Kim Eop

Kim Eop (金業, April 17, 1910 – October 4, 2006) was a South Korean bureaucrat.

Life

Early life

He was born in Hanseong Mapo and spent his early childhood for a time in Gwangju, South Jeolla Province, after which he grew up in Busan, South Gyeongsang Province.

Education

• Busanjin Elementary School
• Pyongyang High School
• Dropped out of the philosophy department of Tokyo Imperial University, Japan (1932)
• Bachelor's degree in law from Kyoto Imperial University, Japan (1938)
• Republic of Korea Army Infantry School graduate (1952)
• 1st class Master of Public Administration from the Republic of Korea National Defense University (1956)

Military career, service as Vice Minister of National Defense, and later life

In 1938, as one of the first generation of Korean volunteer soldiers attached to the Japanese Kwantung Army, he enlisted in the Kwantung Army as a private, and in 1941 he was discharged as a sergeant of the Kwantung Army. After the liberation of Korea (8·15) in 1945, he served as a visiting professor at Seoul National University from August 1947 to February 1948, and in February 1948 he left his professorship. In 1949 he was commissioned as a captain in the Republic of Korea Air Force, and in 1957 he was discharged as a reserve colonel of the Republic of Korea Air Force. Along with Park Chung-hoon (who later retired as a major general of the Air Force and served as acting Prime Minister and acting President of South Korea), he was commissioned in 1949 as an Air Force political warfare officer captain, and was later discharged as an Air Force colonel in 1957. He served as the 10th Vice Minister of National Defense, effectively retired from politics after 1985, and died on October 4, 2006.¹

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