South Korea’s business communities mourned the death of former President Kim Young-sam on Sunday, vowing to continue what they called his legacy of economic reforms that they said helped eradicate corruption.
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The chief of Seoul National College Hospital, Oh Byung-Hee, stated Kim died there early Sunday. He said Kim is believed to have suffered from a severe blood infection and acute heart failure.
South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Cho June-hyuck said at a press briefing on Thursday ‘On Secretary General Ban’s plans to visit North Korea aside from the remarks made by the United Nations spokesman there is nothing more we have to say on this’. He was succeeded by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Kim Dae Jung in 1998 in the country’s first peaceful transfer of power.
Relations between North and South Korea have been both tense and hard since the 2010 sinking of a South Korean warship, an incident South Korea reportedly blamed on the North. Pyongyang reportedly denied any role in the incident. Kim feared a attainable war.
In 1954, Kim was elected as the youngest member of the National Assembly.
Cheong pointed out that if Ban doesn’t meet Kim Jong-un he could hold talks with North Korea’s ceremonial head of state Kim Yong-nam president of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly. North Korea threatened to withdraw from the non-proliferation treaty (NPT) and began removing spent fuel from its Yongbyon nuclear reactor, which could be reprocessed into weapons-grade plutonium.
That agreement followed a spike in military tensions on the peninsula, and included the promise to continue dialogue.
Mr Kim was credited with disbanding a key military faction and bringing transparency to the South’s murky financial system.
Kim was born on Dec 20, 1927, on a southeastern island and became a lawmaker in 1954. During the Korean War, he anchored a defense ministry’s propaganda radio program, Yonhap reported.
During that chaotic period, Maj.
In the 1980s, he was also placed under house arrest twice for his activism, during which is staged a 23-day hunger strike to protest the government’s oppressive actions.
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Kim lost his first run for the presidency in 1987, but he won in the 1992 elections.
