Tokyo, 23 November, /AJMEDIA/
Former South Korean President Chun Doo Hwan, who seized power after a military coup in 1979 and suppressed a civil uprising by force the next year, died at his home in Seoul on Tuesday, Yonhap News Agency reported, citing his aides. He was 90.
The former army general had been fighting chronic illness, according to Yonhap.
Chun gained power through the 1979 coup after then President Park Chung Hee was assassinated earlier that year. In the following year, he ordered a crackdown in the southwestern city of Gwangju on the pro-democracy movement in which scores of civilians were killed.
He was sentenced to death in 1996 for mutiny and treason in connection with the military coup and bloody 1980 crackdown as well as for corruption during his rule, but his sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment and he received an amnesty in 1997.
Chun’s successor as president and partner in the coup Roh Tae Woo died in October this year at age 88.
