Walking the Tightrope

In Korea there is a joke about Kim Dae Jung. It says that as difficult as it is to save a life, in Kim's case it is difficult to die. Sitting in his small office on the fourth floor of Harvard's Center for International Affairs, Kim chuckles as he explains the joke. There have been several serious attempts on his life since he became an opposition leader and advocate of democracy in South Korean politics in the 1960s.

For a man who has been marked for death, Kim looks very well; but as he rises to answer a phone call, he walks with a stiffness in his hips that is the result of a car accident in South Korea which he says was staged to kill him, and did kill three people in the car behind him.

Now he is a visiting fellow at Harvard, in the same fellows program that Filipino dissident Benigno Aquino participated in three years ago, before his assassination as he stepped off the plane in his home country this August.

Kim's participation in Korean politics began when he was elected to the National Assembly. In 1961, he had become such a prominent member of the Korean National Assembly that he was imprisoned after General Park Chung Hee staged a military coup.

He spent the next 10 years in and out of prison until 1971, when he ran for president in South Korea and tallied 46 percent of the vote in the official results, a count which was said to have been fixed against him.

In August 1973 after Park proclaimed martial law. Kim was kidnapped from a hotel room in Japan by agents of the Korean intelligence agency.

"They were going to kill me in the bathtub," Kim says. "They were going to dismember my body but failed because of the appearance of a relative." The agents took him on a boat where Kim says they had bound his arms and legs, and were preparing to throw him into the sea when a plane buzzed the boat and unnerved his would-be executioners. They released him.

Even after his escape from death, Kim was still politically active in Korea and was one of the first people arrested after Chun Doo Hwan seized power in late 1979, a move that engendered anti-American feeling among Koreans.

When hundreds of people demonstrated outside the building he was being held in. South Korean soldiers under American direction violently, restrained the crowd. This "disappointment" among the Korean people with the U.S. was only made worse when President Reagan made Chun the first state visitor after Reagan's inauguration.

"Nearly 80 percent of young people conceive an anti-American feeling," which leads to rioting. Kim says "I never support such destructive manner, but I can understand their sentiment."

However, following Chun's visit to the White House, and some say as a result of the visit. Kim's death sentence was commuted as part of a general amnesty policy for dissenters. And, in December of last year, he arrived in the United States with a passport valid only in the U.S.

"At first I didn't want to come here," Kim says. "I wanted them to leave me in Korea. But if I had not accepted the U.S. Korea proposal [to come to the U.S.], the rest of my colleagues would not have been released.

Reservations

Although he is grateful to the U.S. government for saving his life. Kim has some reservations about its foreign policy. One of Kim's major criticisms of the Reagan Administration is its support of current dictatorships like that of Chun. He outlines three changes he would like to see in Reagan's current policy on Korea that U.S. should more openly advocate the American attitude of democracy in other countries: stop additional financial and to the Korean government and guarantee the neutrality of the Korean army in Korean politics.

If America could change its attitude, my people could change tomorrow. But if America should stay in its attitude, my people will be anti-American I worry about that Kim formerly reserved now sitting forward in his chair gesturing, says "I don't want to see America hated anymore, but my country will be crucified in accordance with American failure."

Kim sees Aquino's assassination as the result of U.S. foreign policy. "Aquino's death was a great loss not only for the Phillipines but for America. He was very important. America made a great mistake to deal with Marcos, and because America supported Marcos. Aquino's assassination was a kind of result of the American policy to support dictatorship."

Kim lauds the effort the U.S. made to save Aquino's life, but points out that Aquino suffered from a lack of official recognition while he was in the U.S.

"America failed to deal with him," Kim says. "During his stay here, he couldn't do many things for his people. Of course he left here--how could he endure such guilty conscience when he could have a good life here while Filipinos are suffering?"

Kim says that Aquino expressed strong anger at the American government in a meeting last spring for not giving him enough attention.

But Kim says that he is being noticed here. He points out that he has made more than 50 speeches before American audiences, and commutes every week between the Fellows Program in Cambridge and his home in Alexandria. Va which he uses as a base for his official visits to Washington.

However, there is a widespread feeling that Kim, too, may not be receiving the national attention that he needs. "Kim has been received at the highest professional level, but not at the political level," says William H. Gleysteen, director of the Washington Center of the Asia Society and former American ambassador to Korea in 1978-1981. He adds, "I think the lack of national coverage has been frustrating for him."

The State Department would not comment on Kim's status at the White House for the record. Kim's application for the fellowship at Harvard inspired the same caution and reserve among administrators.

"I think there was some discomfort on the part of the University at my invitation. I told Harvard I was not willing to participate at the Korea institute--I don't want to hurt the Korea Institute." Kim adds, "According to newspapers, there was a worry that I might use this University as a base for my politics, but I told Brown [Benjamin H. Brown, then director of the Fellows Program] that I never had any intention [of doing that]."

At Harvard this fall, Kim is attending the seminars of the Fellows Program and hopes to start work on two manuscripts. One is to be an analysis of Korea's internal politics and the other a memoir Kim has already published a collection of his letters from prison in Korean and Japanese: he hopes to have them translated into English.

But as busy he may seem to be at Harvard, one gets the feeling that his attention is still riveted primarily on Korea and the problems there. "I dearly want to be with my people," Kim says, "I am very much willing to go back to Korea even though I would be put into prison again."

There is a South Korean Presidential election scheduled for 1988. "If Kim did run," Gleysteen says, "he is still a viable politician. He is not to be dismissed."