Approval of and/or rank the South Korean Presidents?

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Rhee - trash, mass-murdering, ludicrously corrupt bastard who only managed to gain power because he spoke English and completely mismanaged the war.  At this stage, his Korea was no better than Kim Il Sung's.

Posun - one of the more admirable Presidents (and certainly the least vainglorious) but should not have given in to the coup as easily as he did.

Park C - vile man, and even overrated from the perspective of B- b- but development, as he simply lifted wholesale Chang Myon's Plan. The Park regime also did some filthy skullduggery with the Japanese compensation money that was meant to go to victims of Japanese rule, and then hid it so it looked like the Japanese hadn't sent anything at all (this was only discovered a few years back). Also saddled country with the legacy of Yushin and a lot of its more demented power structures

Choi - hapless, like most Korean democrats

Chun - the Gwangju Butcher and stole untold millions from the treasury. His only saving grace was that he was so heavy handed everybody started to resent military factions in power.

Roh T. - saw the light (or at least realised that carrying on with Chun's tactics would end up with his head on a platter). Still corrupt and should be in prison.

Kim Y - his outfoxing of the military parties by taking them over within was hilarious and a great FF move. Not a gread leader on economic issues, but I can't begrudge.

Kim D - probably one of the best leaders of Korea ever, attacked the chaebols, military and bureaucracy; brought in a modern welfare state etc. I'm not really sure how I feel about Sunshine Policy in retrospect, considering that DPRK is such an irrational actor at the best of times, but it was well-meaning.

Roh M - I get the sense that Roh was an extremely naive, yet well-meaning man. Still did some pretty weird moves and not a very good leader.

Lee - an overly authoritarian dud. Not surprisingly for a figure of the Korean right, Mbnomics was actually "lets help the chaebol".

Park G - better than Lee, but still rubbish and has alienated her own party to the extent she become a lame duck less than two years in. Has constantly mishandled the black money and corruption that so often leads to deadly results

[Zioneer]

I guess I'll just take your word for it, I don't know much about South Korea's presidents.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Bump for increased interest in Korea.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Approve of the two lefties, disapprove of everybody else (normal).

[H. Ross Peron]

Mostly agree with Crabcake's assessments. Was it Bruce Cumings who pointed out Chang Myon having drawn up developmental plans btw?

Otoh, it seems clear to me that in retrospect Lee was vastly the lesser evil to Park not just because of the latter's much more grotesque abuses of power but also because Lee (if I'm reading Ask a Korean blog right) was the representative of the reformist/pro-democracy conservatives.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

Yeah, my relatively fair assesment of Park dated itself as her admin spun off the rails.

[Kingpoleon]

1. Kim Young-sam
2. Kim Dae-jung
3. Roh Moo-hyun
4. Park Geun-hye
5. Yun Posun
6. Lee Myung-bak

[Mercenary]

I only know about a few of them. Based on what little I do know I would say 김대중 was probably the best one.