South Korea held a state funeral on Sunday for former President Kim Dae-jung, a persecuted crusader for democracy in South Korea and a frustrated champion for reconciliation with North Korea, whose death brought the two Koreas together in the first major political meeting in nearly two years.
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, right, met Sunday with North Korea envoys in Seoul, the first such meeting in nearly two years.
On the same day as the funeral for Mr. Kim, President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea met with a high-level delegation from North Korea who flew to Seoul to pay respects to Mr. Kim. Through his delegates, the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, sent a message of improving ties with South Korea, officials said.
In a nationally televised scene, some 30,000 politicians, foreign dignitaries and citizens attended the state funeral held at a National Assembly lawn under a blazing sun.
As a motorcade carrying Mr. Kim travelled slowly through downtown Seoul on its way to the national cemetery, citizens lined the streets bidding farewell to the man. Mr. Kim’s transition from a dissident and death-row inmate under past military rule to a president and then Nobel laureate symbolized his own country’s evolution from a war-torn, staunchly anti-Communist dictatorship into a prosperous Asian democracy confident enough to embrace Communist North Korea.
During their 30-minute meeting with Mr. Lee, North Korean delegation relayed Mr. Kim’s “verbal message regarding making progress in South-North cooperation,” Lee Dong-kwan, Mr. Lee’s chief spokesman, told reporters. “To this, President Lee explained our government’s consistent and firm policy toward North Korea and asked the delegates to relay his position to Chairman Kim.”
The South Korean leader stressed the need for dialogue, his spokesman said. For Me. Lee, the Northern delegates’ visit marked a sharp change in mood; only a year ago, Pyongyang had called him a “traitor.”
The North Korean delegation was led by Kim Ki-nam, a secretary of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party, and Kim Yang-gon, the North’s intelligence chief, who also handles relations with South Korea. The two are among Kim Jong-il’s most trusted aides.
Unification Minister Hyun In-taek of South Korea, who met with Kim Yang-gon for 80 minutes on Saturday, had earlier said he hoped that the North Korean delegates’ meeting with President Lee “will become a turning point in South-North Korean relations.”
In a separate meeting on Saturday with South Korean politicians and scholars, Kim Yang-gon suggested more economic ties between the two Koreas, voicing hopes of shipping some of the North’s rich minerals to the South, Yonhap, a South Korean news agency, reported, quoting people who attended the meeting.
Relations between the North and the South have cooled, — and the legacy of Kim Dae-jung’s “Sunshine Policy” of reconciliation with North Korea has crumbled — since Mr. Lee took office in February 2008.
Mr. Lee vowed not to provide aid to the North unless it made concrete progress in dismantling its nuclear weapons program. The North lashed out by cutting off dialogue with the Lee government. Relations deteriorated, and tensions grew, when North Korea conducted nuclear and missile tests earlier this year.
North Korea, however, has appeared to be shifting its tone in recent weeks. North Korean officials met with former President Bill Clinton in Pyongyang, the North’s capital, on Aug. 4, and then released two American journalists and a South Korean worker, all of whom had been held in the North for months on charges of committing hostile acts against the North.
Kim Dae-jung’s death on Tuesday provided North Korean leader Kim Jong-il with an opportunity to reach out to Mr. Lee. The North quickly lifted restrictions on cross-border traffic with South Korea, and dispatched a delegation who flew to Seoul on Friday.
Mr. Kim was president from 1998 to 2003. His best moment came when he travelled to Pyongyang and met Kim Jong-il in 2000 in the first summit between the two Koreas, a meeting which led to an unprecedented detente on the divided Korean Peninsula and earned Mr. Kim a Nobel Peace Prize later that year.
Once jubilant over the mood of reconciliation, South Koreans grew disappointed in recent years when North Korea conducted nuclear tests despite billions of dollars South Korea had provided in aid and trade under the banner of the Sunshine Policy.
They voted against that policy when they elected Mr. Lee in December 2007.
In his last years, Kim Dae-jung lamented the rising of tensions on the peninsula, as North Korea crawled back into its belligerent isolation. But his death gave South Koreans a chance to review his vision for overcoming five decades of enmity with North Korea for a possible unification.
Major television networks broadcast special programs on Mr. Kim’s life and political messages. In downtown Seoul, large electronic screens repeatedly showed speeches of Mr. Kim, who urged “the conscientious to act” against the military dictators and appealed for South Koreans to “embrace the North Korean brethren.”
For South Koreans, Mr. Kim’s was a second funeral for a former president in recent months. In May, former President Roh Moo-hyun, Mr. Kim’s successor and political protege, committed suicide. Mr. Roh’s unexpected death greatly disheartened the ailing Mr. Kim, his aides said. Mr. Kim and Mr. Roh led a 10-year liberal rule in South Korea, which had been governed by conservative and staunchly anti-Communist leaders almost uninterruptedly since its foundation in 1948.
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