Birth of Democracy

Abstract

Kim Dae Jung plotted his return to Korea like a political campaign supported by a well-oiled machine. He broached the plan in one-on-one meetings with journalists, including a lunch in August 1984 with me in a cafeteria a few steps from the offices of USA Today, where I was working at the time, near the Iwo Jima memorial in the Rosslyn district of Arlington, across the Key Bridge from Washington.¹ On August 22, he met Elliott Abrams, the assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs, confirming that he was about to get in touch with his nemesis, President Chun Doo Hwan, and tell him he was going home. On September 11, he wrote to Chun announcing his plan, and ten days later the Korean government came back with the menacing promise to “take due process” on his return.