Dusk to dawn

WHEN nearly 200 women at a bankrupt wig factory were fired in 1979 and then beaten by police for refusing to leave, it was Kim Young-sam who sheltered them in the headquarters of his opposition New Democratic Party (NDP). When more police stormed his offices (and one of the women died), his calls for an end to South Korea’s military dictatorship grew noisier.

For Park Chung-hee, who rose to power in a coup in 1961, the noises became too loud. Park suspended Mr Kim’s leadership of the NDP and expelled him from the National Assembly. “You can wring the rooster’s neck,” Mr Kim retorted, “but dawn will still come.” All 66 of the party’s MPs resigned. Protests followed, the biggest of Park’s rule. (Soon after, Park was assassinated by his security chief, during a row about the protests.)

Mr Kim shone in championing the rights of labourers, but a former minister in his government remembers him as “prince of the conservatives”. His father grew rich from the anchovy trade. His own backers were from South Korea’s growing middle classes. He was ambitious, becoming the youngest MP in the then-tame assembly at the age of 26. Later, in 1996, when he was president, South Korea joined the OECD, the club for rich democracies.

He was a shrewd politician. He missed his first shot at the presidency in 1987, when South Korea held its first free and fair elections in decades. He ran against Kim Dae-jung, a longtime ally in the democratic movement, and split the opposition vote. This allowed a former general, Roh Tae-woo, to win the presidency. Ahead of the next vote in 1992, Mr Kim merged his party with Mr Roh’s. He won that election with backing from military strongmen. Many democrats felt betrayed. (And today that merged party is the vehicle for Park’s daughter, President Park Geun-hye.)

Yet within months Mr Kim purged a clique of officers who still held senior government posts. Sending the army back to the barracks, says Kang Won-taek of Seoul National University, probably averted yet another coup.

Mr Kim hounded the corrupt. He disclosed his wealth, a first, and put Mr Roh and Chun Doo-hwan, a former military dictator, on trial for bribery (and, later, mutiny and treason). Today South Koreans associate Mr Kim with a steaming bowl of kalguksu, the humble noodle dish that he served up in place of lavish banquets. He promised South Koreans a presidential office that would be their “good neighbour”.

Alas, he left office on a low. His own son went to prison for graft. He bungled his response to the painful Asian financial crisis in 1997 and was long remembered for accepting, in the final weeks of his presidency, what many saw as a humiliating international bail-out.

Yet even detractors mourned his death on November 22nd, recalling when South Koreans became free to criticise their leaders. Under Mr Kim, free speech flourished: one art gallery in Seoul displayed little loudspeakers arranged in the shape of the president’s face and played the soundtrack of a porn film through them. Mr Kim wisely ignored the show.