Strategic Thought toward Asia in the Kim Dae-jung Era

Abstract

Kim Dae-jung’s election as president of the ROK in 1997 marked the first time that South Korea had experienced a peaceful democratic transition from the ruling to the opposition party, and represented a dramatic transition in strategic thought toward North Korea and East Asia. This transition was catalyzed by a financial crisis that brought to its knees a rapidly growing Korean economy in the weeks before the December 1997 presidential elections, exposing serious weaknesses in government and corporate financial management and suddenly placing a South Korea that had proudly achieved Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) status and a $10,000 per year per capita GDP at the mercy of international debt-holders and the IMF. The urgency of the crisis and the fiscal and corporate governance failures that it represented initially dominated all agendas and severely limited Kim Dae-jung’s strategic choices. Its resolution became a prerequisite for management of all other policy issues.