Former President Confirmed Dead (Photo)

• A former President has been confirmed dead.

EKOHOTBLOG reports that former South Korean President, Roh Tae-woo, who participated in a military coup then won the election that was the country’s first move toward democracy before he was imprisoned for corruption, has been pronounced dead.

This online news platform reports that the former President died on Tuesday at the age of 88.

The Seoul National University Hospital said Roh died while being treated for an illness. It, however, gave no further details.

Roh was a key participant in the 1979 military coup that made his army friend and coup leader Chun Doo-hwan president after their mentor, dictator Park Chung-hee, was assassinated earlier in 1979.

Roh led his army division into Seoul and joined other military leaders for operations to seize the capital. The coup and the subsequent crackdown by the Chun-controlled military on pro-democracy protesters in the southern city of Gwangju in 1980 are two of the darkest chapters in South Korea’s turbulent modern history.

According to government records, about 200 people were killed in the military-led crackdowns in Gwangju.

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Roh was Chun’s hand-picked successor, which would have assured him the presidency in an easy indirect election. But months of massive pro-democracy uprisings in 1987 forced Roh and Chun to accept a direct presidential poll that was the start of South Korea’s transition to democracy.

Roh, despite his military background, built a moderate and genial image during the campaign, calling himself an “average person.”

His victory in the hotly contested December 1987 election was largely attributable to a split in opposition votes between Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung, who both later became presidents.

Former South Korean President, Roh Tae-woo

During his five-year term, Roh aggressively pursued ties with communist nations under his “Northward Diplomacy” as communism fell in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union dissolved.

South Korea was then deeply anti-communist because of its rivalry with North Korea, but under Roh it opened diplomatic relations with a communist nation for the first time — Hungary in 1989, the year when the Berlin Wall fell and communism crumbled across Eastern Europe.

Roh established relations with the Soviet Union in 1990 and with China in 1992. Relations with North Korea improved under Roh, with the two sides holding their first-ever prime ministers’ talks in 1990 and both countries joining the United Nations at the same time in 1991.

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