An iconic figure of South Korea’s pro-democracy movement, Kim had been treated at Seoul National University Hospital several times in recent years for stroke, angina and pneumonia, and was admitted Thursday with a high fever, the hospital said.
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Kim, South Korea’s 14th president from 1993-1998, had worked hard to promote the democratization of his country and on many occasions praised the R.O.C. for sharing with the Republic of Korea the universal values of freedom, democracy, human rights and free-market economics, the MOFA said in a statement. He also had his two predecessors, Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo, indicted on treason and mutiny charges for their involvement in a coup and bloody crackdown against anti-government protesters in Gwangju in 1980.
During Kim’s presidency, military tensions created a cloud over the Korean peninsula. 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 deal collapsed in 2002 when the United States accused North Korea of running a secret uranium-based program, sparking another nuclear crisis.
Kim Young-sam was the third civilian to hold the position of President of South Korea, and the first since the year 1962.
The North later expressed its “deep regret” for the intrusion that left 24 North Korean agents and 13 South Koreans dead. In 1974, he was elected as the president of the New Democratic Party.
In the early 1980s, Mr. Kim was placed under house arrest twice and staged a 23-day hunger strike to protest political oppression and advocate democracy.
Five years ago North Korea fired artillery at the South’s Yeonpyeong island, which lies south of the Northern Limit Line (NLL) sea border off their west coast, in what was the first attack on South Korean soil by the North since the 1950-53 Korean War.
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Survivors include his wife and five children.
