hankyoreh

A boy from a poor family in the southern part of South Korea is gearing up for the start of a new “myth” after winning the presidential nomination of the nation’s most influential political party.

Lee Myung-bak, who grew up in the South Korean southern city of Pohang, is known as a “man of myth” due to his rise from poverty to become the top executive of Hyundai Engineering and Construction Co., which was at center of South Korea’s economic transformation. During his tenure as a Seoul mayor between 2002 and 2006, Lee also created what many call the “myth of the Cheonggyecheon,” a project that transformed a main elevated highway in Seoul into a public park.

The 65-year-old Lee’s life, depicted by two television dramas, is filled with dynamic and dramatic scenes. However, Lee’s life is also filled with blurs and scars which he must now overcome if he is to reach the finish line.

In 1941, when the Korean peninsula was colonized by the Japanese imperial government, Lee was born as the fifth child in a family of seven children in Osaka, Japan. Lee’s father, Heung-woo, was a ranch worker from Pohang and his mother, Ban Ya-wol, was the daughter of a fruit farmer in Daegu, South Korea.

On his hoju-je, or family registry, the junior Lee’s given name was listed as “Sang-gyeong.” “Sang” is the part of his name that is common to all of those within his generation in his family, following the Korean custom. The name “Myung-bak,” meaning full moon shining in a broad place, was given to him after his mother dreamt that she had embraced a full moon with her skirt.

When his family returned home after the liberation of the peninsula in 1945, the ship carrying the family’s fortune sank, and so began Lee’s poverty. As a child, Lee peddled food on the streets by selling wheat flour cakes, cloth, fruit, matches and ice cream.

When his second eldest brother, Sang-deuk, was admitted to Seoul National University, Lee wanted to quit high school so that he could make money for his brother. Instead, he entered a nighttime commercial high school after his mother allowed him to go to the school “as tuition fees were exempted.”

Lee graduated from high school summa cum laude, but could not afford to go to university. Lee’s memoir states that he later collected garbage in a market in Itaewon to pay his way through Korea University’s business department in the 1960s. At the time, he thought to himself, “Even if I drop out of university because I don’t have any money, it might be better for me to become a university drop-out, rather than a high-school graduate.”

As a junior at the university, Lee became a student leader in the business department. He recalled fielding himself as a candidate to become a student leader in order to change his introspective nature.

Later during his college career, he served four months in prison for leading demonstrations against the normalization of diplomatic ties with Japan. At that time, Lee was sentenced a three-year jail term and a five-year suspended jail term on charges of leading anti-government movements.

In his memoir, Lee picked his mother, a teacher who advised him to go to a commercial high school, and Chung Ju-yung, the founder of Hyundai Group, as two of the “top three influential people” in his life.

His days as a student activist made it difficult for Lee to secure a job so, according to his memoir, he sent a letter to then-President Park Chung-hee, saying: “If a country prevents a young man from ‘standing on his own two feet,’ the country will owe him forever.” In 1965, Lee finally landed a job at Hyundai Engineering, whether as a result of the letter or on his own initiative.

Twelve years after starting work at Hyundai Engineering, Lee became its CEO at the age of 35 and its chairman at 46. He served as the chief executive of 10 Hyundai affiliates before resigning to enter politics in 1992.

At Hyundai, Lee became known for keeping company coffers from angry workers at a Thai construction site, and taught himself to operate a bulldozer by dismantling and assembling it. It was during this time that he also dared to confront the military government of Chun Doo-hwan in order to keep Hyundai Motor out of the hands of the dictatorship.

As a top executive at Hyundai, Lee also built relationships with foreign leaders, including former Singaporean prime minister Lee Kwan Yew, former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamed, former Chinese president Jiang Zemin and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

In 1970, Lee married Kim Yoon-ok, who was once crowned May Queen at Ewha Womans University.

The state-run KBS-TV began running the drama, “Time of Ambition,” in 1990, inspired by Lee’s achievements at Hyundai. A person familiar with the late Hyundai founder Chung said, “Chairman Chung was uncomfortable because he thought the drama was originally inspired by him, not Lee Myung-bak.” Lee said Chung misunderstood and recalled that the debate over the drama was one of the events that prompted him to sever his ties with Hyundai.

In early 1992, Lee cut off his relationship with the late Hyundai founder, who launched a bid to become president in the race against then-ruling party’s candidate Kim Young-sam. In March of that year, Lee turned to politics himself and was elected as a lawmaker. However, the political Lee Myung-bak was not nearly as successful nor as colorful as Lee Myung-bak the businessman.

In 1995, Lee failed to win the nomination for Seoul mayor after a battle with the former prime minister Chung Won-sik, Although Lee became a second-term lawmaker in 1996 in Seoul after beating two opposition candidates, Lee Jong-chan and Roh Moo-hyun, the incumbent President, he was in turmoil after his secretary, Kim Yoo-chan, disclosed that he had spent excessively in his election campaign. In the wake of the turmoil, Lee resigned from the post in 1998 and spent one year as a visiting professor at George Washington University in the United States. The bad ties with Kim continue to haunt Lee even now.

After returning home in late 1999, Lee set up several companies for electronic financial services such as LK e-Bank and EBK Stock Brokerage. It was during this time that Lee met Kim Gyeong-joon, who was at the center of a 38.4 billion won (US$40.7 million) embezzlement case at BBK. Lee is accused of manipulating BBK’s stock prices and misleading investors prior to the company’s declaration of bankruptcy. Lee, however, has refuted the charge as groundless.

After he took office as mayor of Seoul in 2002, Lee made significant achievements, including the restoration of the Cheonggyecheon stream in central Seoul, reforms in the mass transportation system and park revitalization projects at locations throughout Seoul.

Though some critics say that Lee destroyed cultural assets during the stream restoration project, Lee has defended himself by saying, “I met and persuaded merchants, who were opposed to the restoration for fear of losing their business, about 4,000 times. They came to trust me and have become my staunch supporters.”

Lee entered the presidential race after ending his tenure as Seoul mayor in June 2006, by announcing an ambitious project that would connect Seoul and Busan with a waterway.

About fourteen months later, on August 20, 2007, Lee has stepped closer to achieving his presidential ambitions with a pledge to “feed the Republic of Korea.”