[USFK Forums] From jailed activist to nearly prime minister [JoongAng]

[C. Y. Lee]

Uploaded by C. Y. Lee on Saturday, March 25, 2006

From jailed activist to nearly prime minister

The JoongAng Daily

March 25, 2006 ㅡ The prime minister-designate Han Myeong-sook’s path to her new post has been long and winding. Her devotion to democratization landed her in prison for two years in the 1970s, although after her release she continued to be active and promoted women’s issues.

Entering politics mentored by former President Kim Dae-jung, Ms. Han was appointed the country’s first minister of gender equality, a post she retained under President Roh Moo-hyun before being named environment minister.
Ms. Han resigned to run for an Assembly seat for the Uri Party, to which she was elected.

The major opposition Grand National Party’s only quibble with Ms. Han’s selection appears to be her membership in the governing party.

Political observers say that Ms. Han was chosen by the Mr. Roh, after long deliberation, because of her magnanimous character and her reputation for being an “iron hand in a velvet glove,” despite her career as a hardline activist.

Ms. Han, who turned 62 on the day she was nominated for the post, was born in Pyongyang, North Korea, and came to the South during the Korean War. As a teenager she did not picture herself as a democracy fighter ― she entered Ewha Womans University as French Literature major with dreams of being an author. However, she met Park Seong-jun, her husband-to-be at a club of Christian students in an encounter that changed the course of her life.

Mr. Park, then a Seoul National University student, was keenly interested in the democratization movement that opposed then-President Park Chung Hee’s military regime. Ms. Han herself has recalled that her husband led her into the movement.

The two married in 1968, but only six months afterwards her husband was detained for his involvement in democratization. Ms. Han’s husband, now a professor at Sungkonghoe University, served 13 years in prison.

Ms. Han herself got into trouble in 1970 when as a dormitory dean at Ewha she supported students’ demonstrations. She quit her job and began to devote herself to democratization at the Christian Academy, an institute run by activists and religious leaders aimed at educating the have-nots of society.

As the academy grew in influence, being especially well received by the lower classes, the Park Chung Hee regime decided it was a threat. In 1979, the regime’s spy agency labeled the academy an anti-state, pro-North Korean group that planned to overthrow the government. The academy leaders were all arrested and imprisoned ― Ms. Han was one of the first to be detained. Later, when the Kim Dae-jung government was elected it recognized the incident as a fabrication and belatedly restored Ms. Han’s honor.

After her release from prison, Ms. Han went to Ewha’s Graduate School for Women’s Studies to continue her fight for women’s rights. She also was instrumental in forming civic groups and later by heading the Korea Women’s Associations United in 1993, Ms. Han cemented her status as the “Godmother” of women’s rights groups.

Ms. Han’s decades-long career in activism has allowed her to form a wide range of contacts from members of women’s groups to politicians.

Among them are Lee Hee-ho and her husband, former President Kim Dae-jung, both backbone figures in activism for women’s issues and for democracy. At the request of Mr. Kim, Ms. Han joined his governing party in 1999 and was appointed minister for gender equality.

Ms. Han continued to serve on the cabinet until 2003 after Mr. Roh took office. The new president apparently rated Ms. Han highly, as he transferred her ministerial portfolio to the environment ministry from gender equality.

Ms. Han, however, resigned from the ministerial post in 2004 to run for the Uri Party in legislative elections in a Gyeonggi province constituency where she beat five-term major opposition lawmaker Hong Sa-duk.

Now as the prime minister-designate, Ms. Han will continue to gather keen public interest in how she deals with controversial pending issues in the second-highest post of the administration.


by Chun Su-jin


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