So much of the news from Asia is just quite sad. I was reading a brilliant novel in bed after two glasses of good French wine and I said to myself what do I want to do really this evening?
The answer: I just want to share with my tatered, beaten down, but always entusiastic thread-mates the only ray of hope that I've read lately on anything lately concerned with Asia.
On an ongoing roll my bet for the great journalist of his generation on the Asia beat, the heir to Hallet Abend and Edgar Snow is Nicholas Kristoff. In case you missed it...
So here goes:
(C)Nicholas Kristoff
For Private use only
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
EOUL, South Korea -- His head shaved, his taut body dressed in a prison uniform, Kim Dae-jung lay huddled under a blanket in his freezing cell, shivering uncontrollably and despairing that he had wrecked the lives of his wife and three sons.
Sentenced to the gallows for leading the fight against South Korea's military dictatorship, he had felt his Roman Catholic faith wavering as he faced his own death, and he upbraided himself for his doubts and for what he felt was his lack of courage. As he lay in his cell that night, he tried to pray, but instead, he recalled later, he broke down and began to cry, great tears trickling down his icy cheeks.
That was just over 17 years ago, and the distance that Kim and South Korea have traveled since his heart broke on that desolate night will be marked on Wednesday when Kim is inaugurated as the country's president. Often described as "Asia's Mandela," Kim takes office with the same kind of moral authority as Nelson Mandela of South Africa and similar stature as an international figure.
At a time when much of Asia has lost its footing and is groping for a more solid political and economic structure, Kim proclaims a vision for a new Korea and a new Asia: political democracy, market-oriented economics, and policies that emphasize social justice. He says he is willing to speak out against human-rights abuses in Burma or even China, and he clearly intends to transform South Korea so it can be an example for the world.
"I want Kim Dae-jung to be a model that is successful in Asia, proving that democracy and the economy can go together well," Kim said in English during an hourlong interview in his office. "This is my ambition."
Kim's vision is deeply threatening to the entrenched order in much of Asia and much of the developing world. He insists that the solution to Asia's economic crisis is more democracy, greater openness and freer markets, and he argues that the crisis arose because of political weaknesses.
"In every country in Asia, including Korea, the major reason for failure was lack of democracy," he said. He added that democracy was the best way to uproot collusive relations between government officials and business tycoons, while ensuring that companies thrive on the basis of excellence rather than connections.
Kim is a firm critic of the "Asian values" theory, which holds that Asians care more about getting rich than about getting democracy and that a measure of authoritarianism is the best way to nurture economic growth.
"Democracy has to go hand in hand with economic growth," Kim declared.
Wariness Abroad; Big Challenges at Home
That kind of language leaves officials with pained expressions in places like China or Indonesia.
"He is really going to change the whole profile of Asian leadership," predicted Donald Gregg, a former U.S. ambassador to South Korea and now chairman of the Korea Society in New York. "I think he's going to do a fabulous job."
Yet to fulfill the enormous expectations, Kim will have to deal with three overarching challenges in the coming years: reviving South Korea's economy, easing the threat of war with North Korea, and nurturing democratic institutions and a civil society.
These will be tremendously difficult tasks, and lesser problems have already humbled the outgoing president, Kim Young-sam, who was also given a political honeymoon as he took office but who now commands an approval rating of less than 10 percent.
Kim Dae-jung will face some special difficulties, for he has endless experience as a gadfly but none actually running any level of government, and his aides already warn that he is a micromanager who must learn to delegate. In addition, he is handicapped because his political party has only minority support in the National Assembly.
Finally, although he seems healthy, he is already 74 -- judging by the most credible of the several birth dates he has used over the years -- and it is not clear how he will hold up over his five-year term.
On the other hand, Kim has the advantage of a strong South Korean presidency and of soaring approval ratings. Elected with just 40 percent of the vote in a three-way race, he has rapidly won over many critics, and 83 percent of those surveyed in a recent poll said it was good for Korea that Kim had been elected.
There is a mood of elation and relief in part because many South Koreans and foreigners, particularly establishment figures, initially regarded Kim with deep suspicion. He was suspected of being a populist who would pander to labor unions, take revenge on his political opponents and engage in battles and renegotiations with the International Monetary Fund.
So far, none of these worries has proved to be justified.
One of Kim's first actions after the election in December was to arrange the release from prison of two of his greatest persecutors, former Presidents Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo, under whom he was nearly executed.
The gesture was an important effort at national reconciliation, for South Korea is bitterly divided between the Cholla region in the southwest, where Kim comes from, and the Kyongsang region in the southeast, where the two former presidents have their roots.
Kim also went out of his way to reassure the Samsung Group, a giant conglomerate that had fervently opposed Kim for many years. Sending a strong signal of even-handedness, Kim met the head of Samsung and encouraged him to offer suggestions for the national economic restructuring.
In an effort to move away from authoritarian traditions, Kim banned aides from addressing him with the Korean term for "Excellency," as is traditional for the president. He also has ended the practice of hanging the president's picture on government offices around the country.
"Is it necessary to put my picture in every nook and cranny?" a bemused Kim asked. "I'm sure that everyone knows who I am."
Kim has long experience in charming people who expect the worst of him.
"We were always told that Kim Dae-jung was a threat because he could incite the masses, that he was a socialist, that he was a violent person, and I kept on hearing those things, so I came to believe it," recalled Lee Yeol, a retired policeman who says his job from 1976 to 1987 was to spy on Kim's house.
The security agency secretly took over five homes or offices on every side of Kim's home, Lee gleefully recalled, in addition to checkpoints on each of the little lanes that approached the home. Lee said that his main task was to identify foreign journalists who visited Kim and to go through Kim's mail and garbage -- and that was when he began to have private doubts about his work.
"One day, I was looking through Kim Dae-jung's trash, and I found a piece of his writing entitled 'Resolving Regional Hatreds,"' Lee recalled. "I was really impressed. I thought he was a genius."
"I used to look forward to going through his garbage, in hopes of finding some of his writings," he said. "But after a while Kim Dae-jung's family members must have caught on to what we were doing, because they stopped throwing away papers like that. I was really disappointed."
Yet Kim, for all his passions about democracy and human rights, is as much a pragmatist as an idealist. Throughout his career he has been willing to compromise his beliefs, and indeed he was elected in December only because he agreed to take as his running mate a former rival, Kim Jong-pil, who was the architect of the 1961 coup that led to decades of military rule.
Kim Dae-jung "thought that the most important order of the day was a change of government," said Young Jack-lee, a relative and associate. "Everything else can be sacrificed for that."
Kim on Monday appointed Kim Jong-pil, 72, as the next prime minister, Reuters reported a spokesman as saying. The appointment is subject to approval by the National Assembly. The majority Grand National Party has said it will oppose the nomination when it comes to the floor on Wednesday.
Some critics complain that fundamentally Kim follows an authoritarian political style and that members of his transition team have been arrogant and peremptory in demanding legislative changes.
"They behave like a military junta, and that worries me," said Lee Shin-bom, a member of the National Assembly for a rival party. "I know Kim is a wise man and a courageous man and has a vision for our nation. But to run the government he needs to share decision-making and open up the policy process."
These days Kim's pragmatic instincts seem to have concluded that to ensure a major place in history, he must revive South Korea's economy -- and that the best way of doing that is to open the economy up and restructure it along market lines. Thus Kim has surprised many skeptics by trying to lead public opinion and exhort people to accept layoffs, acquisitions by foreign companies and other far-reaching changes.
You Jong-keun, a former Rutgers University professor who is now Kim's economic adviser, said he had urged Kim to borrow a leaf from Ronald Reagan's playbook and bypass political opponents in the legislature by appealing directly to the people. In any case, there is no doubt that Kim is trying to reshape South Korean public opinion and convince people that the financial crisis is a historic opportunity to make the economy more open and flexible.
Last month he held an unprecedented two-hour "town meeting," televised nationwide, and a young woman asked him pointedly whether his efforts to encourage foreign investments would not mean the "economic colonization" of South Korea.
"We must accept a lot of foreign investment," Kim declared, beaming and launching into a long lecture on capital flows. "When money enters my country, that becomes my money. Times have changed so that we are living in an era in which gaining foreign investment is more important than boosting trade.
"We're living in a globalized world, and in this respect our country is very backward," he added. Then he cited and praised a foreign newspaper article that criticized Koreans as among the rudest people in the world to outsiders.
"If foreigners think this, then no investments will enter Korea, no tourists will come here, and no one will buy our products," Kim warned. "How can we survive like this?"
"We must become closer to foreigners and accept the ways of foreigners." he said. "That will not make our country into a colony."
When Kim had finished scolding his countrymen, there was a brief, shocked pause. And then the audience burst into long applause.
A Voracious Reader in Three Languages
Kim's evangelism for free markets is something of a recent phenomenon, for in the past he showed more enthusiasm for government intervention to achieve social justice. The change, aides say, came about after Kim discussed issues with aides and visiting officials and began reading more about international economics.
Always a voracious reader, he sometimes complains that the downside of being released from prison was that he lost his best time to read and reflect, although he still works from 6 a.m. to midnight each day and always makes time to read books -- in Korean, Japanese and English. Kim learned English from an American Peace Corps volunteer and by tutoring himself, puzzling over the English-language daily Korea Times with a dictionary.
"He loves to study, and that's very important to understanding Kim Dae-jung," said Kim Min-seok, a National Assembly member. "That's what makes him young."
Asked who his heroes were, Kim named a typically diverse group: Mencius, an ancient Chinese scholar who proposed a theory of popular rule; Martin Luther, who defied the Catholic Church and provoked the Reformation; Chun Bong-joon, a Korean revolutionary leader and modernizer who tried to overthrow feudalism and resist Japanese colonization, and Abraham Lincoln.
Why Lincoln?
Kim launched into a discussion of Lincoln's theories of democracy and historical contributions, but then he paused.
"What I respect most about Lincoln is his spirit of forgiveness," Kim reflected, and then he switched from Korean to English to quote from Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address. "With malice toward none," Kim said slowly, "with charity for all."
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