Chun Doo-hwan
Awards & Honours
3
Awards Won
4
Honours
2
Records
Chun Doo-hwan's record is not one of honours but of consequences. He held the highest office in South Korea for eight years and presided over the country's fastest period of economic expansion, including its first trade surplus and the awarding of the 1988 Seoul Olympics. Those achievements are real and are still cited by economic historians. They are also inseparable from the Gwangju Uprising, in which hundreds of civilians were killed on his orders, and from the imprisonment and torture of thousands of dissidents. In 1996 he became the first former South Korean president convicted of treason, and the court sentenced him to death. The sentence was commuted and then pardoned, but the conviction stands. Decades later, in 2026, courts were still ordering his family to pay for distortions of Gwangju history, and the government was still stripping decorations from the men who served him.
Awards
Honours & Distinctions
Order of Merit for National Foundation
Awarded for his role in the 1979 coup and the stabilization that followed; now widely regarded as unjustified.
Supreme Order of the Great Seal of the Nation
The highest civilian decoration, awarded on assuming the presidency.
National Flag Decoration
Awarded for service to the state during his presidency.
Revocation of military decorations for 76 regime-linked individuals
The government stripped decorations from individuals tied to the 1979 coup and the Gwangju crackdown, effectively nullifying many posthumous honours.
Records & Feats
First former South Korean president sentenced to death
Convicted in 1996 of mutiny, sedition and corruption and sentenced to death, later commuted to life imprisonment and then pardoned.
Largest fine imposed on a former South Korean president
Fined 220.5 billion won for accepting bribes and embezzling funds, a sum he never fully paid.