Kim, Havel: Remembering Two Very Different Leaders

23 December 2011

Former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright delivers a speech during the state funeral of former Czech President Vaclav Havel in Prague, Czech Republic

This is IN THE NEWS in VOA Special English.

Kim Jong Il and Vaclav Havel died one day apart, strange timing for two such different lives.

Mr. Kim was the second-generation communist ruler of North Korea. Mr. Havel was a writer and dissident who led the anti-communist revolution in Czechoslovakia in nineteen eighty-nine.

He was born in Prague three years before World War Two started. Communists seized power in nineteen forty-eight. They denied him a university education because his parents were wealthy.

Mr. Havel wrote plays in the early nineteen sixties that gained an international following. Then came the invasion of his homeland in nineteen sixty-eight. Troops from the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact invaded the country after an effort at political reforms known as the Prague Spring. Officials seized Mr. Havel's passport when he protested.

Later, his human rights activities led to years of prison and house arrest. But, in the end, he led his country's "Velvet Revolution" as the communist governments of Eastern Europe collapsed.

Mr. Havel was elected president and supervised Czechoslovakia's move to a free-market economy and democracy. The country peacefully split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in nineteen ninety-three. Mr. Havel was elected president of the Czech Republic two times and held the position until two thousand three.