Asia-Pacific
Former S. Korean leader Kim Dae-jung dies
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-08-18 13:29
"I feel like half of my body has crumbled," Kim said after learning Roh had jumped to his death in May.
Kim was born to a middle-class farming family on a small island in South Jeolla Province in Korea's southwest when Korea was still under Japanese colonial rule. The region later became the base of his political support. He went into business after World War II ended Japanese rule.
Kim survived the three-year war that left the Korean peninsula divided, but as South Korea fledgling government veered toward authoritarianism, he resolved to go into politics.
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Kim ran for the presidency a decade later -- and nearly defeated Park. That close call prompted Park to tinker with the Constitution to guarantee his rule in the future.
Just weeks after the presidential elections, Kim was in a suspicious traffic accident that he believed was an attempt on his life. For the rest of his life, he walked with a limp and sometimes used a cane.
Kim persevered in the face of nearly successful attempts by the military-ruled government to shut him down.
In 1973, suspected South Korean agents broke into his Tokyo hotel room and dragged him to a ship where he claimed they planned to dump him at sea.
The would-be assassins aborted the plan following intervention by US officials, who sent an American military helicopter flying low over the ship.
Donald Gregg, who was the US ambassador to Seoul at the time, visited Kim at the hospital last week during a trip to Seoul.
"My husband would rise from the bed if he knew you were here," Kim's wife, Lee Hee-ho, told Gregg. "You played a crucial role in saving my husband's life when he was kidnapped in 1973 and have helped us greatly since then."
After the ship incident, Kim returned to Seoul -- but was immediately put under house arrest by the Park government, and then imprisoned. His release came only after Park's own assassination by his spy chief in late 1979.
Kim was pardoned and his civil rights restored a few months later, allowing him to resume his political activities, but the drama did not end there.
