Kim Young-sam
Kim Young-sam, also known by his initials YS, was a South Korean politician who served as the seventh president of South Korea from 1993 to 1998.
From 1961, Kim spent almost 30 years as one of the leaders of the South Korean opposition and one of the most powerful rivals to the authoritarian regimes of Park Chung Hee and Chun Doo-hwan. He was elected to the National Assembly at the age of 25, the youngest in Korean history, and served as a nine-term lawmaker, working as a leader with Kim Dae-jung and the democratic camp. His art name is Geosan and his hometown is Gimnyeong. Elected as president in the 1992 presidential election, Kim became the first civilian to hold the office in over 30 years. He was inaugurated on 25 February 1993, and served a single five-year term, presiding over a massive anti-corruption campaign, the arrest of his two predecessors, and an internationalization policy called Segyehwa.
The final years of Kim's presidency saw him being widely blamed for the collapse of the Seongsu Bridge and the Sampoong Department Store and the downturn and recession of the South Korean economy during the 1997 Asian financial crisis, which forced South Korea to accept tens of billions of dollars in unpopular conditional loans from the International Monetary Fund. This caused him to have one of the lowest approval ratings of any incumbent president in the history of South Korea at 6%, from a historical high of 97%, until Park Geun-hye surpassed Kim at 1–3% during the political scandal in 2016. After his death, he has seen a moderately positive reevaluation.
Early life and education
Kim was born Kanemura Kōsuke on 20 December 1927 in Geoje, Geojedo, Keishōnan Province, Korea, Empire of Japan. He was born into a rich fishing family. He was the eldest of one son and five daughters in his family. During the Korean War, Kim joined the ROK Army as a student soldier, then he served in the ROK Army as an officer of the Department of troop information and education. In 1952, he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Seoul National University.Early political career
In 1954, Kim was elected to the National Assembly of South Korea, as a member of the party led by Syngman Rhee, the first president of South Korea. At the time of his election, Kim was the youngest member of the national assembly. A few months after his electoral victory, Kim left his party and joined the opposition when Rhee attempted to amend the constitution of South Korea. Kim then became a leading critic, along with Kim Dae-jung, of the military governments of Park Chung Hee and Chun Doo-hwan.In 1969, Kim fiercely opposed the constitutional revision to allow President Park to serve for three consecutive terms. Kim later opposed President Park's power grab with the authoritarian Yushin Constitution of 1972.
In 1971, Kim made his first attempt to run for president against Park as candidate for the opposition New Democratic Party, but Kim Dae-jung was selected as the candidate.
New Democratic Party leader
In 1974, he was elected as the president of the New Democratic Party. While he temporarily lost his power within the national assembly in 1976, Kim made a political comeback during the final year of Park Chung Hee's rule. Kim took a hardline policy of never compromising or cooperating with Park's Democratic Republican Party until the Yushin Constitution was repealed and boldly criticized Park's dictatorship, which could be punished with imprisonment under the new constitution.In August 1979, Kim allowed around 200 female workers at the Y.H. Trading Company to use the headquarters of New Democratic Party as a place for their sit-in demonstration and pledged to protect them. One thousand policemen raided the party headquarters and arrested the workers. One female worker died in the process and many lawmakers trying to protect them were severely beaten, some requiring hospitalization. The YH Incident garnered widespread criticism and led to Kim's condemnation, with an assertion that Park's dictatorship would soon collapse. After this incident, Park was determined to remove Kim from the political scene, like the imprisoned Kim Dae-jung, and instructed the South Korean Central Intelligence Agency to engineer such a move. In September 1979, a court order suspended Kim's presidency of the New Democratic Party.
When Kim called on the United States to stop supporting Park's dictatorship in an interview with the New York Times, Park wanted to have Kim imprisoned while the Carter Administration, concerned over increasing human right violations, issued a strong warning not to persecute members of the opposition party. Kim was expelled from the National Assembly in October 1979, and the United States recalled its ambassador back to Washington, D.C., and all 66 lawmakers of the New Democratic Party resigned from the National Assembly.
When it became known that the South Korean government was planning to accept the resignations selectively, uprisings broke out in Kim's hometown of Busan. It was the biggest demonstration since the Syngman Rhee presidency, and spread to nearby Masan and other cities, with students and citizens calling for an end to the dictatorship. The Bu-Ma Democratic Protests caused a crisis, and amidst this chaos Park Chung Hee was assassinated on 26 October 1979 by KCIA Director Kim Jae-gyu.
House arrest
The government's oppressive stance towards the opposition continued under Chun Doo-hwan, who seized power with a military coup on 12 December 1979. Kim Young-Sam was expelled from the National Assembly for his democratic activities and banned from politics from 1980 to 1985. In May 1983, he undertook a 21-day hunger strike protesting the dictatorship of Chun Doo-hwan.Failed presidential run: 1987
When the first democratic presidential election was held in 1987 after Chun's retirement, Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung ran against each other, splitting the opposition vote and enabling ex-general Roh Tae-woo, Chun's hand-picked successor, to win the election. This was also despite support from the first female presidential candidate, Hong Sook-ja, who resigned her candidacy in order to support Kim.Merged with the ruling party: 1990–92
On 22 January 1990, he merged his Democratic Reunification Party with Roh's ruling Democratic Justice Party to form the Democratic Liberal Party. Kim's decision angered many democratic activists and politicians such as future president Roh Moo-hyun, who considered him a traitor, but he maintained his political base in Busan and Gyeongsang Province. Kim chose to merge with Roh's ruling party in order to become Roh's successor in 1992, when he became the presidential nominee of the ruling Democratic Liberal Party.Presidency (1993–98)
As the candidate of the governing party, he defeated Kim Dae-jung and businessman Chung Ju-yung, the boss of the chaebol group Hyundai in the 1992 presidential election. He was the first civilian elected to a full term since 1960.Reforms
The Kim Young-sam administration attempted to reform the government and the economy. One of the first acts of his government was to start an anti-corruption campaign, which began at the very top, as Kim promised not to use political slush funds. The anti-corruption campaign was also part of an attempt to reform the chaebols, the large South Korean conglomerates which dominated the economy.Kim's government required government and military officials to publish their financial records and introduced the "real-name" financial transaction system across the country, which made it difficult to open bank accounts under false names, precipitating the resignation of several high-ranking officers and cabinet members. This also made it difficult for chaebols to seek government favours by remitting money to politicians and officials under false and anonymous names, drastically curbing such practices. He arrested and indicted his two predecessors as president, Chun and Roh, on charges of corruption and treason for their role in military coups, although they would be pardoned near the end of his term on advice of president-elect Kim Dae-jung. Kim did not stop there, his administration pursued chaebol bosses who paid these bribes to Chun and Roh, most prominently Lee Kun-hee of Samsung and Kim Woo-choong of Daewoo were prosecuted, although Lee's sentence was suspended and Kim did not serve his sentence.
Kim also purged politically minded generals of the Hanahoe clique to which Chun and Roh belonged; until that point, the clique had continued to be deeply engaged in policymaking. Thus, Hanahoe was disbanded and the depoliticization of the military began under Kim.
Kim also granted amnesty to 41,000 political prisoners in March 1993 just after taking office, and removed the criminal convictions of pro-democracy protesters who had been arrested during the Gwangju massacre in the aftermath of the Coup d'état of December Twelfth.
However, Kim's anti-corruption message was damaged after his son was arrested for bribery and tax evasion related to the Hanbo scandal.
Economy
Kim was critical of the influence of chaebols on Korean society in the early 1990s, but was a firm believer in deregulation that heavily empowered "small and medium-sized firms." During his administration, Kim viewed chaebols that monopolized importing certain resources or products and/or predominated certain markets they were "large enterprises" in as outdated parts of the era before his presidency and empowered by lax policies from the prior governments.In addition to curbing corrupt practices of the chaebols, Kim encouraged them to become leaner and more competitive to succeed in the global economy, in contrast to the state-directed economic growth model of the preceding decades. Chaebols were criticized at that time for inefficiency and a lack of specialization. Kim released his "100-Day Plan for the New Economy" for immediate economic reform, intended to decrease inflation and eliminate corporate corruption. Another Five-Year Plan was also implemented, to encourage foreign investment as part of Kim's internationalization and economic liberalism strategy. By 1996, per capita GNP exceeded US$10,000.