Photo from our South Korean correspondent.
*Por Carlos Eduardo Lagos.
A Life Journey of Presidential Candidate Lee Jae-Myung.
A Lawyer for a 'Factory Boy Like Lee Jae-Myung' In November 1986, a year after graduating from college, he passed the bar exam at the age of 23. During the peak period of the democratic movement in 1987 and 1988, he was trained for the legal profession at the Judicial Research and Training Institute (JRTI) for two years. He belonged to the top 30 percent when he graduated from the JRTI, combining his bar exam score and his academic performance at JRTI. During the days of the JRTI, he diligently participated in the activities of the 'Labor Law Society', which was organized by those trainees at the JRTI to work for enhancing the rights of laborers. Thinking of his future career after the JRTI training, Jae-Myung was worried whether he would earn adequate living expenses if he opened a law office at a young age immediately after the JRTI training without experiencing the legal career as a judge or a prosecutor. But he decided to pursue a career as a labor and human rights lawyer after he was inspired by Roh, Moo-hyun, a renowned human rights lawyer in Busan and later became President in February 2003. Roh said in the lecture that 'No matter what you do, a lawyer will never go hungry.'
In fact, after graduating from the JRTI, Jae-Myung lived as an assistant to a prosecutor for four months in Andong, his hometown, and felt attracted to the prosecutor's job. However, he did not choose the career path because he feared that he would lead a privileged life by being addicted to 'elite power.' At that time, Jae-Myung was able to earn a lot of money by serving as a judge or a prosecutor for only six months, as judges or prosecutors could enjoy the privilege of the former post in the Korean legal business industry. In the end, he gave up on being a judge or a prosecutor, thinking that 'if you have vested interests, you lose combat power,' and decided to take a career as a lawyer. However, as a 26-year-old first-time lawyer, it was not easy to open his own law office right away. He did not have the money to rent an office. Reluctantly, he joined the Legal Aid Corporation and worked as a paid lawyer before getting a lawyer's office in Seongnam City and opening his own business in 1989.
Lawyer Young-rae Cho and Mr. Chang-goo Kim were very helpful in starting his lawyer practice. Lee always admired Lawyer Young-Rae Cho, who devoted his life for workers' rights and wrote "A Single Spark: The Life and Death of a Young Worker." During his training days at the JRTI, Jae-Myung worked as a legal assistant for Young-rae Cho and helped the classaction lawsuit against the government, representing the flood victims of 2,300 households in Mangwon-dong in Seoul. Mr. Kim Chang-goo was the head of the college prep school that allowed him and other poor kids to attend the prep school for free. Mr. Kim was the grateful one who encouraged Jae-Myung. He expressed his happiness when Jae-Myung passed the bar exam. Although Jae-Myung's life was hard, he always had such precious and grateful people around him, like his mother, Mr. Kim, and Lawyer Cho, who helped and encouraged him whenever he was in trouble In Seongnam City in 1989, when Jae-Myung opened his legal office, there were many people in similar circumstances to his family. People from all over the country flocked to the new industrial complex to find jobs, including those who were displaced by the government's urban renewal project in Seoul. Their plight was not so different from that of Jae-Myung and his family, who had to live as a boy laborer. Just as there is light, there is shadow, the urban poor in Seongnam and industrial workers in poor circumstances resulted from rapid industrialization and urbanization.
Jae-Myung did not turn away from them. It may be more proper to say that he could not ignore them. Although he succeeded in escaping from the harsh reality by becoming a lawyer, he knew all too well that his family and most of his friends and acquaintances were still unable to escape from that harsh reality. In his eyes, he could see the 'factory boy, Jae-Myung', who had to despair because he did not know where and how to ask for help even if he was not paid for his works, be beaten, or suffered an industrial accident. Helping workers in disadvantaged situations was also healing the pain engraved on his body and mind of 'factory boy, Lee JaeMyung.' Even after becoming a lawyer, Jae-Myung's thoughts, life, and interests never departed from a laborer's perspective. He saw himself as a 'dispatched worker' with a good knowledge of the law. Whenever he was tempted to choose the more convenient way to eat well and live well by myself, he reminded himself, 'Why am I living? Let's not turn away!', and he geared up his determination to live for the people like his childhood.
*Corresponsal para América Latina.
