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TOKYO - Former U.S. President Richard Nixon, facing the possibility of prison after the Watergate scandal, mused that at least he would be in good company. Many of the great political leaders had once been behind bars. It was a good place, Nixon said philosophically, to think and catch up on one's reading.

Pardoned by President Gerald Ford, Nixon was never incarcerated, but South Korea's former President Kim Dae Jung (1925-2009), who died Tuesday, spent five years in prison, seven under house arrest and another two in exile in the U.S. for his steadfast opposition to his country's military dictatorships.

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Having only a commercial college education, Kim used those years as Nixon claimed he would have, by soaking up knowledge from...