In the post-cold war era, a political leader's main job is
managing the
economy. But in Korea, politics matters: the cold war is
still hot along the
South's border with the North. The security threat posed by
Pyongyang has
long distorted South Korea's democracy, providing
conservatives with an
excuse to clamp down on any kind of dissent. Nobody knows
that better
than Kim, who survived several assassination attempts at
the hands of the
country's previous military leaders. Those experiences
convinced Kim his
free-market program won't work without a more muscular
democracy in the
South. So while working to ease tensions with Pyongyang, he
has tried to
heal the political divisions the confrontation with the
North has left in South
Korean society.
In one of his first acts in office, Kim released dozens of
political prisoners.
Some had languished in jail for decades. His government has
promised to
free Korea's remaining prisoners of conscience on Aug. 15,
as long as they
sign a pledge to respect the constitution. That would end
one of the bitterest
legacies of authoritarian rule. Political prisoners have
filled Korea's jails since
the 1970s, as successive leaders imprisoned anybody
suspected of leftism or
sympathy with North Korea. Draconian security laws often
served as a
convenient tool for locking up political enemies.
Painter Nam Kyu Sun learned that lesson in 1989 when the
government
ordered the arrest of her husband, also an artist. The
offense: painting
pictures of oppressed workers. After the arrest, Nam joined
the Committee
for Democratic Families, a group made up of relatives of
political prisoners.
Her husband was released by the end of the year, but she
continued to
militate for human rights. That sometimes meant fasting in
front of Myongdong
Cathedral in a bid to pressure the government to free
prisoners. But after a
turbulent decade that saw Korea move firmly toward greater
democracy, the
committee is taking on a different role. The job now, says
Nam, is to
safeguard Korea's new democratic freedoms: "If we were a
dissident group
in the past, our new role is to monitor the government on
human rights
issues."
Even Korea's combative students are looking for new roles
in a more
democratic era. The world became used to scenes of students
marching
through the streets of Seoul, facing down helmeted riot
police. It was student
protesters who helped force dictator Chun Doo Hwan to step
down and hold
a direct presidential election in 1987, ushering in a
decade of democratic
reforms. Today, the students are as likely to be found
furiously debating the
shape of the new Korea in e-mail forums and long,
smoke-filled bull sessions
on university campuses.
Not that they have lost their spunk. At Seoul National
University, Chung
Byung Doo, 23, an engineering major, spends his days
sleeping on a mat on a
linoleum floor down the hall from the headquarters of his
student union,
attending political debates at night. He fears police will
arrest him if he leaves
the campus because he took part in a banned May Day
demonstration in
support of workers. That's a familiar hazard for student
leaders. The big
change, Chung says, is that many of the students are now
ready to work
within the system, instead of trying to topple it.
Chung hopes his faith in Korea's reform-minded President
isn't misplaced. "I
want to ask Kim if he still feels the desperate urgency he
used to have as a
democratic activist," the student leader says. Kim would
probably answer
that he still does have that fire in his belly, but that he
and other Koreans also
need to draw on their traditional strengths: grit,
self-sacrifice and
perseverance. Those qualities--which have turned another
young Korean,
golfer Pak Se Ri, into a hero for her countrymen--once made
their country
great, and surely will again.
With reporting by Stella Kim/Seoul
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