section_path: National variants/Asia/South Korea
section_name: South Korea
paragraph_text: South Korea
  
  South Korean army general Park Chung Hee seized power in the May 16 coup of 1961, after which he was elected as the third President of South Korea. He introduced the highly authoritarian Yushin Constitution, ushering in the Fourth Republic. He ruled the country as a dictator until his assassination by a fellow army general in 1979.
  
  Right-wing conservative parties have dominated South Korean politics for most of its modern history, while the main opposition parties have been moderate centrist and not left-wing. South Korea's major conservative party, the People Power Party, has changed its form throughout its history. First it was the Democratic-Liberal Party and its first head was Roh Tae-woo, who was the first President of the Sixth Republic of South Korea. Democratic-Liberal Party was founded by the merging of Roh Tae-woo 's Democratic Justice Party, Kim Young Sam 's Reunification Democratic Party and Kim Jong-pil 's New Democratic Republican Party. Kim Young-sam became the fourteenth President of Korea.
  
  When the conservative party was beaten by the opposition party in the general election, it changed its form again to follow the party members' demand for reforms. It became the New Korea Party, but it changed again one year later since the President Kim Young-sam was blamed by the citizen for the International Monetary Fund. It changed its name to Grand National Party (GNP). Since the late Kim Dae-jung assumed the presidency in 1998, GNP had been the opposition party until Lee Myung-bak won the presidential election of 2007.