Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that answer the question.
Query: Who is the current leader of South Korea?
In 2017 Moon Jae-in was elected President of South Korea with promises to return to the Sunshine Policy. In his New Year address for 2018, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un proposed sending a delegation to the upcoming Winter Olympics in South Korea. The Seoul–Pyongyang hotline was reopened after almost two years. North and South Korea marched together in the Olympics opening ceremony and fielded a united women's ice hockey team. North Korea sent an unprecedented high-level delegation, headed by Kim Yo-jong, sister of Kim Jong-un, and President Kim Yong-nam, as well as athletes and performers.
After the Surrender of Japan on August 15, 1945, figures such as Kim Gu returned. On August 15, 1948, the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea was dissolved. Rhee, who was the first president of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea, became the first President of the Republic of Korea in 1948. The Constitution of South Korea, which was amended in 1987, stated that the Korean people inherited the rule of the KPG.
Two-stage presidential elections were held in South Korea in May and July 1978, the second elections held under the framework of the Yushin Constitution. Members of the National Council for Reunification electoral college were elected on 18 May and proceeded to elect the president on 6 July. Incumbent President Park Chung-hee was elected, as in 1972, without opposition. Elections to the National Council for Reunification, an electoral college specified by the constitution, took place on 18 May, and Park Chung-hee was subsequently elected with the support of 2,578 members out of 2,581. One vote was declared invalid, the two remaining delegates were not present. Park Chung Hee would continue in office for just over a year before his assassination on 26 October 1979 and the subsequent collapse of the Yushin system.
Kim Il-sung, later to become leader of North Korea, was a high-rank officer in this army, and attained a distinction that he invaded China-Korea border and attacked Japanese police station in Bochonbo 1939. It was widely reported by Korean presses such as Donga Ilbo and he became famous in Korea as the most prominent leader of the anti-Japanese movement. After the war, some of the Korean nationals in this army became the first generation of the leaders of North Korea. Besides Kim Il-sung, An Gil, Kim Chaek, Choe Yong-gon and Kang Kon were also Korean high-rank officers of NAJUA, later assumed high positions in North Korea.
The current president is Bounnhang Vorachit, since 20 April 2016. He is also the General Secretary of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party, making him ranked first in the Politburo hierarchy.
On August 15, 1948, the Republic of Korea was formally established, with Rhee Syngman as the first president. With the establishment of Rhee's government, de jure sovereignty also passed into the new government. On September 9, 1948, a communist regime, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea), was proclaimed under Kim Il-sung. However, on December 12, 1948, by its resolution 195 in the Third General Assembly, the United Nations recognized the Republic of Korea as the sole legal government of Korea.
His second mistress, Ko Yong-hui, was a Japanese-born ethnic Korean and a dancer. She had taken over the role of First Lady until her deathreportedly of cancerin 2004. They had two sons, Kim Jong-chul (in 1981) and Kim Jong-un, also "Jong Woon" or "Jong Woong" (in 1983). They also had a daughter, Kim Yo-jong, who was about 23 years old in 2012.
The First Republic of Korea () was South Korea's first independent government, ruling the country from 1948 to 1960. It succeeded USAMGIK, the United States military government, which ruled the area from 1945 to 1948. The Philippines recognized South Korea on 15 August 1948. The First Republic was established on August 15, 1948, with Syngman Rhee as the first president. Like subsequent governments, it claimed sovereignty over the entire Korean Peninsula, although it only had power over the area south of the 38th parallel. The investiture of the Rhee government followed the general election of May 10, 1948. The country's first constitution had been promulgated by the first National Assembly on July 17. It established a system with a strong president, who was elected indirectly by the National Assembly. The April Revolution in 1960 led to the resignation of Syngman Rhee and the transition to the Second Republic of South Korea.
The main policy of the First Republic of South Korea was anti-communism and "unification by expanding northward". The South's military was neither sufficiently equipped nor prepared, but the Rhee administration was determined to reunify Korea by military force with aid from the United States. However, in the second parliamentary elections held on May 30, 1950, the majority of seats went to independents who did not endorse this position, confirming the lack of support and the fragile state of the nation.
Estimating gross national product in North Korea is a difficult task because of a dearth of economic data and the problem of choosing an appropriate rate of exchange for the North Korean won, the nonconvertible North Korean currency. The South Korean government's estimate placed North Korea's GNP in 1991 at US$22.9 billion, or US$1,038 per capita. In contrast, South Korea posted US$237.9 billion of GNP and a per capita income of US$5,569 in 1991. North Korea's GNP in 1991 showed a 5.2% decline from 1989, and preliminary indications were that the decline would continue. South Korea's GNP, by contrast, expanded by 9.3% and 8.4%, respectively, in 1990 and 1991.
In 1971, South Korea and Singapore established consular relations by renaming the Korea Trade Centre to a consulate-general. The two countries established formal diplomatic relations in 1975. In 1979, Lee Kuan Yew became the first Prime Minister of Singapore visiting South Korea. The two countries started regular ministerial meetings in the same year. In 1981, Chun Doo-hwan, the President of South Korea paid a state visit to Singapore, making him the first President of South Korea to do so. In 2002, S. R. Nathan became the first President of Singapore visiting South Korea.
Under the leadership of Kim Il-sung, the Korean People's Army attacked from the north on 25 June 1950, starting the Korean War. According to Kim Mansik, who was a military police superior officer, President Syngman Rhee ordered the execution of people related to either the Bodo League or the South Korean Workers Party on 27 June 1950. The first massacre was started one day later in Hoengseong, Gangwon-do on 28 June. Retreating South Korean forces and anti-communist groups executed the alleged communist prisoners, along with many of the Bodo League members. The executions were performed without any trials or sentencing. Kim Tae Sun, the chief of the Seoul Metropolitan Police, admitted to personally executing at least 12 "communists and suspected communists" after the outbreak of the war. When Seoul was recaptured in late September 1950, an estimated 30,000 South Koreans were summarily deemed collaborators with the North Koreans and shot by ROK forces. At least one US lieutenant colonel is known to have approved the executions, when he told a South Korean colonel that he could kill a large number of prisoners in Busan if the North Korean troops approached. A mass execution of 3,400 South Koreans did indeed take place near Busan that summer.
The death of Kim Jong-il was reported by North Korean state television news on 19 December 2011. The presenter Ri Chun-hee announced that he had died on 17 December at 8:30 am of a massive heart attack while travelling by train to an area outside Pyongyang. Reportedly, he had received medical treatment for cardiac and cerebrovascular diseases. During the trip though, he was said to have had an advanced acute myocardial infarction, complicated with a serious heart shock. However, it was reported by South Korean media in December 2012 that he had died in a fit of rage over construction faults at a crucial power plant project.
Group D
Despite the initial plan of a unified Korea in the 1943 Cairo Declaration, escalating Cold War antagonism between the Soviet Union and the United States eventually led to the establishment of separate governments, each with its own ideology, leading to the division of Korea into two political entities in 1948: North Korea and South Korea. In the South, Syngman Rhee, an opponent of communism, who had been backed and appointed by the United States as head of the provisional government, won the first presidential elections of the newly declared Republic of Korea in May. In the North, however, a former anti-Japanese guerrilla and communist activist, Kim Il-sung was appointed premier of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in September.
Kim Hong-il (23 September 1898 – 8 August 1980) was a Korean independence activist and a general of the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Korean War, who later became a diplomat and politician in South Korea. Born in North Pyongan, he did his early schooling in China and Korea, and had a brief career as a teacher before his connections with the nascent Korean independence movement led to his imprisonment. He fled into exile in China in 1918, and served in the Kuomintang's National Revolutionary Army from 1926 to 1948, following which he moved to the newly-independent South Korea to join the Republic of Korea Army. He commanded South Korea's I Corps during the first year of the Korean War, and was then sent to Taipei as South Korea's ambassador to the Republic of China, which by then had retreated to Taiwan. His assignment there ultimately lasted nine years. He returned to South Korea in 1960 following the April Revolution which ended the rule of Syngman Rhee, and served briefly as Minister of Foreign Affairs under the Park Chung-hee junta. He ran for the National Assembly, first unsuccessfully in 1960 and 1963, and was then elected in 1967 and became a major figure in the opposition New Democratic Party.
Hong's career took off in earnest after the 2011 death of Kim Jong-il, the country's leader, and the succession of Kim Jong-un. Hong was number 126 on the funeral committee list of Kim Jong-il. Since 2012, he has accompanied Kim on the occasion of various rocket test launches, and on on-the-spot guidance tours since the beginning of 2013. , Hong is an alternate member of the Central Committee of the WPK.
At the end of World War II, Soviet Union occupied the northern half of Korea and in 1946 established the Provisional People's Committee for North Korea chaired by Kim Il-sung. On 9 September 1948, the DPRK was proclaimed, also led by Kim Il-sung.
In the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the South Korean economy suffered a liquidity crisis and relied on the bailout by the IMF that restructured and modernized the South Korean economy with successive DJnomics policy by President Kim Dae Jung, including the resultant of the national development of the ICT industry. Historically, subsidies were used as means of speeding up adoption of new technology in Korea and has ultimately helped the adoption and development of faster mobile standards for the economy of South Korea. The growth of ICT industry has been far concentrated on the hardware sector, which focuses on expanding wired and wireless telecommunication network penetration rather than the software sector, which creates innovative applications and value-added services. The economy of South Korea is the global leader of consumer electronics, mobile broadband and smartphones. South Korea's LCD TV global market share also jumped to 37 percent in 2009, from 27 percent at the end of 2007, and it will soon replace Japan as the world’s number-one LCD TV supplier. The economy of South Korea ranks No.1 in the world in ICT Development Index 2015 and 2015 Bloomberg Innovation Index.
After publishing his “President Geun Hye Park Image” research in "Shin Dong Ah" magazine, Sang Min Whang was sent to Yonsei University's disciplinary committee for “violation of prohibition on holding a job outside of professorship and violation of prohibition on engaging in commercial activity” and the former Yonsei University president, Gap Young Cheung, who was being mentioned as a potential minister nominee in Geun Hye Park's regime, passed the dismissal motion on his last day in office on January 29, 2016. Yonsei University has claimed there is no relation between Sang Min Whang's research and the exclusionary disciplinary action and that he was removed because of “holding concurrent offices,” but through the Soon Sil Choi affair it was proven Sang Min Whang's research predicted the hidden commander's existence. The retaliatory decision to dismiss a tenured professor, along with Yoo Ra Chung's illicit admission incident, showed that universities lost academic autonomy and became an instrument of political power.
On 15 August 1974, Park was delivering a speech in the National Theater in Seoul at the ceremony to celebrate the 29th anniversary of the ending of colonial rule when a man named Mun Se-gwang fired a gun at Park from the front row. The would-be assassin, who was a Japanese-born North Korean sympathizer, missed Park but a stray bullet struck his wife Yuk Young-soo (who died later that day) and others on the stage. Park continued his speech as his dying wife was carried off the stage. Mun was hanged in a Seoul prison four months later. On the first anniversary of his wife's death, Park wrote in his diary "I felt as though I had lost everything in the world. All things became a burden and I lost my courage and will. A year has passed since then. And during that year I have cried alone in secret too many times to count."
Moon Kook-hyun (Korean: 문국현, Hanja: 文國現, born 12 January 1949) is the leader of the Creative Korea Party, who served as a well-known business manager and civil environmental campaigner in South Korea before entering his political career.
After years of military tension, the aging President Choi Kim of North Korea begins to embrace the "Sunshine Policy" of South Korea, reviving hopes of peaceful reunification of the two Korean countries.
However, high-ranking members of the Korean People's Army become disgruntled with the turn of events, fearing a dramatic loss of their power. Their leader, the brilliant and ruthless Choi Song, believes that his father, President Kim, was losing sight of "North Korea's true destiny." Song leads an army of insurgents into a ceremony celebrating a road map to the reunification of Korea. Both North and South Korean political leaders are shot and killed, and Song is reported to have deliberately killed his own father in the process.
On 27 April, a summit took place between Moon and Kim in the South Korean zone of the Joint Security Area. It was the first time since the Korean War that a North Korean leader had entered South Korean territory. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and South Korea's President Moon Jae-in met at the line that divides Korea. The summit ended with both countries pledging to work towards complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. They also vowed to declare an official end to the Korean War within a year. As part of the Panmunjom Declaration which was signed by leaders of both countries, both sides also called for the end of longstanding military activities in the region of the Korean border and a reunification of Korea. Also, the leaders agreed to work together to connect and modernise their railways.
A former student activist, human rights lawyer and chief of staff to then-President Roh Moo-hyun, Moon served as Leader of Democratic Party (2015–2016) and a member of the 19th National Assembly (2012–2016). He was also a candidate for the former Democratic United Party in the 2012 presidential election in which he lost narrowly to Park Geun-hye. As President, Moon Jae-in has met with North Korean chairman Kim Jong-un at the April 2018 inter-Korean summit, May 2018 inter-Korean summit, and September 2018 inter-Korean summit.