauer	Kim Taejung
See also : Korean name

Kim Dae-jung (born December 3, 1925 as Kin Daichū on the island of Hauido, Sinan-gun, Zenra-nandō province , then the Japanese Empire , today's South Korea ; † August 18, 2009 in Seoul , South Korea) was a South Korean politician. For a long time Kim was the leader of the opposition, in 1998 he replaced Kim Young-sam as President of the Republic of Korea (South Korea) and held this office until 2003. In 2000 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

life and work

Early years

Kim Dae-jung was born the son of a farmer on the island of Hauido in the province of Zenra-nandō . Since this was a colony of the Japanese Empire until the end of World War II and Japanese was the national language, the Japanese pronunciation of the Hanja of his name Kin Daichu was used during this time . He had to adopt the Japanese version of his name Toyota Daichū ( 豊 田 大中 ) by 1940 at the latest. He had six siblings. He attended the trade school in Mokupo until 1943 and then found a job with a shipping line. After the defeat of Japan in the Second World War and the subsequent independence of the Korean Peninsula from Japan, Kim Dae-jung took over the management of the company and expanded it into a shipping company . Until 1955 he was the head of the shipping company. He was also the editor of the Mokpo Daily News for about three years . In 1950, at the beginning of the Korean War , Kim Dae-jung was briefly imprisoned. In 1957 he converted to the Catholic faith .

Working in the opposition

Kim Dae-jung began his political career in 1954 as a rival candidate for Syngman Rhee . Rhee was supported by the US government. So Kim lost the election. It wasn't until 1961 that Kim managed to get a seat in the government. He also completed courses in economics at the universities in Seoul and finished his studies in 1970. In 1963 he was re-elected to parliament. In 1967 he stood as a candidate for the newly founded People's Democratic Party, which won the election with a large majority.

In 1971, Kim Dae-jung ran against incumbent President Park Chung-hee and was narrowly defeated by him. He left South Korea in October 1972 and went to Japan, from where he organized the South Korean opposition. On August 8, 1973, he was kidnapped by agents of the South Korean secret service in Tokyo and was supposed to be murdered. Only through the intervention of the American secret service could his life be saved. Kim Dae-jung was only placed under house arrest in South Korea. In March 1976 he was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison and denied his civil rights . He was released in 1978, after which he was under house arrest until 1979. It was only after Park Chung-hee was murdered that his rights were restored. In connection with the Gwangju uprising , which took place in Gwangju after General Chun Doo-hwan came to power and the subsequent proclamation of martial law in May 1980 , he was accused of plans to overthrow, as a result of which he was sentenced to death. After international protests, Chun Doo-hwan pardoned him on January 23, 1981 in his capacity as president; the death penalty was commuted to life, and later to 20 years, before he was finally allowed to leave the United States in 1982.

In the USA he worked from 1983 to 1984 as a visiting fellow at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University in Cambridge , Massachusetts . In 1985 he returned to South Korea and resumed his role as leader of the opposition. Although he was placed under house arrest again until 1987, he was able to build the New Korean Democratic Party together with Kim Young-sam and establish it as a political force. In the first democratic elections in South Korea after the military dictatorship of General Chun Doo-hwan in 1987, Kim Dae-jung was defeated by the rival candidate ex-General Roh Tae-woo . Roh won this election because Kim Dae-jung and Kim Young-sam meanwhile, as bitter opponents over the further development of the party, divided and weakened the opposition. After losing again in the presidential elections in 1992, this time against his former comrade Kim Young-sam, Kim Dae-jung announced his retirement from politics and gave lectures as an honorary professor at universities in South Korea, China and Moscow .

Acting as President of South Korea

Kim Dae-jung with Bill Clinton

Kim Dae-jung with George W. Bush

In 1995, Kim Dae-jung re-established a party that he called the National Congress for New Politics . In 1997, Kim Dae-jung succeeded in replacing Kim Young-sam in the presidential election on December 18, as the latter had lost his credibility through numerous corruption affairs. Kim Dae-jung formed an alliance with the United Left Democrats and became president of the country on February 28, 1998. As a Catholic (since 1957) he had his home power in south-west South Korea, where Gwangju is the Catholic stronghold. He broke the tradition according to which all of his predecessors came from the rich Gyeongsang region: Park Chung-hee, Chun Doo-hwan, Roh Tae-woo and Kim Young-sam. The people of Jeolla, who had voted for him with an overwhelming majority, hoped that, as was customary until then, he would give preference to his home province for investments and contracts. This has only happened to a certain extent.

In 1999, Kim Dae-jung appointed a commission of inquiry and a. about the Jeju massacre , the results of which weighed heavily on the government.

The first meeting of the heads of state of South and North Korea took place in 2000 : Kim Dae-jung traveled to Pyongyang for talks with Kim Jong-il . This meeting took place within the framework of the Sunshine Policy, for which Kim Dae-jung was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize of 2000. The driving force behind this policy was basically the parent of the Hyundai group, Chung Ju-yung , who is from the north and tried to soften the fronts by making payments to North Korea and investing in the north.

After Kim Dae-Jung's term of office ended in 2003, judicial investigations revealed that Hyundai funds had flown illegally to North Korea and that people close to Kim had accepted large sums of money. Kim Dae-jung was also accused of knowing about North Korea's nuclear weapons program, but of having kept it a secret.

Kim Dae-Jung died on August 18, 2009 at the age of 83 in a hospital in Seoul of complications from pneumonia .

As part of the celebrations for Kim's funeral on August 23, 2009, the first meetings between high-ranking government representatives from North and South Korea for 18 months came as a surprise. At the state funeral for Kim Dae-jung, incumbent Prime Minister Han Seung-soo described the deceased as a "great leader in modern history".

Awards

• Bruno Kreisky Prize for Services to Human Rights (1981)
• Nobel Peace Prize for his contributions to the understanding between South Korea and North Korea (2000)
• Honorary Doctorate from the University of Cambridge (2001)
• Freedom Prize of the Free University of Berlin (2007)

literature

• Kim Dae-jung: My life, my way. Autobiography of the President of the Republic of Korea . Translated from the Korean by Chei Woon-jung, Frankfurter Allg. Book, Frankfurt am Main 2000, parallel text in Korean script, ISBN 3-933180-71-6
• Lee Hee-Ho (Mrs. Kim Dae-jung): My love, my country . From the American English by Werner Pfennig, Abera Verlag, Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-934376-46-0
• Edward J. Baker : Kim Dae-jung's Role in the Democratization of South Korea . In: Education about Asia . Volume 19, No. 1 , 2014, p. 66–71 (English, online [PDF; 588 kB ; accessed on April 23, 2019]).

Web links

Commons : Kim Dae-jung  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Wikiquote: Kim Dae-jung  - Quotes

• Literature by and about Kim Dae-jung in the catalog of the German National Library
• Information from the Nobel Foundation on the 2000 award ceremony for Kim Dae-jung (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ East Asia Institute at Ludwigshafen am Rhein University of Applied Sciences : Japanese Occupation , accessed on December 27, 2013
2. ↑ Berlinale.de: Background information on the film “KT” (PDF; 61 kB), requested on December 27, 2013
3. ↑ FAZ: Kim Dae-jung's kidnapping - late confession in Seoul from October 24, 2007.
4. ^ Baker : Kim Dae-jung's Role in the Democratization of South Korea . In: Education about Asia . 2014, p.  70 .
5. ↑ Christian Schmidt-Häuer: "Kill everyone, burn everything!" In: Online publication of the weekly newspaper Die Zeit . May 23, 2002, accessed December 27, 2013 . 
6. ↑ North Korea and South Korea are holding talks again , Spiegel Online , 23 August 2009
7. ↑ University honors world leader , University of Cambridge, December 5, 2001 (English).
8. ↑ blow by blow , Free University of Berlin on 20 July of 2007.

predecessor	Office	successor
Kim Young-sam	South Korean President 1998–2003	Raw Moo-hyun

Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Korean. Kim is the family name here, Dae-jung is the first name.