Informant38

...not for himself, but for the nation...
Before Lee Kyung Hae left for Mexico on his final mission to defend South Korean farmers, he climbed a hill behind his old apple orchard here, and raked and trimmed the grass around his wife's tomb.
On Wednesday in Canc�n, Lee, a 55-year-old farm union leader, climbed a barricade outside a meeting of World Trade Organization and fatally plunged his old Swiss Army knife into his heart.
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In 1992, wielding the same Swiss Army knife, Lee stabbed himself in the stomach at the World Trade Organization's headquarters in Geneva. Last February, he returned to Geneva, began living in a tent outside the building and conducting a one-month hunger strike.
"He staged hunger strikes 30 times," said his older sister, Lee Kyang Ja, who followed his protests even though she lived in Chile through most of the 1990's. "For him, the most important things were farmers, his parents, and his three daughters."
�IHT/NYT 09.15.03
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