Kim Dae Jung was the eighth President of South Korea, who received a Nobel Peace Prize for his long struggle against dictatorship in his country. He was born in the early 20th century in the Japanese-ruled South Korea and completed his education two years before his country became independent. He started his career as a clerk in a Japanese shipping company and became its owner very soon. Although he was a successful businessman, the despotic rule of the then Korean president provoked him to join politics in the mid-1950s. Since then, his life became a relentless struggle against dictatorship, and he had to face not only multiple imprisonments, but also repeated attempts on his life. Yet, he never gave up, ultimately becoming the president of the country when it was facing the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s. As the president, he not only saved his country from imminent bankruptcy, but also opened dialogue with North Korea. In 2000, he became the only Korean to have received a Nobel Prize.