Kim Jong-pil
South Korean politician (1926–2018)
Kim Jong-pil (Korean: 김종필; pronounced [kimdʑoŋpʰil]; January 7, 1926 – June 23, 2018), also known colloquially as JP, was a South Korean politician and military intelligence officer who was the founder and first director of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency. He served as the prime minister twice, from 1971 to 1975 during the presidency of Park Chung Hee and from 1998 to 2000 during the presidency of Kim Dae-jung. He was a nine-term National Assembly member.
Early life
Kim Jong-pil was born in Buyeo County, Chūseinan Province, Korea, Empire of Japan. He initially attended Seoul National University's College of Education but graduated from the Korea Military Academy (KMA) in 1949 (8th graduating class). From September 1951 to March 1952, he studied at the U.S. Infantry School at Fort Benning, Georgia. He participated in the Korean War as an intelligence officer of the Republic of Korea Army. He retired as a brigadier general.
Political career
After the April Revolution, a citizens' and students' uprising against the Syngman Rhee dictatorship and election fraud in 1960, he engineered the May 16 coup, led by Major General Park Chung Hee in 1961 with his fellow Korea Military Academy (8th graduating class) classmates. He served in several high-profile offices, including chairman of the ruling Democratic Republican Party during Park's eighteen year presidency until his assassination in 1979.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Kim Jong-pil” is south Korean politician (1926–2018). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Jong-pil, South and Korean, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “south Korean politician (1926–2018)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q246167. VIAF identifies the subject as 70410147. The Library of Congress control number is n86070125. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1926, 2018, 1971 and 1975.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kim Jong-pil” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.