The president of the Republic of Korea, also known as the president of South Korea (Korean: 대통령), is the head of state and head of government of the Republic of Korea. The president leads the State Council, and is the chief of the executive branch of the national government as well as the commander-in-chief of the Republic of Korea Armed Forces.
Kim Jae-gyu was a South Korean politician, army lieutenant general and the director of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency. He assassinated South Korean President Park Chung Hee—who had been one of his closest friends—on October 26, 1979, and was subsequently executed by hanging on May 24, 1980.
On August 8, 1973, the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) kidnapped South Korean dissident leader and future president of South Korea Kim Dae-jung from a conference of Korean anti-authoritarian reformers in Tokyo, Japan.
The fourth Republic of Korea (Korean: 제4공화국) was the government of South Korea from November 1972 to March 1981.
The fifth Republic of South Korea was the government of South Korea from March 1981 to December 1987.
Park Chung Hee, the third President of South Korea, was assassinated on October 26, 1979, during a dinner at the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) safe house inside the Blue House presidential compound in Jongno District, Seoul, South Korea. It was the first assassination of a head of state in Korea in 606 years, since the assassination of Gongmin of Goryeo. Kim Jae-gyu, the director of the KCIA and the president's security chief, was responsible for the assassination. Park was shot in the chest and the head, and died almost immediately. Four bodyguards and a presidential chauffeur were also killed. The incident is often referred to as "10.26" or the "10.26 incident" in South Korea.
Presidential elections were held in South Korea on 16 December 1987. They marked the establishment of the Sixth Republic, as well as the end of the authoritarian rule that had prevailed in the country for all but one year since its founding in 1948. They were the first direct presidential elections since 1971. For the previous 15 years, presidents had been indirectly elected by the National Conference for Unification, an electoral college dominated by the governing party.
Indirect presidential elections were held in South Korea on 27 August 1980 to fill the vacancy caused by President Choi Kyu-hah's resignation.
The October Yusin or October Restoration was an October 1972 South Korean self-coup in which President Park Chung Hee assumed dictatorial powers. Park had come to power as the head of the Supreme Council for National Reconstruction after the May 16 coup of 1961, and in 1963 he won elections and assumed office as civilian president.
Presidential elections were held in South Korea on 15 October 1963. They were the first elections since the 1961 May Coup, and the first during the Third Republic. The result was a narrow victory for the acting incumbent and leader of the governing military Supreme Council for National Reconstruction, Park Chung Hee, who won 46.6% of the vote, securing a transition to civilian rule under his Democratic Republican Party. Voter turnout was 85.0%.
Presidential elections were held in South Korea on 27 April 1971. The result was a victory for incumbent president Park Chung-hee, who won 53.2% of the vote. Voter turnout was 79.8%. Within a year of his re-election, Park declared martial law and introduced the Yushin Constitution, which vested him with sweeping and near-dictatorial powers.
Legislative elections were held in South Korea on 27 February 1973 to elect 146 members of the National Assembly. Another 73 members appointed by President Park Chung-hee were indirectly elected by the National Conference for Unification on 7 March 1973.
Legislative elections were held in South Korea on 12 December 1978 to elect 154 members of the National Assembly. Another 77 members appointed by President Park Chung-hee were indirectly elected by the National Conference for Unification on 21 December 1978.
Presidential elections were held in South Korea on 19 December 2012. They were the sixth presidential elections since democratization and the establishment of the Sixth Republic, and were held under a first-past-the-post system, in which there was a single round of voting and the candidate receiving the highest number of votes was elected. Under the South Korean constitution, a president is restricted to a single five-year term in office. The term of the then incumbent president Lee Myung-bak ended on 24 February 2013. According to the Korea Times, 30.7 million people voted with turnout at 75.8%. Park Geun-hye of the Saenuri party was elected the first female South Korean president with 51.6% of the vote opposed to 48.0% for her opponent Moon Jae-in. Park's share of the vote was the highest won by any candidate since the beginning of free and fair direct elections in 1987 and the first such election in which any candidate won a majority. Moreover, as of the 2022 election, this is the latest South Korean presidential election in which the winning candidate won an absolute majority of the vote.
Presidential elections were held in South Korea on 6 July 1978, the second elections held under the Restoration Constitution, which gave the members of the National Conference for Unification the power to elect the president.
Presidential elections were held in South Korea on 6 December 1979 following the assassination of Park Chung Hee on 26 October. The members of the National Conference for Unification, who among other things, were responsible for election of president, choose Prime Minister Choi Kyu-hah as the President of the Republic of Korea unopposed; Choi had been acting President since Park's death.
The New Democratic Party was a South Korean opposition party that existed from 1967 to 1980, when it was forcibly dissolved by the ninth amendment of the constitution promulgated by Chun Doo-hwan the same year. It was the main opposition party during the Park Chung-hee dictatorial regime, and especially since 1972, when the Yushin constitution was put into effect.
The 2021 South Korean by-elections were held in South Korea on 7 April 2021. The National Election Commission announced on 2 March 2021, that the by-elections would be held for 21 public offices or electoral districts, including 2 Metropolitan mayors, 2 Municipal mayors, 8 Metropolitan Council constituencies, and 9 Municipal Council constituencies. Candidate registration ran from 18 to 19 March, and the list of candidates was confirmed on 26 March.
An indirect legislative election was held in South Korea on 16 February 1976 to elect 73 members of the National Assembly who have been appointed by President Park Chung Hee.
The National Conference for Unification (Korean: 통일주체국민회의) was an organization of indirect democracy established in accordance with the Constitution when the 4th Republic was launched with the Yushin Constitution on October 17, 1972. The most important function was to promote independent peaceful reunification policies, which were the core of the Yushin Constitution, and indirect presidential elections during the 4th Republic From August 1973, the NCU was decided as National Assembly. The National Assembly was composed of delegates directly elected by the people from each district across the country, and the delegates of the National Assembly for Unification were unofficially called Tongdae.
