Daily Inspiration Quote by Kim Dae Jung

“Moderate” is doing a lot of political work here. Kim Dae Jung frames a hard demand - that North Korea “open door to outside” - as almost modest, even reasonable. It’s a rhetorical judo move aimed at two audiences at once: foreign powers tempted by isolation and punishment, and South Koreans wary that engagement is naive. By labeling openness as moderation, Kim tries to shift the center of gravity. The extreme position becomes the status quo: a hermetically sealed state that starves its people, threatens its neighbors, and treats information like contraband. Against that baseline, asking for a crack in the door starts to look like basic sanity.

The clunky grammar (“open door”) reads like diplomatic English, stripped of ornament because the stakes aren’t aesthetic. Kim’s intent isn’t to deliver a poetic line; it’s to normalize a policy horizon. This is Sunshine Policy logic distilled: contact is not indulgence, it’s leverage. Outside access means markets, aid conditionality, inspection possibilities, and - most destabilizing to Pyongyang - ideas. Kim implies that openness is not just a concession North Korea should make to be liked; it’s the minimum requirement to be dealt with as a legitimate actor.

Context matters: Kim governed with memories of the Cold War and the Korean War still raw, nuclear anxiety rising, and humanitarian catastrophe in the North. Calling the demand “moderate” is also a warning to the international community: if even this feels radical, your expectations have already been captured by authoritarian exceptionalism.