Chun Doo-hwan

Biography

Chun Doo-hwan was born in 1931 into a poor farming family in Hapcheon County, in Japanese-ruled Korea, and grew up mostly in Daegu. He entered the Korea Military Academy in 1951 and was commissioned in its 11th class in 1955. After backing Park Chung Hee's 1961 coup he rose quickly under Park's patronage, serving in the coup government, the Korean Central Intelligence Agency and the presidential security service, commanding a regiment in the Vietnam War and later the 1st Infantry Division. Within the army he built Hanahoe, a secret clique of officers mostly drawn from his academy class.

Appointed head of the Defense Security Command in 1979, he led the investigation into Park's assassination that October and used it to take control of the intelligence services. On 12 December 1979 he had the army chief of staff arrested without presidential approval and, with troops loyal to him, became the country's real ruler. In May 1980 he extended martial law nationwide and sent troops to crush the Gwangju Uprising, in which at least 200 people were killed.

An electoral college with him as sole candidate made him president in August 1980, and he was re-elected under a new constitution in February 1981 as head of his new Democratic Justice Party. His Fifth Republic combined harsh repression, including mass detentions in re-education camps, with economic stabilization that brought rapid growth and the country's first trade surplus. He survived a North Korean bomb attack in Rangoon in 1983. When he named Roh Tae-woo as his chosen successor in 1987, the June protests forced direct elections, and he handed power to Roh in February 1988.

After leaving office he withdrew for two years to a Buddhist temple. In 1996 he was tried for the 1979 coup, the Gwangju crackdown and corruption, sentenced to death and then to life imprisonment, but was pardoned in December 1997; most of his large fine went unpaid. He never apologized for Gwangju and died in Seoul in 2021.