Thaindian News

The former president of South Korea, Kim Dae-jung, is said to have passed away on Tuesday, August 18, 2009. This information has been provided to the media by the hospital authorities where the Korean leader had been admitted for quite some days, a month to be precise, to undergo treatment for pneumonia. He was 85 years old.

It is a real sad incident in the global scenario too as the former Korean president was regarded as one of the reckoning forces in peaceful negotiations for his landmark “Sunshine” policy concerning the reconciliation efforts towards improving ties with North Korea. For which he had also won the Nobel Prize in 2000.

He had survived numerous assassination attempts on his life throughout but sadly collapsed to a heart failure at a hospital in Seoul, from which he could not be revived, according to the hospital authorities. According to the statement of Park Chang-il, who is the chief of the Severence Hospital in Seoul, Kim Dae-jung’s condition seemed to have worsened over the day and shortly after 1:40 p.m. (0440 GMT). He had reportedly suffered respiratory problems, a pulmonary embolism as well as multiple organ failure.

According to lawmaker Park Jie-won, in his final moments before death, the Nobel Laureate’s wife and three sons were by his side, also flanked by ex-aids. Said President Lee Myung-bak in a statement, “We lost a great political leader. His accomplishments and aspirations to achieve democratization and inter-Korean reconciliation will long be remembered by the people.”

Over the one month that he had been admitted at the hospital, people from all over had been paying their last respect to the man who had been a motivating factor in South Korea’s political scene from the time of the authoritarian rule to the transition to a full fledged democracy.