Rev 12:11 They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony; they did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death. (NIV)
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Faith, Adversity, Hope and Peace
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Kim Dae Jung is one of a handful of Presidents in the last twenty years who has managed to overcome great adversity and risk of losing his own life. His faith in God kept him going in the darkest moments. He once remarked that God saved him for a purpose and now the hour has come - the peace talks with North Korea. Ex-Presidents/Prime Ministers Lech Walesa of Poland, Corazon Aquino of the Phillipines and Nelson Mandela of South Africa are the other beacons of hope when their countries were controlled by communist regimes, racists, dictators and despots. What kept them going throughout their difficult times was their faith in God and their hope for freedom both for themselves and their fellow countryman. "We are one people. We share the same fate. Let us hold hands firmly. I love you all.' -- President Kim's appeal to North Koreans in his arrival speech
SOUTH KOREA MARCH 2, 1998 VOL. 151 NO. 8 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jailed, beaten, marked for death. To Kim Dae Jung, it was all preparation for this moment BY FRANK GIBNEY JR. Seoul -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Opposition candidate Kim Dae Jung was on his way to a rally in Seoul a month after his first unsuccessful run for the presidency. Suddenly, a 14-ton truck headed deliberately into the path of Kim's car. His driver swerved off the road, and the truck hit another vehicle, killing two people. But Kim was left with a broken arm and a limp that dogs him even now. That 1971 incident set the tone for a presidential quest unmatched in modern democratic politics. Two years later, Kim was kidnapped and almost drowned. He has been jailed, beaten, exiled and marked for execution. But on Wednesday, in a star-studded ceremony in Seoul, the 73-year-old Catholic from a remote island off Korea's southwestern coast will be inaugurated as his country's eighth President. "Throughout my life I have faced death five times. For six years I was in prisons, and for 10 years I was in exile or under house arrest" Kim told Time last week. "I never lost hope that someday there would be something like this." Kim's arrival at Seoul's presidential Blue House this week is the beginning of another journey for which he will need every ounce of strength. Since the fateful car accident--which most Koreans suspect was no accident--the country's spectacular rise from the ruins of war boosted incomes by more than 300%, before the won began to depreciate in October. Military rule has been replaced by the rough-and-tumble of democracy. Yet Kim steps into the presidency only to find South Korea's economy in deep trouble. The Asian financial crisis engulfed the country in November, and on Dec. 3, just a day away from a default on Korea's short-term debt, the government of outgoing President Kim Young Sam signed a $58.5 billion bailout agreement with the International Monetary Fund. Korea's giant conglomerates, the chaebol, have lost their credibility, if not their credit. And the country's annual growth rate, which hummed for so long at well over 6%, now looks as if it might slip to zero. The Korea that Kim Dae Jung inherits is a paradoxical study in success and failure: having achieved a prosperity Kim himself once could not have imagined, the country now faces the task of wholesale reorganization. "Never have Korea's institutions--the military, labor, business, students--been so weak," says Kim Jong Hwi, a national security adviser to former President Roh Tae Woo. "This is a challenge, but it is an opportunity as well." Yet Kim--who is known as "D.J." to distinguish him from the multitude of Korea's political Kims--faces a long list of other challenges. They range from stabilizing relations with the United States and Japan to forging a new blueprint for coexistence, if not reunification, with deteriorating North Korea. Last week, North Korea made a surprising overture of cooperation to Seoul. How Kim responds will depend largely on whether the man who for decades was branded a communist sympathizer can win the support of would-be opponents in the National Assembly, where his fragile coalition remains greatly outnumbered by conservative lawmakers from the former ruling party. President Kim's self-proclaimed vision is for a kinder, gentler Korea that balances market economics with the kind of democracy he has fought for decades to install. "If we had had greater democracy in this country we could have avoided the present crisis, because the government would not have controlled banks and finance," Kim told Time. To put Korea back on track, the country's durable dissident will have to convince a legion of longtime opponents that he can change the system from within. "He'll want to show past Korean leaders that you don't need totalitarian rule to expand economic growth," says economist Kim Jong In. "Mr. Kim understands the problems we face, he has the right set of solutions and if he sticks to them, we will be able to overcome this crisis." By any measure, Kim has been running Korea since the day after his Dec. 18 election--with impressive results. Briefed on the economy shortly after his victory, he conceded he had vastly underestimated the scope of Korea's woes and, discarding his initial hesitance, vowed to follow the IMF's structural reform program to the letter. He sought advice from international financiers like George Soros. And his early statements on the need for reform were encouraging enough that foreign bankers tentatively agreed Jan. 28 to reschedule $24 billion of Korea's short-term debt. Most important, Kim began negotiating with powerful labor unions and business leaders to accept a downsizing of vast, inefficient corporate empires--a process that inevitably will lead to massive layoffs. Those talks resulted in historic legislation that will give Korean companies the discretion to fire large numbers of workers, allow substantial foreign ownership of securities and permit hostile corporate takeovers. Cover: Photograph for TIME by Tom Wagner--SABA [ Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 | Page 4 | Page 5 ] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- time-webmaster@pathfinder.com
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