Editing Kim Dae-jung (section)

==Return to politics and 1997 election victory==
{{see also|1997 South Korean presidential election}}

However, in 1995, he announced his return to politics. Despite losing his comeback bid for a list seat in the 1996 National Assembly elections, he began his fourth quest for the presidency for the 1997 election.

Initially trailing heavily in the polls and seen by some as a [[perennial candidate]], his situation became favorable when the public revolted against the incumbent conservative Kim Young-sam government in the wake of the nation's economic collapse in the [[Asian financial crisis]] just weeks before the election.

Forming an alliance with [[Kim Jong-pil]] who was previously prime minister under Park Chung Hee, he defeated [[Lee Hoi-chang]], Kim Young-sam's designated successor, in the election held on [[1997 South Korean presidential election|18 December 1997]]. His election victory at that time was the closest ever, where a split in the ruling conservative party led to separate candidacies of Lee Hoi-chang and [[Lee In-je]], and both achieved 38.7% and 19.2% of the vote respectively, enabling Kim to win with only 40.3% of the popular vote or by a margin of 390,000 votes of 26 million over Lee Hoi-chang.<ref>{{cite web|title=1997 South Korean Presidential Election |url=http://www.isop.ucla.edu/eas/statistics/kor-pres.htm |publisher=University of California, Los Angeles – Center for East Asian Studies |year=1998 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061208200539/http://www.isop.ucla.edu/eas/statistics/kor-pres.htm |archive-date=8 December 2006}}</ref> Lee Hoi-chang was a former Supreme Court Justice and Prime Minister who had graduated at the top of his class from the [[Seoul National University]] School of Law. Lee was widely viewed as politically inexperienced, elitist, and his inept handling of charges that his sons had dodged the mandatory military service further damaged his campaign.

Kim, in contrast, had an outsider image which suited the anti-establishment mood and developed a strategy to use the media effectively in his campaign. In 1997, the "North Winds" scandal involved lawmakers of Lee's party, who met North Korean agents in Beijing, who agreed to instigate, in exchange for bribes, a skirmish on the [[DMZ]] right before the presidential election to try to cause a panic that would hamper Kim's campaign due to his dovish stand on North Korea.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Ryoo |first=Kihl-jae |url=https://apcss.org/Publications/Edited%20Volumes/turningpoint/CH10.pdf |title=The North Wind: North Korea's Response and Policy Towards the 2002 Presidential Election in South Korea |year=2005 }}</ref><ref>{{cite news | url=https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/black-venus-the-south-korean-spy-who-met-late-north-korean-leader-kim-jong-il | title=Black Venus: The South Korean spy who met late North Korean leader Kim Jong Il| newspaper=The Straits Times| date=5 September 2018}}</ref><ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1998-03-29-9803290316-story.html | title=Korean Cloak-And-Dagger Case Might be Unparalleled in Scope| website=[[Chicago Tribune]]| date=29 March 1998}}</ref> Lee's colleagues were later prosecuted.<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.nknews.org/2016/04/the-north-korean-wind-and-south-korean-elections/ | title=The North Korean wind and South Korean elections &#124; NK News – North Korea News| date=14 April 2016}}</ref>

Ex-presidents [[Park Chung Hee]], [[Chun Doo-hwan]], [[Roh Tae-woo]], and [[Kim Young-sam]] originated from the [[Gyeongsang Province]] region, which became wealthier since 1945 partly because of the policies of Park, Chun, and Roh's regimes. Kim Dae-jung was the first president who came from the southwestern [[Jeolla Province|Jeolla]] region to serve a full term, an area that had been neglected and less developed partly because of the previous presidents' discriminatory policies.

===Transition period as president-elect===
Two days after the election, outgoing president Kim Young-sam and the president-elect Kim Dae-jung met and formed a joint 12-member Emergency Economic Committee (ECC), made up of six members each from the outgoing and incoming governments but effectively under the president-elect's control, serving as the de facto economic cabinet until Kim Dae-jung would assume office two months later on 25 February 1998. This meant that Kim effectively had taken charge of making economic decisions during this period even before he took office.

The president-elect's coalition and the majority Grand National Party of the outgoing president also agreed to convene a special session of the National Assembly to deal with a series of thirteen financial reform bills required under both the original IMF program and its 24 December revised deal. This transition period saw important financial reform legislation being passed into law, that had been stalled under the outgoing government. The president-elect cooperated with the outgoing government and ruling party to get legislative backing for several important reform measures. In particular, the delegation of substantial powers to the newly created [[Financial Services Commission (South Korea)|Financial Supervisory Commission]] (FSC) greatly enhanced the government's powers to rein in the [[chaebol]]s who were caught up in the crisis.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Sharma|first1=Shalendra|title=The Asian financial crisis: Crisis, reform and recovery|date=2003|publisher=Manchester University Press|location=|isbn=|page=231}}</ref>

As president-elect, Kim Dae-jung also advised outgoing president Kim Young-sam to pardon two former presidents who were both imprisoned in 1996 for corruption, treason and insurrection, [[Chun Doo-hwan]] (who had Kim sentenced to death) and [[Roh Tae-woo]] (Chun's second-in-command), in the spirit of national unity.