S. Korea's Kim Gets Nobel Peace Prize

South Korean President Kim Dae-jung accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of his people Sunday and pledged to continue his lifelong campaign for democracy, human rights and reconciliation with North Korea.

The 76-year-old leader, a former political prisoner, said the prize is one he shares with the Korean people - and one he would have liked to share with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

Since a historic summit in June, North and South Korea have embarked on a series of friendly gestures, including two reunions of separated relatives, the reopening of liaison offices and an agreement to reconnect a cross-border railway.

"I am infinitely grateful to be given the honor. But I think of the countless people and colleagues in Korea who have given themselves willingly to democracy and the dream of national unification. And I must conclude that the honor goes to them," Kim said in his acceptance speech.

In the South Korean capital of Seoul, the government set off firecrackers as the awards ceremony began in Oslo.

Smiling, Kim accepted the prize, which includes a medal, a diploma and 9 million Swedish kronor (about dlrs 940,000), at the ceremony at Oslo City Hall, marked by music, flowers and speeches.

More progress has been made in easing tensions between the two Koreas in recent months than in the half-century since the divided nation went to war.

But combat-ready armies, including 37,000 U.S. troops in the South, remain in place on both sides of the world's most heavily armed border. The two sides have yet to discuss arms reductions and troop pullbacks, sensitive topics that could take years to resolve.

Reuters

Kim shows the diploma and the medal after he was awarded the 2000 Nobel Peace Prize by Gunnar Berge, chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

Gunnar Berge, the chairman of the five-member awards committee, said the South Korean president showed the courage to break with 50 years of hostility on the Korean Peninsula with his "sunshine policy" of contact and confidence building.

"In most of the world, the Cold War ice age is over," Berge said. "The world may see the sunshine policy thawing the last remnants of the Cold War on the Korean Peninsula...and no one has contributed more than today's laureate."

In his speech, Kim recalled his summit with Kim Jong Il in the North Korean capital of Pyongyang.

"I went with a heavy eart, not knowing what to expect but convinced that I must go for the reconciliation of my people and peace on the Korean peninsula," he said.

The two Koreas were divided into the communist North and the pro-Western South in 1945. They fought a war from 1950-53, which ended in an uneasy armistice, not a peace treaty.

Kim was an opposition leader for four decades under military-backed rule in the South. He was jailed, sentenced to death and, he says, the target of four assassination attempts.

"I could not have endured the hardship without the support of my people," he said. "For six months in prison, I awaited the execution day. Often, I shuddered with fear of death. But I would find calm in the fact of history that justice ultimately prevails."

Democratic reforms were introduced in South Korea in the late 1980s, and Kim won the presidential election in 1997 on his fourth attempt.

The peace prize is the only Nobel awarded in Oslo, with the others presented in Stockholm, Sweden. They are always presented on Dec. 10, marking the date their benefactor, the Swedish industrialist Alfred Nobel, died in 1896.

Last year's peace prize went to the international humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders.

By Doug Mellgren
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