In today’s Impromptus, I quote from Kim Dae-jung’s Nobel lecture in 2000. He said that he had always struggled against the ignorant notion that “Western-style democracy was not suitable for Asia, that Asia lacked the roots.” I’d like to mention here that Kim made possibly the most dramatic statement of any Nobel lecturer, in history.

Toward the end of his address, he said he wished to offer a “personal note” — which included,

I have lived, and continue to live, in the belief that God is always with me. I know this from experience. In August of 1973, while exiled in Japan, I was kidnapped from my hotel room in Tokyo by intelligence agents of the then military government of South Korea. The news of the incident startled the world. The agents took me to their boat at anchor along the seashore. They tied me up, blinded me, and stuffed my mouth. Just when they were about to throw me overboard, Jesus Christ appeared before me with such clarity. I clung to him and begged him to save me. At that very moment, an airplane came down from the sky to rescue me from the moment of death.

Not something you hear every day in Oslo — or anywhere else. (You can read about this 1973 drama in various accounts of Kim, and of South Korean history. And those accounts vary.)