Kim Dae-Jung, RIP

Mike Gonzalez / August 19, 2009

Former South Korean President Kim Dae-Jung once told me one of the most poignant stories I have ever heard about the role America plays overseas, how it is a force for good around the world. After hearing the news of his death in Seoul yesterday, it made me wonder how the current administration would act under similar circumstances.
Kim was president from 1997 to 2003 and instituted a policy of rapprochement with communist North Korea which did not produce the promised results. However, he was a stalwart (and brave) opposition leader much longer than President, and it was as such that I came to know him in Seoul in the 1980s, when I was a wire service reporter there.

He invited me to lunch when I departed my post and it was at that feast that I asked him to recount his tale. Evidently weary of telling the same anecdote over and over again, he said with some sarcasm, “Ah, you want to hear the story!” but he humored me. (more…)