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| Kim Hong-il, a former three-term lawmaker and eldest son of late former President Kim Dae-jung Korea Times file |
By Park Ji-won
Kim Hong-il, a former three-term lawmaker and eldest son of late President Kim Dae-jung, died in Seoul Saturday. He was 71.
The cause of his death is unknown. A local fire station said it received a report that Kim was found collapsed at his home in Mapo-gu at around 4 p.m. on Saturday. He was immediately transferred to Yonsei Severance Hospital in Sinchon but was declared dead at around 5 p.m. the same day.
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| Kim Hong-il, right, former three-term lawmaker and eldest son of late President Kim Dae-jung, left, is seen during a party event in this April 16, 1996, photo. Kim Hong-il died at 71 on Saturday. Yonhap |
The younger Kim had suffered from Parkinson's disease for decades, apparently due to complications stemming from torture he underwent under the authoritarian governments of Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan in the 1970 and 1980s together with his father. Kim Dae-jung survived intense oppression, marked by assassination attempts and a death sentence as a dissident leader before being elected president in 1997.
Kim Hong-il had become a lawmaker of the National Congress for New Politics, the predecessor of the current ruling Democratic Party of Korea, in 1996 after being elected as a representative for Mokpo, South Jeolla Province, which has been a stronghold for liberal politicians including Kim Dae-jung. He had served as a key aide for his father ever since.
Along with other two sons of the former president, he played a supportive role in Kim Dae-jung's commitment to the country's democracy and inter-Korean reconciliation. Kim Dae-jung, who served as president between 1998 and 2003, died of heart failure in 2009 due to complications from pneumonia. The former president held the first-ever inter-Korean summit in 2000 with then-North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. He won the Nobel Peace Prize the same year for his contribution to bringing peace to the Korean Peninsula with the so-called Sunshine Policy of engagement with North Korea. Kim Hong-il had also served as chair of the Korean Council for Reconciliation and Cooperation, a consultative body with the North, between 2004 and 2006.
However, Kim Hong-il lost his Assembly seat in 2006 after being sentenced for violating the law on influence-peddling by receiving bribes worth 150 million won after receiving an improper job solicitation offer from a banker. He didn't play active roles in the political arena after that and allegedly had been focusing on treatments for his diseases.
Numerous well-wishers at home and abroad, including political foes, visited the hospital to pay tribute to his contributions to democracy.
Rep. Park Jie-won of the Party for Democracy and Peace, who served as presidential chief of staff under the Kim Dae-jung administration, wrote Saturday on Facebook that "I pray for him to meet his father in the sky and give us wisdom for the country's peaceful unification and the elimination of torture."
Rep. Min Kyung-wook, spokesman of the main opposition Liberty Korea Party, said, "I assume many who knew of his patriotism and activities in the Assembly will mourn his passing. May he rest in peace."
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| Visitors mourn at the funeral of late Kim Hong-il, former three-term lawmaker and eldest son of late President Kim Dae-jung, at Yonsei Severance Hospital in Shinchon, Sunday. Yonhap |
