Two Years of Kim DJ Presidency

This is to refute your Editorial (12/20/99), Two Years of Kim presidency.

When I have read your editorial “Two Years of Kim presidency” I had a weird feeling of déjà vu that the editor who wrote it definitely had plagiarized or at least contextualized from the contributing article by Donald Gregg (12/18), with which I have rebutted in Herald Forum.

In commemoration of Kim’s two-year presidency, you have editorialized an ample and obsequious display of adulation and reverence for his political philosophy and leadership that has gross resemblance and close proximity with an ex-CIA man’s love song.

1. Mr. Donald Gregg has put Kim on a high pedestal comparing him with Franklin Roosevelt in dealing with the country’s economic crisis and comparatively you have given Kim more than the maximum point as a lifetime champion of democracy and human rights who has an ability to overcome the extraordinary task laid before him.
2. Ex-CIA man has chastised Korean media for their obsession with the Furgate and other scandals and you are hand in glove with him declaring that “it is understandable that Kim appears to find it hard to swallow the increasingly bitter criticism from the public and the media. It is amazing to me that you appear to agree to disregard or overlook his political or criminal faux pas because Korea has “come out of the crisis completely” under Kim’s leadership that is the most egregious white lie.
3. Former cloak-and-dagger agent adulated Kim profusely that he has played a major role in the economic cooperation among Asian nations and Kim’s diplomacy has created the best possible base from which to deal with the North Korea. Again, your editorial emphasized his laudable achievements in inter-Korean affairs and foreign relations. As far as I know, his soi-disant Sunshine policy is as dead as do-do without clear direction because he can never be an ultimate and final decision-maker but a pantomiming clown to follow Uncle Sam’s order.
4. Your editorial, as former American Ambassador noted, has come to the conclusion that Kim has achieved a remarkable turnaround from the national bankruptcy in just two years without raising the issues of the awe-inspiring national debt incurred by his government, channeling the huge amount of tax-payer’s money into the financial salvage operation, the exponential growth of homeless population resulting from his social policy and who will eventually have to sacrifice to pay all the debt that is projected to reach one quarter of GDP in a couple of years.
5. Finally, you expressed the wishful thinking, as Mr. Gregg mumbled in futuristic tone, that Kim will be remembered by the future generations as a great leader who has built the society of democracy, welfare and humanity, and you whimpered pensively that this will depend much on his future efforts to figure out where the cry come from and how to deal with it.

In the first paragraph, you have beatified Kim a Saint declaring that the President-elect had to roll up his sleeves to work with no time of rejoicing his winning and was burdened with the task of saving the country from the national crisis.
It is true he was tortured, abducted and almost buried at Davy Jones’s locker and he was fighting for the under-privileged during the military regime in the 70s.
However, you can not deny the fact that he was elected President employing the Machiavellian feat with the slush fund provided sub rosa by Chaebols and promising of opening up every national treasure for international sale, not as a lifetime fighter for democracy as you editorialized. Apropos of your wishful thinking to crown him the great leader, I am definitely negative about his leadership, because he behaves like an Israeli Jew who has totally forgotten his sufferings from Nazi dictator and become an oppressor of helpless and poor Palestinians. Frankly speaking, I am not surprised about his wrong-headed metamorphosis; his close aide once noted “Everything can be sacrificed for his Presidency, Kim means literally everything, people, money, pride, or trust. Presidency was the be-all and end-all of his existence.”
Kim is not so much a lifetime fighter for democracy, but for his Presidency.