Ex-Prime Minister Shin Hyun-hwack Passes Away at 87
By Ryu Jin
Staff Reporter
Shin Hyun-hwack, who served as prime minister for about six months after the assassination of President Park Chung-hee in October 1979, died of a chronic illness at the Seoul National University Hospital on Thursday. He was 87.
Shin had been hospitalized for over a year after he suffered a spinal fracture February 2006. He breathed his last breath early in the morning with his offspring in attendance, according to hospital doctors.
His body will be buried at the Taejon National Cemetery, or Hyonchungwon, after five days of public memorial services. He is survived by a son and four daughters.
Born in Chilgok, North Kyongsang Province, in 1920 when the modern Korea was under Japanese colonial rule, Shin studied law at Kyongsong University, the predecessor of Seoul National University.
He passed the state examination to become a civil servant in 1943 and quickly climbed up the hierarchical ladder to be appointed as minister of restoration in 1959 at the age of 39.
After the April 19 Revolution in 1960, which led to an en masse Cabinet resignation, Shin worked as an executive for companies such as Tonghae Electric Power and Ssangyong Cement Industrial.
In 1973, he was elected as a member of the National Assembly on the ticket of the then-ruling Republican Party, the predecessor of the largest opposition Grand National Party (GNP).
Under the Park Chung-hee regime, he was appointed as minister of health and society in 1975 and then deputy prime minister-minister of economic planning in 1978.
He served as prime minister for about six months after Park was assassinated by his own spy chief after 18 years of iron-fisted rule dating from a military coup in 1961. Shin was once again elected as a Republican Party lawmaker in 1979.
In the late 1980s when pro-democracy movements swept the country, Shin served as chairman of Samsung Corporation and chief director of the Samsung Foundation of Art & Culture.
He lived a vigorous life in his last years even when he, at the age of 79, became chief of an organization for memorial activities for the late President Park in 1999.
Shin’s last activities, however, did not make progress because Park was too controversial of a figure to be commemorated _ a lot of people condemned him as a cruel dictator, while others praised him as the father of the nation’s modernization.
His only son is Shin Chul-seak, a vice ministerial official at the prime minister’s office, and one of his sons-in-law is Seong Sang-cheol, the director of the Seoul National University Hospital.