NORTH KOREA: Former S. Korean Leader Kim, 87, Dies

A South Korean hospital official says former President Kim Young-sam has died.

According to Seoul National University Hospital, Kim was suffering from a serious blood infection and had been hospitalized with a high fever since Thursday. The cause of death was septicemia complicated by acute heart failure. While in office, Clinton and Kim worked together - and sometimes clashed - over how to resolve the first North Korean nuclear crisis in the early 1990s.

"Kim was vehemently against the idea, citing a possible war", the agency said. But those efforts faltered and his government sought bailout protection from the global Monetary Fund at the height of the 1997 Asian economic crisis.

Five years later, he won the presidential election. But two years later, Kim later pardoned Chun and Roh Tae-woo.

The North, slapped with U.N. and US sanctions for its nuclear weapons and rocket programmes, often threatens to destroy the South, and its major ally, the United States, in a sea of flames.

When first elected in his mid-20s, Kim was then the youngest member of the legislative house in 1954.

Kim was credited with disbanding a key military faction and bringing transparency to the South's financial system.

Kim was born on December 20, 1927 on Koje Island off the southeastern tip of the Korean Peninsula. During the Korean War, he anchored a defense ministry's propaganda radio program, Yonhap reported.

"He did much to lay the foundation for South Korea's peaceful transition from military rule to multiparty democracy".

But a few months later, he broke with the ruling regime over a constitutional issue and joined the opposition - a move that was followed by decades struggling against military rule. Gen. Chun Doo-hwan and his military cronies rolled tanks and troops into Seoul to seize power in another coup that ended an interim government.

Kim is survived by his wife, two sons and three daughters.

Kim was a central figure in Korea's democratic struggle from the 1960s to 1980s along with President Kim Dae-jung, who succeeded him as president. In 1992, Kim became Korea's 14th president after forging an alliance with his political opponents and defeating his fellow activist and rival Kim Dae-jung.