스크랩 서울올림픽의 역사적 의의를 부정한 것이 민주화였나요?

[김일병]

Dear Ambassador Kathleen Stephens, A leader gives a vision to his people. I often think about the history you and I share together, the history your country and my country share together. If you follow the link http://study21.org/library/defence_treaty.htm , you can watch the video that shows a defense treaty signed between your country and my country in 1953, in the year when you were born. You were born when Dwight David Eisenhower is the President of U.S.A. He came to the White House with his pledge that he would accomplish cease-fire in the Korean Peninsula. And he did it. Thus, Eisenhower is remembered in U.S. as the leader who accomplished the vision he shared with his people. Indeed, he made a history. But that was not the end of the Cold War.

In fact, the Cold War was a deepening dilemma which brought the fear of Russian Atomic Bombs. You stayed in Korea in 1976, just when President Jimmy Carter attempted to solve the problem by decreasing the U.S. atomic bombs. But his successor President Ronald Wilson Reagan saw that Jimmy Carter's peace project did not work at all. By early 1980's Russia had more than three times of atomic missiles than America had. That was the deepening dilemma, the deepening crisis of the Cold War in those years. It was also the time when it appeared that the territories of the Soviet Empire were ever expanding?

But this problem of the Cold War was solved by the way one could hardly expect. The success of Seoul Olympics in 1988 triggered the collapse of the great Soviet Union. When people from the Soviet Union and the Eastern Europe watched the Seoul Olympics along with the splendid miracle of the Han River, the rational for the Communist system was destroyed. And where the rational for the Communist system was destroyed, the Communist regimes could no longer stand. The great Soviet Empire with its threat of the atomic bomb war suddenly disappeared. Thus, the age of the Cold War came to the end by the way no one could expect. Just like President Eisenhower made a history, President Chun Doo Whan made a history.

We still vividly remember how we began the year of 1981, as President Chun Doo Whan shared his vision for Seoul Olympics'88 in his pledge for Presidential election. Indeed, his vision and his effort made a history. For the success of Seoul Olympics was the victory of the Free World. But Kim Dae Jung's group did not celebrate this victory. When they record history, they do not record this victory. Instead, they create a logic that denies this victory. Just when the success of the Seoul Olympics boomed economy, they sent ex-President Chun Doo Whan into exile. Ex-President Chun was punished not by objective facts, but by the subjective feeling--the subjective reason that he was not popular among Kim Dae Jung's group. The two Kim's group did so because they wanted to go back to their old bad practices in the nineteenth century. But was there anything pro-democratic in regressing to most undemocratic habits of older days?


(* 윗글은 캐슬린 스티븐스 주한미국대사님께서 2009년 1월 6일에 "Happy New Year!'"(새해 복 많이 받으세요!")란 제목으로 http://cafe.daum.net/issue21/5J2B/124 에 올리신 글에 달아드린 댓글들 중 네번째 씨리즈의 댓글들입니다.)


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