KIM YOUNG SAM

born Dec. 20, 1927, Koje Island, off Pusan, Korea [now in South Korea] South Korean politician and moderate opposition leader who served as his country's president from 1993 to 1998. Kim graduated from Seoul National University in 1952 and was first elected to the National Assembly in 1954. A centrist liberal, he was successively reelected until 1979, when he was expelled from the assembly for his opposition to President Park Chung Hee. His expulsion, on October 9, touched off the riots and demonstrations that preceded Park's assassination on October 26. To protest Kim's dismissal, all 66 opposition members of the assembly resigned. After Park's death, it was assumed that Kim Young Sam would be a contender in the presidential election. But General Chun Doo Hwan's takeover in May 1980 precluded this possibility. First put under house arrest by Chun (May 1980), Kim was also banned from political activity for eight years in November 1980. His party was also banned. Kim's house arrest was lifted in June 1983, and he resumed his political activity in 1985. That year he reasserted his leadership of the moderate opposition to President Chun. Kim ran unsuccessfully for the South Korean presidency in 1987, splitting the antigovernment vote with the rival opposition leader and presidential candidate Kim Dae Jung. In 1990 Kim Young Sam merged his Reunification Democratic Party with the ruling Democratic Justice Party led by President Roh Tae Woo, thus forming a centre-right party that dominated Korean politics. As the candidate of this ruling Democratic Liberal Party, Kim won election to the presidency in December 1992, defeating Kim Dae Jung and another opposition candidate. Once in power, Kim established firm civilian control over the military and tried to make the government more responsive to the electorate. He launched reforms designed to eliminate political corruption and abuses of power, and he even allowed two of his presidential predecessors, Roh Tae Woo and Chun Doo Hwan, to be prosecuted and convicted of various crimes committed while in power. The South Korean economy continued to grow at a rapid rate during Kim's presidency, and, with wages rising rapidly, the standard of living reached that of other industrialized nations. Kim was constitutionally barred from seeking a second term as president. His popularity declined rapidly in the last year of his five-year term owing to corruption scandals in his administration and the increasingly precarious state of the South Korean economy, which was caught in the financial crisis sweeping through Southeast and East Asia in late 1997. He was succeeded as president by the longtime opposition leader Kim Dae Jung.