KDJPF Closed

Kim Dae-Jung Peace Foundation for the Asia-Pacific Region (KDJPF) officially closed on the 1st after creating stirs involved in several Gates.

It is two weeks after it announced that it would temporarily cease the activity until the resignation of President Kim Dae-Jung at the directors’ meeting on the 18th last month.

Only silence reigns the office building of the peace foundation in Donggyo-dong, Mapo-gu Seoul, as all the personnel resigned and left the building on the 30th last month.

Three workers of a janitor, a guard, and an accounting clerk are taking care of the building with 5 stories above and 3 stories below the ground.

Founded in 1994, it once had some 70 personnel, who were reduced to 30 after successive layoff due to the crisis of foreign money exchange.

Home page of the foundation (http://www.kdjpf.or.kr) is left with its address and rough map wiped away.

The official reason of the close of the peace foundation is `financial trouble`. It was threatened of its maintenance when vice president Kim Hong-Up and standing executive Lee Soo-Dong, who is called `steward of Donggyo-dong`, were involved in the several corruption suspected cases. 4 former and present executives have been arrested so far.

President Kim Dae-Jung had established the peace foundation in January 1994, when he returned from England where he spent times studying after he failed in the presidential race in 1992. The aim of the foundation was to develop the theories and policies over peaceful reunification of Korean peninsula, democratization of Asia, and world peace.

President Kim organized the party Kookmin Hoeui based on this foundation, which was base camp to create political power at the presidential race in 1997.

Sun-Woo Kim sublime@donga.com