Chun Doo-hwan left office in 1988 and died in 2021.
After sitting in the highest position of power for about 8 years and stepping down, he lived as a ‘former president’ for 33 years.
During that period, Chun Doo-hwan never did what he had to do.
The only thing he had to do was admit his mistake and apologize.
Although he did express regret vaguely, it was difficult to see it as an atonement in any respect.
True atonement begins with clearly identifying and admitting what you have done wrong.
He didn't admit any wrongdoing.
Moreover, he claimed innocence by shifting the blame for his mistakes to the North or to the “communist forces.”
The fact that he was sued for glorifying the Gwangju massacre as an "act of national defense" against communist forces in his memoirs written in his later years is clear evidence that Chun Doo-hwan had no intention of admitting his wrongdoing.

---From the "Prologue"

The path taken by former dictator Chun Doo-hwan was unlike any of those dictators.
Far from being in power for a long time, he was plagued by frequent protests from the opposition, barely completing his term and stepping down as president. After leaving office, he was unable to exert direct influence on South Korean politics, and lived in the country for 33 years as an ordinary citizen.
He was convicted and imprisoned eight years after leaving office, but was released after two years, and lived freely in the outside world, not in prison, until the end of his life.
He lived in a house with a total area of ​​1,652㎡ (approximately 500 pyeong) consisting of 4 lots and 3 buildings, and was protected by bodyguards. He was occasionally invited to the Blue House as a “former president” and spoke about “the future of the country” and “national security,” and played golf and frequented high-end restaurants with his close associates.
Then, at the age of 91, he passed away from a chronic illness.

---From the "Prologue"

The process of normalizing the unconventional, extravagant, and exceptional from Syngman Rhee to Park Chung-hee, and from Park Chung-hee to Chun Doo-hwan, was like a chart that clearly showed the process.
The soil of colonialism, division, and war demanded a miracle that would "make the impossible possible," and in the process of putting social pressure on leaders to drive that miracle, the cart before the horse was put, resulting in the destruction of the original utility and meaning of the miracle.
After the establishment of the South Korean government, the process of passing down a fatal and heavy burden among the leaders took a gradual path, in which the burden lost its original meaning and came to serve only corrupt selfish desires.
---From "Part 1, Chapter 1 | Syngman Rhee, Park Chung-hee, and Chun Doo-hwan"

It was a coincidence that he was selected as a key figure by an absolute ruler who was on the verge of doom, but it was the individual effort of Chun Doo-hwan that allowed him to protect the Security Command, grow his authority, and maintain a 'ready posture' to secure an important position at a crucial moment.
Chun Doo-hwan, who had lived his life fiercely seizing even the slightest opportunity to rise in status and maximizing his chances of rising in rank, leaped at the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of the presidential candidacy with incredible momentum, seizing it, and thereafter, eliminating every possible scenario in modern Korean history, he galloped in the direction his ambitions pointed him to.

---From "Part 1, Chapter 2 | The 49-Year-Old Security Commander"

The image of Chun Doo-hwan during his days as a cadet at the Korea Military Academy, when he would just go to the Chief of Staff's house, was far from evil or ugly.
How young and unruffled was Chun Doo-hwan, suddenly dropping by the home of a Chief of Staff he had no personal relationship with! Until then, Chun Doo-hwan had naturally and positively expressed the qualities inherent in him.
No one demonstrates more clearly than Chun Doo-hwan that a person's strengths and weaknesses stem from the same root.
---From "Part 1, Chapter 4 | Active and Friendly Military Academy Cadets"
For Choi Kyu-ha, the few hours between December 12th and the early morning of December 13th were the last moments of hostility toward Chun Doo-hwan.
After that day, Choi Gyu-ha gradually softened his attitude.
Sitting in the formal position of president, he approved the documents handed over by Chun Doo-hwan with a much more friendly attitude than before, and maintained his presidency despite those around him urging him to resign.
During the Fifth Republic, it served as a major decoration to create the appearance of a 'peaceful transfer of power' by accepting various ceremonies provided by Chun Doo-hwan.
Later, when summoned to appear as a witness in trials related to Chun Doo-hwan, he did not respond at all, and he maintained a comfortable old age, resolutely refusing to play a role that only he could play in history, and took the truth of December 12 to his grave.
---From "Part 1, Chapter 5 | The Day of Rebellion, December 12, 1979"

Chun Doo-hwan gave orders to remain completely in the 'now', 'here', and 'me', to laugh freely, joke heartily, and inflict harm on the living human body.
To Chun Doo-hwan, his ‘past self’ was no different from anyone else.
It didn't matter what my past self said or did about Gwangju.
He could say and do anything as long as his 'present self' could survive and enjoy peace.
The fact that he viewed and responded to Gwangju superficially and from a thoroughly self-centered perspective from beginning to end stemmed from his fundamental disposition: the characteristic of thinking only in terms of the "present, here, and me," and his exceptional ability to be completely insensitive to others who were not related to him.

---From "Part 1, Chapter 7 | Stepping on Gwangju and Sitting on the Throne"

According to the National Archives, Chun Doo-hwan visited Gwangju a total of 18 times since taking office as the 11th president in 1980.
During his term, Chun Doo-hwan visited Gwangju one to four times a year.
There are countless testimonies and documents that show the situation at the time, including the Samcheong Education Corps, the attempt to enact the Private Education Act, and the excessive suppression of the Konkuk University protests.
Given these circumstances, it appears that both were true.
During his term, Chun Doo-hwan paid attention to Gwangju in his own way (albeit in a non-essential and impromptu manner), and at the same time, he constantly attempted outrageous acts such as the Samcheong Education Corps.
---From "Part 1, Chapter 8 | Chun Doo-hwan's Special Lightness"

During his time in power, the thing that Chun Doo-hwan devoted the most effort to was ‘economic development.’
Chun Doo-hwan, who had invited economic expert Park Bong-hwan as his tutor and studied economics separately since his days as the commander of the Security Command, continued to devote himself to understanding economic trends after taking office as president. He emphasized the importance of price stability and foreign debt repayment by discussing exchange rates and interest rates during regional inspections, press conferences, and conversations with business leaders.
---From "Part 2, Chapter 1 | What Was the 1980s Like?"

Before Chun Doo-hwan came to power, there was no case of the state's regular army shooting citizens in mass murder, no media consolidation and issuing individual reporting guidelines, no case of the president dismantling certain conglomerates at will, and no case of powerful figures in certain fields (mainly conglomerates) meeting with the president and directly offering bribes.
There was no case of the president's family and relatives on his wife's side entering public office en masse and amassing astronomical sums of money.
Even during the 18 years of rule of Park Chung-hee, who was called a “dictator,” no such measures were taken.
These practices, which can be called the limits or lower limits of social ethics, collapsed all at once or gradually during the Fifth Republic.
---From "Part 2, Chapter 2 | One Man vs. Forty Million People"

Even during the Fifth Republic, the appearance of an export-led and government-planned economy was maintained.
At times, things that were completely contrary to the market economy were carried out, such as suddenly dismantling the 7th largest conglomerate with 21 subsidiaries simply because they had offended the president.
However, in the midst of this, we can see that the policy of directly intervening in the government to control prices for price stability or distorting the market's price setting function by suppressing imports through administrative regulations is being eradicated.
---From "Part 2, Chapter 3 | The Copernican Transition in South Korea"

Kim Jae-ik, a leading figure in stabilization policies, was active in the Fifth Republic for only three years and four months, from June 1980, when he served as the chairman of the National Security Council's Economic Sciences Division, to October 1983, when he was sacrificed at the Aung San Mausoleum in Burma.
For three years and four months, Chun Doo-hwan did not accept all of Kim Jae-ik's claims, and after Kim Jae-ik's death, he spent the remainder of his term in a state of vacillation, turning to policies that produced immediate, visible results in order to preserve his regime, and then returning to stabilization.
In particular, systems such as the real-name financial transaction system were never implemented due to the illegal and corrupt nature of the regime itself.
---From "Part 2, Chapter 4 | Using Talents as Arms and Legs"

Although he was nominally the head of state, Chun Doo-hwan was a burden to the heads of state of other countries, especially those of countries where democracy had taken root.
In the case of the US President, whenever he held a summit with Chun Doo-hwan or tried to implement policies that would benefit South Korea, he faced strong criticism and opposition.
Because of his history of killing citizens and becoming president, the US Congress, which holds the power to approve decisions made by the US administration, was reluctant to provide the budget.
---From "Part 2, Chapter 5 | The Inner Thoughts of an Illegitimate President"

However, Chun Doo-hwan was fundamentally a person who liked people.
Rather than waiting for someone to approach me, I tend to take the initiative to express interest and reach out.
Although he was angry and upset during his visit to Baekdamsa Temple, he was the first to contact Roh Tae-woo to meet him, and when Kim Dae-jung, the "communist element" he had tried so hard to eliminate during his presidency, invited him as a "former president" after he took office, he was delighted and ran to the Blue House.
When he heard the news of Kim Young-sam's death, which sent him to prison, he went to the funeral to pay his respects.

---From "Part 2, Chapter 6 | The Good Husband, the Cruel Slaughterer"

Some of his ambitions were realized, but most of them came to nothing.
Although he succeeded in making his lifelong comrade and friend Roh Tae-woo the president, the prosecution under Roh Tae-woo's government launched a large-scale investigation into the Chun Doo-hwan family.
The Sixth Republic, backed by public opinion, drastically reduced the authority and scale of the National Elders Advisory Council, and Roh Tae-woo sent his close associates to urge Chun Doo-hwan to go abroad.
The deposed president was not only unable to exercise influence like the former king, but was also summoned to the Gwangju Special Committee and the Fifth Republic corruption hearings.
As time passed, the situation worsened, and during the Kim Young-sam administration, he was imprisoned and sentenced to death.
---From "Part 2, Chapter 7 | The End of the Era of Making the Impossible Work"

So, the situation that unfolded after Chun Doo-hwan's retirement was an amorphous state where the most important cornerstone of democracy had been laid, but the remaining areas were vaguely placed in the realm of vested interests and conventions, waiting for change. Compared to the situation after Park Chung-hee's death, it was a state that could be defined as a "half-constitutional situation."
Lurking in the middle of that situation, red and blazing, was the issue of dealing with the 'former president' who had started a civil war and seized the highest position of power. After that, South Korean society spent the next 30 years improvising to deal with that issue according to the political situation at hand, and then was faced with the scene of the former president ending his life on earth in freedom.
---From "Part 3, Chapter 1 | Holding My Four-Year-Old Granddaughter..."

Now, a new self-image was born within Roh Tae-woo.
A president elected by the people.
A president who becomes the head of state at the call of the people and can run the country in a fair and just manner.
A new self-image spread like wildfire in Roh Tae-woo's heart.
In a society where dynastic systems, which derived their authority to rule based on bloodlines, now exist only in history books, and where modern people live with a code of laws clearly inscribed in their hearts that all men are created equal and that power emanates from the people, there has been no leader more legitimate than the president elected by the people.

---From "Part 3, Chapter 2 | The Most Fearsome Enemy, Roh Tae-woo"

Because he was a brother born in the same boat as his predecessor, a blood relative who shared the DNA of a coup, beheading his predecessor, Chun Doo-hwan, was no different from beheading Roh Tae-woo himself.
When Chun Doo-hwan retreated to a remote mountain valley in Gangwon Province and disappeared from view, and the opposition parties, which had the upper hand in the minority government situation, began to pour out fire on the corruption of the Fifth Republic, Roh Tae-woo realized that he and the man who had been exiled to a remote temple were inseparable.
---From "Part 3, Chapter 3 | The Pause of Decline"

But Kim Young-sam went his own way without batting an eye.
Anyone interested in politics knows that the primary reason for sending two former presidents to prison while calling for "setting history straight" was to divert attention away from Kim Young-sam's own campaign finances, but that didn't bother Kim Young-sam at all.
He succeeded in turning the tide by presenting the perfectly justifiable cause of punishing the criminals and recovering the embezzled money, and now no one questions the source of the astronomical sums of money Kim Young-sam spent on his campaign funds.
But was there really any need to bother with that issue? If someone were to bring it up again, we could just do something to change the situation.

---From "Part 3, Chapter 4 | The Day of Judgment and Kim Young-sam"

Another key characteristic of Chun Doo-hwan emerges in the latter half of his imprisonment.
As he adjusted to prison life after his trial, he clearly revealed the strongest and most outstanding trait that had defined him, a trait he had never lost throughout his life: diligence, an unrivaled diligence.
---From "Part 3, Chapter 5 | Prison Life"

Chun Doo-hwan and Kim Dae-jung are polar opposites who show the opposing tendencies of our modern history.
In South Korea, which had to move straight from the dynastic era to the colonial era, and then straight from the colonial era to the divided nation era, Chun Doo-hwan was a person who embodied the authoritarianism that was a remnant of the dynastic era with his whole body, and Kim Dae-jung was a person who devoted his life to fighting to establish in Korea the democratic ideology that was suddenly transplanted from abroad.
If the former symbolizes force, materialism, winner-take-all, expediency, and pre-modernity, the latter symbolizes intelligence, human rights, modernity, and peace.

---From "Part 3, Chapter 6 | The Two Opposites in Modern Korean History: Chun Doo-hwan vs. Kim Dae-jung"

If there was a programmer who designed a game called 'Korean Politics', he would have sketched out the outline of the player Roh Moo-hyun from the time he designed the player Chun Doo-hwan.
Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Moo-hyun were figures with polar opposites, as if they were drawn out in the symmetry of a decalcomania.
---From "Part 3, Chapter 7 | The Two Opposites in Modern Korean History: Chun Doo-hwan vs. Roh Moo-hyun"

And soon after, he died of a chronic illness, and the good egos that remained inside Chun Doo-hwan also died.
The fragile self that was terrified of being attacked at any moment, the intellectual self that wanted to figure out the truth of what it had done, the self that thought it was okay to do so at the time but now that I think about it, it was a huge mistake and wanted to admit it and apologize, the self that wanted to kneel down in anger and apologize and be forgiven (I think there must have been a tiny amount of that inside Chun Doo-hwan too) have all passed away.
It never showed itself to the world, remaining dormant in the body of a 91-year-old warrior as a seed, and then completely lost its vitality.
---From "Part 3, Chapter 9 | The Last Years of a Man Who Never Met Hisself"

However, the consequences of Chun Doo-hwan's 33 years of life without reflection were not only passed on to his descendants.
Because Chun Doo-hwan, who had served his term without incident, lived for over thirty years without reflecting on his actions, his traces were left powerfully throughout the national community.
His traces became a huge black cloth that covered up the mistakes each member had made, making them invisible.
If the criminals had received the punishment they deserved, a black curtain would have been lifted and disappeared, but instead, it hung heavily over society, preventing those who had joined the military regime from seeking out and reclaiming the material and social benefits they still enjoyed. It also created negative side effects on the other side.

---From "Part 4, Chapter 1 | Sacrifices on the Altar of History"

Looking back at this history, I get the feeling that what people miss is not a specific person like Chun Doo-hwan, but rather an era represented by that person.
A time when I definitely felt that the country 'existed'.
A time when the image of a strong, capable, and exemplary leader could be ingrained and accepted within the hearts of the people.
There was a time when I, a hard worker, had a clear sense of belonging in the hearts of the people as a member of the 'Republic of Korea.'

---From "Part 4, Chapter 2 | The Age of Lost Glory"

In the 1980s, during the Chun Doo-hwan era, people would go to their next-door neighbors' houses to borrow phones, families upstairs and downstairs would meet to make kimchi together, and periodically, several households would gather together for a "bansanghoe."
When their parents were out of the house, the children would go to the house next door, upstairs, or downstairs to eat dinner and learn Chinese characters and arithmetic from the house next door.
When a public holiday fell on a long weekend, we went on a trip with another family in the neighborhood.
To welcome the president back from his overseas trip, members of schools and local groups were mobilized in large numbers, and people from all walks of life gathered to practice and train in preparation for the 'National Wind 81', '86 Asian Games', and '88 Olympics' programs.
The newly created professional baseball of that time brought together people from each region and created a custom of cheering, cheering, and mourning together.

---From "Part 4, Chapter 3 | Who Misses Him and Why?"

But in my view, Jeon Woo-won's confession is a slightly different matter.
Supporting Jeon Woo-won's actions with systems and the rule of law, and thus ensuring that the remaining military forces are held accountable, would naturally be the most desirable scenario.
But even if that doesn't happen right away, Chun Doo-hwan's grandson's actions won't be meaningless.
The moment a young man with Chun Doo-hwan's eyes went to Gwangju and knelt down, the moment the bereaved families of those who lost their children in the May 18th Democratization Movement embraced him and shed tears, a new microbe began to spread through Korean society.
Jeon Woo-won released new microbes into the river, which was already filled with the microbes of crime, laziness, selfishness, hatred, and hostility.
---From "Part 4, Chapter 4 | The Heavenly Punishment of the Living"

However, politicians Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung used the punishment of Chun Doo-hwan for their own political gains, the National Assembly made or did not make laws according to the then head of government's "will to use" Chun Doo-hwan, and the prosecutors also made a farce by deciding not to indict, saying "a successful coup cannot be punished," and then a few months later, following the will of the head of government, indicted him.
No one in a position of decision-making power in Korean society had the will to condemn Chun Doo-hwan.
It seems that no one risked their job to protect the 'line'.
The spectacle of a notorious outlaw who caused the tragedy of soldiers massacring their own people, living out the rest of his life in luxury without being properly punished, must be traced to the failure of the certain 'line' that members of our society cherish and uphold.

---From "Part 4, Chapter 5 | A Society Where Good Is Maintained"