April Revolution - Outcome

Outcome

After violent rallies and demonstrations continued into the end of April, the rallies started to grow and the violent aspect of the rallies started to slowly disappear. By the April 25, 1960, more citizens and professors started to join the demonstrations, and the police started to withdraw, refusing to attack the protestors. President Rhee Syng-man stepped down from his presidency soon after these events. Lee Ki-poong, Rhee's handpicked running mate for the vice presidency, was blamed for most of the corruption in the government. Syng-man Rhee was less blamed than Lee Ki-poong. The public's main criticism of Rhee Syng-man was that he was too old (being 85 at the time) and was too out of touch for politics. Lee Ki-Poong and his entire family committed suicide after the April Revolution.

After the resignation of Rhee Syng-man and the death of Lee Ki-poong, the rule of the Liberal Party government came to an end. When the reign of the Liberal Party ended there was not a direct transfer of power to the Democratic Party government, the largest party to oppose the Liberal Party.

Instead, the government being taken over by the opposite political party, General Park Chung-hee and a group of soldiers under his military command, established a military government on May 19, 1961. Korea eventually regained its president-centered government after the Democratic Republican party took control and changed the constitution, but transition to full democracy came as late as 1987.

The students who had led the revolution represented their actions as an effort to replace authoritarianism with democracy. South Korea need to halt and reverse the trend to a totalitarian regime and bring a fair and free election. In terms of looking at the April 19 Revolution as a process of being Democratized, it was not a class conflict of the bourgeoisie or the proletariat but a people's rights revolution. Students were at the center of calling out for bringing better rights of the citizen and demolishing authoritarianism into South Korea. Consequently, it had the meaningful implication that South Korea was opening her eyes into Democracy and began its history of developmental autocracy. We cannot not perfectly say that this revolution ended in successful outcome due to the another military authoritarian regime by Park Jung-hee, however, it is undisputed that it was the meaningful incident which showed the power of citizens even bringing its own president down from his office and cry out loud for the fair and clean politics in South Korea for the first time.