The Committee awarded President Kim with the Nobel Prize not only for his work in bringing democracy to South Korea, but for his efforts to reconcile South Korea with North Korea. To facilitate that goal, President Kim established the Sunshine Policy in an attempt to overcome more than fifty years of war and hostility between the two Korean nations. President Kim has said that his struggle against dictatorship was the greater achievement in his life.
Democracy is most important.
Only when we uphold human rights and freedom, is our struggle against communism meaningful, he said. His father was a farmer on an island in the southwestern province of Cholla. President Kim was a good student and elected a leader of his high school class. However, he learned an early lesson about democracy when he was stripped of his position, after he published an essay condemning the Japanese colonial government that controlled Korea at that time. It would be the first of many sacrifices President Kim would make before being elected to lead South Korea.