Chun Doo-hwan (1931– )

South Korean military ruler who seized power in 1979, and was president 1981–88 as head of the newly formed Democratic Justice Party.

Chun, trained in Korea and the USA, served as an army commander from 1967 and was in charge of military intelligence in 1979 when President Park Chung Hee was assassinated by the chief of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA). General Chun took charge of the KCIA and, in a coup, assumed control of the army and the South Korean government. In 1981 Chun was appointed president, and oversaw a period of rapid economic growth, governing in an authoritarian manner, until 1988 when he retired to a Buddhist retreat.

In 1995 Chun was arrested on charges of staging the coup that had brought him to power in 1979.