As I wrote in my previous column, I continue here the correspondence I exchanged 17 years ago with my old friend Nam Shin-woo. What follows is my first open letter in response to his note.

 

Dear Shin-woo,

 

I hesitated for quite some time after receiving your letter. First of all, your long-held, overly generous view of me made me both laugh and feel uneasy. I was sorry that I may have come across as someone who had long concealed my true thoughts and acted contrary to your expectations.

 

In a way, it pained me that you spoke of what should be natural as if you were complaining, or even drunkenly rambling as in the old days.

 

But the conclusion to this story is simple and clear. You have overestimated me from long ago, and that assumption was flawed from the start. Everything you wrote in your letter today stems from that overestimation, leading to faulty judgment. In short, your views are largely mistaken.

 

I wondered how, or whether, I should respond. For a moment, I even thought of just leaving it unanswered.

 

Yet since you titled your letter “You Must Choose,” it struck me not so much as a private note between friends but as a statement of conviction you wanted to make public. That made me feel I should reply.

 

And since you did not send the letter to me alone but also to Sun-kwon, Young-jin, and others, it seemed to me you considered this a matter to be addressed collectively among our group of friends. Therefore, I also came to feel my answer should be made openly to all.

 

Indeed, that makes sense. We not only attended middle and high school together, but also spent four years at the same university, in the same architecture department, even in the same design studio. For those four years we were virtually inseparable.

 

What’s more, we even shared a dormitory room for several years. During that time, we were together 24 hours a day. We shared our troubles, and our room became notorious among the 600 students for drinking the most, earning us the watchful eye and constant inspections of the dorm master.

 

So even now, it may seem strange that we appear to hold different views on certain matters. To outsiders, we must have looked like we always thought alike. People envied us for sticking so closely together.

 

But is that still the case today?

 

The first time I truly felt like an outsider from our group—or community, if you will—was when the four of you left for the United States. At the time, I thought there was no reason to go abroad; what was urgent was to gain practical training in architecture at the Kim Swoo Geun Research Institute.

 

When Yong-chul, the last of us, left for America after finishing his four years as an Air Force officer, I went to Gimpo Airport to see him off. I slipped two bottles of soju into his bag and told him:

 

“Let’s meet again in 10 years. If you’re all doing well in America and I’m struggling here, then please take me with you. But if it turns out the other way and you’re struggling while I’m doing well here, I’ll bring you all back to Seoul.”

 

Though I said that, on the way back from the airport I felt lonely and afraid. One by one you all left, until I was the only one remaining. There was no one left to call for a drink when I was feeling down.

 

Two years later, I went to the Netherlands. Looking back, perhaps that was the beginning of the divergence in the way we thought. In 1972, under martial law imposed for the Yushin constitutional amendment, I carried in my passport a red rubber stamp reading, “Departing for the sake of the nation and people (Martial Law Command).” And unlike you, I went to the opposite side of the globe.

 

There, classmates sometimes asked me, “Isn’t South Korea just a lackey of American imperialism?”

 

They questioned why our country accepted U.S. aid in exchange for hosting military bases and acting as America’s pawn. For me, who had been educated all my life under anti-communist ideology, such questions were suddenly difficult to answer.

 

To them, Korea was a barely visible dot on the other side of the earth, split into two and endlessly fighting ideological battles. They saw us as waging a pointless proxy war on behalf of East and West.

 

I encountered a diversity of thought among professors and students that amazed me. I realized how accustomed we had been to rigid, uniform thinking. I felt deeply that I had done well to come.

 

Traveling across Europe afterward made me realize more vividly how many different nations shared this planet. At every airport, officials quarreled with me over the red stamp in my passport. What did it mean? Was I suspicious? No wonder I was treated oddly. I felt ashamed of our country, ruled as it was by the military.

 

One of the most striking events at the time was West German Chancellor Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik. West and East Germany acknowledged the reality of being one people but two states, and pursued friendship, cooperation, trade, and even joint entry into the United Nations.

 

In 1972 came the Berlin Agreement among the four Allied powers—the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. Twenty years later, Germany was unified. It has now been another 20 years since the Berlin Wall came down.

 

We have since learned how repressive East Germany was: one-third of its people were informants for the Stasi secret police. Yet West Germany still poured economic cooperation into the East, even paying to bring back political prisoners.

 

That is why I supported Kim Dae-jung’s Sunshine Policy. I agreed with the idea that if one member of the family is wayward, you must calm him down. You cannot kill him simply for being wayward.

 

I believed then—and still believe—that the money South Korea “gave” to the North was small compared to West Germany’s cooperation with East Germany, and also small compared to the future investment that unification will inevitably require.

 

Up to now, the amount is said to be 9 trillion won: 200 billion under Kim Young-sam, 2.7 trillion under Kim Dae-jung, 5.7 trillion under Roh Moo-hyun, and 500 billion under Lee Myung-bak. Of that, 8.3 trillion came from government funds and 800 billion from the private sector.

 

Compared to Lee Myung-bak’s 22 trillion won Four Major Rivers Project—with another 10 trillion or so in hidden costs—that is a drop in the bucket.

 

And I think I now understand why, when North Korea threatened to turn Seoul into a “sea of fire” in the late Kim Young-sam years, the United States sent Jimmy Carter as a special envoy to defuse the tension. Had such extreme confrontation continued, foreign investment would have been nearly impossible during the IMF crisis, and economic recovery would have faltered.

 

Kim Dae-jung endured nearly 30 years of political persecution under Park Chung-hee, Chun Doo-hwan, and Roh Tae-woo, verging on attempted political murder. Yet he ultimately proved that democracy could prevail, and demonstrated the possibility of inter-Korean reconciliation and cooperation.

 

That was why he received the Nobel Peace Prize. Still, there are those who insist it was the result of lobbying and bribery. Can you imagine? That the judges of the Swedish Academy were swayed by money from Seoul? Such claims are ignorant and pathetic.

 

I even heard more plausible accounts that domestic opponents lobbied against awarding him the prize.

 

After becoming president, Kim pardoned Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo, the very men who had once sought to execute him. How could one man forgive those who tried to kill him? I believed him when he said he did it to ensure that political retaliation would never again plague our country.

 

Let me tell you one story related to myself. When the Environment Ministry and the Construction Ministry clashed fiercely over building the Donggang Dam, then-Environment Minister Kim Myung-ja fought hard. President Kim instructed the prime minister’s office to mediate, and if that failed, to seek an assessment from an internationally respected authority.

 

The Prime Minister’s Office sought to commission Bechtel, an American company, which quoted 2.5 billion won and two and a half years of work.

 

The president instead ordered the formation of a joint civilian-government investigation team of Korea’s top experts. We insisted on three conditions: that civilians and officials be equal in number, that the team’s conclusion be final, and that it work without restrictions of time or scope.

 

These conditions were accepted, and the result was a fair assessment. Based on its conclusion, the president announced the cancellation of the Donggang Dam project the following year. I am still convinced his handling of the matter was democratic and reasonable.

 

Not only because you raise North Korean human rights issues often, but let me also share one experience. I once took part in a project to build a children’s hospital in Pyongyang.

 

The night before my departure, our high school classmates gathered for another matter. When I told them I was going to help build a hospital, they protested: “We must not help the North. All North Koreans should die.”

 

I replied, “Yes, the rulers are evil. But aren’t the children innocent?” To which they answered in unison, “Even the children should die.”

 

I still cannot comprehend such cruelty. I believe it was right to build not only the hospital but also a soy milk factory. That factory now feeds 50,000 malnourished children daily, children who cannot digest cow’s milk. It cannot possibly be only the children of the elite.

 

What mattered to me was the sight of a hospital standing tall on a Pyongyang hill, its entrance engraved with the names of South Korean donors, and the soy milk factory running on machines bearing the names of South Korean manufacturers. That alone was worth it.

 

(To be continued)

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