WASHINGTON : Korea’s Kim Visits
President Kim Young Sam of South Korea arrives in Washington today for a four-day visit in which he will help dedicate the U.S. Korean War Veterans Memorial. The ceremony, honoring 33,560 fallen American service people, will take place after a White House meeting with President Clinton on Thursday.
The Korean War--in which the United States and its allies, fighting under the U.N. flag, turned back a North Korean invasion--ended in 1953, a year before Kim was elected to the National Assembly on the ticket of President Syngman Rhee.
Kim soon broke with Rhee and spent the next four decades in opposition. During the 1980s, the South Korean government banned Kim from political activity. Pro-democracy demonstrations finally brought down the regime in 1987, and Kim was elected president in 1992.
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