Former South Korea president Kim Dae-jung will discuss Catholicism
By Anna Walters
Nobel Laureate Kim Dae-jung has survived mulitple acts of violence during his lifetime, incuding a kinapping, a near murder and wrongful imprisonment. It's no surprise that Kim comes to UP today bearing a message of peace.
Kim is scheduled to address a crowd of around 2,300 (as of press time) UP students and community members at 7 p.m. in the Chiles Center.
At an Academic Senate meeting, UP President, the Rev. William Beauchamp, C.S.C., said Kim is speaking only at UP and Harvard. The Events Office is expecting 200 more ticket requests before Thursday evening.
"We had no idea how big (the crowd for the lecture) was going to be and the last week and half it has gathered momentum," said Bill Reed, special events director at UP.
Kim's presentation will focus on the role God has played in his life and his conversion to Catholicism after he was kidnapped from his hotel room in Tokyo by intelligence agents of the then military government of South Korea. The agents took Kim to a boat anchored along the shore and bound and gagged him.
"Just when they were about to throw me overboard, Jesus Christ appeared before me with such clarity," Kim said in his Nobel acceptance speech. "I clung to him and begged him to save me. At that very moment, an airplane came down from the sky to rescue me from the moment of death."
Kim served as president of South Korea from 1997 to 2003 and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000 for successfully facilitating the first summit with North Korea's president Kim Jong Il.
At the summit, the two leaders agreed that unification between the North and South should be achieved independently and peacefully and agreed to continue to building relationships and promote peaceful coexistence until both nations were ready for the transition.
"For the first time in the half-century division, the two sides have found a point of convergence on which the process toward unification can be drawn out," Kim said during his speech.
Kim's lecture is part of the development of a Nobel Peace Laureate Center to be built on an Oregon university campus and is sponsored by the Wholistic Peace Institute and cosponsored by the University of Portland, the World Affairs Council and the Kim Dae-jung Peace Center in Seoul.
Tickets to the event are free, but interested parties must e-mail events@up.edu or call (503) 943-7523.
