The late Lee Hee-ho, widow of former president Kim Dae-jung.

Lee Hee-ho, the widow of former president Kim Dae-jung, died on June 10. She was 97.

Lee ended her tumultuous life in which she and her husband experienced hardships during upheavals of Korea’s modern history.
She spent her youth while experiencing Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule, division of the Korean Peninsula, and the sufferings of the Korean War. Lee once stuck to celibacy before she got married. She served as an active elite woman rights activist after returning from her abroad study.

After Lee became the wife of a politician, Lee had to lead a turbulent life as she had witnessed her husband’s being at a death’s door, caused by political persecutions, but she finally got the honor of becoming the first lady of the nation’s 15th president.

 
Lee served as an outside supporter of ex-president Kim who was serving time in prison, a guardian of the former president who lived a political exile abroad, and a political comrade of Kim who was put under house arrest, and a counselor of Kim who served as an opposition party leader. Lee was evaluated to be a political partner of ex-president Kim beyond the wife of the former president.

The late first lady Lee Hee-ho is put to rest at the Seoul National Cemetery in Dongjak-dong, Seoul, at a funeral on June 14. (Photos on the courtesy of the website of Cheong Wa Dae)

Lee, Celibacy Activist and Wife of Politician

Lee was born in 1922 as the eldest daughter of a family of father Lee Yong-gi, a doctor, mother Lee Sun-i, six sons and two daughters. Lee, who grew up in a rich, Christian family, attended the predecessor of Ewha High School and the predecessor of Ewha Womans University. She graduated from Seoul National University Teaching College, and later, she obtained a master’s degree in sociology from Scarritt College in the United States.

After returning home in 1958, Lee began her woman rights activist career as she worked as manager of Korea YWCA. She launched unprecedented woman rights activities of the times of patriarchal society by proposing slogans such as “Let’s Register Marriages” and “No! Politicians with Concubines to the National Assembly.”
Lee strived to change laws and regulations discriminating

against women while heading the Women Issues Association. She also spearheaded the institutionalization of the Korean National Council of Women.

Lee began to walk the path as the wife of a politician as Lee, a female rights activist, got married with the former president at age of 40 in 1962. She first encountered Kim while escaping to Busan in 1951 during the Korean War. Ten years later, she got tied up with ex-president Kim whose wife died.

She did not give up her determination to get married with Kim, who was repeatedly lost in elections, despite strong opposition from her family and the female community. Ex-president Kim’s arrest on charge of counterrevolution 10 days after their marriage was the just beginning of her numerous trials.

Ex-president Kim’s narrow loss to former president Park Jung Hee by 950,000 votes elevated the former to an opposition political leader, but it paradoxically became the stat of the couple’s turbulent life.

Ex-president Kim undergone numerous surveillance and persecutions from the military regime such as his political asylum in 1972, intelligence authorities, kidnapping Kim from Japan in 1973, house arrest and imprisonment between 1973 and 1979.

When ex-president Kim was sentenced to death for rebellion charges, Lee launched a campaign to save his life to the international community like her sending of a letter to former U.S. president Jimmy Carter. He resigned from the political field and left for the UK after Kim lost to the 13th and 14th presidential election. And in his fourth attempt in 1997, he was finally elected to president.