wfn.org | United Methodists Recall Struggles of Kim Dae Jung

[George Conklin <gconklin@igc.apc.org>]

CONTACT: 	Joretta Purdue
(10-21-33-71BP){95}
		Washington, D.C. (202) 546-8722      Feb. 19, 1998

NOTE: Photographs are available upon request.

Former missionaries see inauguration
as beginning of new day for Korea

				by United Methodist News Service

	Two United Methodists who have known the president-elect of
South Korea for decades never expected to see Kim Dae Jung live to take
office.
Now, Jane Hull Harvey and the Rev. Pharis Harvey are planning to attend
the Feb. 25 inauguration in Seoul.
	Kim (the family name in Korea comes first rather than last) had
been imprisoned, tortured, kidnapped and sentenced to death over the
previous 30 years, the Harveys recalled in an interview with United
Methodist News Service.
	Jane, an assistant general secretary of the Board of Church and
Society, said she is convinced Kim really won the office in 1987. As an
election monitor, she saw ballot boxes burned and other violations.
	"He definitely won that election," she declared. At the Korean
Council of Churches office, she had watched as election results were
gathered from the polls by phone. Kim had more than enough votes to win,
when the Korean CIA stormed the building and everyone fled, she said. 
Six months later, a U.S.-based computer company confessed that it had
been hired to rig the government computers so that the ruling party
stayed in power.
Kim's most recent election is the first time in Korean history that the
opposition candidate has officially won the election, Jane noted.
	"I think there is a new day coming throughout Asia," she said.
"The movement for human rights and democracy in Korea has finally come
to fruition and, by definition, that will affect all the dictatorships
of Asia."
	Pharis observed that Kim's overriding priority will be recovery
of the Korean economy, which has been stricken with bankruptcies and
layoffs. Kim has laid out an economic plan and will try to restructure
the conglomerates, which were based on loans to each other "like a Ponzi
scheme," Pharis said. The price of doing business that way was large
payments to the party in power, he added.
Jane foresees a quick end to laws restricting freedom, such as the
National Security Law, which imposed long prison terms for criticizing
the government. The Harveys expect Kim to also work for rapprochement
with North Korea. 
	Jane still wonders what the Korean government found so scary
about "this gentle man." A devout Roman Catholic, Kim came from an
impoverished area of South Korea, she said. He had only an eighth-grade
education, and like Abraham Lincoln, he educated himself through
extensive reading.
	Kim is a powerful speaker, Pharis said. "He was a devoted
democrat . . . a fearless fighter against corruption and authoritarian
rule."
The Harveys underscored that the journey has been harrowing for Kim, his
family and friends, and many others who dared to seek democracy and
freedom in Korea.
	In 1973, Kim went to meet with Korean dissidents in Japan, only
to be kidnapped by the Korean CIA. Taken to sea, he was tied to heavy
weights and was about to be thrown overboard, but the presence of a
persistent airplane deterred his captors, he told the Harveys.
	A few days later, he was dumped near a church close to home in
Korea, then placed under house arrest. Between 1972 and 1979, the
Harveys said, Kim was either in prison or under house arrest almost
constantly.
	In 1979, Pharis, then a United Methodist missionary in Japan who
had been working on human rights in Korea from within Japan, was sent by
the Board of Global Ministries to Korea to evaluate the human rights
situation.
Pharis had met Kim in 1966, but the Korean government would not allow
them to meet this time. However, Pharis did visit Kim's wife, Lee Hee
Ho, a longtime friend of Jane's.
After that trip, Pharis was ordered back to the United States by the
mission board to organize North American churches for Korean civil
rights. For the next 14 years, he was executive director of the North
American Coalition for Human Rights in Korea, based in Washington.
In 1980, Kim was given a show trial that resulted in a death sentence.
Lee received his last will and final words on death row and went home,
where she was under house arrest. Days later, friends learned Kim's
sentence had been commuted to life in prison and called Lee with the
news.	
"She has suffered so much for democracy," Jane said.
Jane's friendship with Lee stretched back to college days, when the two
were roommates at Scarritt College for Christian Workers in Nashville,
Tenn., in the late 1950s.
Neither woman was married when they graduated in 1958 -- Lee with a
master's and Jane with a bachelor's degree. Lee, a Korean Methodist, had
been unable to pursue her education in war-torn South Korea. Sponsored
by the Methodist Men of the Memphis District, Lee had first earned a
bachelor's degree at Lambuth College in Jackson, Tenn., also a United
Methodist-related school.
	Jane was sent as a missionary to Korea by the Methodist Women's
Division. She and Pharis, then a lay missionary to Okinawa, were married
in Seoul in 1959.
Meanwhile, Lee returned to Korea, where she became director of the YWCA.
	Kim, whose first wife had died of cancer, married Lee in 1962.
He had two sons from the first marriage, and another was born to Lee in
1964. "She adopted her husband's sons as her own," Jane said.
	During Kim's difficulties, Lee helped keep the world spotlight
on him and others in the opposition movement.
"She organized the other prisoners' wives to work for justice for their
husbands and culture," Jane recalled. "They became a profoundly powerful
group of women, banded together while their husbands were tried."
	It is remarkable, Jane said, that these women from a Confucian
culture could bring the whole government to a halt by marching and
singing hymns, organizing prayer meetings and being in court as silent
witnesses wearing black tape crosses across their mouths.
	Also in silent witness and prayer, the wives knitted shawls in
court while reading to themselves the same collection of Bible verses
over and over. These peace shawls, V-shaped for victory, were sold
throughout the world to raise awareness of the lack of basic rights in
Korea and to provide income for the political prisoners' families.
	"Yet in the midst of all of it, Hee Ho was the most joyous
individual -- certain that there would be victory," Jane said.
	Kim's life sentence was eventually changed to permanent exile,
and he and Lee were forced from the country. In 1984, Kim felt the need
to go back.
	His return occurred only months after the opposition leader in
the Philippines was murdered at the airport when he tried to return
home, so a group of activists and celebrities surrounded Kim and Lee
when they landed. 
"Pharis was the first person out of the plane," Jane said ruefully. The
idea was to form a human shield, but the Korean CIA was like a moving
wall. Watching television news coverage in the United States, she saw
him and his new briefcase fly into the air, spilling papers into the
melee. A ring of Korean CIA men surrounded Kim and Lee, and spirited
them off. The couple were put under house arrest. 
Now, as Kim and Lee prepare to take over, Jane said, "Sometimes in life,
justice does prevail.
"Their leadership will change Korea forever."
					# # #

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