Troubled at home, Kim finds a place he can smile － Oslo

As President Kim Dae-jung, the 2000 Nobel Peace laureate, shook hands with Joseph Rotblat, who won the prize in 1995, at the Nobel Peace Prize centennial symposium in Oslo, Norway, last week, he did something rarely witnessed in Korea lately: He smiled broadly.

The camaraderie among the laureates and the international recognition Mr. Kim receives as a democracy activist-turned president-turned Nobel laureate may well have cheered him.

At home, as the year 2001 ebbs away, he is chided as an "imperial president," pushed to resign from the leadership of his political party. Partisan confrontation and a string of financial scandals involving close aides have stalled his legislative agenda. His trailblazing rapprochement with North Korea is at a stalemate. His North Korean counterpart, Kim Jong-il, remains mum on a promised return visit to Seoul. A weakening economy forecloses policy options. And President Kim's popularity, 41.8 percent at the outset of his presidency, hovers around 25 percent.

The array of problems boiled over Oct. 25 when his Millennium Democratic Party was rudely shut out in three by-elections. Party reformers demanded that Mr. Kim, president of the party as well as the republic, resign to accept responsibility for the defeats.

Mr. Kim did so, and now he is criticized for that, too.

"What he did was to erode the basis of responsibility in a democracy," said Chang Dal-joong, professor of political science at Seoul National University. "When things go wrong in a democracy, the voters must be able to ask for accountability. By resigning from the party presidency, he has obscured the where the blame lies."

By personally taking responsibility for past failures by the ruling party, the president has confused the voters, Mr. Chang said. They no longer feel able to blame the ruling party, but also are unable to look to the opposition.

"In a sense, it is part of the strategy toward next year's presidential election," Mr. Chang said.

In resigning his party leadership, the president said that his priorities would be reviving the economy, inter-Korean relations, insuring the fairness of the June local elections and the December presidential election, and the success of next year's soccer World Cup and Busan Asian Games. Political watchers said that Mr. Kim wants to be recorded in history as a "successful president."

What he exactly means by a successful president is actively debated. One scenario is that by "success" he means to see to it that his Millennium Democratic Party retains the Blue House.

"Scenario number one is that he will put his weight behind a strong presidential candidate from the Millennium Democratic Party, if they can agree on one," Mr. Chang said.

The second scenario is that he will remain aloof from politics, concentrating on the economy and inter-Korean relations until his five-year tenure ends in February 2002.

The economy has begun to rally to his side. Moody's Investors Service upgraded its outlook on South Korea's sovereign debt to Baa2 positive from Baa2 stable. The Bank of Korea forecast that South Korea's gross domestic product would grow by 3.9 percent next year.

Rapprochement with North Korea is "at a stalemate," as Mr. Kim acknowledged in Oslo. A few days earlier in Seoul he said he was "disappointed but not outright discouraged."

"The breakdown of the ministerial talks has cut the momentum, which is critical, for the administration's North Korea policy," said Professor Koh Yu-whan. "It will be hard to recover the momentum."

Not helping is a public that is turning conservative. Public support for the government's "sunshine" policy toward North Korea, as measured in a poll by the Presidential Advisory Panel on Democratic and Peaceful Unification, dropped to 54.2 percent in November from 76.7 percent in June. North Korea watchers suggest that the Pyeongyang regime is suffering from the rapid pace of reconciliation with the capitalist South. In these circumstances, President Kim is unlikely to get much help in the political arena, in particular from the opposition, if he really intends to remain above politics.

A third scenario for the president, considered the most unwelcome by the public, is that he will pull a switch and align with such conservative forces as former President Kim Young-sam and Kim Jong-pil, and form a new political party. All three scenarios imply one thing: The president may be a lame duck, but he is still a powerful politician with influence on the Millennium Democratic Party and the political arena.

"Despite his resignation, he is the largest shareholder in the party," Professor Chang said, and he can have a hand in any political realignment before the competition for the next year's presidential election heats up.

Just how he will play his hand is unclear. Initial clues as to where Mr. Kim is headed will be gauged by the cabinet reshuffle expected to come this month at the earliest. If Mr. Kim needs any public feedback, a recent poll by the Korea Broadcasting System showed that 75.6 percent of Koreans think he did well to resign; 81.9 percent think he should not intervene in the nomination of the MDP presidential candidate or in politics.

Professor Chang discounts the chance of any power grab or crackdown on liberties - familiar moves in Korean political history. The Nobel Peace Prize, a personal glory for the president, "is also a guarantee for Korean democracy that the course will not be reversed," he said.

by Kim Ji-soo