Yun Posun
Yun Posun was president of South Korea when the army took the country and declined to stop it. He came from a wealthy family, was educated at Edinburgh, and had been mayor of Seoul and a leader of the opposition to Syngman Rhee. When the student protests of April 1960 brought Rhee down, the constitution was rewritten to make the president a ceremonial figure and the prime minister the government. Yun was elected to the ceremonial office in August. The Second Republic lasted nine months. It was the freest period in South Korean politics until the late 1980s, with the press unmuzzled and hundreds of demonstrations a month, and it was also unstable, with a governing party split in two and an economy that had not recovered from the war. On 16 May 1961 Major General Park Chung-hee moved troops into Seoul. The American commander of the combined forces asked Yun to authorise loyal units to put the coup down. Yun refused, saying that Koreans should not shed Korean blood, and told the army not to resist. Whether that was principle or calculation has been argued about ever since; the effect was that the junta met no organised opposition. He stayed in the office for another ten months as a legitimising figure and resigned in March 1962 when the junta purged the old politicians. He then ran against Park for the presidency twice, in 1963 and 1967, and lost both times, the first by fifteen thousand votes out of ten million. He was tried for sedition in the 1970s for opposing the Yushin constitution and lived to see the country elect a president freely again.
- Lived: 1897 CE – 1990 CE
- Nationality: South Korean
- Roles: head_of_state, politician
