Former AP photojournalist Kim Chonkil dies at age 89

Former Associated Press photojournalist Kim Chonkil, whose images captured South Korea‘s turbulent transition from dictatorship to democracy, has died. He was 89.

Kim’s son, Kim Kuchul, confirmed he died in New York on Thursday.

Kim covered South Korea for AP for nearly 40 years until leaving the company in 1987, a period during which the country rose from the devastation of the 1950-53 Korean War into an Asian industrial power and a full-fledged democracy following a bloody struggle against dictatorship.

He will be remembered for one of the most iconic photos in South Korea’s history — a May 1961 photo of military strongman Park Chung-hee, in an army cap and sunglasses, observing a march of military cadets in capital Seoul, two days after seizing power in a coup.