Korean leader sees Gods work in his
life
By NCR STAFF
According to news reports, many South Koreans find the
reunification fever sweeping their country a bit surreal after 55 years of
division, of regarding their northern neighbors as mortal enemies.
Suddenly, proclaimed The New York Times on June 19,
South Koreans are enthralled with all things North Korean.
Clearly, both North and South are reaching out, with South Korean
president Kim Dae Jung taking the lead, and North Korean president Kim Jong II
doing his part -- even to the point of expressing his openness to a visit from
the pope. Kim Dae Jungs visit to North Korea June 13-15 was the first
ever by a South Korean president to the North.
All of this may be confusing for the politically reserved.
However, for the 75-year-old South Korean president, the successful summit with
the Northern leader and the prospect of reconciliation represents fulfillment
of a long-held dream, a Christian hope that has infused his embattled political
career.
South Koreas President Kim, a convert to Catholicism who
once had a direct experience of Jesus as his political enemies prepared to
drown him, regards his years of political trials as nothing less than a chance
to participate in Gods redemptive work.
For 30 years until he was elected president of South Korea just
three years ago, following three unsuccessful bids, Kim Dae Jung was a
political outsider and a member of the opposition party. His election marked
the first time an opposition leader had come to power since Korea was
partitioned in 1945.
Attracted to Catholicism in part because it was the faith of John
M. Chang, opposition party leader, Kim was baptized in his early 30s.
Consciously merging his newfound faith with his political resistance, he took
Thomas More as his baptismal name and asked Chang to be his sponsor.
Perseverance is perhaps the most striking quality of Kims
career. He has suffered torture, years of imprisonment and house arrest, two
exiles from his homeland and four assassination attempts, by his own count.
In the most dramatic assassination attempt, the one most relevant
to his sense of religious mission, he was kidnapped from a hotel in Tokyo in
1973 by men working for then-president Park Chung-hee. Kim, as he described the
incident in a 1993 interview, was in a dead faint
on the verge of
being thrown into the sea in the darkness of the night.
I used to pray twice a day, he said, but at that
crucial moment I didnt and was only thinking about how I could save
myself.
At that moment, Jesus Christ stood beside me. I firmly held
his sleeves, honestly begging for my life. A few seconds later, red beams of
light flashed through my blindfold, and I heard a boom, boom! Then there was
the sound of planes approaching and somebody calling my name.
His life was spared.
All my hard trials experienced in the past -- imprisonment,
frequent detention, torture and forced exiles -- happened in the process of
Gods redemptive work, he said in 1993, and in that sense, I
think, I have also participated in Gods salvation project.
Such an outlook is not unusual for Koreans, according to scholars
of Koreas contemporary religious history. For instance, Andrew E. Kim,
writing for Korea Overseas Information Service, finds that Koreas long
history of political vulnerability to Chinese and Japanese control, Japanese
colonialism and then the Korean War has provided fertile ground for
Christianity and its theology of salvation-in-history.
Christianity, first introduced to Korea in the late 1700s, has
grown faster in South Korea than in any other country. Though estimates of the
Christian population vary, reliable data-gatherers say it increased from 4
million in 1974 to 22 million -- nearly half the population -- in 1997. About 3
million of those are Roman Catholics.
An intriguing aspect of Koreas introduction to Christianity
is that it came through laymen rather than missionary priests. Around 1770,
Chong Tu-won learned about Christianity through Catholic literature encountered
on a visit to China. He brought it back to Korea, where it was studied by
scholars with a strong interest in Western civilization.
Although Korean Catholics are often described as conservative, the
label hardly fits President Kim. I firmly belief that God exists and
lives in a variety of forms, also in Buddhism, Confucianism and other
religions, he said. About 2 percent of Asias population is
Christian.
This article is based on wire stories, including UCA News and
Catholic News Service.
National Catholic Reporter, June 30,
2000
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