Shrewd Vision for a Modern Korea : Provocative ideas for a powerful U.S. ally

Last Sunday Kim Dae Jung spoke to a group of Los Angeles friends gathered privately to celebrate the anniversary of the Korean Institute for Human Rights, a group he founded in this country 10 years ago as a political refugee under sentence of death. From 1970, when he first challenged a repressive political regime in South Korea, until 1992, when he retired from politics, Kim was often in prison, often under a death sentence and twice narrowly escaped assassination. He was never elected president of South Korea, but in some sense he is South Korea’s most distinguished elder statesman, the herald of its democratization.

Kim has just concluded a long stay at Cambridge University, interrupted by three visits to Germany. Rapid Korean reunification on the German model, he believes, would be a colossal mistake. North Korea went directly from Japanese imperial rule to communism of a particularly totalitarian stripe. As a result, North and South Korea differ far more than East and West Germany did on the eve of reunification. Kim’s gradualist reunification plan begins with at least 10 years as a two-state confederation.

There are, of course, more immediately pressing problems. The Western powers have little or no trade leverage with North Korea, Kim warns, and their sanctions cannot deter that country from developing nuclear weapons and touching off a fearsome East Asian arms race. The one country with enough economic muscle to sway North Korea, he says, is China. But will China help?

In response to a question about China and the Olympics, Kim reminded his audience that South Korea was still without political liberty in 1988 when the Olympics went to Seoul. No single event, he claimed, did more than the Olympics to accelerate the downfall of the tyrannical regime that had so avidly sought the games. No surprise, then: Kim would have awarded the Olympics to Beijing. (The Olympic committee recently rejected Beijing’s bid in favor of Sydney, Australia.) The democracy dividend might have been as great for China as it was for Korea; Kim speculates that in the seven years prior to the year 2000, when Beijing would have hosted the games, China might have been more cooperative with the West on issues like nuclear non-proliferation.

Agree with him or not, Kim’s position is reasoned and provocative. The Cold War is not yet over in East Asia. That vast region, with 30% of the world’s population and annual trade with the United States of $430 billion, may need Kim’s ideas far more than the government in Seoul needs Kim himself. If the career of a lifelong dissident proves nothing else, it proves that ideas have power.