---
node: kim_dae_jung
type: person
slug: kim_dae_jung
title: "Kim Dae-jung"
lead: "Kim Dae-jung (1924–2009) was South Korea's long-persecuted opposition leader and its president from 1998 to 2003. His engagement with North Korea won him the 2000 Nobel Peace Prize."
published: 2026-07-09
updated: 2026-07-09
image_file: kim_dae_jung.jpg
image_source: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kim_Dae-jung_(Cropped).png"
image_author: "Presidential Press and Information Office"
image_license: "CC BY 4.0"
---


## Who they were

South Korea's great opposition survivor. He nearly beat Park Chung-hee in the 1971 presidential election; in 1973 he was kidnapped from a Tokyo hotel by the Korean CIA and nearly killed, as records document. In 1980 the Chun Doo-hwan junta sentenced him to death on charges linked to the Gwangju uprising; the sentence was commuted under international pressure, and he went into exile.

## What they did

Elected president in December 1997 — the first peaceful transfer of power to the opposition in South Korean history — he steered the country out of the 1997–98 Asian financial crisis, repaying the IMF program early. His "Sunshine Policy" of engagement with North Korea produced the first inter-Korean summit, held in Pyongyang in June 2000 with Kim Jong-il, and won him the Nobel Peace Prize that year. Critics have argued the policy and summit involved undisclosed payments and yielded too little. He died in 2009.

## Legacy

He embodies South Korea's democratization; the possibilities and limits of engagement remain debated to this day.