S. Korean President Kim Wins Nobel Peace Prize

South Korean President Kim Dae Jung, who survived assassination attempts and decades of political persecution, won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for his lifelong struggle for democracy and his recent crusade for reconciliation with North Korea.

“Through his ‘sunshine’ policy, Kim Dae Jung has attempted to overcome more than 50 years of war and hostility between North and South Korea,” the Norwegian Nobel Committee said, adding that Kim’s historic June summit in North Korea reduced tensions between the two countries. “There may now be hope that the Cold War will also come to an end in Korea.”

South Koreans celebrated their nation’s first Nobel prize with fireworks, and some restaurants gave out free drinks. Many said the international recognition will give Kim the clout to continue healing divisions--both within South Korea and in its relationship with the North.

But critics feared that, however well deserved, the award to the South Korean leader might offend his North Korean counterpart, Kim Jong Il, and even derail the fledgling rapprochement between Cold War enemies.

Though nearly all South Koreans want peace with North Korea, some have questioned the Communist regime’s financial demands, its refusal to tone down its military readiness, and its sincerity. In Seoul, a recent joke suggested that Kim Dae Jung would win the Nobel Peace Prize, but Kim Jong Il should get an Oscar for posturing.

South Korea endured decades of harsh authoritarian rule that followed the Korean War before emerging as a stalwart of democracy in Asia under Kim Dae Jung.

Although Kim’s aides reportedly orchestrated a campaign for their boss to win the Nobel Peace Prize, the reaction from the president’s office was muted.

“I’d like to share this honor with my wife and children, companions and relatives who suffered with me, and the many in this country who made sacrifices and dedicated themselves to peace and democracy,” Kim said in a statement.

A devout Catholic, Kim has been a leading advocate for the universality of human rights, rejecting the argument that “Asian values” justify granting Asians any fewer political or individual rights than other peoples.

The Nobel committee noted his “great moral strength” and his commitment to democracy in Myanmar and against repression in East Timor.

Although he has won at least five human rights awards and has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize many times, it was his “sunshine” policy of engaging Stalinist North Korea that tipped the Nobel committee scales this year.

Just the day before the Nobel award was announced, the United States and North Korea also took a big step toward ending their hostility, saying in a joint statement at the end of the visit of a senior North Korean official to Washington that they would “fundamentally improve” relations. They also said President Clinton probably would visit North Korea before he leaves office in January.

The United States still has 37,000 troops stationed in South Korea to protect it from invasion from the North.

Kim, 76, who hails from the rebellious southwestern province of Cholla, has long been a symbol of struggle and refusal to submit.

He was first elected in 1961 to a parliament that was dissolved three days later by strongman Park Chung Hee. He ran for president in 1971, nearly upsetting Park, and he still walks with a limp after a car accident later that year that he believes was the first of three assassination attempts. Kim went into exile in 1972 and was kidnapped the next year from a Tokyo hotel room by South Korean intelligence agents. Yet decades later, when he was elected president, he made the man who ran the agency at the time, Kim Jong Pil, his first prime minister.

After he was kidnapped, Kim survived a death sentence for treason and 14 years of prison, house arrest or exile.

While in prison, he taught himself English and played imaginary games of chess against North Korean founder Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il’s late father. He later joked that, in his own mind, he usually won.

In 1985, he returned from exile in the United States, where he had taught at Georgetown University, and was immediately placed under house arrest. It was not until 1987 that he was cleared of all charges and was able to reestablish a pro-democracy political party.

Despite warnings by conservatives that he was a closet Communist dangerously soft on North Korea, he was elected president of South Korea in 1997 on his fourth try. His election marked the first peaceful transfer of power in South Korea.

Kim won points for keeping an olive branch extended to the North despite the infiltration by a North Korean submarine and a naval clash in the Yellow Sea. His reward was an invitation to a historic summit in June in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang. There, he and Kim Jong Il agreed to work toward peace and an eventual reunification of the peninsula in a loose confederation.

The two Koreas have since allowed reunions of 200 people separated from their families for the five decades since the war.

North and South technically are still at war and have a total of about 1 million troops facing each other across a bristling demilitarized zone. Nevertheless, they have pledged to reconnect a railroad that runs through the heavily fortified DMZ, with the North Korean army supplying most of the labor.

There was no immediate reaction from North Korea. Some worried about the possibility of North Korean jealousy over Kim’s Nobel Prize, which has in the past been awarded to pairs of opposing leaders involved in peace negotiations, however fragile their deals.

“This is the beginning of the end,” said Lee Ki Tak, a professor at Seoul’s Yonsei University who fled North Korea as a teenager in 1950. “I think [Kim Jong Il] will be very angry about the monopolization of the prize.”

Many armchair analysts had believed that Kim Dae Jung would not win the Nobel for precisely that reason. The Nobel committee’s statement included a sentence recognizing the leadership of North Korea and other unspecified countries in advancing the reconciliation process.

The opposition Grand National Party, which has lambasted Kim for giving too much foreign aid to the North in exchange for too few concessions, offered grudging congratulations.

“We hope that the president will now eliminate suspicion that he may use the Nobel Prize to extend his rule and promote himself to become the first president of a unified Korea,” opposition spokesman Kwon Chul Hyun said.

Robert A. Manning, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, remarked in Washington that the North Koreans should get a prize for predatory diplomacy.

“They have milked everyone in the world for everything they can get without spending a nickel,” he said. “If this [rapprochement] is serious, we have to see at least a hint of real progress on reducing the [North Korean] military threat, and we have yet to see that.”

Still, the prize was a source of pride for many South Koreans, who are smarting from the humiliation of an International Monetary Fund bailout just before Kim’s election. Kim inherited a near-bankrupt government and has since sought to put the economy and the political system back on track while battling corruption.

“He deserves it. He has sacrificed to develop true democracy in Korea,” said Lee Jun Young, a 48-year-old businessman. “But from now on, I hope he will focus more on the ailing economy.”

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Times researcher Chi Jung Nam in Seoul contributed to this report.