Kim Dae-jung - A Personal Homage to a Great Asian Statesman

By Ronald Meinardus

I will never forget the day of November 27th, 1996. I had just settled in Seoul a few weeks earlier when I received an invitation to have lunch with Kim Dae-jung. Then the leader of the opposition, Kim arrived at the exclusive Korean restaurant with two aides. One of the gentlemen was a young Korean scholar who had just graduated from Hamburg University, the same school I attended many years back. It was not to by the sole surprising factor of this remarkable encounter. Over lunch we discussed many issues. My host expressed special interest concerning developments in Germany and was eager to learn how the process of unification was moving on. We also touched more controversial topics, such as relations with North Korea and the notorious National Security Law. Kim made no secret of his opposition to that law, which penalizes individuals for their ideological preferences, but added on a cautious note that South Korean society was not ready for abolition of the law, reflecting the influence of conservative circles.

At the end of the luncheon, I received a major surprise. As I prepared to express my gratitude for the hospitality I had received, the doors flung open and in came waiters bearing a huge birthday cake and a bottle of champagne. ``Happy Birthday,’’ said my host. I was dumfounded and utterly impressed by this grand courtesy. ``How on earth did he find out it is my birthday?’’ I asked myself. ``My boss takes personal relationships very seriously,’’ Kim’s private secretary confided to me later.

In the ensuing years, I was given the honor of meeting Kim on several occasions. I had come to Korea as the resident representative of the Friedrich-Naumann Foundation. Ever since it set foot on Korean soil in 1987, this German NGO has been involved in the promotion of local autonomy. Political decentralization, to use but another word for local autonomy, has always been a special concern to Kim. During his presidential term, major reforms in this field have been initiated. While there is general agreement that South Korea still has a long way ahead before its system of local government reaches the level found in the so-called advanced democracies, there is also consensus that over the past five to ten years a true paradigm shift has taken place in the country regarding decentralization.

Still, the bridge connecting Kim and my foundation was not primarily the common concern about local government reform, but primarily the joint dedication to promote democracy and human rights in Asia. It is no exaggeration to call this endeavour one of Kim’s pet-projects. Having suffered himself under the brutal rule of dictators, the struggle for democracy and respect of human rights became a major personal concern. In close cooperation with the Forum of Democratic Leaders in Asia-Pacific, which Kim founded in 1992, my Foundation sponsored a series of workshops and conferences aimed at advancing the good cause of democratic rule in the region. Among the highlights of this successful program has been the annual Young Leaders Workshop, where young democrats and liberals from all parts of Asia and the Pacific would convene in Seoul and Kwangju and discuss solutions to the current problems of the region. Kim made an effort not to miss a single event. ``He enjoys these meetings with the young political activists, they remind him of his own past,’’ a member of the presidential staff told me once.

While Kim is internationally renowned primarily as a political and economic reformer and visionary regarding his work on inter-Korean affairs, he has also been a herald of the Asian democratic movement. At a time when others where seriously arguing that, for cultural reasons, democracy was unsuitable for Asian nations, Kim forcefully spoke out in favour of the universality of the democratic ideal. For many years, his article ``Is culture destiny?’’ served as a central point of reference in the so-called Asian Values-debate. That this debate has come to an end may also be attributed to the political achievements of Kim and other democratically elected leaders in the region.

From his many writings, one easily gathers that Kim is well-read. At the meetings I had with him, I was always impressed by his many references to other political thinkers. ``Since childhood I have been extremely fond of studying,’’ Kim confesses in his autobiography, ``A New Beginning.’’ In one of the chapters of his ``Prison Writings,’’ which consist mainly of personal notes he wrote to his family during his incarceration, he mentions some of the authors he has read: the list is a who-is-who of world-literature.

This, I am mentioning because intellectual sophistication is not a standard virtue of modern politicians. In this regard, Kim truly sticks out. He qualifies therefore as a modern philosopher-king in Plato’s sense. For those foreigners interested in Korean affairs, and not capable of reading Korean, it may be called a stroke of luck that many of his works have been translated into English. It is well worthwhile to read these books. They not only give the reader a first-hand account of South Korean politics in the later part of the twentieth century, but also bring you closer to one of the great statesmen of our times.

Unlike many of his politician colleagues (in South Korea and in other countries), Kim is cosmopolitan and the direct opposite of a parochial national leader. His years in political exile are one of the main roots of this internationalism, as they influenced his political thinking and thus have had a major impact on his presidential policies: his foreign policy, to give but one example, has been basically multidimensional. Although a staunch supporter of South Korea’s alliance with the U.S., Kim is the first South Korean president who has rid his nation of its one-sided fixation on America. He has reached out to Asia, and also to Europe, thus earning great respect for his country in those parts of the world.

More than any other South Korean politician, Kim has studied the contemporary history of Germany, always searching for lessons relevant for the situation in his own divided land. ``Standing in front of the Berlin Wall, I resolved to dedicate the rest of my life to studying plans for the reunification of my fatherland,’’ Kim writes in his aforementioned autobiography. Actually, his studies in Germany will later become the foundation of his epochal study, ``Three-stage Approach to Korean Reunification,’’ in which he designs a roadmap for the future of inter-Korean relations.

No doubt, the efforts to overcome the Korean division are the leitmotif of Kim’s presidency. In this field he has kicked off an historical process that _ in spite of all the setbacks and complications _ seems irreversible today.

Let me end this homage with a note on domestic South Korean politics. In my eyes, Kim’s five-year term constitutes the first truly liberal era in that country’s history. This is not to say that there haven’t been hold-ups and disappointments in the reform process. Some of the setbacks have been caused by personal failures and short-comings, others find their explanation in the structures of the South Korean political system and society Kim operated in: the key-words here are regionalism, hyper-centralism and conservatism.

One single five-year term has not proven sufficient to change structures and mindsets with a century old tradition. But Kim has laid the groundwork for a radical democratic transformation of South Korea. It is now up to the next generation to follow suit. It is one of the ironies of South Korean politics that Kim is more popular beyond the shores of his own country than in South Korea itself. Still, I am confident that not before long a large majority of South Koreans will venerate Kim for what he is _ a visionary statesman who has successfully prepared his people for the challenges of the new millennium.

Dr. Ronald Meinardus was the former Resident Representative of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation in the Philippines and will leave Manila late September for a new posting in the Middle East. He writes a blog at www.myliberaltimes.com