From Third World to First The Singapore Story pdfdrive com

Party (DJP) was not a communist party, I said he could not dispense with the
existing bureaucracy and start afresh, but had to use it. He could slowly ease out
older senior officials and bring in younger men who were untainted, and ensure
they maintained high standards. They should be paid well. I emphasised,
however, that unless the top leaders were beyond reproach, and the higher
echelons cleaned up before the lower, it would be a waste of time.
I next met Roh in 1988 when he was president. He asked how I had stayed in
power for so long, winning successive elections. Because, I replied, people knew
I did not lie and was sincere in advancing their interests. Ordinary people could
not follow the intricacies of an economic or a political problem so they learnt
whom to trust. To win such trust, I never said anything which I did not believe
in, and people slowly recognised that I was honest and sincere. This was my
most powerful asset. It was also US President Reagan’s strength. He had good
speechwriters. He worked on their drafts, using their ideas but putting them into
his own words. He did not allow himself to be “voiced over” by his
speechwriters, so when he delivered a speech, he came across as a man of
sincerity and conviction. I advised Roh not to compete with Kim Dae Jung in

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making powerful speeches. Roh had shown the people that he could keep cool in
a crisis with massive riots and disorder before the election, and had shown
humility. These were assets he should build on.
Roh had coopted Kim Young Sam, one of the two major opposition leaders,
into his party. This enabled Kim to become the first elected civilian president in
1992. He made cleaning up corruption his major campaign issue. He sacked
three cabinet ministers within weeks of their appointment for various corrupt
practices, removed several senior judges, and sacked and imprisoned a number
of senior military officers. The army acquiesced. Several Korean television and
newspaper groups visited Singapore to do documentaries and articles on our
anti-corruption law and enforcement system.
In 1996 I met President Kim Young Sam when he visited Singapore. A
dapper, well-dressed man, he proudly told me that he jogged many kilometres
every morning. He said that we shared common values like the importance of the
family unit and a social network to support the family. I added that our most
important common interest was the strategic importance of the US presence in
Asia.
The situation in the North had changed dramatically. Kim described the
leaders of North Korea as crazy and capable of irrational acts. They had an
armed force of 1.1 million men but their weapons were outdated, supply lines
weak and logistics vulnerable.
Kim had said when he took office that he would not reopen old issues. But as
domestic pressures increased, he reversed his position in late 1995 and got the
national assembly to pass a special law to lift the statute of limitations for the
1979 coup and for murder, sedition, corruption and other crimes related to the
1980 Kwangju massacre, when the military had killed several hundred civilian
protestors. His two predecessors were arrested and charged. I was startled to see
them on television brought to court in remand prison clothes, handcuffed and
humiliated. Chun was sentenced to death and Roh to 22 years and 6 months in
prison for their role in the 1979 coup and 1980 Kwangju killings. Both were also
fined for taking bribes during their presidential terms. On appeal, these sentences
were later reduced to life sentence for Chun and 17 years for Roh.
Soon after, President Kim Young Sam himself was engulfed in a huge
corruption scandal when a large chaebol (conglomerate), the Hanbo Group,
collapsed, owing billions of dollars to several government-controlled banks.
Kim’s son was prosecuted for taking some US$7 million and sentenced to three
years’ jail, with a fine of US$1.5 million. The opposition alleged that Kim

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himself had received bribes from the Hanbo Group and that he had grossly
exceeded the legal spending limits for his election. President Kim made a public
apology on television, but refused to disclose details. The standing of the
incumbent president and his ruling party collapsed after the widely publicised
scandals of corruption and mismanagement of the economy. Because of the
ensuing economic crisis, South Korea required the assistance of the IMF.
In December 1997 Kim Dae Jung, a veteran opposition leader standing for
the fourth time, won the presidential election. He had forged an electoral alliance
with Kim Jong Pil, the first Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) chief
who had once ordered his capture.
As a prominent dissident, Kim Dae Jung had spent many years in the United
States and become an advocate of the universal application of human rights and
democracy regardless of cultural values. As an opposition leader, he had written
an article in the magazine