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Chun Doo-hwan (born 18 January, 1931) was a Korean military officer and the President of South Korea from 1980 to 1988. Sentenced to death in 1996, Chun was later pardoned by President Kim Dae-jung, whom he himself had been sentenced to death some 20 years earlier.
The road to power
Chun was a graduate of the eleventh class of the Korean Military Academy in 1955, and a member of Hanahoi, a powerful private group of military officials that supported his actions. As head of the Army Security Command, he was in charge of the investigation into the assassination of President Park Chung-hee. On 12 December 1979, in what became known as the Coup d'état of December Twelfth, Chun ordered the arrest of Army Chief of Staff General Chung Sung Hwa (정승화, 鄭昇和) without authorization from then-President Choi Kyu-ha, alleging involvement in the assassination. This led to a bloody shoot-out at the Army Headquarters and the Ministry of Defense. By the next morning, Chun and his fellow eleventh class military academy graduates Roh Tae-woo and Jeong Ho-yong were in charge of the Korean military.
On 17 May 1980, Chun expanded martial law to the entire country and disbanded the National Assembly. Many politicians were arrested, including opposition politician Kim Dae-jung, who was later sentenced to death despite protests from the U.S. Later, Chun commuted Kim's sentence in return for U.S. support. Protests across the nation were ruthlessly suppressed, most brutally in Gwangju, where hundreds -- by some accounts thousands -- of demonstrators were killed in the Gwangju Massacre. Choi resigned in August, and Chun was elected his successor by the National Conference for Unification, the South Korean electoral college, in September. In February 1981, Chun was elected president under a revised constitution as the candidate of the Democratic Justice Party (later renamed Democratic Republican Party), having resigned from the army after promoting himself to four-star general.
Years in office
As president, Chun promoted strong centralized government, and the rapid economic growth of the Park era continued.
Chun ruled in an authoritarian manner, but had far less power than Park, and for the most part his rule was much milder. The revised 1981 constitution was less authoritarian than its 1972 predecessor, the Yushin Constitution, but still granted an unusual amount of power to the president. However, it restricted the president to one seven-year term, and Chun did not attempt to amend the document so he could run for reelection in 1988. It soon became clear that Chun had hand-picked his classmate, Roh, to succeed him.
By 1986, there was much public antipathy against Chun's regime due to the lack of political freedom and Chun's strongman tactics. Ordinary citizens of South Korea's newly-prospering middle class joined in the nationwide, student-led June 1987 protests. In the same month, U.S. President Ronald Reagan sent a letter to Chun in support of the establishment of "democratic institutions." Following these events, on June 29th, Roh announced a programme of reform that made major concessions to the protesters. This included direct presidential elections, restoration of banned politicians including Kim Dae-jung, and other liberalizing measures. Chun accepted these reforms. This won Roh instant popularity, and helped by a divided opposition, he was elected as the next president of South Korea. It later became known that this was a move orchestrated by Chun.
During Chun's visit to Rangoon, Burma (now Myanmar) in 1983, a bomb exploded at a mausoleum he was about to visit, killing 21 people including South Korean Cabinet members. Chun himself narrowly escaped death as he arrived at the scene only minutes afterwards. While no firm evidence of North Korean involvement has been established, they are widely suspected to be the responsible party.
An embattled ex-President
After he stepped down, under the freer political atmosphere, much public scrutiny fell upon the faults of Chun's regime, including the massive corruption involving his family. On November 23, 1988, the embattled Chun chose to go into the Baekdamsa Buddhist temple as a symbolic gesture of repentance for the excesses of his regime. He spent two years in Baekdamsa.
In 1996, former presidents Chun and Roh were jailed on charges of corruption. On December 16, they were also convicted of treason and mutiny connected with their takeover of power. Chun was initially sentenced to death, which was later commuted to a life sentence. He and Roh were pardoned a year later in a move of conciliation initiated by President-elect Kim Dae Jung.
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Korean people | Presidents of South Korea | South Korean criminals | 1931 births | Living people
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"Chun Doo-hwan"