Word: korea
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...South Korea is ready for the big party. Seoul is bedecked with flags and banners that flutter their welcome in a gentle summer breeze. Children are rehearsing spirited songs. The bands have been tuning up for months. Soon the guests from 161 countries will be arriving: 250,000 tourists, 14,000 journalists and, most important, 13,000 athletes and sports officials. A global television audience of more than 1 billion people will tune in as the Games of the XXIV Olympiad get under...
Only last year South Korea was under the iron fist of President Chun Doo Hwan, a former army general who had seized power in a 1980 coup. The press was muzzled, the National Assembly a rubber stamp, and the political opposition rendered impotent by persistent, often brutal suppression. Human rights were routinely abused...
Much of that grim past has been swept away. In a year of exciting political change, South Korea rewrote its constitution and in December 1987 held its first free presidential elections in 16 years. Most of its political prisoners were released. The press was allowed to operate freely, the door to political debate thrown open. Elections for a redistricted National Assembly, won by the opposition last April, confirmed a commitment to the electoral process...
...came out ahead in a hard-fought battle for the presidency, has set South Korea on a more liberal path, a course to which the country is still accommodating itself. Political opposition is flourishing. At the beginning of Chun's rule in 1980, the country's best-known opposition leader, Kim Dae Jung, 62, was found guilty of treason and, after serving time in prison, forced into exile for two years. Upon his return, he was put under house arrest...
...today holds a powerful position in the National Assembly, where he leads the Party for Peace and Democracy, the largest opposition group. Last month the military detailed a two-star general to give Kim a guided tour of South Korean defenses along the Demilitarized Zone, which borders Communist North Korea. Roh, himself a former four-star general, regularly invites Kim and other opposition leaders to the Blue House, the presidential seat, to brief them on government policies and listen to their views...