Lee Myung-bak is married to Kim Yoon-ok and has three daughters and one son.
85 Facts About Lee Myung-bak
2.
Lee Myung-bak's older brother, Lee Sang-deuk, is a South Korean politician.
3.
Lee Myung-bak altered the South Korean government's approach to North Korea, preferring a more hardline strategy in the wake of increased provocation from the North, though he was supportive of regional dialogue with Russia, China and Japan.
4.
Lee Myung-bak ended his five-year term on 24 February 2013, and was succeeded by Park Geun-hye.
5.
On 22 March 2018, Lee Myung-bak was arrested on charges of bribery, embezzlement, and tax evasion alleged to have occurred during his presidency.
6.
Shortly before his arrest, Lee Myung-bak posted a handwritten statement on Facebook denying the charges.
7.
Lee Myung-bak's arrest occurred roughly a year after the arrest of former president Park Geun-Hye, who was arrested on charges stemming from the 2016 South Korean political scandal.
8.
Lee Myung-bak was convicted on 5 October 2018 and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
9.
On 29 October 2020, the Korean Supreme Court upheld a 17-year sentence against Lee Myung-bak given to him by an appellate court.
10.
Lee Myung-bak was born 19 December 1941, in Osaka, Japan.
11.
Lee Myung-bak's parents had emigrated to Japan in 1929, nineteen years after the Japanese annexation of Korea.
12.
Lee Myung-bak's father, Lee Myung-bak Chung-u, was employed as a farm labourer in rural Japan, and his mother, Chae Taew-on, was a housewife.
13.
Lee Myung-bak personally witnessed the deaths of his older sister and a younger brother, who were killed in the bombardment of Pohang, during the Korean War.
14.
Lee Myung-bak attended night school at Dongji Commercial High School in Pohang and received a scholarship.
15.
In 1964, during his third year in college, Lee Myung-bak was elected president of the student council.
16.
That year, Lee Myung-bak participated in student demonstrations against President Park Chung-hee's Seoul-Tokyo Talks, taking issue with Japanese restitution for the colonization of the Korean Peninsula.
17.
Lee Myung-bak was charged with plotting insurrection and was sentenced to five years' probation and three years' imprisonment by the Supreme Court of Korea.
18.
Lee Myung-bak served a little under three months of his sentence at the Seodaemun Prison in Seoul.
19.
Shortly after he was hired by the company, Lee Myung-bak was sent to Thailand to participate in the project, which was successfully completed in March 1968.
20.
Lee Myung-bak returned to Korea and was given charge of Hyundai's heavy machinery plant in Seoul.
21.
Lee Myung-bak became a company director at the age of 29, five years after he joined the company.
22.
Lee Myung-bak later became the CEO at age 35, becoming Korea's youngest CEO in history.
23.
Lee Myung-bak left Hyundai after a 27-year career and decided to enter politics.
24.
In 1992, Lee Myung-bak made the transition from business to politics.
25.
Lee Myung-bak joined the Democratic Liberal Party instead of the Unification National Party, founded by Chung Ju-yung.
26.
Lee Myung-bak was elected as a member of the 14th Korean National Assembly.
27.
In 1996, Lee Myung-bak was reelected as a member of the Korean National Assembly, representing Jongno-gu in Seoul.
28.
In 1999, Lee Myung-bak was a visiting scholar at the George Washington University, in Washington, DC.
29.
Lee Myung-bak worked to transform the area around Seoul City Hall from a concrete traffic circle to a lawn where people could gather.
30.
On 10 May 2007, Lee Myung-bak officially declared his intention to seek the nomination of the Grand National Party as its presidential candidate.
31.
Lee Myung-bak promised to form a consultative body with the North to discuss furthering economic ties.
32.
Lee Myung-bak promised to seek a Korean Economic Community agreement to establish the legal and systemic framework for any projects emerging from the negotiations, and called for the formation of an aid office in North Korea as a way of decoupling humanitarian aid from nuclear talks.
33.
In 1999, Lee Myung-bak was alleged to have met an American and established the LKE Bank with him.
34.
The corrupt Korean prosecutors manipulated BBK case so that Lee Myung-bak was found not to be guilty.
35.
However, in 2018 Lee Myung-bak was arrested for charges related to BBK.
36.
Although, the prosecutor claimed in 2007 that Lee Myung-bak had nothing to do with DAS, a corporation that funded BBK, in 2018 the same prosecution office found that DAS is owned and controlled by Lee Myung-bak.
37.
Lee Myung-bak finished with a nearly 2-to-1 margin over his nearest challenger, Chung Dong-young of the Grand Unified Democratic New Party.
38.
Lee Myung-bak took the oath of office on 25 February 2008, vowing to revitalize the economy, strengthen relations with the United States and "deal with" North Korea.
39.
Specifically, Lee Myung-bak declared that he would pursue a campaign of "global diplomacy" and seek further cooperative exchanges with regional neighbors Japan, China, and Russia.
40.
Lee Myung-bak stated that he wanted to restore better relations with the United States through a greater emphasis on free market solutions.
41.
The Lee Myung-bak administration introduced a tailor-made educational system and established the National Scholarship Foundation, which offers services such as student loans and loan counseling.
42.
Teachers were highly critical of these changes, arguing that Lee Myung-bak wanted to turn Korean education into a "free market," while ignoring the underfunding of education in regions outside the Seoul area.
43.
The Lee Myung-bak government planned to use a pool of young Korean Americans for the promotion of after-school English education in public schools in rural areas, with the aim to improve the quality of education.
44.
However, Lee Myung-bak abandoned the program after facing strong opposition from parents, teachers, and education specialists.
45.
Lee Myung-bak then attempted to implement a program where all English courses in middle and secondary schools would be taught in English only, which would require the government to educate many teachers in Korea and recruit university students studying abroad in English-speaking countries.
46.
Lee Myung-bak wanted to move to low-carbon growth in coming decades.
47.
In connection with the recent financial shock from the United States, President Lee Myung-bak emphasized the importance of solid cooperation between political and business circles.
48.
Lee Myung-bak proposed a tripartite meeting among the finance ministers of South Korea, Japan, and China aimed at coordinating policies to cope with the credit crisis.
49.
President Lee Myung-bak laid out an agenda for National Strategy for Green Growth and the Five-Year Plan for Green Growth in 2008.
50.
In February 2009, President Lee Myung-bak established the Presidential Committee on Green Growth, which absorbed the sustainable development commission and two other committees on energy and climate change under direct authority of the President.
51.
The project was spearheaded by South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and was declared complete on 21 October 2011.
52.
Although, former president Lee Myung-bak claimed that the Four Major Rivers Restoration Project was Eco-friendly, its results face severe criticism from environmental experts both inside and outside of the government.
53.
Lee Myung-bak faced strong criticism over his choice of political appointees, many of whom were wealthy.
54.
Lee Myung-bak had to face corruption charges leveled at his administration.
55.
On 7 July 2008, Lee Myung-bak named Ahn Byong-man, a presidential advisor for state future planning, as his new minister of education, science and technology.
56.
Lee was widely considered to be pro-US In mid-April 2008, Lee traveled to the United States for his first official overseas visit to meet with US President George W Bush at the White House and Camp David.
57.
Lee Myung-bak gave assurances that both the US and South Korea would use dialogue to end the crisis.
58.
Lee Myung-bak accepted an invitation by Obama to visit the United States on 16 June 2009.
59.
Lee Myung-bak played a role in bringing about the normalization of South Korea's relations with Russia.
60.
Furthermore, Lee Myung-bak built relationships with foreign leaders, including former Singaporean prime minister Lee Myung-bak Kuan Yew, Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen, former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, former Chinese Communist Party general secretary Jiang Zemin and former Soviet Union Communist Party general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev.
61.
On 18 April 2008, Lee Myung-bak's administration agreed on resumption of US beef imports.
62.
Lee Myung-bak's name became a target practice in the North Korean military as shown through the Korean Central Television on 6 March 2012.
63.
In March 2010, Lee Myung-bak's presidency ended the Sunshine Policy, originally planned by Kim Dae-jung to improve relations with the North.
64.
Towards the end of his term in office, Lee Myung-bak began to take actions that caused friction between South Korea and neighboring Japan.
65.
On 10 August 2012, Lee Myung-bak flew to the Liancourt Rocks, known as Dokdo or Tokto in Korean, or Takeshima in Japanese.
66.
Lee Myung-bak was the first Korean president to do so.
67.
On 14 August 2012, on the eve of Liberation Day, Lee Myung-bak said that the Emperor of Japan Akihito should not visit Korea unless he apologized to the victims of Japan's past colonialism.
68.
Lee Myung-bak made the statement while speaking at a meeting of education officials.
69.
President Lee Myung-bak embraced an aggressive approach to foreign policy, driving initiatives such as Green Korea and Global Korea.
70.
President Lee Myung-bak conducted frequent state visits to other countries and extended invitations to foreign counterparts to visit Korea from the time he took office.
71.
In 2009 alone, Lee Myung-bak visited 14 countries, including the US and Thailand on 11 occasions and attended 38 summits.
72.
President Lee Myung-bak held bilateral summits with the leaders of the United States, Japan, and People's Republic of China to discuss North Korean affairs.
73.
President Lee Myung-bak succeeded in bringing the Cheonan incident to the forefront in the Chair's Statement for the Asia-Europe Meeting in 2010 at Brussels, drawing member nation support for the South Korean government's stance on North Korea's nuclear issue and stability in Northeast Asia.
74.
Lee Myung-bak was involved in a surveillance scandal that encouraged both Saenuri Party and the Democratic United Party to put pressure against him.
75.
Lee Myung-bak was alleged to have been involved in an illegal company named BBK, which brought controversy to South Korea during the election season.
76.
Lee Myung-bak never admitted any wrongdoings, but the Korean press, controlled by Lee, made false report that he did.
77.
Lee Myung-bak was declared innocent of all charges by the Supreme Court of Korea.
78.
In 2018, Lee Myung-bak was arrested and his involvement in BBK and DAS was confirmed by the same prosecutor's office.
79.
Lee Myung-bak moved to the US to avoid possible arrest.
80.
Lee Myung-bak purchased the land under his son's name, which could potentially violate South Korean real estate laws.
81.
Legal professor Lee Myung-bak Sang-don, voiced his opinion that President Lee Myung-bak's Naegok-dong property crisis could justify his impeachment.
82.
The spokesperson of the Democratic Party, Lee Myung-bak Yong-seop, said that the presidential family's current residence was evading tax by declaring parts of the building for commercial purposes.
83.
Lee Myung-bak is accused of taking bribes from Samsung of nearly $6 million in exchange for a presidential pardon for Samsung chairman Lee Kun-hee who was in prison for tax evasion and stock fraud.
84.
Lee Myung-bak is accused of embezzling $700k of government money that was initially set aside for Seoul's intelligence agency.
85.
On 5 October 2018, Lee Myung-bak was convicted of bribery, embezzlement and abuse of power and sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment.