Ronald Reagan’s weirdest side quest — Transcript

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1. 0:00in 1980 Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul
2. 0:02II saved a Korean man's life his name
3. 0:05was Kim de Jung in 1950 he was on a
4. 0:07business trip in Soul but when he
5. 0:08returned to mpo on foot the North
6. 0:10Koreans arrested him and sentenced him
7. 0:12to death he managed to escape but then
8. 0:13just a few years later his wife passed
9. 0:15away causing him to convert to
10. 0:17Catholicism he ran for president in 1971
11. 0:20against the dictator at the time Park
12. 0:21Chang HEI he didn't win but his showing
13. 0:23was good enough that Park thought he was
14. 0:25a threat but he ended up fleeing to
15. 0:26Japan and while in Japan the Korean CIA
16. 0:29ended up kiding kidnapping him in 1973
17. 0:31and were about to execute him until a
18. 0:33Japanese plane flew overhead Kim
19. 0:35returned to Korea after the dictator was
20. 0:37assassinated but the new president Chung
21. 0:39Duan falsely accused him of starting an
22. 0:41uprising and sentenced him to death
23. 0:43again this is where Pope John Paul II
24. 0:45comes in as he wrote a letter to the
25. 0:46then president asking for clemency for
26. 0:48Kim because he was a Catholic the Reagan
27. 0:50Administration got involved because they
28. 0:52didn't want to be blamed for his
29. 0:54execution the Korean president granted
30. 0:55Kim Exile in the United States which is
31. 0:57where he ultimately became a professor
32. 0:59at Harvard