Kim Dae Jung, the leader of opposition to two south Korean dictators--first Park Chung Hee and now Chun Doo Hwan--has been sentenced to death by hanging. In a month-long general court-martial concluded September 17 in Seoul, he was convicted on five counts ranging from "sedition" to "conspiracy to overthrow the government."
The military court convicted 23 others on related charges, sentencing them to prison for up to 20 years. Among the 23 was Rev. Moon Ik Hwan, a leading theologian and translator of the Korean New Testament.
Kim, 54, was interviewed in the October, 1979, Sojourners. In that interview, as throughout his political career, he insisted on a peaceful transition to a democratic government that respects human rights.
Last May, after several months of outspoken criticism of military rule, Kim was imprisoned. A massive insurrection, initially nonviolent, erupted in the city of Kwangju. Hundreds were killed in the week-long siege before troops subdued tens of thousands of protestors.
Kim was charged with instigating those riots, even though it was more directly his arrest that triggered the rebellion.
"I have made every effort to achieve democracy," Kim told the court, "but I never tried to seize power by an insurrection."
We hope that Sojourners readers will join us in a letter-writing campaign. Kim's death sentence is now under review. Letters of protest to the Korean government, and to the U.S. government which backs the Korean regime, are needed.
More than that, we hope you will send written notes of support to Kim himself and his wife, Lee Hi Ho. Because Kim is in prison, we suggest that you address the envelopes in either case to: Lee Hi Ho, 178-1 Tonggyo-dong, Mapo-gu, Seoul, Korea. Ms. Lee (Korean wives keep their family names), like Kim, is a Christian. Christmas cards and letters would be appropriate next month.--The Editors
October 10,1980
Dear Mr. Kim,
Journalists are not supposed to publicly exhibit their personal feelings about people in the news. But loss of some professionalism seems a small sacrifice when your life literally hangs in. the balance. Thus this open letter.
Since you were sentenced last month, I've had a deep sense of you in prison: your spirit alive, your mind at peace, even as your body is weak and your heart heavy. I, like all of us at Sojourners, pray that the first part of that is true.
Why do I suspect that you're in good spirits? Because I've gone back and read copies of my six interviews with you since November, 1972. Two things stand out--two things that I didn't want to believe. In fact, I considered you the consummate politician: very good at manipulating young reporters like myself who still had to practice being hard-nosed.
Those two things were 1) your insistence that the Korean government not only wanted you dead but was actively trying to kill you, and 2) your constant reference to God and Jesus Christ and how, by a combination of their love and your faith, you were not only alive but, thank you Jesus, doing reasonably well in the midst of harsh realities.
Here I was, molding my journalistic self on credibility and objectivity, and there you were, coming out with these incredible, subjective statements.
I didn't believe you. In fact, I felt at the time that you were 1) slightly exaggerating your own importance as a threat to the all-powerful Park Chung Hee regime, and 2) playing up to an allegedly Christian reporter for confessedly Christian magazines in supposedly Christian North America.
Going through the transcripts, I felt some kind of battle of wills was going on between us. The harder I pushed political questions, the more you sounded like a minister instead of a politician. It occurred to me that one of us wasn't likely to make it big in our chosen professions.
Well, neither of us has succeeded as the world defines success. There are many different reasons. The central one, I think, is the matter of faith, yours and mine. The faith that makes us whole also makes us less than successful in a broken world. At one with Jesus nailed on the cross, our common faith isn't going to win the popularity contests that are prerequisites for presidencies and Pulitzers. Living out our faith is more likely to get us in deep trouble with the majorities that confer such mantles of power and prestige.
You have told me repeatedly that, given free debate and free elections, you could be elected president of South Korea. I don't doubt that given their deep fear of you, dictators Park and Chun apparently also have known your electabllity.
But I don't think it's meant to be, and not just because the government has the power to imprison and even kill you. Physical power is finally vulnerable only to the power of the human spirit.
If I may dare to say so, I think that, all along, God has had a higher and more burdensome caning for you than that of becoming president.
That calling is to continue to be faithful, to your God and to your people and to your vision of a Korea free from tyranny. I have no doubt that you will continue to be so; I pray that I could be half as faithful under similar persecution.
Being faithful is ultimately more important than being electable.
You are a compassionate politician. In today's insecure world that is considered not only a contradiction but a defect, a weakness. You are "behind the times," people say, because you are committed to ideals in an age of thoroughly, practical politics--politics as naked power-brokering geared to maintaining the dangerous status quo.
Fear is rampant in the world. The south Korean people know more than their share of fear. Their fear is deepened by a government that now seeks to kill you, and further embalm freedom and democracy, in one pull of the rope. The government knows that a fearful people is a more obedient people.
Your life, from newspaper president to politician to prisoner, is one consistent testimony that fear need not rule us. Even if the government kills you, even if it pretends benevolence and "merely" imprisons you for life, you have a message for your people and the people of the world: Kim Dae Jung was not and is not afraid.
In Korea and around the world, militarists and their civilian protégés exploit the politics of fear, threatening individual hangings and larger annihilations. They hate you most of all because you are not afraid of them.
Others, American and Korean, rulers and ruled, are more easily controlled by fear. The fear that your government induces as a means of control is the same fear that guides my government's policy toward Korea. They call it fear of communism; in reality, it is fear of freedom.
But I don't need to tell you this. You told me this in 1973. Then, I thought it was a lot of rhetoric. Now, I know better.
Over the years, several Korean pastors have shared with me how the Psalms--27, 69, 74, or numerous others--sustained them in prison, even during torture. I hope you will find similar sustenance.
One of the more morbid jokes I learned in south Korea was the English expression "hang in there," said to people whose beliefs made them susceptible to the government's noose. It was part of the humor (most of it considerably more funny) that, I'm sure, has helped you and others to keep up the struggle.
I prefer to say: God's peace, Mr. Kim.
Sincerely,
Jim Stentzel
Jim Stentzel was on the editorial staff at Sojourners when this article appeared.
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