President Park Geun-hye paid her respects Tuesday to those who were killed in a 1960 pro-democracy civil uprising that led to the ousting of South Korea's first President Syngman Rhee.

Park offered flowers and burned incense before holding a moment of silence at a national cemetery in northern Seoul where 186 people killed in the "April 19 Revolution" are buried.

The chief executive later shook hands with some family members of the victims.

She visited the cemetery two hours before Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn presided over a formal ceremony to mark the anniversary. 

Hwang vowed to resolve social friction and to make efforts to forge national reconciliation.

"The seeds of democracy sowed by” those who were killed in the uprising have "now blossomed into a flower,” Hwang said in the ceremony.

The civil revolt was touched off by public anger over vote rigging in the presidential elections by the Rhee government in power at the time.

A series of nationwide student protests culminated on April 19 with hundreds of demonstrators killed or wounded in clashes with armed police.

The uprising ultimately forced Rhee to quit after 12 years in office. Rhee was the first president of South Korea, which was founded in 1948 after its liberation from Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule.

Rhee later went into exile in Hawaii and died there in 1965. (Yonhap)