By Michael BreenThe history of modern Korea is dominated by the figure of Park Chung-hee. Through his vision and forceful conviction, the compact dictator — Park was 1.63 meters tall — transformed a people who had traditionally valued poetry and ceremony over manual labor into a cohesive nation of workaholics. Of the revolutionaries and reformers of the 20th century, few built a more lasting and impressive legacy.
Park's vision for Korea was of a country with the industrial base to defend against North Korea without relying on American support, which he knew could one day disappear.
Park was born during the Japanese occupation of Korea. Like most, he came from a poor peasant family. His mother, who was 45 when she conceived, drank raw soy sauce and willow soup to try and induce a natural abortion. She tied a belt around her belly and even jumped off a wall. But Park survived.
He excelled at school and became a teacher before deciding to join the army. He was at the top of his class at the Japanese Manchukuo Academy and went to the elite Tokyo Military Academy. After graduation in 1944, he was commissioned a lieutenant in the Manchukuo army.
This Japanese experience is the key to understanding Park's future role as the maker of the Korean economic miracle. In the army, he was exposed to Japanese planning and their ethic of placing the interests of the group and nation before those of family and individual.
At the time, Japanese officers were concocting a mixture of rightist military ideas and communist notions of state control. Park saw this at play in the development of Manchuria, where the army worked with Japanese business groups to build infrastructure.
After his older brother was killed by police in 1946 during a communist-led riot in Daegu, Park sided with the political left, which he considered better organized, more patriotic and less corrupt than the right. In 1948, he led a communist cell in the army and was sentenced to death for his role in a revolt of junior officers. The sentence was commuted to 15 years and he was later pardoned (although expelled from the army) due to his cooperation with investigators.
During the Korean War, Park was allowed to return to military duty and promoted to brigadier-general and later, in 1958, to major-general. He disliked the government of President Syngman Rhee for its corruption and overdependence on the United Sates. Rhee stepped down following student protests in 1960, and the system was changed into a parliamentary democracy. The new leader, Prime Minister Chang Myun, was too weak to prevent constant protests from all but paralyzing the country. To Park, this democracy appeared dangerously chaotic. When students declared they would march to the North Korean border, he made his move.
After the May 1961 coup, the Kennedy administration knew enough about Park's history to worry that he may have still been a communist. The local press gave him a Russian-sounding nickname, calling him "Parkov," (enjoying a press freedom that was later curtailed).
Koreans traditionally had not valued commerce. In old Korea, the study of history, poetry and Confucian ethics was considered more virtuous. The country was among the poorest in the world. Bureaucracy and business were awash with corruption. Government officials did not earn enough to live on and many were preoccupied with leveraging their positions for short-term personal fundraising.
Immediately after taking power, Park launched an anti-corruption campaign, rounding up the rich, centralizing economic planning and generally making it clear who was the boss. Several wealthy businessmen were arrested, but most were let off provided that they set up companies in certain designated industries.
Rather than suppress businessmen, as the leftist within him may have wished, Park sought to harness their profit-hunting abilities in the interests of national growth. Bankers, however, were not so lucky. Banks were nationalized. Why? So that Park could determine that loans went in the direction he wanted. This was to prove a key factor in the country's centrally planned growth.
In 1962, Park launched his first five-year economic plan. No one was impressed. Burma and the Philippines were seen as the promising Asian economies of the day. The prevailing forecast for Korea was gloomy. But during those first five years, annual GNP growth averaged 8.3 percent, exceeding the forecasts of even the planners.
Exporting was the priority and would become a patriotic duty. The mantra of growth soon became "export-good, import-bad." Companies were given export targets by bureaucrats. Firms that met the targets gained preferential credits, tax benefits and the grateful support of bureaucrats, who were being held responsible by the all-powerful Blue House for the results. Firms that failed to meet their targets could get into trouble and even find themselves under orders to be taken over. During the second plan, annual GNP growth averaged 11.4 percent.
The Seoul-Busan Expressway is a good example of the resistance that Park found and the bull-headedness he employed to achieve the results he was convinced were necessary. Most people in 1968, when it was built, saw the expressway as a complete waste of money. The World Bank had advised against it. The National Assembly had refused to approve it, thinking Park was going to bankrupt the country. Park ignored them. Within three years, 80 percent of the country's vehicles were using the expressway and the area it serviced was producing some 70 percent of GNP.
As part of his development strategy, and under some U.S. prodding, he signed diplomatic relations with Japan. This earned a useful $500 million in grants and loans, but offending the sensibilities of many Koreans, for whom the memories of occupation were still fresh. Students had protested so strongly that it almost brought the government down. Park saw that he needed economic growth not just to build his nation, but to legitimize his regime.
In the early 1970s, Park launched a major drive to build up heavy and chemical industries. Around the same time, he also started the Saemaul (New Village) Movement, which, through a combination of self-help projects and government funding, sought to raise living standards in the countryside so that the provinces didn't lag behind. It began with a cement surplus in 1970. Park ordered that every village be given 335 free bags. The following year, villages which were deemed to have used them well (about half), were given another five hundred bags and a ton of steel. Park composed an 11-point memo containing such wisdom as "Projects forced upon villagers by the government are doomed to fail."
A moderate drinker, Park was considered austere and humorless. One American ambassador described him as "aloof, authoritarian and disdainful," saying Park "demanded respect, not popularity."
Like most political leaders, he claimed to favor democracy. But just as people today claim to favor reunification, he had arguments for postponing it. Korea, he said, was in the "top-knot and horsehair hat stage of old" and couldn't be changed overnight through the institution of democracy. It would take an industrial revolution.
"The goal of the revolution is to weed out corruption, strengthen the autonomous ability of the people and establish social justice," he said. "Therefore democracy should be established by administrative means, not by political means, during the transition period."
The transition period he was referring to at the time was between his 1961 coup and elections, which came in 1963. Park of course ran in those elections and continued to do so, changing the constitution and fiddling the results when necessary. The "transition period" lasted for eighteen years.
Park earned much respect during his first two terms in office, up until 1971. Had he stepped down at this point, as the constitution required, he would have done Korean democracy the favor of having an established precedent for the peaceful transfer of power. However, fear of North Korea and other events convinced him that he was indispensable.
As his second term came to an end, Park forced through a constitutional change to allow him to run again in 1971. He almost lost to his opponent, Kim Dae-jung, a surprise compromise candidate between opposition factions.
In 1972, talks began with North Korea, and the two rival sides signed a historic agreement pledging to end their hostility. This process was treated internationally as if there had been a breakthrough. In fact it was nothing of the kind, as there had been no significant power shift toward one side. The "reconciliation" was a temporary lull. Ironically, their exposure to the North Koreans made Park nervous of his own opposition. Park's response was to suspend the constitution and declare martial law.
He introduced a new "Yushin" (revitalizing) constitution and had himself reelected for a six-year term. His rule degenerated into repression. He even made it illegal to criticize the new constitution.
In 1974, the popular first lady was shot and killed by a North Korean gunman in an assassination attempt on Park in a crowded theater.
In October, 1979, opposition leader Kim Young-sam was expelled from the National Assembly and protests erupted in the cities of Busan and Masan, his political home base. At a dinner, Park Chung-hee scolded the KCIA director, Kim Jae-kyu, for failing to control the demonstrations. Park's chief bodyguard, Cha Ji-chul, joined in the criticism of the KCIA chief. Kim left the room and returned with a pistol, shot Cha and then shot Park.
Two million people crowded the streets of Seoul to watch the journey of Park's coffin to the national cemetery, and to wonder about the future. There was no successor and Koreans had no system in place to fairly and peacefully choose their leader. What they did have, though, were jobs, viable industries and increasing wealth. Their country had been transformed. No future leader could change that, or indeed do as much as Park had. All who followed would build on his foundation.
Michael Breen is an author, former foreign correspondent and the chairman of Insight Communications, a public relations consulting company. He can be reached at mike.breen@insightcomms.com.