Kim Dae-jung, the tireless force for democracy in South Korea who overcame kidnapping, prison and a commuted death sentence to win his country's presidency and a Nobel Peace Prize, died in Seoul Tuesday of pneumonia. He was 85. As president, Kim reached out to North Korea with a 'Sunshine Policy,' flying to its capital for the first North-South summit with communist leader Kim Jong Il. He helped cement young institutions of democracy in South Korea and restore its economy after a 1997 financial collapse. His later years brought some frustration, however. Despite the summit's pledges of detente, tensions rose as the North detonated two nuclear test bombs and the Bush administration rejected the outreach policy. Kim's own standing suffered with disclosure of secret payments to the North before the summit and a corruption conviction of his two sons. Throughout his life, Kim pursued his goals with a single-mindedness that could startle enemies and friends alike. Over and over, he surmounted the insurmountable, only to be undone by arrest or military coup, then picked himself up and go back for more. 'The people must be treated as masters and must act like masters,' he once said. As a dissident, Kim was aided at particular danger points by the U.S. government, which maintained tens of thousands of troops in the country, a Cold War flashpoint, and exercised strong influence in its capital, Seoul. U.S. officials stepped in to shield Kim from military officers who viewed him as a dangerous, disloyal radical and wanted him dead. Once the tables were turned and he entered South Korea's presidential mansion, known as the Blue House, he displayed a remarkable ability to make peace with former adversaries. Among the parade of South Korean dignitaries who called on him during his final illness in a Seoul's Severance Hospital was retired general and former president Chun Doo-hwan, whose military court had sentenced him to death in 1980. Kim was born Jan. 6, 1924, his presidential library's Web site says. At the time, Korea was ruled by Japan as a colony. The son of farmers on an island off the Korean peninsula's southern coast, he obtained a commercial high school diploma on the mainland and built a career in the local shipping industry around the time of independence in 1945. He did not serve in the South Korean military during the 1950-53 Korean War. But he later recounted being captured by communist forces and escaping from one of their prisons. In 1957, he was baptized a Roman Catholic, joining an influential Christian minority that has long been a force for change in Korean society. Kim would say later that his faith nurtured him during long periods of danger and incarceration. 'Only the truly magnanimous and strong are capable of forgiving and loving,' he wrote one of his sons, according to an official biography. 'Let us persevere, then, praying always that God will help us to have the strength to love and forgive our enemies. Let us together, in this way, become the loving victors.' Kim entered politics in the 1950s, making three unsuccessful runs for office. In 1961, he finally won a seat in the National Assembly, but lost it three days after the vote when Park Chung-hee, an army general who would become his first military nemesis, staged a coup d'etat and dissolved the legislative body. In new elections that Park allowed in 1963, Kim again won a seat. He soon established himself as a rising figure in the New Democratic Party, the main opposition group of the time. In 1971, as its presidential candidate against Park, he astounded the military and world by winning more than 46 percent of the vote in a race heavily stacked in Park's favor. Park later declared martial law. Kim continued his agitation, in foreign countries as well as South Korea. In 1973, agents of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency abducted him from a Tokyo hotel and took him by sea toward South Korea. He later said that his captors were close to throwing him overboard. U.S. officials urged his release, and he later went free in Seoul. In 1976, he organized democracy demonstrations, resulting in a five-year sentence that he served in prison and under house arrest. Park's assassination in 1979 brought on a brief period of openness in South Korean politics. Kim traveled up and down the country speaking out for democratic rule. But a new group of soldiers led by Gen. Chun soon seized power. In 1980, Kim was tried by a military court on treason charges connected to an uprising that the army forcefully put down in the city of Kwangju, located in Kim's native region. Wearing the white garb of Korean prison inmates, he was sentenced to death. Under pressure from Washington, the Chun government commuted that penalty to 20 years in prison and allowed Kim to leave for the United States, ostensibly for medical treatment. In return, Chun was invited to visit President Ronald Reagan at the White House. Yet another turbulent chapter in Kim's career began in 1985, when he flew back to Seoul from exile. He was detained at the airport and bundled away to what became extended arrest at his house in Seoul. Meeting frequently with allies who ignored the plainclothes policemen stationed outside, he played an important back-door role in the country's slowly loosening politics. Chun's power was broken in 1987 by a grand miscalculation, a gamble that he could install another retired general, Roh Tae-woo, as his successor through an electoral college that Kim and the rest of the opposition said he would control. Roh's nomination triggered a month of huge street demonstrations in Seoul and other South Korean cities that forced Chun to allow the direct election that the opposition was demanding. With that surprise concession, Kim's struggle was transformed from bold defiance of military rule to operation in politics as the art of the possible. 'He always told me that, even though he had dreams, he had to understand reality,' said Sung Deuk-hahm, a Korea University professor who served as an informal adviser to Kim. 'Dreams without reality are just hopeless.' Although his route to the presidency was now legally open, it took Kim a decade to win the office, after overcoming rivalries within the opposition and among South Korea's regions. Recognizing the dangers of a split opposition vote in the direct election of 1987, Kim and fellow dissident leader and longtime presidential aspirant Kim Young-sam met repeatedly to seek a deal by which one would withdraw. There was no deal. Both men ran. Chun's nominee Roh won. For the next presidential campaign, in 1992, Kim Young-sam crossed over to the ruling party and became its candidate. He was elected. It was only in 1997, with the shock of the Asian financial collapse having sullied the ruling party, that Kim Dae-jung won the Blue House, but with only 40 percent of the vote. Kim won praise by publicly forgiving Chun and Roh, both of whom had been convicted of abuse of power and corruption charges. Looking north, he devised the Sunshine Policy, consisting of diplomatic overtures to North Korea and extensive food aid at a time of famine in the closed communist state. On June 13, 2000, Kim flew to the communist capital, Pyongyang, for a summit with Kim Jong Il. The two men embraced on the tarmac of Pyongyang's airport. The South Korean president later recounted that in subsequent talks, 'I told Chairman Kim, `People don't live forever. Even though they are in high positions, they cannot remain in such positions forever either. Now, as we are in life and hold highly responsible positions, we are obliged to open the path to peace, cooperation and unification for all Korean people. That is how you and I can live forever in history.' ' The leaders signed a declaration pledging cooperation and reduction of tensions. The Nobel prize followed. 'With great moral strength, Kim Dae-jung has stood out in East Asia as a leading defender of universal human rights against attempts to limit the relevance of those rights in Asia,' the Oslo-based prize committee said. 'His visit to North Korea gave impetus to a process which has reduced tension between the two countries. There may now be hope that the Cold War will also come to an end in Korea.' Donald Gregg, a former U.S. ambassador to Seoul who saw Kim shortly after his meeting with Bush, recalls his 'tremendous grace under pressure.' Kim was bitterly disappointed but did not criticize Bush, Gregg recalled: 'I thought it was a tremendous demonstration of his strength of character.' Kim's Nobel Peace Prize was also tarnished by revelations that before the summit a South Korean company had secretly paid close to $200 million to the North. Kim apologized and said he had known of the money; critics accused him of buying the prize. But his greatest personal humiliation came with the conviction and imprisonment of two of his sons in a bribery and influence-peddling scandal. South Koreans saw a new repentant side of their president: 'For the last few months I have lived with a very shameful and sorry feeling for not looking after my sons properly,' he told the nation. 'Throughout my life I have been through a lot of difficulty, but I never thought I would have to go through something as catastrophic as this.' 