TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Thousands of mourners gathered Thursday at the lawn outside South Korea's parliament to bid farewell to former President Kim Young-sam, whose landmark 1992 election victory ended decades of military rule and ushered in a series of reforms.
Kim, a towering figure in South Korea who fought against a succession of dictatorships from the 1960s through the '80s, died of a severe blood infection and acute heart failure on Sunday at age 87.
"We are here together to bid a final goodbye to former President Kim Young-sam, who was a huge mountain that oversaw our country's democratization," Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn said in a speech during a state funeral.
The televised funeral was held on the National Assembly lawn, where Kim was sworn in as president in early 1993 for a single five-year term. He was buried at the state cemetery in Seoul later Thursday.
Mourners, dressed in black and braving cold wind and flurries of snow, sat in silence below a flag at half-staff, many of them sobbing or wiping away tears with handkerchiefs.
There has been outpouring of mourning for Kim, whose achievements have been largely ignored since he left office in disgrace in early 1998, after accepting what many South Koreans still recall as a humiliating international bailout during the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis.
More than 180,000 people have paid respects for Kim at makeshift mourning sites across the country, while TV stations and newspapers have run feature stories every day since his death.
At age 25, Kim was the youngest lawmaker and spent most his career in the opposition. His courageous, outspoken criticism against back-to-back dictatorships led by President Park Chung-hee — the father of current President Park Geun-hye — and his successor Chun Doo-hwan, earned him a reputation as a pro-democracy fighter, but also made him the subject of repeated political suppression.
As president, Kim reshuffled top military generals loyal to past dictators, brought transparency to the country's murky financial system and took other reforms.
Kim's reputation was seriously undermined after his government accepted a $58 billion bailout from the International Monetary Fund in late 1997 amid the Asian foreign exchange crisis. Thousands of companies collapsed, stripping millions of people of their jobs in South Korea.
AP
