S. Korea Basking in Nobel, but Kim’s Honeymoon May Soon End

Leaders throughout history have used war to distract their domestic critics. South Korean President Kim Dae Jung may find himself hoping that his Nobel Peace Prize can have the same effect.

Kim has come under his share of brickbats in recent months in both the political and the economic arenas. But on Saturday, South Koreans were beaming with pride as word spread that their 75-year-old leader will be inducted this year into the elite rank of Nobel laureates for his commitment to democracy and his patient efforts to punctuate half a century of Cold War tension on the Korean peninsula.

“I was so happy, I clapped and found myself talking to perfect strangers,” said Hwang Gyn Sang, 40, a former rowing coach and now president of a small company that makes kayaks. “This is one of the greatest moments in 5,000 years of Korean history.”

Stores quickly announced special discounts as free beer flowed and restaurants waived meal tabs. Bookstores set up special displays promoting works by and about Kim. An online florist said it would distribute 2,000 roses at subway stations and public parks. And the Lotte and Hyundai department stores launched Nobel Prize sales featuring North and South Korean products prominently displayed side by side.

For many South Koreans, the global recognition was a chance to reflect on how much their world has been upended in the last few years. Democracy is now firmly rooted after decades of military repression; they’ve weathered economic turmoil; a former political prisoner is in the presidential mansion, the Blue House; and the divided peninsula has its best shot at real peace since the Korean War erupted 50 years ago.

Saturday saw the arrival of a flood of congratulatory messages from large and small nations. The nightly news led with footage of Kim taking a call from President Clinton. And many South Koreans took particular pleasure in accolades from the International Monetary Fund, a body strongly associated with the nation’s late ‘90s financial meltdown.

But one element of praise noticeably absent was any from Seoul’s most immediate neighbor and a key actor in events leading up to the nomination: North Korea.

The Nobel committee has often handed out peace prizes to both sides of a conflict. And some South Koreans thought that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il deserved co-recipient status after the historic summit he and the South’s president held in June--even though North Korea remains, at least for the time being, on the U.S. list of nations sponsoring terrorism.

The stony silence from the North’s capital, Pyongyang, left pundits to guess at its motives, as they have for decades. Some attributed the lack of comment by the Stalinist state to jealousy and others to paranoia.

“Pyongyang isn’t telling its people about the prize because it has never told them the prize existed,” ventured one local report.

A mission returning from a three-day exchange on labor issues in Pyongyang fueled further speculation when it reported that ordinary North Koreans had welcomed the prize even as they expressed regret that their beloved chairman was not sharing the glory. This raised the specter that the awarding of the prize might set back the very process it was meant to promote.

Even as South Koreans washed their champagne glasses and got used to their new place on the global stage, however, less lofty concerns of the domestic variety were quickly creeping back into the their consciousness.

Political analysts and ordinary citizens said Kim’s gold medal will provide enough afterglow to keep criticism of him at bay--including concerns about the troubled economy, stalled political and financial reforms, and regionalism--but not for long.

“It’s great that he got such a prestigious prize,” said Paik Ji Hie, a 24-year-old office worker living in Seoul. “But he needs to spend more time on the South Korean economy because it’s really bad.”

Kim has a far better reputation overseas, where he’s sometimes referred to as the Nelson Mandela of Asia, than he does amid the often petty and unforgiving world of Korean politics, several analysts said.

“It may be difficult for foreigners to understand, but this will give him no real honeymoon from conservatives in [South] Korea,” said Park Jai Chang, a political science professor at Sook Myong Women’s University. “Issues like human rights [and] fighting for freedom don’t always count for all that much in traditional Korean culture.”

Balancing the roles of global statesman and local leader is never easy, particularly when the opposition is as strong as it is in South Korea. Because Kim campaigned for the presidency on his hopes to unify the country and reform its political structure, however, he’s been stung harder by scandals within his administration and charges that he strongly favors people from his home province of Cholla over the rest of the country.

On other fronts, the stock market is now at half its peak 1999 level, even as foreign investors fret that financial and structural reforms are going nowhere. And many South Koreans still feel that the middle class is being squeezed out of existence as the gap between rich and poor widens.

“He should be congratulated on his Nobel Prize,” opposition leader Lee Hoi Chang said. “But I hope the president moves to lessen the problems of the South Korean people with an open mind.”

Attempting to address these concerns, Kim’s spokesman said shortly after the prize was announced that the president is concentrating on national affairs, with economic recovery still his foremost concern. Economic ministries have chimed in with their hopes that the prize will help spur consumer spending in South Korea and improve foreign demand for its goods.

But in the end, said Korea University professor Choi Jang Jip, the prize and Kim’s enhanced international stature probably will help him counter domestic criticism on only one policy front, his stance toward the North. In this area, his enhanced credibility should in effect help neutralize domestic conservatives who say he’s giving too much away to Pyongyang.

To be sure, dangers remain as long as nearly 1 million troops are squaring off across the divided peninsula. Barring a return to hostilities, however, Kim’s critics could come under added pressure to lower the decibel level now that U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has expressed interest in visiting Pyongyang this month in preparation for a possible Clinton visit.

Choi noted that the skills that served Kim so well during his years as a political exile have not always helped him as a president attempting to manage a huge bureaucracy. Determination and single-mindedness allowed him to persevere in the face of assassination attempts and prison sentences over his nearly four decades as an outsider. But these same traits are now seen by some Koreans as evidence of stubbornness and an unwillingness to listen to all sides.

The Nobel also sparked speculation in another direction--what the president plans to do with the $908,300 cash award he’s due to receive when he accepts the prize Dec. 10 in Oslo. An informal polling of Seoul residents found that most expected him to give it to charity, either for some cause involving North Korea or one tied to promoting human rights in Asia.

“Since he got it for peace, he should use it for peace,” said Kim Young Kyun, a 24-year old German language major at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. “It’s not really his money, so he shouldn’t use it on himself.”

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Chi Jung Nam of The Times’ Seoul Bureau contributed to this report.