S. Korea's new chief: blunt talk, clean hand

Some sources say it could be Yoon Young Kwan, a transition team member who shocked a Washington dinner party at the US Institute of Peace this month by saying that a North Korea with nuclear weapons was preferable to a North Korea that collapsed.

Roh will also need to address fragile US relations. "The US-South Korean alliance should be at its best right now, but unfortunately, it is at its worst ever," says Jung Hoon Lee of Yonsei University in Seoul. "The only one happy about that is North Korea.

"Actually, I think much of the problem is miscommunication. For some reason, the Roh team is convinced the US is trigger-happy or seeking to resolve things militarily. The US has not been saying that. But it seems to stick inside the transition team."

Roh's first US visit is likely to be in May, either to Washington or the Crawford ranch.

Today's inauguration is being attended by Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Junichiro Koizumi of Japan is a guest head of state. But much of the pomp and circumstance has been muted due to the tragic Taegu subway incident last week, in which more than 130 Kor- eans were killed.

That incident has also stunted evaluation of outgoing Kim's legacy.

The former president is a historic figure in Korea by any measure. He rarely got credit for economic reforms, though his tough policy of privatization and allowing big firms to fail if they were not innovative allowed Korea to weather the Asian financial crisis of 1997 with the least damage of any country in the region. "DJ," as he is popularly known here, also rarely got credit for small reforms, like the funding of orphanages.

Experts say that under DJ, Korea became a more pluralistic society. In one of the more patriarchal societies on earth, Kim raised the profile of women, worked on such basic issues as child care and equal pay, and created a Ministry of Gender Equality, a cabinet-level position.

Yet DJ could not escape what seems like a legacy of presidential cronyism.

Last year, his three sons were put in jail for accepting bribes and consorting with gangsters. Currently, the circumstances around the acceptance by North Korea's Kim Jong Il of the historic 2002 Korean summit are under investigation. Some $180 million to $500 million in unreported payments to the North, reportedly engineered by Kim and presumably aimed at facilitating the negotiation process, is prompting the equivalent here of a grand jury investigation.

Already Roh is renaming his engagement policy, articulated in today's inaugural address, a Peace and Prosperity Policy. (Sources say that if Roh finds it necessary to modify the Sunshine Policy, he can use the scandal as a political pretext.)

Most problematic is how history will judge the Sunshine Policy. Critics today ask if the Koreas are any closer to formulating a federation on the peninsula. They argue that the fundamental strategy of the North has not changed, and that Pyongyang has simply benefited from a great deal of free aid from the South.

One longtime observer - and sympathizer of Sunshine - points to a flaw in the South's engagement with the North, noting that Kim, a human rights champion, turned a blind eye to human rights for those suffering under a policy of malnutrition and abuse in the North as the price of engagement.

That question may also come to rest on the doorstep of Roh - who is also a human rights advocate.

Kim's sacrifice for his country, however, is unquestioned and admired.

As he once put it, "I survived five attempts on my life, spent six years in prison, and lived for decades under exile, arrest, and surveillance." One American official notes: "No Korean has given as much for the cause of a democratic South and a united Korea as Kim."

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