Kim Dae Jung Nominated in South Korea

Kim Dae Jung was nominated Tuesday by his opposition Democratic Party to run for president for a third time, and he pledged to transform South Korea into a power that would stand alongside the advanced industrialized democracies.

Kim, 68, won 1,413 votes, or 60%, in a party convention, against 925 for Lee Ki Taek, 54--almost exactly the ratio of Kim and Lee’s separate followings when the two men amalgamated their forces into the new opposition party last year.

Although widely expected, Kim’s nomination underscored the democratic advances that outgoing President Roh Tae Woo has brought to South Korea since pledging in 1987 to end authoritarian rule. Roh, limited by the constitution to a single five-year term, is to step down next February.

Kim had been kidnaped, jailed, placed under house arrest, sent into exile and once sentenced to death under Roh’s predecessors. But he made no reference Tuesday to issues involving democracy. Instead, he pledged to restore international competitiveness to South Korean products and make the nation a great economic power standing alongside the Group of Seven, the major industrial democracies.

“This is really my last shot--the culmination of my 40-year political career,” he told reporters. He lost presidential bids in 1971 and 1987.

Kim did acknowledge fears of him within the South Korean Establishment by pledging that he would “never seek revenge” against his old tormentors. The armed forces, which once demanded his execution, have come to understand “my consistent positions against communism, against violence and against anti-Americanism,” he added.

Nonetheless, he recognized that he would have to overcome smear campaigns and a deep “civil war-like” antipathy against his native Cholla region in the southwestern part of the country.

“Military dictators called me pro-communist,” he told the convention. “When that accusation lost its effect, they said I was too radical. And when that allegation didn’t work anymore, they started charging that I am corrupt.” He promised to issue an annual accounting of all his assets.

Kim called himself “the victim, not the perpetrator” of regional antipathy between Cholla and the southeast Kyongsang region from which all of South Korea’s three former military presidents came. And he promised to promote balanced economic development throughout the country, select appointees in line with the regional distribution of the population and name a “pan-national Cabinet.”

He also emphasized that “my government would not be a Kim Dae Jung government. It would be a Kim Dae Jung-Lee Ki Taek government.” Lee, co-chairman of the party, comes from Pusan in the Kyongsang region.

Other major presidential candidates include the favorite, Kim Young Sam, 64, a lifelong opposition leader who defected to the ruling camp two years ago, and billionaire Chung Ju Yung, 76, founder of the Hyundai Group.