Roh Tae-woo

Biography

Roh Tae-woo was born near Daegu in 1932 and was a high-school friend of Chun Doo-hwan. He served as a conscript in the Korean War, graduated from the first four-year class of the Korea Military Academy in 1954, and rose through the army, commanding a battalion in Vietnam and later the 9th Infantry Division.

A member of the secret Hanahoe officers' group, he was a key backer of Chun's coup of 12 December 1979 and supported the bloody suppression of the Gwangju Uprising in May 1980. He commanded the Capital Security and Defense Security commands, retired from the army in 1981 and held a series of ministerial posts, including sports and home affairs, before chairing the Seoul Olympic Organizing Committee and the ruling Democratic Justice Party.

Chun's choice of Roh as his successor in June 1987 fuelled the June Democratic Struggle. Roh answered with the June 29 Declaration, promising direct presidential elections, and won the December 1987 election with 36.6 percent against a divided opposition. As president from 1988 to 1993 he hosted the Seoul Olympics, merged his party with two opposition parties into the Democratic Liberal Party in 1990, and through Nordpolitik opened relations with the Soviet Union, China and Eastern Europe while both Koreas joined the UN.

Under his successor Kim Young-sam he admitted amassing a huge secret political fund, and in 1996 he was convicted of corruption, mutiny and treason over the 1979 coup and Gwangju and sentenced to 17 years. He was pardoned in December 1997 and died in Seoul in 2021.