Former South Korean President Chun Doo Hwan, who seized power after a military coup in 1979 and suppressed a pro-democracy civil uprising by force the next year, died on Tuesday. He was 90.
The former army general died at his Seoul home after battling chronic illnesses such as multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer, Yonhap News Agency reported, citing his aides.
The presidential office regretted that Chun died without an apology for the bloody crackdown on the 1980 uprising, even as it said it prays for the soul of the deceased.
Chun "didn't reveal the truth of history until the end," presidential spokeswoman Park Kyung Mee told reporters, adding that the presidential office "expresses regret because there was no sincere apology."
The government has decided not to hold a national funeral for Chun, Yonhap reported.
Chun was sentenced to death in 1996 for mutiny and treason in connection with the military coup and crackdown as well as for corruption during his rule, but his sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment and he received an amnesty in 1997.
The former president subsequently led a life mostly removed from politics.
Chun seized power on Dec. 12, 1979 after gaining control of the military by leading a group of officers who arrested the then army chief of staff and ordering troops onto the streets of Seoul.
The coup followed the assassination of then President Park Chung Hee, to whom Chun had been a close aide, on Oct. 26 the same year.
On May 17, 1980, Chun strengthened the martial law he had earlier declared and proceeded to arrest opposition leader Kim Dae Jung, ban political activities and close universities.
He also brought in troops to quell protests that began in the southwestern region of Gwangju on May 18, 1980, and continued until May 27, leaving over 200 citizens dead or missing.
Chun became the country's president in September 1980 and served until February 1988.
Born in Hapcheon, South Gyeongsang Province, in January 1931, Chun was admitted to the Korean Military Academy. After graduating in 1955, he went on to serve in the Vietnam War.
During his tenure as president, the country won its bid to host the Olympics, which were held in Seoul between September and October of 1988 under his successor Roh Tae Woo. Roh, who was Chun's partner in the coup, died in October this year at age 88.
Tensions with North Korea remained high during Chun's presidency, most notably marked by an attack on his entourage in Rangoon, Burma -- today's Yangon in Myanmar -- in October 1983, which killed some of his Cabinet members.
In September 1984, he became the first South Korean president to make an official visit to Japan, the former colonial power that had ruled the Korean Peninsula between 1910 and 1945.
In November 2020, a Gwangju court sentenced Chun to eight months in prison, suspended for two years, for insulting a late democratic activist in his controversial memoir published in 2017.
The activist, a pastor, had given eyewitness accounts of military helicopters shooting citizens during the 1980 democracy uprising. The court ruled that the former president defamed the activist by calling him "a shameless liar."
