Word: kim
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When I met Kim Dae Jung some weeks ago, I was struck by how the years had caught up with him. He shuffled slowly into an elegant reception room at his official residence and proffered a hand that felt too soft, the skin papery thin and blotched with liver spots. His clothes hung loosely on his frame. Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised that the feisty democracy fighter who had once faced down South Korea's generals looked ready to turn in his sword. After all, his official birthday has him turning 77. (His friends say he is closer...
...just age, however, that makes Kim appear frail. When he came to office nearly five years ago, he was a towering moral figure?Asia's Nelson Mandela, according to his many admirers. Jailed, beaten and threatened with death, he was the face of the struggle for democracy in South Korea. You felt he had the chance to become not just a good President but a great one. But with barely three months to go before he hands over power to the winner of South Korea's Dec. 19 presidential election, Kim has become a lonely, almost tragic figure, deeply unpopular...
...Legacy: Kim Dae Jung Retires...
...imagined when I watched Kim on a day few Koreans thought would ever come: his inauguration on Feb. 25, 1998. Political rivals, diplomats, even pop stars were in attendance as he swore the oath of office under a clear blue winter sky on the steps of the National Assembly. The mood wasn't festive?South Korea was in the throes of the Asian financial crisis (appropriately, the inaugural music included Paul Simon's Bridge Over Troubled Water). But it was a soaring, hopeful moment for the nation, the first peaceful transfer of power to an opposition party in half...
...music. A deep sense of disappointment has replaced the promise of the inauguration. A President who came to office pledging to end what Koreans call "money politics" has seen two of his three sons convicted of corruption in the past six months. In the eyes of average Koreans, Kim might as well have taken the bribes himself. Kim spent much of his presidency trying to coax North Korea's reclusive Kim Jong Il out of his lair. His unprecedented trip to Pyongyang in June 2000 lifted the hopes of millions of Koreans, won him the Nobel Peace Prize, and looked...