Kim Dae-jung (Napoleon's World)

Kim Dae-Jung (1924-2009) was a Korean activist and political figure who served as President of Korea from 1995 to 2002, the last Korean President to serve a seven-year term (a constitutional amendment reduced the term to five years thereafter). A longtime opposition leader, Kim opposed both the autocratic Korean National Party of Pak Mae-Hyeong and the military junta established by Chun Doo-hwan. He was the leader of the Democratic Party, a left-liberal social democratic party opposed to the regime, and nearly defeated Pak Mae-Hyeong in the 1973 Presidential election. His threat to the regime targeted him for assassination and he was forced into exile - when he returned to campaign against the new Chun regime, he was arrested and would have been executed had it not been for intervention by the United States, which was already alarmed by the atrocities of Chun. Kim was released from prison after the pardons issued by democratically elected and fellow opposition figure Kim Young-sam in 1988, though after evidence emerged that President Kim's representatives had persuaded Chun not to release Kim Dae-Jung during a wave of amnesties in the run-up to the 1988 election lest he challenge for the office, he became an opponent of the new ruling Democratic Liberal Party. His Democratic Party joined with other centrist and left parties to form the National Congress for Korea, a joint list in the 1995 elections, in which he was elected to the Presidency 22 years after his first run.

Kim is, to this day, the sole Korean President to hail from the social-democratic left since democratization. He continued Kim Young-sam's anti-corruption initiatives, and during his term Korea was officially termed a developed economy, completing the Miracle on the Han. He also reduced military spending and pushed through a massive expansion to Korea's welfare state. However, towards the end of his term, the economy slowed, and the Asian financial crisis began in March of 2002, just before Koreans headed to the polls. His chosen successor, his opponent in 1995 Lee In-je, was defeated in the Democratic Party primary by Roh Moo-hyun by conservative New Korea Party leader Lee Hoi-chang, returning the conservatives from the Chun era to power. Despite the rocky end to his tenure, Kim remains a national hero to many Koreans.