Kim Jong-pil (politician)

Kim Jong-pil (1999)
Kim Jong-pil
Hangeul	김종필
Hanja	金鍾 泌
Revised Romanization	Gim Jong-pil
McCune- Reischauer	Kim Chongp'il
See also : Korean name

Kim "JP" Jong-pil (born January 7, 1926 in Buyeo-gun , Chosen Province , Japanese Empire ; † June 23, 2018 in Seoul ) was a South Korean politician .

biography

After attending a grammar school in Kongju, he began studying education at Seoul National University , but then moved to the Korean Military Academy, which he graduated as an officer in 1949. During the Korean War of 1950 and 1953, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel. After President Rhee Syng-man lost power in 1960, he had to leave the army for a short time because of " insubordination ".

Finally, he returned to the Army and became the colonel promoted and was the founder of the notorious secret Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA). As such, he played a leading role in the 1961 coup of his brother-in-law, General Park Chung-hee, and was his right-hand man until his assassination by then secret service director Kim Jae-kyu on October 26, 1979. During this time he used the KCIA to arrest and torture of opponents of the regime up to attempted murder of the opposition politician Kim Dae-jung because of his criticism of the autocratic regime. In addition, the secret service was used to raise funds for the establishment of a one-party state under the leadership of General Park. Kim Jong-pil himself was involved in several scandals in the 1960s such as the manipulation of the stock exchange in Seoul or the abuse of exchange rate privileges, but was never charged for this.

On June 4, 1971, he became Prime Minister of the Republic of Korea for the first time under President Park Chung-hee as successor to Baek Du-jin . He held this office until his replacement by Choe Gyu-ha on December 19, 1975.

On May 18, 1980, during the turbulent period following the assassination of Park Chung-hee, he was arrested along with other leading officers of his military dictatorship after the new president, General Chun Doo-hwan , declared martial law over mass demonstrations . The following month, General Chun announced that Kim, along with nine other politicians and military officers, had illegally enriched themselves by a total of nearly 150 million US dollars during the previous dictatorship . This also led to his expulsion from the ruling Democratic Justice Party (DJP).

In 1987, however, there was a political comeback . In the presidential election he was fourth of the candidates and received 8 percent of the vote. In 1992 he formed a coalition with Kim Young-sam after Kim Young-sam won the presidential election. However, a year later there was a falling out between the two. In the following years he founded the right-wing United Liberal Democrats (자유 민주 연합), which won 50 seats in the 1996 general election.

In 1997 he concluded an alliance with Kim Dae-jung, which was viewed with suspicion after it came about because of the opposition between the two. Kim Dae-jung was aware, however, that he would not be able to win the presidential election if he did not expand his traditional political home in the former Jeolla-do Province in the south-west of the country (today's Jeollabuk-do and Jeollanam-do provinces ) and the voters could not convince them that he was no longer the radical left demagogue as in the previous military regimes.

On March 3, 1998, he was reappointed Prime Minister by recently elected President Kim Dae-jung.

On January 13, 2000, Park Tae-jun succeeded him as Prime Minister. In the subsequent elections on April 13, 2000, his party United Liberal Democrats (ULD) won 25.17 percent of the vote and only 25 seats. In 2004 he declared his retirement from political life after the ULD had only won 4 seats in the parliamentary elections.

Web links

• rulers.org
• Kim Jong Pil in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Former South Korean Prime Minister Kim Jong Pil has died. In: Lucerne newspaper . June 23, 2018, accessed June 23, 2018 . 
2. ↑ Aidan Foster-Carter: Memo to Kim Jong-pil: kindly leave the stage. In: Asia Times. August 25, 2001. Retrieved June 23, 2018 . 

predecessor	Office	successor
Baek Du-jin	Prime Minister of the Republic of Korea June 4, 1971 to December 19, 1975	Choe Gyu-ha

predecessor	Office	successor
Goh Kun	Prime Minister of the Republic of Korea March 3, 1998 to January 13, 2000	Park Tae-jun

Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Korean. Kim is the family name here, Jong-pil is the first name.