Moon Jae-in << moon jah ihn >> (1953-…) served as president of the East Asian country of South Korea from 2017 to 2022. Moon is a lawyer and a politician. He is a member of the liberal Democratic Party of Korea. Moon succeeded President Park Geun-hye, who had been removed from office after being accused of corruption.
Moon was born on the southern island of Geoje (also spelled Koje), South Korea, on Jan. 24, 1953. His parents were refugees who fled North Korea during the Korean War (1950-1953). His father then worked at a camp for prisoners of war. His mother sold eggs. Eventually, they settled in the port city of Busan (also spelled Pusan).
In 1972, Moon began studying law at Kyung Hee University in Seoul, the South Korean capital. He became a lawyer in 1980. In 1982, Moon and his friend Roh Moo-hyun opened a law firm in Busan specializing in human rights cases.
Roh was elected president of South Korea in 2002 and served from 2003 until 2008. Moon held several positions in the Roh administration, including chief of staff. In 2012, Moon won a seat representing Busan in the National Assembly. Later that year, Moon ran for president but narrowly lost to Park Geun-hye.
In December 2016, the National Assembly voted to impeach Park, and the Constitutional Court upheld the impeachment in March 2017. New elections were held, and Moon won a decisive victory. His campaign focused on uniting the country in the wake of Park’s corruption scandal. Moon also pledged to revive South Korea’s economy and address the country’s high youth unemployment rate.
Moon expressed a willingness to negotiate with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Relations between the two Koreas had remained poor after the Korean War and became increasingly tense in response to the North’s nuclear weapons development program in the 1990’s and early 2000’s. In April 2018, Moon and Kim held a meeting at Panmunjom, in the Demilitarized Zone that separates the two countries. It was the first of several summit meetings between them that year. At the meeting, the two leaders pledged to remove nuclear weapons from the Korean Peninsula and to work toward reaching a formal peace agreement to officially end the Korean War. However, tensions mounted again beginning in 2019.
Moon’s term as president ended in May 2022. Yoon Suk-yeol, a member of the conservative People Power Party, succeeded him as president.
