Nobel peace winner led reconciliation with N. Korea

Nobel peace winner led reconciliation with N. Korea

SEOUL (Reuters): South Korean President Kim Dae-jung's patient persistence with his "sunshine policy" with North Korea and lifelong commitment to democracy and human rights earned him the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.

But Kim, who is sometimes described as "Asia's Mandela", has paid a high price for his political principles.

Under Korea's military rulers in the 1970s and 1980s he was twice sentenced to death, repeatedly tortured, the victim of two assassination attempts, exiled twice and held under house arrest 55 times.

But the first act of the perennial dissident after he was elected president in December 1997 was to pardon the former rulers who sentenced him to death when he was an opposition leader.

"Only the truly magnanimous and strong are capable of forgiving and loving," he wrote in a letter to his son from prison death row in November, 1980.

That optimism and strength has sustained his policy of engagement with North Korea, despite scorn from the political opposition and skepticism from a public that has seen long been witness to North Korean provocations.

Just 16 months ago, the rival Korean navies clashed in the Yellow Sea in their bloodiest naval engagement since the 1950-53 Korean War.

In August 1998, North Korea stunned the region by test-firing a medium-range missile that soared over Japan before splashing into the Pacific and defense analysts said it was working on a longer-range version that could put the west coast of the United States within striking range.

So the world watched in almost shocked disbelief as President Kim embraced the reclusive and mysterious North Korean leader Kim Jong-il during their landmark summit in Pyongyang in June.

The two Koreas -- technically still at war because the Korean conflict a half century ago ended in an armed truce that has never been replaced by a peace agreement -- have since taken unprecedented steps towards rapprochement.

They have staged emotional reunions of families separated during the Korean War and agreed to reconnect rail and road links severed during that conflict, requiring the opposing armies to cooperate in clearing landmines on the heavily fortified border.

North and South Korean athletes marched together under a unification flag for the first time at the Sydney Olympics and the two countries have agreed on ambitious business projects.

A populist politician with a gift for oratory, Kim, as an opposition leader, had drawn wide support among workers, students and farmers attracted by his mildly social-democratic principles.

As president, Kim inherited a nation on the verge of bankruptcy. Shortly before his victory, South Korea accepted with humiliation a bail-out package of nearly $60 billion arranged by the International Monetary Fund.

Kim is widely credited with preventing a national default in the days following his election, as he assured foreign investors South Korea would conduct free-market policies and rapid reform.

In his first year of office, Kim steadfastly pushed through wide-ranging reforms in a highly leveraged corporate sector and a banking system rendered almost insolvent by the "Asian contagion" financial crisis.

Kim argued from the beginning of his administration that democracy and a free market economy must have parallel development "like two wheels on a cart".

He first ran for president in 1971, winning an astonishing 45 percent of the vote against military strongman Park Chung-hee despite efforts by the government's propaganda machine to destroy him.

During the campaign, a truck hit his car in what he claims was an assassination attempt. The accident left him with a permanent limp and chronic neuralgia.

In 1973, he was kidnapped from his Tokyo hotel room by men he identified as South Korean intelligence agents, who spirited him on to a boat and tied him to a traditional Korean burial board wired to concrete weights.

Kim believes he was saved from death by the unexplained appearance over the craft of a U.S. helicopter.

He told Reuters in a May 1999 interview he was driven by a strong belief he was on the right side of history.

"When I was kidnapped and when I was sentenced to death, of course I was afraid of death, but I thought to myself I was the victor. If I felt that I was the victor then I had no reason to be discouraged," Kim said. "Often it was the ones who failed who turned out to be the victors in history."

His Roman Catholic faith also sustained him, he said. He was born, the son of a rich farmer on a small island off the coast of Cholla Province, on Dec. 3, 1925. He entered parliament in 1961 after working as an accountant and publishing a local newspaper.

Kim's wife, Lee Hi-ho, is a long-time activist for women's rights. They have three sons.