Kim Young-sam (14 January 1929 – 22 November 2015) was President of South Korea from 25 February 1993 to 25 February 1998, succeeding Roh Tae-woo and preceding Kim Dae-jung. In 1990, he formed the Democratic Liberal Party, which would later be renamed the Liberty Korea Party.
Biography[]
Kim Young-sam was born on Geoje Island, Japanese Korea in 1929, and he graduated in sociology from the Seoul National University in 1951. He became a secretary to Syngman Rhee, but left the ruling Liberal Party of South Korea in 1954 in protest against Rhee's dictatorial style. Together with Kim Dae-jong, he subsequently emerged as one of the country's foremost oppositional leaders, becoming Chairman of the Democratic Party of Korea. He was put under house arrest after the Kwanju massacre in 1980, and later became co-chairman of the Council for Promotion of Democracy with Kim Dae-jong. His candidacy in the 1987 presidential elections against Kim Dae-jong split the opposition and allowed the government candidate, Roh Tae-woo, to win. He consented to the merger of his Reunification Democratic Party with the Democratic Justice Party and the New Democratic Republican Party to form the Democratic Liberal Party under Roh Tae-woo in 1990. He was elected head of the party in 1992, winning the presidential elections of 18 December 1992, thus becoming the country's first civilian president in 32 years. He continued his predecessors' careful political reforms, while clamping down on popular protests with similar ferocity. While in his term president Kim made extraordinary reforms in the army, and began purging officers and generals who were tied to the hanahoe. The hanahoe was a powerful secret society filled with corrupt military generals who had already proved themselves to be treacherous enough with them aiding the coup detat of 1979. Within 13 hours 3 generals were kicked out of the military, and many more within months. The gap was filled with non-hanahoe officers and until this day, kim is applauded for his work as the hanahoe was confirmed of plotting a coup already few years after. In 1996, his party lost its majority in the National Assembly, and Kia Motors collapsed soon after, setting off a chain of events that embroiled South Korea in a political crisis.