Asian editorial excerpts=NOBEL PROZE ACKNOWLEDGES STEPS TO PEACE

Asian Economic News, Oct 23, 2000

TOKYO, Oct. 20 Kyodo

Selected editorial excerpts from the Asia-Pacific press:

NOBEL PRIZE ACKNOWLEDGES STEPS TO PEACE (The Australian, Sydney)

It was 16 months into Kim Dae Jung's presidency when his (ships) exchanged fire with those from the North for the first time since the Korean War ended in 1953...

Twelve months on, in June this year, Mr. Kim met the North's Kim Jong Il in a historic summit in Pyongyang. A South Korean woman saw the North's reclusive leader on television and commented on what a normal, joking guy he looked. Two months later, Koreans cried as 200 families, separated for five decades, were reunited. Then a month ago, athletes from the North and the South marched into the Olympics under a united flag.

Only (Kim Dae Jung) could have made this happen. As with many Nobel Peace (Prize) laureates, he endured assassination attempts, kidnappings and imprisonment, then forgave the culprits in the interest of reuniting his people.

Like other champions of democracy, Mr. Kim's time had to come. Since Japan lost World War II and ended 35 years of enforced rule, the Korean people have been split by war. Communism became entrenched in the North, while the South was led by a succession of military strongmen who erased dissent, accusing democrats such as Mr. Kim of being Communists. From the time he entered politics in 1954, the Cold War climate made his present ''Sunshine Policy'' unworkable. Yet he persevered, at great personal cost.

While he implemented reforms to bring South Korea's economy back from the brink, he kept alive slim hopes for reunification in the face of increasing belligerence from Pyongyang. But Mr. Kim forgave the North its provocation, and even the June 1999 battle in the Yellow Sea. Without this forgiveness, the Koreas would not be entering talks about replacing the 1953 truce with a permanent peace declaration; President Bill Clinton would not be planning the first trip to North Korea; and Pyongyang would not have accepted South Korea's place in four-way talks on the peninsula's future.

The future is still far from safe and sound. Some fear Kim Jong Il will be angry about his southern counterpart's Nobel Prize. But the North has yet to be brought to account, and has won concessions too cheaply. The North needs to fulfill its commitments on halting missile tests and reducing the nuclear threat. (Kim Dae Jung), too, has much to do to prepare for the economic shock that reunification with the poverty-stricken North would bring. He has many more obstacles to pass, but he is destined to try.

(Oct. 17)