Leading pro-democracy intellectual dies at 81

Posted on : 2010-12-06 13:42 KST Modified on : 2010-12-06 13:42 KST
Lee Young-hee was a leading critic of authoritarian administrations that took power after the Korean War

By Lee Moon-young 

 

Lee Young-hee, a national symbol of an intellectual activist and a major figure in the journalist sector, passed away Sunday at the age of 81.

Lee, a former Hanyang University professor emeritus and editorial adviser for the Hankyoreh, died at around 12:40 a.m. Sunday at Green Hospital in the Myeonmok neighborhood of Seoul’s Jungnang District, where he had been hospitalized for chronic illness.

Lee’s life was a long battle with the anti-intellectualism and anti-democracy forces that had him dismissed twice each from press and university positions and arrested a total of five times. Following his imprisonment in 1980 after the new military regime of Chun Doo-hwan fingered him as one of the ringleaders behind the Gwangju Uprising, the French daily Le Monde called him “an intellectual mentor.”

Born in 1929 in Unsan County, North Pyongan Province in North Korea, Lee began his career in journalism in 1957 as a reporter in the foreign news department at the Hapdong News Agency. In 1969, he was forced out of his position at the Chosun Ilbo, where he had been working for more than five years, after he wrote an article critical of the deployment of South Korean soldiers to fight in the Vietnam War. In 1971, he was dismissed from the Hapdong News Agency after taking part in a statement by 64 intellectuals expressing opposition to the military dictatorship and their suppression on college campuses. He was twice stripped of his position as a professor at Hanyang University, in 1976 and 1980, under pressure from the Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan administrations, respectively. In 1988, he took part in the launching of the Hankyoreh newspaper, servicing as a director and editorial adviser.

In 1989, he was arrested and prosecuted on charges of violating the National Security Law after making plans to visit North Korea for journalistic purposes. He was sentenced to one year and six months in jail, of which he served 160 days.

His books “Logic of a Transitional Era” (1974) and “Idols and Reason” (1977) provided candid pictures of the true nature of the Vietnam War concealed under anti-Communist ideology, and the realities of Communist China. Both were among the era’s most prominent banned books.

His statements of concern about the era did not stop even after the right half of his body was paralyzed following a cerebral hemorrhage in 2000. Lee, who once said, “My hope is that one day my books do not sell a single copy and my royalties come out to zero Won,” died without ever seeing a society where his books were not needed.

 

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]

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