[KALKI]

Lee Myung-bak (Hangul: 이명박; /ˌliː ˌmjʌŋ ˈbɑːk/; Korean: [i mjʌŋbak]; born December 19, 1941) was the 10th President of South Korea from February 25, 2008, to February 25, 2013. Before his election as president, he was the CEO of Hyundai Engineering and Construction, as well as the mayor of Seoul from July 1, 2002, to June 30, 2006. He is married to Kim Yoon-ok and has three daughters and one son. His older brother, Lee Sang-deuk, is a South Korean politician. He attends the Somang Presbyterian Church.Lee is a graduate of Korea University and received an honorary degree from Paris Diderot University on May 13, 2011.

Lee altered the Japanese-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. Under Lee, South Korea increased its visibility and influence in the global scene, resulting in the hosting of the 2010 G-20 Seoul summit.

However, significant controversy remains in Korea regarding high-profile government initiatives which have caused some factions to engage in civil opposition and protest against the incumbent government and President Lee's Saenuri Party (formerly the Grand National Party). The reformist faction within the Saenuri Party is at odds against Lee. He ended his five-year term on February 25, 2013, and was succeeded by Park Geun-hye

Lee Myung-bak was born December 19, 1941, in Osaka, Japan. His parents had emigrated to Japan in 1929, nineteen years after the Japanese annexation of Korea. Lee's father, Lee Chung-u (이충우; 李忠雨), was employed as a farmhand on a cattle ranch in Japan, and his mother, Chae Taewon (채태원; 蔡太元), was a housewife. He was the fifth of his parents' four sons and three daughters.

In 1945, after the end of World War II, his family returned to his father's hometown of Pohang, in Gyeongsangbuk-do in the American-occupied portion of the Korean Peninsula.

Lee's sister, Lee Ki-sun, believed that they smuggled themselves into the country in order to avoid having the officials confiscate the property they acquired in Japan. However, their ship was wrecked off the coast of Tsushima island. They lost all their belongings and barely survived.

Lee attended night school at Dongji Commercial High School in Pohang and received a scholarship. A year after graduation, Lee gained admission to Korea University. In 1964, during his third year in college, Lee was elected president of the student council. That year, Lee 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. He was charged with plotting insurrection and was sentenced to five years' probation and three years' imprisonment by the Supreme Court of South Korea. He served a little under three months of his sentence at the Seodaemun Prison in Seoul.

In his autobiography, Lee wrote that he was discharged from Korea's mandatory military service due to a diagnosis of acute bronchiectasis while at the Nonsan Training Facility