Reconciliation of Ex-Presidents It's Time to Oust Bossism, Political Regionalism In good ways and bad, former Presidents Kim Dae-jung and Kim Young-sam have substantively shaped Korea's politics as it is today. The nation's post-war history, summed up by industrialization and democratization in one generation, would have been inconceivable without the two elder states men, ling been referred to as just "the two Kims," plus another ex-Presidents - Park Chung-hee. On the downside, the two Kims, often called "DJ" and "YS" after their respective initials, can hardly be free from responsibility for Korea's notoriously unproductive politics marred by regionalism and factionalism. Worse, the two have been at odds with each other for more than two decades over political hegemony and personal rivalry. So, it should be seen as another symbolic event in Korea's modern political history that YS visited DJ in hospital Monday and virtually - albeit one-sidedly - declared their "reconciliation." "We've been cooperators and competitors at the same time, maintaining a love-hatred relationship unparalleled in the world," he said. It is more than welcome to see the two former democracy fighters make peace with each other even at what could be the final moments for one of them. YS was right when he said, "Without our live-or-die struggles, Korea today might have been little different from Myanmar."Unfortunately, however, the en of military rule did not automatically bring about democracy in a genuine sense, as shown by the seemingly perennial stalemate at the National Assembly. And this is why the reconciliation between the two Kims should not end up as just personal accommodation but develop into a more upgraded democracy based on accepting different views and policies more gracefully and institutionally. In many ways, the political deadlock since the Lee Myung-bak administration took office one-and-a-half-years ago can be seen as a proxy war fought by the political disciples of the two Kims, with YS representing the political right-of-center and DD, left-of-center groups. Come to think of it, however, the ideological difference between the two Kims, or center-rightists and center-leftists in Korea, could be smaller than that between the U.S. Republicans and Democrats, especially when they take the form of concrete policies. What voters witness on the political scenes of Kore and America, therefore, lie not so much in the difference of policy or even ideology as in Their political environment, which has much to do with how long they have practiced democracy and as a result, how mature their democracies are. Many of the Barack Obama administration's policies are squarely opposite to those of George W. Bush, but President Obama doesn't call - at least not openly - his predecessor's tenure as the "lost eight years," just quietly rectifying and supplementing it. We hope the two Kims' reconciliation will serve as an occasion to put an end to region-and individual-based politics that has led to a vicious circle of political vendettas every five years.