Former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung dies
The longtime dissident, who survived three assassination attempts and spent years in prison, was 85. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for engaging North Korea.
The funeral procession for former President Kim Dae-jung, who died Tuesday at age 85 after a long bout of pneumonia. (YNA, EPA / August 23, 2009)
 South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, right, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il embrace at Pyongyang airport in June 2000. (Associated Press / Yonhap) |
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South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, right, is embraced by North Korean leader Kim Jong Il - Statement by President Obama on the Death of Former President Kim Dae-jung of the Republic of Korea
He was 85.
South Korea's president from 1998 to 2003, Kim is best known for the moment on June 13, 2000, when he stepped onto the tarmac at Pyongyang's airport with arms outstretched to embrace North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.
That landmark meeting, which was supposed to end 50 years of enmity between the Koreas, won Kim the Nobel Peace Prize. But Kim lived just long enough to see his "sunshine policy" unraveling as a result of North Korea's continued nuclear ambitions and the installation last year of a conservative president in South Korea.
The meeting in Pyongyang was only one of many dramatic moments in a most eventful life.
There was the time in 1973 that Kim found himself on a boat -- blindfolded and manacled, his limbs encased in concrete -- about to be tossed overboard by assassins presumably working for South Korea's military dictatorship. And then there was his return from exile in the United States in 1985, when he arrived at Seoul's airport flanked by U.S. congressmen, only to be immediately seized and placed under house arrest.
After four decades as the country's most famous dissident, Kim (often known by his nickname D.J. to distinguish him from other Kims in public life) became its president in 1998. By daring to meet with Kim Jong Il, he established what many think is an irreversible course of rapprochement between the estranged Koreas. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000 for his "sunshine policy" of engaging North Korea and his lifelong struggle for democratization.
But his final years were spent in frustration. He was disappointed by Kim Jong Il's failure to reciprocate for the Pyongyang summit with a visit to Seoul, as well as by the George W. Bush administration's skeptical attitude toward his efforts.
Just five months after winning the Nobel Prize, Kim was humiliated during a White House visit when newly inaugurated President Bush was publicly dismissive of the idea that one could negotiate with the North Koreans.
"Although I understand fully why the North Korean leadership is not very likable, it is in the interests of global peace to pursue the policy of dialogue," Kim later recalled, in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, telling Bush.
Kim also had to spend his later years fending off a series of political scandals. His youngest son was arrested on charges of taking bribes from a lobbyist. The revelation that Kim's aides had secretly ordered the transfer of $500 million to North Korea shortly before the meeting with Kim Jong Il led to charges that he had bought the summit and hence the Nobel Peace Prize.
In 2005, investigators made the ironic discovery that this icon of democracy and human rights had allowed illegal wiretapping during his presidency at a pace unmatched even by South Korea's former military dictators.
Like former dissidents who became president -- Lech Walesa of Poland or Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic -- Kim's image abroad was always better than at home. He was often likened to a prophet scorned in his own land.
"The Koreans forgot that he was a champion of democracy and saw him just as another political boss. He was always more highly rated overseas than domestically," said Michael Breen, a Seoul-based biographer of Kim Jong Il who has been researching a biography of Kim Dae-jung as well.
In his later years, with his hair dyed the artificial dark black of many aging Asian politicians and his skin powdered white, Kim appeared as a distant and forbidding figure. He gave only occasional interviews, pleading for continued dialogue with North Korea.
Kim was succeeded as South Korea's president by Roh Moo-hyun, a similarly left-leaning politician who tried to continue the rapprochement with Pyongyang. But 2007 elections brought conservatives back in power.
A much-heralded resort run by South Korea's Hyundai Asan group near North Korea's Mt. Kumgang closed last year, and many businesses pulled out of an industrial park in Kaesong, north of the DMZ. North Korea's two nuclear tests, one in 2006 and a more recent one in May, have been viewed by many in South Korea as proof that Kim's policies of conciliation were a failure.
Hahm Sung-deuk, a presidential scholar at Korea University in Seoul, predicts that South Koreans will come to appreciate Kim more, especially when his presidency is stacked up next to the disappointing terms of his successors.
"His legacy will grow with time. Even if he made some mistakes, people appreciate his contributions to democracy and his handling of the economy," Hahm said today.
Kim was born on tiny Haui island off the southwestern coast of South Korea, in Cholla province, renowned for the anti-authoritarian streak of its people. He has said that his date of birth was Jan. 6, 1924, although various later dates are often cited in official records -- discrepancies that his opponents used against him later to claim he was dishonest. (The most likely explanation for the confusion over his birth date was that his family was trying to keep him out of the draft during the 1910-1945 occupation period.)
NATO Probes Fatal Afghan Airstrike
Dozens of Civilians May Be Among Dead in U.S. Strike on Hijacked Fuel Tankers; Some Victims Buried in Mass Grave
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U.S Gen. Stanley McChrystal, left, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, and U.S. Rear Admiral Gregory J. Smith, center, NATO's director of communications in Kabul, are surrounded by Afghan and German soldiers as they visit the site of Friday's airstrike where up to 70 people, many reportedly civilians, died outside Kunduz, Afghanistan, Saturday, Sept. 5, 2009. (AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)
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Play CBS Video Video Civilians Caught in Crossfire A U.S. air strike aimed at a group of Taliban fighters resulted in the deaths of Afghan civilians. Elizabeth Palmer reports on the resulting pressure put on America's top commander in Afghanistan.
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Video Troops Sparse in Afghanistan The number of U.S. soldiers stationed in Afghanistan can barely match the strength and influence of Taliban forces in some of the more remote sections of that nation. David Martin reports.
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The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan is visiting the site of an airstrike where villagers reportedly died when American jets bombed two fuel tankers hijacked by the Taliban.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal waded through knee-high water to inspect the blackened tankers, which exploded when a U.S. F-15E Strike Eagle jet dropped two 500-pound bombs.
On Saturday, reporters traveling with McChrystal saw that about a dozen small yellow fuel cans had survived the blast. Several were still full of fuel.
Local officials have said about 70 people died in the northern province of Kunduz, but it was unclear how many were militants and how many were villagers who had rushed to the scene to siphon fuel from the trucks.
Friday's pre-dawn strike occurred despite McChrystal's new orders restricting use of airpower if civilian lives are at risk. High civilian casualties in military operations have enraged Afghans and undercut support for the war against the Taliban.
Before traveling to the site of the bombing, McCrystal met with local Afghan leaders in the provincial capital. He expressed sympathy for any civilian losses and said the fight against the Taliban should not come at the expense of civilian lives.
"I am here today to ensure that we are operating in a way that is truly protecting the Afghan people from all threats," he told the officials.
At least one local official supported the allied bombing, saying it would help drive the insurgents from the area.
"If we did three more operations like we did yesterday morning, the Kunduz situation would be peaceful and stable," said Ahmadullah Wardak, a provincial council chief.
An aide to McChrystal, who briefed reporters, said the general was taking reports of civilian deaths "very seriously."
McChrystal discussed the incident with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and later told senior commanders that "we need to know what we are hitting," the aide said, speaking on condition of anonymity under command policy.
McChrystal told reporters Saturday in Kabul that he wanted to find out what happened in Kunduz "so that we first can prevent it from happening again - or minimize the chances that it happens again - and correct anything that we might be able to correct about it like helping the injured."
A 10-member NATO investigative team flew over the site on the Kunduz River where the U.S. jet, called in by the German military, bombed the tankers, which reportedly had become stuck trying to cross a river. German officials have said the Taliban may have been planning a suicide attack on the military's nearby Kunduz base using the tankers, which were hijacked carrying NATO fuel supplies from neighboring Tajikistan.
The investigative team led by U.S. Rear Admiral Gregory J. Smith, NATO's director of communications in Kabul, also spoke to two wounded villagers in the Kunduz hospital, including a boy and a farmer with shrapnel wounds.
Smith said it was unclear yet how many civilians were at the site of the blast. "Unfortunately, we can't get to every village."
Mohammad Shafi, 10, who was injured in the blast and shifted to Kabul for treatment, said that his father had told him not to go near the stolen tankers, but he went anyway. "While I was going to get the fuel, on the way I heard a big bang, and after that I don't know what happened," he said from his hospital bed, with bandages on his arm and leg.
A bomb blast, meanwhile, hit a German military convoy Saturday, damaging at least one vehicle and wounding four troops, none seriously. Kunduz provincial police chief, Abdullah Razaq Yaqoobi, said a suicide car bomb caused the blast, though German military officials said it was a roadside bomb.
An AP reporter at a nearby German base said the blast created a shock wave that could be felt inside the base. The thousands of German troops in Kunduz have come under increasing militant attack in a region that had largely escaped the scale of violence seen in the east and south of Afghanistan.
Germany said 57 fighters were killed in Friday's airstrike and no civilians were believed in the area at the time, based on surveillance of the tankers by a drone aircraft. NATO secretary general Anders Fogh Rasmussen, however, acknowledged some civilians may have died, and the U.S.-led coalition and the Afghan government announced a joint investigation.
Local government spokesman Mohammad Yawar estimated that more than 70 people were killed, at least 45 of them militants. Investigators were trying to account for the others, he said.
The local governor, Mohammad Omar, said 72 were killed and 15 wounded. He said about 30 of the dead were identified as insurgents, including four Chechens and a local Taliban commander. The rest were probably fighters or their relatives, he said.
Many of the bodies were burned beyond recognition, and villagers buried some in a mass grave.
The deputy U.N. representative to Afghanistan, Peter Galbraith, said Saturday he was "very concerned" about the reports of civilian deaths.
"Steps must also be taken to examine what happened and why an airstrike was employed in circumstances where it was hard to determine with certainty that civilians were not present," Galbraith said.
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