Kim Young-sam

Kim Young-sam ( or ; 20 December 1927 – 22 November 2015), often referred to by his initials YS, was a South Korean politician and activist who served as the 7th (14th election) president of South Korea from 1993 to 1998.

Kim was born on 14 January 1929 in Geoje, Geojedo, Keishōnan-dō, Korea, Empire of Japan (now in South Gyeongsang Province, South Korea).

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 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.

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.

From 1961, he 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 person in Korean history, and served as a nine-term lawmaker, working as a leader with Kim Dae-jung and the democratic camp.

His nickname is Geosan (巨山) and his hometown is Gimnyeong (金寧).

In 1969, Kim fiercely opposed the constitutional revision to allow President Park to serve for three consecutive terms.

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.

Kim later opposed President Park's power grab with the authoritarian Yushin Constitution of 1972.

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policy of never compromising or cooperating with Park's Democratic Republican Party until the Yushin Constitution was repealed and boldly criticized Park's dictatorship, which could be punished with imprisonment under the new constitution.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 (KCIA) 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.

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.

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.

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.

At the final years of his presidency, Kim had been 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 (IMF).

This caused him to have one of the lowest approval ratings of any incumbent president in the history of South Korea at 6%, until Park Geun-hye surpassed Kim at 1–3% during the political scandal in 2016.

After his death, however, he has seen a moderately positive reevaluation.