Word: sams
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Chun promised from the outset that he would serve only a single seven-year term as President. He agreed to open negotiations on a series of constitutional and electoral reforms. The parliamentary opposition, led by Kim Dae Jung and Kim Young Sam (see following story), had as its main goal the abolition of South Korea's electoral college, a panel of more than 5,000 elected delegates that chooses the President. Instead, the opposition wanted direct elections for a chief executive. The electoral-college system favors the ruling party, according to its critics. Since an elector is allowed to change...
Opposition Leader Kim Young Sam called on Chun to "rescind the April 13 decision" and proposed talks between himself and the President. But Kim placed conditions on such a meeting: the release of some 1,500 demonstrators still in jail and the lifting of Kim Dae Jung's ten-week-old house arrest. Short of complying with those stipulations, Chun might submit the issue of whether to amend the constitution to a referendum, which it would almost certainly win. That would allow the President to let the matter be settled by popular will without forcing him explicitly to back down...
Last week's student-led protests could help change that. By demanding free elections, the demonstrators are advancing the formal opposition's most cherished goal. Says Kim Young Sam, president of the Reunification Democratic Party, the main opposition faction: "There is no solution to the present crisis unless the government agrees to our demands for a direct presidential election. The government has been driven to the wall...
South Koreans have had decades to size up the two principal opposition leaders. Kim Dae Jung, 63, and Kim Young Sam, 59, who are neither related nor particularly close friends, have been active in antigovernment party circles since the 1950s. The older Kim, a stubborn politician and charismatic speaker, won 45% of the vote in the 1971 presidential election. In 1980 he was tried by a military court and sentenced to death for inciting students to rise against the government. After the sentence was first commuted to life in prison and then reduced to 20 years, Kim was permitted...
Earlier this week, Kim Young-sam met with Chun to discuss the opposition's demands, but both leaders said little was accomplished...