Korea has truly lost one of its greatest sons. Kim Dae-jung passed away on 18 August after a lifetime of struggling for democracy and human rights in Korea and in Asia. By his own account, he escaped death five times as successive governments in Korea sought to silence him. To much of the world, he was most famous for the sunshine policy towards North Korea, but my memories of him - formed because they coincided with my time in Korea - were of his conviction for sedition and his death sentence in 1980 and then as an opposition politician in the 1990s before becoming President in 1998. Without him (and this is not to say he fought alone: there were many other heroes, famous or not) Korea would not have made the transition to the vibrant democracy it is now. And also among his many achievements we should not forget the decisive and effective action he took as President to bring Korea out of the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s. But certainly my most vivid memory of him will be seeing him in early July and being struck by how passionate he was - even though he was clearly not at all strong physically - about human rights in Burma. He never stopped fighting for causes he believed in.
Posted at 09:47 26 August 2009 by Martin Uden | Comments[0]
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