South Korea Democracy Lacks Honesty, Courage, Educator Says

South Korea’s preeminent intellectual, Kim Donggil, is deeply troubled over his nation’s state of affairs.

“Politicians cannot be trusted, hypocrisy is rampant and the press is crawling,” the U.S.-educated historian said during a visit to Los Angeles last week.

South Korea puts on a face of democracy, Kim said, but inside, the nation of 43 million continues to suffer from the legacy of decades of authoritarian rule--six years after the last general left the presidential mansion.

The long-term effect of fear and political brainwashing, he said, has kept many, including the news media, from speaking out against the government and other institutions. This lack of honesty and courage, he said, continues to be a major obstacle to democracy in South Korea.

“Without a moral foundation--being honest in personal and public conduct--you cannot have a democracy,” said Kim, whose 1971 doctoral dissertation at Boston University was on Abraham Lincoln.

Kim knows the price of confronting the powerful. He spent a year in jail for denouncing one South Korean dictator and lost his professorship for criticizing another. But he has earned respect.

His daily radio commentary is heard on Korean-language radio stations across the United States, including Southern California, home to an estimated half-million people of Korean ancestry.

“Professor Kim is a conscience of South Korea,” said Kapson Yim Lee, managing editor of the Korea Times English Edition.

If it weren’t for Kim’s commentaries, Lee said, Korean Americans would not know what is happening in Korea. The Korean press remains silent and Tokyo-based foreign correspondents do not have the language or background to probe most issues, the editor said.

“He is South Korea’s only public philosopher,” said Janghee Lee, president of Radio Korea, which has broadcast Kim’s commentaries for seven years. “Our listeners love him.”

Need for Moral and Cultural Revolution

Kim was in town on the first leg of a U.S. lecture tour as head of the Pacific-Era Committee.

The nonprofit group was organized to instill a new generation of Korean leaders with a sense of community conscience and the moral leadership needed to run a democracy.

The retired history professor who taught at Yonsei University in Seoul, said South Korea needs a moral and cultural revolution.

Kim said that Koreans, like other East Asians influenced by Confucianism, lack a tradition of civic culture that accompanies Western-style democracies.

“For people who come from Confucian cultures, everything begins and ends with the family,” Kim said.

That may work in a traditional culture of the Confucian village, where everybody knows everyone, he said, but “you cannot have a democracy when you do not think of about other people’s welfare.”

The Judeo-Christian notion of being one’s brother’s keeper is fundamental to the workings of a democracy, he said.

Kim has been critical of President Kim Dae-Jung, a former dissident who won the presidency in December by a narrow plurality and took office in February.

Kim has publicly accused the president of political expediency.

“I expected more from him because he was for so long associated with the opposition,” Kim said. So far, he said, Kim Dae-Jung has made “all manner of compromises.”

When former President Roh Tae-Woo was prosecuted in 1995 for amassing hundreds of millions of dollars in slush funds while in office, Kim Dae-Jung admitted that he received a gift of $2.6 million from Roh.

And, after his election, Kim Dae-Jung pressed his lame duck predecessor, Kim Young-Sam, to pardon Roh and Chun Doo-Hwan. Chun had been sentenced to life in prison and Roh to 17 years on corruption charges.

Chun was also convicted of murder for the bloody suppression of a pro-democracy uprising in Kwangju in 1980 and for taking tens of millions of dollars in bribes from businessmen.

‘Speaks From the Bottom of His Heart’

Kim Dae-Jung’s critics have attacked his action as a political sellout, but the president has said his decision was best for the welfare of the nation.

“President Kim Dae-Jung may talk about cleaning up the government, but as long as he remains unclean himself, it’s an impossible task,” said Kim Donggil.

The South Korean press, he said, has done little to ferret out the truth.

“The South Korean press is supposed to be free now under a democratically elected leader, but it does not exercise the freedom it supposedly has,” the historian said. “The press is still crawling--keeping an eye on the powers that be. It’s the worst form of self-censorship: second-guessing the powerful.”

A recent commentary he wrote for a major Korean newspaper was not published, he said, even though the paper had solicited it.

The commentary, “An open letter to President Kim Dae-Jung,” was broadcast on radio last month in the United States. In it, Kim reminded the president of his campaign promises and asked pointedly how he has implemented them.

President Kim, asked about the professor’s criticisms during an interview with The Times in June, said with a smile, “I always welcome Professor Kim’s comments.”

“I like Kim Donggil because he doesn’t play games,” said Charles J. Kim, executive director of the Korean American Coalition, the Los Angeles-based civil rights group. “He is a thinker who speaks from the bottom of his heart. It’s also fun listening to him because he is so humorous in his commentaries.”

The former history professor did not always have such freedom to speak.

In 1974, he was given a 15-year sentence for his opposition to Park Chung-Hee, the general who seized power in a coup. Kim was released after serving a one-year sentence, but the government made sure that he could not easily return to the university.

“So, I began writing,” Kim said. His books became bestsellers and he became a sought-after speaker in Korea and abroad.

He eventually resumed teaching at Yonsei, and rose to the rank of vice president of the institution.

But after another general, Chun Doo-Hwan, seized power, and Kim was critical of the new president, he was forced to resign from the university in 1980.

“So, I bought a small house in the countryside and wrote,” he said. “The only places that invited me to talk were churches.”

Since then, he has written more than 60 books.

Taking a Chance in Politics

Kim Donggil made a foray into politics in the early 1990s, winning election to the National Assembly in a landslide.

“For four years, I struggled very hard, but couldn’t accomplish anything,” Kim said.

Though he has been criticized for venturing into politics, Kim said he doesn’t regret the experience. “I learned a lot,” he said. “I can say clearly that politics is corrupt and that you can’t trust politicians because I saw it. Without getting involved, how could I possibly say that?”

A frequent visitor to Los Angeles, Kim Donggil said he feels strong ties between the two countries.

“As much as Korea needs the United States, America needs Korea, too,” he said, because of the strategic location of the Korean peninsula.

South Korean leaders in the past may have been “arrogant and misleading,” he said, but ordinary citizens are loyal to the United States. “The United States cannot truly rely on Japan or China,” he said, “but it can rely on Korea.”