Roundup: S.Korea accords state funeral to former president Kim Young-sam

South Korea on Thursday accorded a state funeral to former President Kim Young-sam who died of heart failure four days ago.

The black hearse, carrying the coffin of Kim, left the Seoul National University Hospital, where he was admitted on Friday with a fever and passed away on Sunday, at about 1 p.m. local time (0400GMT) earlier than scheduled.

President Park Geun-hye made a visit to the hospital to see off the dead and condole the bereaved families. Park refrained from going to the official funeral ceremony because of a severe cold.

The funeral car cut across downtown Seoul to enter the National Assembly building at about 2 p.m. for an official funeral ceremony that ran for 80 minutes.

The coffin is scheduled to be moved to the Seoul National Cemetery to rest in peace after a burial ceremony.

In the past four days, more than 160,000 people paid respect at about 220 memorial altars nationwide, mourning the death of Kim who played a major role in the country's transition from dictatorship to democracy.

Kim was born on Dec. 20, 1927 as a son of rich anchovy fisherman on Geoje Island off the southeastern tip of the Korean peninsula.

With the southeast region as home turf, Kim was elected to parliament at 26, becoming the youngest lawmaker in the country's history. He was reelected eight more times since then.

Along with former President Kim Dae-jung who had a political home ground in the southwest region, Kim Young-sam was a famous critic of Park Chung-hee, father of President Park Geun-hye who took power in a coup in 1961 and had kept it before his assassination in 1979.

In the 1980s when military dictator Chun Doo-hwan seized power in a coup, Kim underwent political ordeal as he was put under house arrest and barred from politics during Chun's presidency. In 1983, he staged a hunger strike for 23 days in protest against the military dictatorship.

In the 1992 election, Kim was elected as president and became the first civilian leader in South Korea in more than three decades.

During his five-year term, Kim purged the private military clique, called Hanahoe led by Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo, former army general who became the president in the 1987 election. Chun and Roh were arrested and convicted of treason and corruption charges.

Kim introduced the landmark "real-name" system in financial transactions, which bans people from opening bank accounts under borrowed names. The pseudonym bank accounts were used to hide slush funds at the time.

As part of anti-corruption policies, Kim obliged government officials to make public assets. In 1995, he instructed the teardown of the building of the Japanese Government-General of Korea, a symbol of Japan's colonization of the Korean peninsula from 1910-45.

Kim was disgraced by the arrest of a son on corruption charges during his late presidency. He was also criticized for failing to prevent the country's financial crisis in 1997 when South Korea received 58-billion-U.S.-dollar bailout funds from the International Monetary Fund. Enditem