The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

Chun Doo-hwan, brutal South Korean dictator, dies at 90

He was responsible for a massacre that killed hundreds and was later convicted of mutiny, treason and accepting bribes

Gen. Chun Doo-Hwan in 1978. (AP)
7 min

Former South Korean president Chun Doo-hwan, an army major general who seized control in a 1979 coup and whose name will forever be associated with a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators the next year, one of the darkest moments in the country’s postwar history, died Nov. 23 at his home in Seoul. He was 90.

The Associated Press, quoting police and emergency officials, said the immediate cause was a heart attack. He also had multiple myeloma, a blood cancer.

Mr. Chun came from a peasant family and owed much of his rise in the military to his mentor, former president Park Chung-hee, a general whose 18 years of authoritarian rule ended with an assassin’s bullet in 1979. In the aftermath of the killing, Mr. Chun instigated a coup against Park’s weakling successor and began a reign of absolute power and terror. He purged top officials from the intelligence service, rapidly expanded martial law and closed the National Assembly. Newspapers were shut, and potential troublemakers were jailed or sent for “social cleansing.”

In 1980, Mr. Chun ordered a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters in the southern city of Gwangju, killing about 200 people. In later years, he tried to minimize this act as the proper response to a “riot” that he blamed partly on North Korean forces trying to foster dissent.

He devoted his further energies to the South Korean “economic miracle,” continuing the effort to transform the country into a global manufacturing powerhouse, and President Ronald Reagan invited Mr. Chun to Washington and pledged economic and military support.

Continuing protests at home against the Gwangju crackdown had some political effect. Mr. Chun’s government introduced a constitution limiting the president to a single, seven-year term. In 1987, he was forced to hold a direct presidential election that was viewed as a pivotal moment in the country’s transition to democracy. His successor was Roh Tae-woo, another army general who had participated in the Gwangju killings.

But the 1992 election of Kim Young-sam, a longtime figure in the pro-democracy movement, signaled a change in Mr. Chun and Roh’s fortunes. Kim had the two military strongmen indicted on mutiny and treason charges — with Mr. Chun sentenced to death and Roh to a 22-year prison term. Mr. Chun, who was also convicted of accepting hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes from South Korean conglomerates, called the charges “political revenge.”

The Supreme Court shortened those sentences to life imprisonment for Mr. Chun and 17 years for Roh, and Kim pardoned them toward the end of his term. They were released in 1997 by President-elect Kim Dae-jung in a gesture of national reconciliation.

Mr. Chun, who grew up in a large peasant family, was born in early 1931 in the southeastern province of South Gyeongsang, in what was then the Japanese colony of Korea. He later went to high school in the city of Daegu and attended the Korean Military Academy, in the same intake as Roh, who would become his close friend.

But he forged his most important tie with Park, the general who began his rule in 1961. Park also hailed from South Gyeongsang — an important connection in quasi-tribal South Korea — and graduated from the same military academy. Mr. Chun had married Lee Soon-ja, the daughter of a senior officer at the academy, and his new father-in-law had been a classmate of Park’s.

In addition to his wife, survivors include four children.

Under Park, Mr. Chun served in key military and intelligence roles, and in 1968 he led the battalion that repelled a group of North Korean commandos who were trying to infiltrate the presidential house to attack Park.

When Park sent troops to the war in Vietnam, Mr. Chun commanded an infantry division, and he subsequently was named to Park’s security-and-intelligence team. Then one night in October 1979, Park was assassinated by the president’s disgruntled spy chief at a drunken party. A new president, Choi Kyu Hah, was appointed, but he was widely deemed ineffectual. Within two months, Mr. Chun was launching a takeover — but not for the presidency.

On the night of Dec. 12 — a night that quickly became known as 12/12 — Mr. Chun launched the first stage in a two-part coup. The first involved capturing control of the military. Mr. Chun had his superior, a four-star general, arrested on charges of being involved in Park’s assassination. Generals loyal to Mr. Chun arrested key military figures and took over military headquarters, key roads and bridges, and media outlets.

Mr. Chun and his allies refused direct contact with the Americans until they had established effective control, former Washington Post correspondent Don Oberdorfer wrote in his book “The Two Koreas.” U.S. ambassador William H. Gleysteen Jr. came to distrust Mr. Chun, Oberdorfer wrote, and eventually consider him “almost the definition of unreliability … unscrupulous … ruthless … a liar.”

For his part, Mr. Chun told the New Yorker in 1980 that the takeover was needed to “restore discipline” in the armed forces and was just “a minor incident in the course of the investigation” into Park’s assassination. Mr. Chun quickly became South Korea’s de facto leader. Among those arrested during that period was Kim Dae-jung, a democratically minded presidential hopeful.

The repression of those first few months of 1980 was notable even after almost two decades under Park’s iron-fisted rule.

Protests against military rule began to spring up across the country, with tens of thousands of ordinary people calling for democracy. Gwangju, a hotbed of political opposition, became the center of the protests. Tens of thousands of people, starting with students but rapidly becoming broader, gathered over 10 days in May.

Before dawn on May 27, Mr. Chun’s junta sent special forces, including tanks and helicopter gunships, into Gwangju to stop the protests. Soldiers beat civilians in the streets, and tanks and helicopters fired indiscriminately.

At least 200 people died, according to conservative estimates; some suggest the real number could have been as high as 1,000. The U.S. military, which had tens of thousands of troops in South Korea to act as a bulwark against North Korea, was criticized for not stopping the massacre. Three of Mr. Chun’s political opponents, including activists Kim Dae-jung and Kim Young-sam, were arrested and jailed.

Five months after the events in Gwangju, Mr. Chun followed through with the second stage of his coup. He was chosen by a carefully selected electoral college as South Korea’s 11th president.

After leaving office after the 1988 election, Mr. Chun went into self-imposed internal exile at a Buddhist monastery in the mountains for two years — as penance for what he admitted was widespread corruption during his administration.

As political tides shifted and he was sentenced to prison, Mr. Chun refused to admit wrongdoing. Although pardoned, he was still ordered to pay massive financial restitution, but never did. In contrast, Roh left a letter of apology for his role in the 1980 massacre with his family members before he died last month. South Korea held a five-day state funeral for him, and current President Moon Jae-in sent flowers.

On Tuesday, the president’s office said it would not be sending flowers to Mr. Chun’s family, nor would he receive a state funeral or be buried at a state cemetery reserved for national heroes.

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