Former South Korean President Dies at 85

Kim Dae Jung, who died on Aug. 18 of heart failure in Seoul at age 85, was not the father of democracy in South Korea, but he was its consolidator. Throughout the era when South Korea was effectively ruled by the military, Kim was its most active and prominent dissident. He came within 1 million votes of upsetting then President Park Chung Hee in an election in 1971, after which Park amended the constitution and turned South Korea into a one-party police state. In 1973 government agents — with Park's assent — kidnapped and apparently planned to kill Kim. The U.S....