History
For most of the 20th century South Korean citizens lived under non-democratic rule by the successive authoritarian military regimes of Syngman Rhee, Park Chung-hee, Chun Doo-hwan, and Roh Tae-woo. Civil liberties, most especially the freedoms of speech and association, were significantly curtailed and regime opponents risked torture and imprisonment. In 1967 the KCIA fabricated a spy ring, imprisoning 34 citizens, to solidify the rule Park Chung-hee. After the Gwangju Massacre in 1980, public desire for democracy and greater civil liberties was increasingly expressed; the years just before the 1988 Seoul Olympics saw an increase in pro-democracy activity that forced free elections to be held in 1992, putting long-time human rights activist Kim Young-sam into power.
Read more about this topic: Human Rights In South Korea
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Classes struggle, some classes triumph, others are eliminated. Such is history; such is the history of civilization for thousands of years.”
—Mao Zedong (1893–1976)
“The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior.”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)