Pre-paid Nobel Peace Prize

Former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906 for negotiating peace after the Russo-Japanese war. However, Roosevelt whose nickname was imperialist was far from peace. He organized a militia regiment during the Spanish-American war and prevented Europe from intervening into South American issues by sponsoring the Monroe doctrine. His ideology was “Speak softly, and carry a big stick.” Some claim that Norway, which became independent a year before the former U.S. president won the Nobel, chose him because the Nordic country needed a strong ally.

Nobel Peace Prize laureates include Albert Luthuli (1960), "President of the African National Congress,” Andrei Sakharov (1975), an anti-Soviet activist, and Aung San Suu Kyi (1991), a Burmese foreign minister. However, human rights and peace can be perceived differently depending on who see them. When German journalist and pacifist Carl von Ossietzky became a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1935, Adolf Hitler forbade German scholars from receiving Nobel Prizes. When Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989, China was against it.

Former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, Korea’s only Nobel Prize winner, was awarded the prize in 2000, the year marking the 100th anniversary of the Nobel Peace Prize. He won the award for the inter-Korean summit and the June 15 Joint Declaration. Lee Jong-chan, a former head of the National Intelligence Service, said in his memoir that former South Korean administrations tried to prevent Kim from winning the prize. Lee, however, tried to help him win the Nobel Prize since 1995. Such a big prize was decided not simply by people’s will after all.

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize was given to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos for striking a peace deal that could end the 52-year long civil war in Colombia. It is a sort of a “pre-paid” Nobel Peace Prize to encourage him to complete the peace deal that was voted down in a referendum. Is it better than the Nobel Peace Prize that President Barack Obama won in less than one year since his inauguration in 2009?

김순덕 yuri@donga.com