Kwon Young-hae

Korean spelling
Hangeul	권영해
Hanja	權 寧海
Revised Romanization	Gwon Yeonghae
McCune- Reischauer	Kwon Yanghae
See also : Korean name

Kwon Young-hae (born September 9, 1937 in North Gyeongsang Province ) is a politician and former military man. From February 26 to December 22, 1993 he was Minister of Defense , from December 24, 1994 to March 3, 1998 director of the South Korean secret service and has been co- chairman of the Saenuri Party since April 5, 2017 .

Life

Kwon Young-hae was called up for military service in 1959 and served in the Vietnam War between 1965 and 1967 . In 1984 he was appointed commander of the 6th Infantry Division and in 1986 he was appointed Chief of Staff of the 3rd Infantry Division. After serving as the commander of the Support Unit for the 1988 Summer Olympics , Kwon retired with the rank of major general (Korean 소장 , soyang ) and began working for the Ministry of National Defense . In 1990 he was named Deputy Secretary of Defense under President Roh Tae-woo .

Just one day after the inauguration of the new South Korean President Kim Young-sam , he began a far-reaching government reshuffle, in which Kwon Young-hae was appointed Minister of Defense on February 26, 1993 to succeed Choi Se-chang . In making this personnel decision, Kim Young-sam broke with the tradition that a general (Korean 대장 , daejang ) was usually used when appointing the defense minister . In March 1993, President Kim Young-sam instructed Kwon to remove Kim Chin-young from the position of Chief of Staff of the South Korean Army and Lieutenant General Suh Wan-soo as head of the military security service.

On December 24, 1994, Kwon Young-hae was appointed director of the South Korean National Security Planning Agency. During the 1997 presidential election , Kwon Young-hae initiated a smear campaign against opposition candidate and later President Kim Dae-jung . He paid the Korean-American businessman Yoon Hong-joon at three of his press conferences before the election date on December 18, 1997 to convey impressions that Kim Dae-jung had contacts in North Korea . In early March 1998, after Kim Dae-jung was sworn in as President of South Korea, rumors began to grow and Kwon Young-hae, Yoon Hong-joon and five other intelligence officials were arrested and more than two dozen intelligence officials lost their jobs. While in custody, Kwon Young-hae attempted suicide on March 22, 1998, using a knife believed to have been smuggled in from his wife.

The trial of Kwon Young-hae began in early May 1998, and on September 23, 1998, he was sentenced to five years in prison. On October 26th of the same year he was charged with new allegations. He allegedly concealed a conspiracy by three people, including a former Blue House employee , to provoke North Korea to shoot at the border in order to garner more conservative votes for their presidential candidate Lee Hoi-chang . In 2006, Kwon Young-hae was sentenced to prison after he could not be detained for medical reasons for the previous years.

Kwon Young-hae participated in the protests against the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye and went on hunger strike after her impeachment . On April 5, 2017, he was elected co- chairman of the Saenuri party, which was founded on the same day . The Saenuri Party, made up of park loyalists , should not be confused with the ruling Saenuri Party , which renamed itself the Freedom Party of Korea in February 2017 .

literature

• Central Intelligence Agency Directorate of Intelligence (Ed.): Key players of South Korea . May 1993 (English, Internet Archive - LDA 93-10822).
• KWON Young-Hae . In: Who's who in Asia and the Pacific Nations . Fourth ed. International Biographical Center, Cambridge 1999, p. 229 (English).
• KWON Young Hae . In: Roh Jeong-seon (Ed.): Korea Annual 2000 . A Comprehensive Handbook on Korea. 37th Annual ed.Yonhap News Agency , Seoul 2000, p. 645 (English).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Terence Roehrig: The Prosecution of Former Military Leaders in Newly Democratic Nations . The Cases of Argentina, Greece, and South Korea. McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, Jefferson, North Carolina, and London 2002, ISBN 0-7864-1091-4 , pp. 170 (English).
2. ↑ Donald Kirk: Korea Betrayed . Kim Dae Jung and sunshine. Palgrave Macmillan, New York 2009, ISBN 978-1-349-38285-9 , pp. 142 (English).
3. ↑ Oh Kong-dan (Ed.): Korea Briefing: 1997–1999 . Challenges and Change at the Turn of the Century. ME Sharpe, Armonk & London 2000, ISBN 0-7656-0610-0 , pp. 201 (English).
4. ^ ^{A b} BC Koh: Seoul Domestic Policy and the Korean-American Alliance . Asia / Pacific Research Center, Stanford 1999, p. 16 (English, stanford.edu [PDF; accessed April 10, 2017]). Seoul Domestic Policy and the Korean-American Alliance ( Memento of the original dated April 11, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
5. ↑ Donald Kirk: Korea Betrayed . Kim Dae Jung and sunshine. Palgrave Macmillan, New York 2009, ISBN 978-1-349-38285-9 , pp. 203 (English).
6. ↑ Choi Ha-young: Spy agency likely to become No.1 target of reform. In: The Korea Times . March 13, 2017, accessed April 10, 2017 .  

Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Korean. Kwon is the family name here, Young-hae is the first name.