Korea's Development Under Park Chung-Hee: Rapid Industrialization, 1961-79 (Routledge Asian Studies Association of Australia (Asaa)East Asia Series)

KOREA’S DEVELOPMENT UNDER PARK CHUNG HEE

Based on personal interviews with the principal policy-makers of the 1970s, Korea’s Development under Park Chung Hee examines how the president sought to develop South Korea into an independent, autonomous sovereign state both economically and militarily. Kim brings a new narrative to the complex task of exploring the paradoxical nature and effects of Korea’s rapid development which maintains that any judgment of Park must consider his achievements in the socio-economic, cultural and political context in which they took place. Aspects of Park’s government analyzed include: • • • • • •

his abhorrence of Korea’s reliance on US aid; the Korean model of state-guided industrialization; Park’s rapid-development strategy; the role of the ruling elites; Park’s clandestine nuclear development program; the heavy and chemical industrialization of the 1970s.

The prevailing popularity of Park in the eyes of the Korean public is significant and relevant to their acceptance of how their national development was achieved. This book tells that story while simultaneously recognizing the flaws in the process. With a great deal of material never before published, scholars of Korean politics and history at all levels will find this book a stimulating account of South Korea in the 1960s and 1970s. Kim Hyung-A is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Asia Pacific Social Transformation Studies (CAPSRTANS), University of Wollongong, Australia.

ROUTLEDGECURZON/ASIAN STUDIES ASSOCIATION OF AUSTRALIA (ASAA) EAST ASIA SERIES Edited by Tessa Morris-Suzuki and Morris Low

Editorial Board: Dr. Gemerie Barmé (Australian National University), Professor Colin Mackerras (Griffith University), Professor Vera Mackie (Curtin University), and Associate Professor Sonia Ryang ( Johns Hopkins University). This series represents a showcase for the latest cutting-edge research in the field of East Asian studies, from both established scholars and rising academics. It will include studies from every part of the East Asian region (including China, Japan, North and South Korea and Taiwan) as well as comparative studies dealing with more than one country. Topics covered may be contemporary or historical, and relate to any of the humanities or social sciences. The series is an invaluable source of information and challenging perspectives for advanced students and researchers alike. RoutledgeCurzon is pleased to invite proposals for new books in the series. In the first instance, any interested authors should contact: Professor Tessa Morris-Suzuki Division of Pacific and Asian History Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies Australian National University Canberra, ACT 0200 Australia Dr. Morris Low Department of Asian Language and Studies University of Queensland Brisbane, Queensland 4072 Australia

RoutledgeCurzon/Asian Studies Association of Australia (ASAA) East Asia Series 1 GENDER IN JAPAN Power and public policy Vera Mackie 2 THE CHAEBOL AND LABOUR IN KOREA The development of management strategy in Hyundai Seung Ho Kwon and Michael O’Donnell 3 RETHINKING IDENTITY IN MODERN JAPAN Nationalism as aesthetics Yumiko Iida 4 THE MANCHURIAN CRISIS AND JAPANESE SOCIETY, 1931–33 Sandra Wilson 5 KOREA’S DEVELOPMENT UNDER PARK CHUNG HEE Rapid industrialization, 1961–79 Kim Hyung-A

KOREA’S DEVELOPMENT UNDER PARK CHUNG HEE Rapid industrialization, 1961–79

Kim Hyung-A

First published 2004 by RoutledgeCurzon 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by RoutledgeCurzon 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” RoutledgeCurzon is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group © 2004 Kim Hyung-A All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Kim, Hyung-A, 1948– Korea’s development under Park Chung Hee : rapid industrialization, 1961-1979 / Hyung-A, Kim. p. cm. — (RoutledgeCurzon/Asian Studies Association of Australia (ASAA) East Asia series ; 5) 1. Park, Chung Hee, 1917–1979. 2. Korea (South)—Politics and government—1960–1988. 3. Korea (South)—Economic policy— 1960– 4. Presidents—Korea (South) I. Title. II. Series: RoutledgeCurzon/Asian Studies Association of Australia East Asia series ; 5. DS922 .42. P34K547 2004 951.95⬘043—dc21 2003009875 ISBN 0-203-35642-X Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-38722-8 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0–415–32329–0 (Print edition)

For my mother, Yi K umwol and My son, Eugene Gregory van Leest

CONTENTS

xi xii xv xviii 1

List of illustrations Preface Acknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction PART I

Road to military revolution

11

1

Park: a colonized soldier

13

2

The eve of the military coup: intellectual debate on national reconstruction

39

PART II

Military rule and nation-building 3

67

The military junta: a quest for legitimacy and control

69

4

The leap forward: alliance with the US

94

5

Global change: the nation in transition, 1968–72

110

PART III

All-out reform 6

131

Saemaul movement: from top-down rural development to Yusin reform ix

133

CONTENTS

7

The Yusin state

148

8

Presidential guidance and heavy and chemical industrialization

165

Military modernization 1974–9

188

9

PART IV

Conclusion: The legacy of the Park era

203

10 Conclusion: the legacy of the Park era

205

Appendices 1 Long-term Industrial Development Policy 1973 2 Three stages of industrial development in Korea: for selected industries 3 Long-term National Industrial Plan Chronologies of the HCI Triumvirate Notes Bibliography Index

x

222 223 224 225 232 249 271

ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures 1 Park with short hair as a school teacher 2 Park in teaching days dressed in military-style uniform 3 The house in which Park was born 4 Park and his mother, when he was a student at Taegu Teachers’ College 5 President Park and his eldest brother, Pak Tonghui 6 Park and his family soon after he became president 7 Park meets President John F. Kennedy and his wife in 1963 8 Kim Chongp’il receives medal from Park soon after coup in 1961 9 Chong Chuyong, founder of Hyundai Conglomerate, briefs President Park 10 Front left: Park T’aejun, first president of POSCO, President Park and Kim Hang’yol, Deputy Prime Minister 1969–72 11 Park inspects Korean-made weapons 12 Park inspects Korean-made tank A.1.1 Long-term development policy A.2.1 Three stages of industrial development in Korea: for selected industries Tables 5.1 South Korean exports 1963–71 5.2 Deputy prime ministers and ministers of Commerce and Industry (1964–79)

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32 33 33 34 34 35 35 36 37

37 38 38 222 223

116 122

PREFACE

Park Chung Hee, South Korea’s dictator from 1961 to his assassination in 1979, left a legacy mired in controversy. Was he a bloody dictator who kept his country enthralled in a police state, repressed all dissent, and prevented his own people from aspiring to a political system of democracy, justice, and civil liberties, or was he an ingenious mastermind of rapid, state-led industrialization inspired by nationalistic sentiment that propelled his country to the second rank of industrial nations? He was both, says Hyung-A Kim, in an excellent book that instructs the reader that Park was not a political megalomaniac devoted to the aggrandizement of his own power, but a determined nationalist who believed that only a centrally organized political system under a dictator who believed in recruiting a central core of planners and administrators could carry out forced-draft industrialization and the improvement of military defense. Of course, state leadership in late industrialization involving either the control or guidance of the economy – what has lately been dubbed “developmentalism” – in contrast to liberal, free-market capitalism is by no means a new phenomenon. What is interesting about the South Korean case, however, is that Park’s project was carried out under the thumb of its long-term protector, the US, despite American objections to his repressive politics, his rejection of free-market principles, and his periodic forays into an independent defense and armament policy. Park was determined to carry out rapid industrialization after he seized power to pull his country out of the mire of poverty, and he chose to achieve this by intensifying the concentration of power at the center. He probably was motivated in doing so by his observation of Japanese development as an officer in the Japanese Army in Manchuria in the late 1930s and early 1940s, an observation that many scholars have already made, but Hyung-A Kim has discovered that the push for powerful leadership from the top was by no means confined to military officers like Park, but to leading members of the presumably liberal intellectual community in the 1950s who had no use for the dictatorship of Syngman Rhee, the first president of the Republic of Korea because of his repressive and undemocratic methods. xii

PREFACE

Although these liberal intellectuals soon became the vocal protesters against Park’s dictatorial methods as well, Park was responding to a widespread demand for leadership. After his coup d’état in 1961 Park was forced to reinstate civilian government with elections for the presidency and National Assembly by the US in 1963, but when he was almost defeated by the main opposition politician of the time, Kim Dae Jung, in 1971, he quickly turned further to the right by instituting an even more centralized and despotic regime under his Yusin (Revitalization) system in 1972. Several hypotheses about why he did so have been voiced in the past, but Hyung-A Kim has posited the most persuasive hypothesis of them all. Park was so shocked by what he perceived as the American failure from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s to respond to North Korean provocations, to stay the course in Vietnam, and to maintain a solid commitment to the defense of South Korea, that he decided to institute a more determined policy to achieve the next phase of the industrial revolution by creating a heavy and chemical industrial sector. In doing so, he carried out a restructuring of the government by concentrating power in the economic sector to an uneven narrow core of power – a triumvirate of himself, Kim Chóngnyóm, and O Wónch’ól, with full power to design and carry out fund-raising, factory construction, and the choice of products to be made without interference from the political parties (including his own), the National Assembly, the businessmen he had created and supported in the first decade of his rule, and least of all, the factory workers, students, and intellectuals who protested his draconian methods and tyrannical repression. What was even more significant was that Park chose an engineer like O Wónch’ól to run his economic development program rather than the free-market economists of his own Economic Planning Board (EPB) because he was more interested in people with a record of accomplishment willing to carry out his plan rather than economic theoreticians who objected to his violations of USinspired economic theory. As Hyung-A Kim points out, this concentrated system of control under Park himself and his two economic tsars was something that even the Japanese had not been able to create even under state-directed economic policy during the heyday of Japanese militarism in the 1930s. Not satisfied only with industrial development for economic growth because he truly feared that US presidents from Nixon on could not be counted on now that they were initiating relations with Communist China, ending the war in Vietnam and threatening to withdraw US forces from South Korea, and calling on South Korea to assume greater costs in “burden sharing,” Park not only pressed ahead with his economic juggernaut, but began an open program of conventional weapons manufacture and secret plans for developing a nuclear weapons and missile capability. The problem was that Park’s repressive dictatorship antagonized many xiii

PREFACE

Americans at the same time that he wanted a firm US commitment for the support of South Korea. Of course, support for South Korea meant support for Park’s dictatorship, but this only created a crisis when Jimmy Carter became president of the US. Park survived Jimmy Carter’s threat to withdraw US troops thanks to opposition within his own administration committed more to maintaining stability in South Korea than to causing disruption to further democratic politics. Nevertheless, Park’s political policies created an adverse reaction by the late 1970s which spread from the activist students, intellectuals, professors, and progressive Christians to the workers and petty urban bourgeoisie. One could say that Park’s system imploded in 1979 because the dictator had become so remote from popular sentiment and seemed to be under the influence of trusted bodyguards and confidants that his inclination to call out the troops to repress protest in a bloodbath contributed to his assassination at the end of the year. In short, what Hyung-A Kim has been able to do is to provide a convincing explanation of the strategy and tactics of Park’s successful economic development policy, connect it to his nationalistic drive to achieve his own goals of national construction and defense in the face of what he believed was an undependable US, and defy the growing clamor for democratic process and civil liberties growing under his nose and without much support from the US government. Had Park lived a century ago in the last dynasty in an age when popular participation and democratic procedure were unheard of, he might have gone down in the history books as one of the greatest leaders in all of Korean history. Now, however, his obvious leadership skills in creating a modern economy have to be offset by his nefarious record of persecution, with one important proviso. His negative record in politics created a reaction that achieved a democratic politics on the part of the South Korean people through three decades of heroic suffering without which democracy might never have been achieved. Certainly the US had done little to further their efforts during the Cold War. In any case, this book should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand the nature and complexities of Park Chung Hee and his policies. Professor James B. Palais Department of History University of Washington Seattle, USA

xiv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

From the outset I should say that this work was not a well-planned longterm dream, but a project that developed progressively as I moved in my research from mask-drama, to political satire, to the minjung movement, to self-reliance ideology in Korea, and finally to rapid industrialization under Park. And I am sure my path will not end there. However, I am certain that this work will prove for me, and for many others, to be a valuable source of understanding development in Korea, which can be applied to many issues facing Korea today and into the future. In the arduous task of writing this book, I received help and advice from many people. Without them, this book would have been a somewhat different product. I owe special thanks to James Cotton, who initially suggested to me that I should undertake a study of President Park Chung Hee. His suggestion ultimately led me to the luxury of writing over several years on the immensely complex story behind Park and his key technocrats, especially in the course of Korea’s heavy and chemical industrialization during the 1970s. Much of this book was written and rewritten at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University. There I have been exceptionally fortunate to have the support of so many inspiring teachers and friends, who have provided me with a wealth of knowledge, understanding and enthusiasm. I am particularly grateful for everyone there in the History Division, especially Professors Geremie Barmé, Gavan McCormack, Tessa Morris-Suzuki and Ken Wells, and many friends in the office including Marion, Dorothy, Oanh, and Caroline. Unexpectedly, I also found a new friend, Stephanie Anderson, who poured much energy and effort in proofreading my manuscript, for which I am deeply grateful. Every single pencil stroke she made on the manuscript gave me a fresh perspective and helped me to polish extensively the text for the completion of the final version. At a vital stage of finalizing this work, I was fortunate in being appointed to the Centre for Asia Pacific Social Transformation Studies (CAPSTRANS), a joint initiative between the Universities of Newcastle and xv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Wollongong, where Professors Jim Hagan and Andrew Wells recognized the significance of this project and allowed me the widest scope possible to complete it for publication. I will always remain indebted to their generosity and support. I also thank Christoph Antons, the new Director at CAPSTRANS for his enthusiasm and support for this book. In the United States, my thanks go to Professors Robert Scalapino, Michael Robinson, Younghwan Kihl, Mark Seldon, and Gordon M. Berger. In each of their different ways, I have been greatly encouraged by these eminent scholars who generously offered me their support, as well as many invaluable suggestions. During my teaching appointment at Linfield College in Oregon in 1998–9, I also received heart-warming support from my colleagues there, especially John Fincher and Ellen Summerfield. I have been extremely fortunate to receive the support of Professor James B. Palais who read the entire manuscript twice, and provided me with most detailed and substantive comment, suggestions and advice. His assessment of my work as a worthy contribution to understanding Korea’s rapid-development strategies under Park, was a great inspiration and source of encouragement to me, as I struggled to examine and incorporate where appropriate the reams of notes he compiled on early drafts. I was also fortunate to receive unreserved support from Korea, especially in gathering material and being introduced to many relevant and interesting people over the last decade or more. I owe many thanks to the members of President Park’s family, Pak Kunhye and Pak Chiman, who opened many doors for me. In particular, I owe special thanks to Yi Kwanghyung from EG Corporation who, along with several members of their staff and colleagues, including Yi Sangyo, made extraordinary efforts to support this project. Were it not for their selfless help and support, my fieldwork in Korea would have been much less inspiring and productive. I also owe much to Mr Chong Yonghui who worked tirelessly to send me photographs and to obtain clearances for their publication, in the midst of difficult security concerns in the course of the “war on terrorism” and hold-ups in the mail. I am grateful also for the enduring support of Paik Nakchung, Cho Kapche, Kim Hakjun, Kang Kiwon, and Han Chiyon. I owe immeasurable thanks to many distinguished former officials, including Kim Chongnyom, Kim Songjin, Pak Chinhwan, and Cho Hyongsop, who most generously responded to my requests for interviews and questionnaires. My biggest thanks goes to O Wonch’ol who believed in me and graciously endowed me with his personal papers, rare documents and, above all, unrestricted interviews and countless faxes, phone calls and personally handwritten letters. My editor, Stephanie Rogers, her staff, as well as Sarah Coulson, helped me throughout the publication process in an understanding and professional manner, patiently responding to my numerous questions on design, xvi

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

format and style. I was especially appreciative of Stephanie’s belief in the value and importance of this book. Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders for their permission to reprint material in this book. The publishers would be grateful to hear from any copyright holder who is not here acknowledged and will undertake to rectify any errors or omissions in future editions of this book. Finally, I thank my family members. My brother Kim Iksang and his wife Sujong looked after me whenever I visited Seoul during the entire period of my research from 1990. Since my mother passed away in 1997, my sister Taesun and my niece Hyanghee have been a major source of my strength, especially when lost in self-doubt. I also could not have got through my self-doubt if not for Miriam, my dearest friend whom I proudly call my sister. Many hours of long-distance heart-to-heart talks with her saved me from the darkest hours of despair and desolation. Above all, I owe my biggest debt to Adrian, my husband, and Eugene, my son. For better or for worse, they stood by me all the way, and for that I am grateful.

xvii

ABBREVIATIONS

ADD ADMM AMG ARPA ASPAC BHS DMZ DRP ED EOIC EPB FKI FMC FMS FYP HCI HCIPC IECOK IMF IRC KCIA KCOTS KDP KIST KMAG KNFDC MAP MCI MITI MMA MOC MOF

Agency for Defense Development Assistant Deputy Ministers’ Meeting American Military Government Advanced Research Projects Agency Asian and Pacific Council Blue House Secretariat demilitarized zone Democratic Republican Party Emergency Decree export-oriented industry construction Economic Planning Board Federation of Korean Industry Five-Member Committee foreign military sales Five-Year Plan heavy and chemical industrialization Heavy and Chemical Industry Promotion Committee International Economic Cooperation Organization on Korea International Monetary Fund Investigation and Research Committee Korea Central Intelligence Agency Korean Constabulary Officers’ Training School Korea Democratic Party Korea Institute of Science and Technology Korea Military Advisory Group Korean Nuclear Fuels Development Corporation Military Assistance Program Ministry of Commerce and Industry Ministry of International Trade and Industry Manchukuo Military Army Ministry of Construction Ministry of Finance xviii

ABBREVIATIONS

MOND NCPD NCRD NCU NDP NISM NMF NSC NVM OMF PRP PSA SCNR SEM SES SLT UIM USOM YEA YPC

Ministry of National Defense National Council for the Protection of Democracy National Congress for the Restoration of Democracy National Conference for Unification New Democratic Party National Industry Standard Model new mainstream faction National Security Council New Village Movement old mainstream faction People’s Revolutionary Party presidential special assistant Supreme Council for National Reconstruction Second Economy Movement Second Economic Secretariat Saemaul Leaders’ Training Urban Industrial Mission US Operations Mission Yulgok Enforcement Agency Yusin Policy Council

xix

INTRODUCTION Scratch a modernizer and find a nationalist. (Morley 1971: 3)

In the early twenty-first century, Korea, South and North, has become the scene for a “new Cold War” (Reifer 2001; Johnson 2000). With the hardening of the US war on terrorism, US President George W. Bush’s labeling of North Korea as a part of an “axis of evil”1 is seen as a challenge not only to the Korean people of both the North and the South, but also to nations throughout the region. Has North Korea been pushed into this position by virtue of the demise of the USSR and the ongoing alliance between the US and South Korea? Since the great powers see the possession of an independent nuclear capability as a crucial component of their power, lesser nations might be forgiven for reaching the conclusion that this capability might equally give them greater autonomy in international affairs. Yet, at the same time, they know that such a course is likely to make them the target of surrounding nations and the focus of US security interests. Therefore, regional security policy and strategy, especially in regard to the Korean peninsula, now more than at any period since the 1970s, needs to be reassessed and revised. This study examines how in the 1960s and 1970s Park Chung Hee sought to develop South Korea (hereafter Korea) as an independent, autonomous sovereign state, economically and militarily. It also examines how Park came to abhor the fact that Korean security relied on a US military presence and associated aid and assistance programs, and how in the process of building Korea’s economic and military capability, he exploited the US commitment to defend Korea by pushing ahead with a secret nuclear weapons program. Park took this course without any communication with the US. It is notable that even when Park moved in this direction, the US did not contemplate withdrawing from Korea. Park was, however, assassinated when it became clear that he meant to persist with his clandestine nuclear plans. By the time Park came to power in 1961, holding a strong antiCommunist line, Korea had become an indispensable part of US security policy in the region, especially following the Korean War (1950–3). In particular, Korea was believed to be indispensable to the security of Japan. It 1

INTRODUCTION

may be that the extent of the dependency on the US that this role created frustrated Park’s ambitions of “chajusong” (independence) and his desire to be able to deal with the North as he saw fit, without US interference. Exactly what drove Park to pursue his nuclear weapons and missile plan independently may never be known, but his policies were certainly not the most adequate for Korean security, not to mention regional and global security. While recognizing this ultimate flaw in Park’s approach, due recognition has to be given to what he accomplished in terms of Korea’s modernization in a relatively short period of time. Any assessment of Park must take into account his considerable achievements in this respect as well as the socio-economic, cultural and political context in which they took place. American liberal democracy is not easily imposed on a society such as Korea with its centuries-old tradition of Confucianism. And Park certainly found a new way forward. The continuing popularity of Park in the eyes of the Korean public is significant and relevant to their acceptance, in the Korean cultural context, of how national development was achieved. This study aims to tell that story while also recognizing the mistakes made by Park and his followers in the process. Much of the text is devoted to Korea’s state-led industrialization. There is, of course, much debate in the economic literature about the efficacy of state-guided developmentalism. East Asian newly industrializing countries (NICs) and Japan all followed the model of state governance of the economy, with differences based on their special circumstances. As Robert Wade (1990) notes, Park chose big conglomerates, or chaebol, as his industrial partners, and technocrats rather than economic bureaucrats as his policy advisers. The “engineering approach” thus adopted by Korea to industrial development, especially to heavy and chemical industrialization (HCI) in the 1970s, is a core topic of discussion in this study. This approach was possible because of the degree of control that Park was able to maintain throughout his presidency, especially under the Yusin (Restoration) system,2 which focused the entire nation on clearly defined and planned goals as set out by elite technocrats. By tracing and analyzing Park’s centralized governing structure, therefore, I aim to explain the way in which Korea’s state-guided industrialization, especially the HCI program, was conducted, while I also explore the connection between political repression and HCI policy. I shall pay particular attention to Korea’s ties to US policies, which emerged during Park’s rule, especially in the 1970s. This study will be directed toward two goals. The first is to give a detailed account of the Korean model of stateguided industrialization, especially in regard to its fixation on a planned economy, and consider at the same time why Korea industrialized in the way that it did and did not replicate exactly the methods used in Taiwan, Japan or Hong Kong (Wade 1990). The other goal is to analyze Park’s 2

INTRODUCTION

rapid-development strategy and the role of the ruling elite. Among the questions to be considered are: what factors led to Park’s formula for rapid industrialization and why did he insist on a centralized command structure? Who were the main actors behind Park’s Yusin system and what changes did the ruling elite bring about in terms of economic bureaucracy? Why did Park have so little tolerance for business leaders? Why did he have such disdain for political parties, even his own? Why did he rely so heavily on the KCIA (Korean Central Intelligence Agency), police and other security agencies? As the two key areas of this study – the Korean model of state-guided industrialization and the role of the ruling elite in Park’s rapiddevelopment strategy of this study – are complex, this study offers assessments that are sometimes necessarily tentative. In its analysis of Korea’s national development under Park, it does not set out to provide a comprehensive history of the Park era, or a biography of Park. Rather, it is intended as a first step toward providing a new framework for exploring the paradoxical nature and effects of Korea’s rapid development. The study is based largely on personal interviews with Park’s principal policymakers in the 1970s, personal accounts of the period by participants and observers published in newspapers and journals, as well as archival documents from both Korea and the USA, including Park’s own version expressed in his speeches between 1963 and 1979. One key source is the personal papers of O Wonch’ol, the author of the government’s blueprint for Korea’s heavy and chemical industrialization. Entitled Chunghwahak kongophwa chongch’aek sonon e ttaron kongop kujo kaep’yonnon (On the Restructuring of Industry in Accordance with the Declaration on Heavy and Chemical Industry Policy), this text, which is reported to have been kept in the Korean Government Archives and Records Service (Chongbu kirok pojonso), was long unknown to the public.3 O’s role as Park’s senior economic secretary from 1971 to 1979, during which he planned and managed the implementation of the HCI program as well as Park’s defense program, has remained obscure in the Englishlanguage literature on Korea’s rapid development. Some researchers have suggested that Kim Yonghwan, then presidential economic secretary in charge of foreign loans who carried out the radical financial bailout under the August 3 Decree in 1972 was the chief manager of the HCI program ( Jung-un Woo 1991: 129). In fact, Kim headed the HCI program for only about eight months from the initial HCI implementation in June 1973 to February 1974 (discussed in detail in Chapter 8). Others note O’s role in the HCI program, but limit it to that of a “cheerleader” (Clifford 1994: 186). A joint publication of the Korea Development Institute and Harvard University in 1995 was the first to acknowledge O’s role as the “architect” of the HCI program but did not explain how O came to lead the HCI 3

INTRODUCTION

program or discuss the role of other technocrats, primarily those in the Ministry of Commerce and Industry (Stern et al. 1995). Even the latest (2002) English-language publication minimized the role of O and his team of technocrats in the HCI program (Kang 2002: 93). This imperfect understanding concerning the workings of Park’s inner circle reflects the profound political reprisals that occurred in the immediate aftermath of his assassination on 26 October 1979. It also reflects the favorable reception generally accorded to the program of economic restructuring led by the EPB in the early spring of 1980. Although O Wonch’ol was not the only technocrat with a key influence on the HCI program, and while Korean technocrats as a whole were not always predominant in national development, engineer technocrats, especially of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MCI) – hereafter MCI technocrats – were a crucial force behind Park’s rapid industrialization and authoritarian “capitalist developmental state” (Johnson 1982). Their role in Korea’s rapid development was so significant that any analysis that neglects it is incomplete. This study argues that Korea’s export-led industrialization was so distinctive in the 1960s because of the pragmatic and hands-on approach of MCI technocrats. It was they who, as ardent economic nationalists and key economic reform planners, led heavy and chemical industrialization in the 1970s. The difference in economic thinking and approaches between the MCI technocrats and the economists of the EPB was never a secret, even at that time. While the role of EPB economists is commonly seen as representative of Korea’s technocracy in the post-Park era (Stern et al. 1995: 31–3; Jung-un Woo 1991: 190–1; Clifford 1994: 177–85), the role of the MCI technocrats has yet to be adequately explained. In addressing these issues, I show that MCI technocrats played a critical role in Korea’s high-speed development and that they implemented Park’s ideas of Korea’s “modernization” (kundaehwa) under the draconian Yusin Order (1972–9).

Theoretical perspectives Development studies since the late 1970s have tended to interpret the economics of the Korean case in terms of either a market-oriented neoliberal approach, or a statist approach in which the state’s role is regarded as the key to the politics behind the “economic miracle,” as was the case not only in Korea, but also in other NICs in Asia. The former approach has been adopted by many free-market economists and international economic organizations, including the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, who argue that Korea’s economic success was “broadly in line with market based outcomes” (World Bank 1990: 299) and that the state played only a supplementary role in supporting the market for its best performance. The World Bank’s 1993 study, however, modified its earlier position by recognizing the significance of the state’s 4

INTRODUCTION

role in East Asian high-speed economic development (World Bank 1993; Rowen 1998). The statist approach focused on the issue of why NIC governments chose the policies they adopted and how they were able to sustain them. Proponents of this school, most notably Amsden (1989) and Wade (1990), emphasized the role of the state and its policies while providing detailed critiques of the market-oriented approach to Korea’s and Taiwan’s economic success respectively. Similarly, Johnson’s (1982) analysis of the state’s role in Japan’s economic miracle made a major contribution to this approach. In the 1990s, at least up until the Asian financial crisis of 1997, this approach dominated academic debate. Its key proposition is that the effectiveness of industrial policy depends on: how exactly it is designed and implemented; how realistically the “target” industries are selected in light of the country’s technological capabilities and world market conditions; how closely the policy is integrated with an export strategy so that there is some “objective” criterion to judge enterprise performance; how politically willing and able the state is to discipline the recipients of the rents that it creates; how competent and politically insulated the bureaucracy that implements the policy is; how closely the state interacts with the private sector while not becoming its hostage; and so on . . . (Ha-Joon Chang 2000: 775–88) A third school of thought focused not on the internal – political or policy – arrangements of the system, but on its location in the world economy and thus on the interface between those who dominate the local economy on the one hand and the dominant powers in the global economy on the other. Cumings, among others, argued that US regional hegemony in the economy of North-East Asia, with Japan playing a subordinate role, was the key to understanding Korea’s economic trajectory, with Korea first located on the periphery of the world system and then moving to the semi-periphery (1987: 44–84). Cumings’ account places South Korea in a dependent or semi-dependent position determined by factors beyond government control, and irrespective of its planning or thinking in regard to national development. In the era of globalization, Cumings’ account remains compelling because, like many capitalist countries in the world, Korea is more dependent on the global economy than ever before and has little ability to control its own destiny through protectionist measures. Most notably, Korea is still heavily dependent on the US for its defense. Despite this obvious reliance on the US, Park’s version of rapid industrialization took place largely because he and his developmental elites, the 5

INTRODUCTION

MCI technocrats, did not blindly follow US advice but planned and pursued their own independent agenda even to the point of provoking conflict between Korea and the US. Of course, Korea profited enormously from the favorable conditions of the international economy tied to US Cold War security and financial linkages to North-East Asia. US tolerance of Park’s economic protectionism together with the maintenance of an open US economy receptive to Korean exports was one of many benefits on which Park capitalized. (This era ended in the 1980s, with the 1997 financial crisis as the clearest example.) Nevertheless, it was Park and the developmental elites who put the nation on a path to economic independence and political sovereignty, even though neither Park nor any president after him carried it to completion. A further theoretical approach emphasizes culture and ideology, concentrating on Confucian values as key factors in economic development in Asia, especially among the NICs. Vogel’s work is characteristic of this approach (1991). However, I shall argue that Park succeeded not by utilizing Confucian culture but by drawing on post-Confucian values with an emphasis on technology and technical specialists. His methods of organization and decision-making were militaristic, and in the 1970s he tended to turn his advisers into something akin to the servile officials of Choson dynasty kings. Within Korea, the most influential theory opposing Park’s rapiddevelopment policies was that taken in the name of the Korean working masses or minjung. The minjung advocates believed that Park was responsible for Korea’s “dependent capitalism” which resulted in social divergence between the ruling class and the ruled, in particular between employers and the minjung (Han’guk minjungsa yon’guhoe 1993).4 Their key tenet, which owed something to the bureaucratic–authoritarian school (Hyug Baeg Im 1987, 231–57; Cotton 1992: 512–31), was that autonomous economic and political development in Korea was impossible because of American imperialism (Pak Segil 1989). According to these minjung advocates, Park’s national development policy, especially the Yusin system, was the desperate recourse of a regime offering nothing beyond its intensive but hopeless drive to achieve economic results and hammer home antiCommunism.5 While this approach correctly characterized these two major priorities of the Yusin system, its interpretation of Park’s development policies and strategies is too simplistic. In any event, the minjung theorists’ dependency approach lost its appeal when Korea enjoyed phenomenal success in economic, cultural and political transformation between the achievement of “democratization” in 1987 and the financial crisis in December 1997 (Amsden 1989: 341–80). Ironically, in the midst of the country’s nearbankruptcy, which necessitated a call for rescue by the IMF, Park emerged from the grave as the “Father of Modernization” and the historical 6

INTRODUCTION

“Leader” of the Korean people, especially as the champion of their unyielding “Can-Do” (hamyon toenda) spirit.6 What does this popular perception of Park’s role in Korea’s rapid development mean?

The Park syndrome Korea may be the only country in the world where, little more than two decades after his death, a former dictator is repeatedly acknowledged by its people as their “best president ever.” Park’s reputation in international circles is also high. In August 1999, US weekly news magazine, Time, included him as the only Korean in its list of the twenty most influential leaders in Asia in the twentieth century. Inside Korea, Park’s reputation began to soar from early 1997 when most Koreans became utterly disappointed with the economic failures and corruption of the Kim Young Sam government. A survey conducted by the prominent daily newspaper, Tonga Ilbo, in April that year, showed that 75.9 percent of respondents approved Park as the “most effective president ever” (cited in Newsreview 22 May 1999: 8). Another survey carried out at Korea University found that students ranked Park third in a list of Korean and world figures identified for “cloning” for posterity, after Kim Ku, the nationalist leader assassinated in June 1949, and Mother Teresa (Newsreview 19 April 1997: 32–3). Many critics dismissed this phenomenon as a temporary “syndrome” which, they argued, held very little significance as a reflection of the longterm view of the Korean public. Yet Park’s popularity remains unchallenged. The latest survey conducted in July 2001 by the monthly journal, Sindonga, showed that 58 percent of respondents – out of 3,644 university professors – chose Park as “the president who played his role the best” (Choson Ilbo 5 March 1995; Kyonghyang sinmun 16 August 1994) followed by Kim Dae Jung with 22 percent (Tonga Ilbo 19 July 2001). Park’s popularity contributed in large measure to the rapid rise of his daughter, Pak Kunhye. Twice elected representative of the National Assembly, she also served as vice-president of the conservative opposition, the Grand National Party (Hannara-dang). The Park syndrome reached its peak in December 1997 when Korea experienced a financial crisis which led to the borrowing of US$58 billion from the IMF. Large numbers of Koreans began to revisit the Park era, especially his economy-first leadership. Park, to many of them, came to be seen as the infallible modernizer. They believed that Park had succeeded in bringing out the best in the Korean people. This was especially true of the large enterprises or chaebol which, during the 1970s, were seen as Korea’s leading industrial pace-setters but, in the 1990s, when performing at their worst, were blamed for the 1997 financial collapse. Public adulation for Park rested primarily on his commitment to, and competence in, national development. 7

INTRODUCTION

As we shall see, financial corruption among chaebol and high-ranking officials was rife in the 1960s and early 1970s, especially in connection with political funds. In the course of heavy and chemical industrialization, however, Park exercised supreme authority, labeled “Presidential Guidance” (taet’ongnyong chisi), which he used as a tool to discipline the state as well as individual officials, leading chaebol, high-ranking bureaucrats and military generals. Under the Yusin system, Park functioned as the state itself and as such no one was exempt from his scrutiny, especially in respect of financial improprieties. Park demanded, and largely succeeded in arousing, a shared sense of “mission” for national development among the Korean people. Yi Kwanghyong, an army major who had been seconded to serve as Park’s personal aide soon after the assassination of the First Lady in August 1974, sums up the attitude of the presidential staff in the 1970s: As the President’s private secretary residing in the Blue House, I was on stand-by even during off-duty hours, in case the President’s bell might ring. I was just married, but I was totally committed to my duty as was everyone around the President. We had a mission greater than our own, a cause to which, we believed, all of our private interests and concerns had to be subordinated. (Interview with Yi Kwanghyong, October 1996) The commitment Yi describes here reflects, in essence, the zeitgeist of the Park regime. In reference to similar attitudes shown by Japanese reformists of the Taisho/Showa era, Minichiello appropriately modifies James Morley’s phrase, quoted at the beginning of this chapter, to: “Scratch a reformist and find a nationalist” (1984: 7). In the Korean case, Park and his elite technocrats were both “modernizers” and “reformists” who, above all, saw themselves as committed nationalists. At the same time, it has to be acknowledged that the price of commitment to Park-style industrialization – also known as the “Korean Way” (Han’guksik) development – was high in terms of political reprisals, not only for Park who was assassinated, but also for leading technocrats. O Wonch’ol’s testimony illustrates the dramatic downgrading of the HCI program immediately after Park’s assassination, from the state’s symbol of national power to principal factor in the Park Government’s “excessive” investment. It also shows how the elite technocrats who led the HCI program were silenced on the night of May 17 1980 in the military coup which enabled MajorGeneral Chun Doo Hwan to become president: On 10 May 1980, I think, a plain-clothed American came to my house in the middle of the night and told me that I should hide somewhere away from my house, or I would be arrested. At about 8

INTRODUCTION

11 o’clock at night on 17 May, two men grabbed me at the front of my apartment and brought me to the Defense Security Headquarters in Kwanghwamun. On this day, Kim Chongp’il, Yi Hurak and Kim Dae Jung were also arrested. The May 18 Kwangju Uprising broke out the following day. I was the only non-political civil servant among the group arrested. I was interrogated for amassing “40 billion won” [equivalent to $100 million] from political funds. I was interrogated for eight weeks. Even after my release, I was forbidden to contact any outsiders. I was totally barred from doing any work until 1992. (Interview with O Wonch’ol, November 1998) It would be a mistake to assume, however, that such political reprisals and oppression occurred only under the two generals-turned-Presidents Chun and Roh Tae Woo (No T’aeu). Before them, Park tortured numerous people for various reasons. Even the Prime Minister’s personal staff were watched and interrogated, just as many National Assemblymen were “taught lessons,” in other words, tortured. So, why should we now revisit the 1980 political reprisals? One reason is that doing so will help to elicit the hitherto repressed inside story about Park’s rapid-development agenda, including the HCI program. It will also bring out into the open the story of Korea’s military modernization, especially Park’s secret nuclear missile development plan which came to threaten the US security commitment in Korea in the aftermath of Park’s assassination. In May 1980, the thirty-one-member Special Committee for National Security Measures led by the Command of National Security and MajorGeneral Chun Doo Hwan denounced the HCI program on the grounds that “excessive investment, inefficient management and substandard productivity of the [heavy and chemical industry] sector all combined to seriously threaten the wholesome development of the Korean economy” (Clifford 1994: 186). This was also the official rationale for the radical restructuring of the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI, or former Ministry of Commerce and Industry), and the Ministry of Finance (MOF). In this way, Korea’s industrial and financial management shifted entirely from Park’s presidential economic secretariat, more commonly known as the Blue House Secretariat (ch’ongwadae pisosil), to the EPB. Throughout the Chun regime (1980–8), Park and his MCI technocrats were heavily criticized for “excessive spending” under the HCI program while, at the same time, these technocrats were removed from their office and prevented from engaging in public debate. Given the highly controlled political climate in the aftermath of Park’s death, any available material regarding the HCI program could hardly have escaped censorship by the Chun regime and the new economic elites of the EPB. In conducting the research on which this study is based, I have been 9

INTRODUCTION

made acutely aware of the dualistic character of Korea’s development under Park. The authoritarian methods of the Park regime – and the benefits it brought – have been clearly delineated by Yi Hungwu, a veteran journalist and poet, as follows: He [Park Chung Hee] seized power by the drastic measure of a military coup d’état which, according to the principles of liberal democracy, was evil. He created unprecedented economic construction within a very short term in a poor country with no capital, resources, technology or infrastructure. Making less sacrifices in comparison with [Stalin, Ceaucescu or Kim Il Sung], [Park] achieved extraordinarily high-speed growth. That was good for both the nation and its people. (Yi Hungu 2001: 349–50) As North and South Korea grapple with their respective problems and dilemmas, especially in the context of US security policy over North Korea, the urgency of understanding and distinguishing between the positive and negative elements of Park’s rapid-development model is obvious. The history we are concerned with here is not “mere” history, just an episode in Korea’s past, but is crucial to understanding the present and facing the future. The strong need for Koreans to understand the good and the bad of the Park era, the achievements of Park and his technocrats, as well as the contradictions inherent in their program, has been the driving force behind this study of Park-style industrialization.

10

Part I ROAD TO MILITARY REVOLUTION

1 PARK A colonized soldier Everybody has a dream and hopes. My dream was to become a great soldier and thus I became a soldier. (Park Chung Hee Korean Herald 27 October 1978) regardless of how soon or how violently the colonized rejects his situation, he will one day begin to overthrow his unlivable existence with the whole force of his oppressed personality. The two historically possible solutions are then tried in succession or simultaneously. He attempts either to become different or to reconquer all the dimensions which colonization tore away from him. (Memmi 1967)

Undernourished child Park Chung Hee (Pak Chonghui) was born on 14 November (the 30th day of the ninth month of the lunar calendar) 1917 in Sangmo-ri, a village in Kumi-myon, Sonsan-gun (county) in the Province of North Kyongsang in South-East Korea. Born to poverty-stricken country folk, he was the youngest child of seven. In the year of Park’s birth, his father, Pak Songbin (1871–1938), was 46 and his mother, Paek Namui (1872–1949), 45. In handwritten memoirs about his childhood, Park wrote: “My mother often joked that, because she became pregnant in her old age, and in the same year that her own daughter was expecting, she felt very awkward. And thus as soon as I was born, she was going to throw me, wrapped in a blanket, into the kitchen furnace” (Park Chung Hee 1997: 245–6). Despite these inauspicious beginnings, Park instantly became the love of his mother who “regretted” her attempts to abort the baby. There are many anecdotes that have been provided by Park’s own family members but with very little verifiable evidence. Some caution is therefore necessary when making a sketch of Park’s childhood. However, his alleged undernourishment appears to have had significant repercussions later in life, to which he himself openly referred (see below). The role of Park’s father in the community of Yongwol warrants 13

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mention. There are three versions of Pak’s role, including one written by Park himself. The first version portrays Pak as a “fallen official yangban” who fought against the Tonghak Peasants’ Revolt (1894–5) and, for his achievement, was appointed “mayor” (kunsu) in Yongwol, Kangwon Province (Chong Kwangmo 1967). The second version portrays Park’s father as a revolutionary activist who fought as a chopchu (group leader) in the Tonghak Peasants’ Revolt against official corruption. As a result of his fall following this Revolt, he is said to have lived the rest of his life in poverty and insobriety (Chong Chaegyong 1992: 26–7). The third, and Park’s own, version portrays Pak as a scholar-bureaucrat, yangban, who passed the mukwa (military division) State Examination and was appointed “mayor” in Yongbyon in south P’yongan Province (now in North Korea). Pak was unable to take up his appointment because of the dissolution of the Tonghak Peasants’ Revolt. Park also claimed that in 1892 his father, at the age of 22, became “leader” (chopchu) of the Tonghak rebels in Songju, the Pak family’s original home town (Park Chung Hee 1997: 247). This third version is inscribed on Pak’s tombstone erected in Sonsan in November 1964, a year after Park became president and twentysix years after Pak Songbin’s death in 1938. However, there is no independent verification of the claims regarding Pak Songbin’s supposed official role made in Park’s own handwritten memoir about his childhood. Nevertheless, these versions all agree that Pak Songbin sustained his livelihood as a tenant farmer of a small rice paddy (approximately 4,450 sq meters) located below his wife’s family burial ground. However that may be, Park Chung Hee recalled his father as having neither farming skills nor any interest in his household. He is said to have spent his time drinking, ultimately squandering the family assets to the extent that the family had to move to Sangmo village (dong) in 1916, the year before Park was born. The extent of the Pak family’s struggle seems to be reflected in their non-existent official status within Sonsan county even after ten years of residency in Sangmo village. Cho Kapche noted that the county records published in 1926 show 97 family names registered in that county. Cho asserted that Pak’s family clan, Koryong Pak, was not included (Choson Ilbo 31 December 1997). In other words, Park’s family clan, in terms of the Sonsan county records, were simply regarded as temporary vagabonds. Despite his low social standing and his indifference to his family affairs, Pak Songbin displayed a certain progressiveness in sending two of his children to a “new-style school” rather than to the traditional Confucian sodang or hyanggyo, where the Chinese classics were taught. However, as a schoolboy, Park Chung Hee was always short of the basic necessities. Growing up under these conditions must have left an indelible mark on him psychologically as well as physically. He may have been diminutive in size, but Park showed early signs of academic potential at Kumi Normal 14

PARK: A COLONIZED SOLDIER

School,1 which he entered in April 1926 at the age of nine. He was the first student from his village since his older brother, Sanghui to attend this school.2 Park traveled to and from school on foot for six years, a distance of approximately 40 li each way (approximately 16 kilometers), yet rarely missed attendance. He grew just 5.9 cm during these years, from 129.9 cm in first grade to 135.8 cm in sixth grade. His weight almost doubled in this period from 15.4 kg to 30 kg (Cho Kapche 1992: 60). Clearly, Park was not a well-developed young man. Park is said to have been a quiet and reticent boy with an “unyielding obstinacy” (ogi). He appears to have exercised his ogi character particularly effectively to compensate for his physical smallness when pitted against his opponents. Under the subtitle, “Remembrance of [my] class captain days,” Park wrote: I had a classmate who was physically strong and had a very poor attitude to following my instructions [as a class captain]. But, after I saw him always being scolded by [our class] teacher for his poor maths performance, I thought of an idea to persuade him to pay attention to me. During recess, I taught him some numerical questions as well as helping him to complete his homework several times. Thereafter, I remember that he would submit unconditionally to whatever I said. (Park Chung Hee 1997: 267) Instruction at primary school was entirely in Japanese and focused on Japanese culture. Park recollected that becoming a soldier had been his childhood dream from the moment he encountered Japanese troops, the 80th Infantry Regiment located at Taegu, which often carried out field training in Kumi. Park admired the Japanese heroes whom he had learned about through Japanese history but, he claimed, he particularly idolized Korea’s own Admiral Yi Sunsin, as well as Napoleon, after reading their biographies in fifth and sixth grade (Park Chung Hee 1997: 268). Overall, this relatively sheltered childhood, although strewn with many hardships, seems to have provided the young Park with reasonably stable surroundings, enabling him to nurture his immediate ambitions and self-esteem.

Recalcitrant adolescent In April 1932, Park now aged 15, entered Taegu Teachers’ College (TTC – Taegu sabom hakkyo), one of the three teachers’ colleges in colonial Korea which, as part of Japanese colonial policy, were sponsored by the colonial state.3 Successful candidates were guaranteed low school fees, accommodation and, most attractive of all, employment after graduation. 15

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For this reason, competition for places at the TTC was severe, particularly among the bright but economically poor Korean students.4 Park was one of the hundred successful candidates – 90 Koreans and 10 Japanese – who were admitted to the fourth class of the TTC. As a colonial state-sponsored student, Park’s primary task involved learning to become a thoroughly “Japanized” teacher in accordance with the colonial government’s assimilation policy better known as naisen ittai (unity of Japan and Korea) or kokoku shimminka (transform [the Korean people] into imperial subjects).5 This required Park, like other students, to undergo a path of total transformation, of rebirth. Mentally, he was obliged to think “Japanese,” especially in terms of the yamato spirit of “one hundred million hearts beating as one” (Dower 1993: 272) and loyalty and self-sacrifice to the emperor. Physically, all his activities were strictly controlled, watched, and tested by the college authorities, even during holidays. The district police also acted on behalf of the authorities. Thus, teachers’ college itself represented an officially institutionalized course of Japanization and colonization. The college expelled anyone who failed to comply with its requirements. Nevertheless, from a number of Korean teachers at the college, including Yom Chonggwon who taught Chinese classics, Park is believed to have gained a sense of national consciousness different from that of Japanese consciousness. To what extent Japanese militarism influenced Park as a student under the colonial education system and later as an officer of the Japanese Imperial Army cannot be established precisely. However, there is ample evidence in records of his academic and social activities in his youth and early adulthood, to show that Park had progressively imbibed a Japanese militarist mentality, with or without Japanese nationalism. In particular, he immensely admired Colonel Arikawa Hiroshi, the military officer attached to Park’s college who was known as an elite radical militarist (Interview with Yi Kwanghyong May 1996). Outwardly, however, he was pensive and revealed little of his inner thinking. It seems that Park soon lost interest and confidence in his cadet teacher training. This was particularly evident in his discouraging academic results and frequent absences throughout his senior years at college. His ranking quickly dropped to 60th out of 97 in the first year; 47th out of 83 in the second year; and 67th out of 74 in the third year. In the fourth year, he was ranked last of his class, 73rd out of 73; and in the fifth year, 69th out of 70. Therefore, contrary to popular belief, Park was far from a model student. At best, he barely satisfied his course requirements. Evidence suggests, however, that Park was acutely attuned to the consequences of Korea’s colonial situation at that time. The following short verse, written in Korean (a practice which was forbidden to all students) in his third year at college on an excursion to Mt Kumgang, shows Park’s harboring of nationalistic sentiments as a 17-year-old. 16

PARK: A COLONIZED SOLDIER

Mount Kumgang, twelve thousand peaks, The world’s most famous mountain. Ah, your features are so splendid and solemn And you spread your fame all over the world, But we, who live in the same land, Korea, are so destitute That we are ashamed to lift our heads to look at you. Mount Kumgang, we too will exert ourselves To shine out to the world, alongside you. At Onjongni, [Park] Chung Hee. The complexity of Park’s character is seen even more clearly in these three verses which were featured in the 1936 Alumni Bulletin of Taegu Teachers’ College. Great Nature Rather than a beautiful rose in a garden, An unknown wild flower Blossoming shyly in the corner of the wilderness Is more elegant and beautiful. Rather than a noble lady beautifully adorned Or, a hero made a slave of honor, A farmer who reclaims the earth with back against the sun, Is more noble and splendid. Like the Sun, even if spending only a day, Like the waves, even if living only a night, Contentedly, in a leisurely way, I’d like to farewell the passing day, And greet the coming day. (Cited by Cho Kapche Choson Ilbo 26 January 1998) Park wrote the poem at a time when his academic ranking was either last or second last and thus there was very little reason for him to have been content in himself, either in terms of his career prospects or his personal safety. After all, Japan was at the peak of its military expansion in China following the Manchurian Incident of 1931 and only two years later, in 1938, Japan would publicly declare its policy of the New Order in East Asia. And yet Park’s poems show no sense of fear or anxiety but instead an unusual degree of calmness and maturity in their reflective romanticism. They suggest that Park inwardly rebelled against the colonial subjugation at the college and this may well have been to his own detriment. In March 1937, aged 20, Park began his career as a primary school teacher in a remote mountain village called, Mungyong in North 17

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Kyongsang Province. His character, according to the Taegu Teachers’ College records, had been assessed as “moody, discontented, lacking devotion/loyalty,” and “quiet and inactive” (Cho Kapche 1992: 68–9). Given this assessment together with his equally poor academic results, it is no surprise that Park was posted to one of the remotest places in South Korea. Park taught for about three years, from 1937 to September 1939, when he “suddenly” resigned and, a few months later, entered the Manchukuo Military Academy (MMA) in Xinjing/Hsinking (formerly Changch’un).

Colonized soldier There are many competing explanations for Park’s sudden resignation from teaching and his decision to enter the MMA. One is that Park had encountered personal conflict with his headmaster and resigned to travel to Manchuria; a second is that he went to the MMA in order to learn certain military skills and “leadership” as a means to leading the Korean Army after liberation; a third is that he entered the MMA because of economic hardship; and the last, that he entered the MMA because he wanted “to choose a career which would suit his aptitude.”6 Besides these explanations, many of Park’s biographers consider his frustration with his marriage, which had taken place in the summer of 1935 at the demand of his father, to have greatly affected him. Park was 18 when he married and his bride, Kim Honam, just 16.7 Park is said to have resented this marriage immensely and spent very little time with his wife. The marriage officially ended on 1 November 1950 when the couple’s divorce was finalized. By then, Park had a daughter, Chaeok, born in September 1938, who is believed to have been registered for some time as the child of Park’s eldest brother, Tonghui (1895–1972). On 12 December 1950, 40 days after the divorce from his first wife, Park married Yuk Yongsu, his wife for 24 years until she was assassinated on 15 August 1974. Park had three children, two daughters and a son, from his second marriage. (Park also had a de facto wife, Yi Hyonnan, an Ehwa Women’s University dropout. This relationship ended sometime in early 1949. It is reported that the two were engaged in 1948, but their relationship ended abruptly when she learned that Park had been charged with Communist activities (discussed below).) Whatever the factors involved, the widely held view is that Park resigned from his teaching position after quarreling with his Mungyong village school headmaster who scolded him for having long hair. Park’s long hair is supposed to have led him into deeper trouble when the Provincial Schools Inspector visited Park’s school and commented on his long hair as “evidence” of his “inability” to adjust to the government’s education policy of Japanization (Chong Chaegyong 1992: 65–6). It is alleged that that 18

PARK: A COLONIZED SOLDIER

night Park was again criticized by both the inspector and headmaster during a dinner party which the headmaster had hosted in his house for the inspector. Although commentators are divided on Park’s reaction toward his superiors on that night, Park’s sudden resignation from teaching could have been related to an incident such as this, as well as a desire to go elsewhere. In any event, Park left immediately for Manchuria after his resignation and, in October 1939, he passed the entrance exam to the MMA, ranking fifteenth of the 240 successful applicants. Five months later, at the age of 23, Park was admitted to the second class of the Academy. This dramatic change in his career came about as a result of the personal intervention of his former mentor at Taegu Teachers’ College, the Japanese Army Colonel Arikawa, who was in Manchuria as a senior officer in the Kwantung Army. It would seem that Park went to Manchuria only because Arikawa was there.8 According to Park’s supporters, Colonel Arikawa took pity on Park and thus became Park’s referee for the entrance exam to the Academy. This story was repeated by many biographers during the 1990s. In 1998, however, in his popular unauthorized biography of Park entitled, Spit on My Grave (Neamudom e ch’imul paet’ora!), Cho Kapche very convincingly argued that Park did not choose to become a soldier as a consequence of the dispute with the headmaster, but because of Park’s long-held ideals. As a means to persuading the Academy to accept him, Cho asserted, Park wrote a “letter in blood from his little finger” which stated that “he would do his best ‘to serve the country loyally and die for the benefit of the public (chinch’ung poguk myolsa ponggong)’ .” As a result, sometime in March 1938, Park reportedly learned, according to Cho, that his “blood letter” had been published in a newspaper in Manchuria. Some days after this news, Park received a letter from Colonel Arikawa, his former college mentor, who advised him to “visit him if he was so anxious to become a soldier.” Park is believed to have visited Arikawa, taken the entrance exam in the autumn of 1939, and “then returned to work in Mungyong, before leaving for the military academy in March the following year [1940]” (Choson Ilbo 11 and 12 February 1998). In this account Cho has Park leaving Mungyong not hastily as a reprobate, but with many dignitaries, parents and students gathered (at the bus stop) to see him off. Cho’s new findings may well be proved correct, but they do not answer one fundamental question. What changed Park from an underachieving, unmotivated and recalcitrant youth into the exemplary, self-motivated and highly popular teacher that Cho claimed he became? Moreover, why then should Park choose the military, especially the Japanese Army, in Manchuria? There must have been some reason more compelling than those that have so far been suggested for Park’s dramatic change in career. The real truth may never be known. Park himself painstakingly 19

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suppressed information about this decision throughout his life. However, what is obvious beyond doubt is Park’s awakening to what he came to see as his own reality. In other words, after enduring an unlivable existence under colonial rule as a “colonized” youth and then again as a “colonized” teacher in one of the remotest locations in the country, he had to find a solution to his condition. Albert Memmi’s description of the “colonized” man’s mentality mirrors the image of Park’s personal struggle. Indeed, Park certainly pursued what Memmi saw as the “two historically possible solutions” to the trauma of colonization. Park first rejected his situation as a college student to his own detriment, and was subsequently sent off to a remote country school where his life was far from what he would have considered “heroic.” He then tried the alternative solution which, in line with Memmi’s description, was “to reconquer all the dimensions which colonization tore away from him.” If this was what Park sought, he certainly picked the ultimate route to achieving such reaffirmation: joining the almighty Japanese Imperial Army in Manchuria. After all, the only reason Park entered the Academy, in his own words, was “because I wanted to wear a long sword” (Kim Chongsin 1997: 199–200). According to Michael Keon, the Australian author of Park’s biography, Park had decided to enter the MMA because he believed that “the acquisition of military skills and disciplines was the only road that promised eventual freedom from alien domination” (Keon 1997: 62). Whether Park was motivated nationalistically as Keon suggests, or otherwise, is not relevant. What is relevant, however, was Park’s ambition to reinvent his personal identity as a “victorious” Japanese Army officer. Thus in April 1940 when Park was admitted to the MMA, he wasted no time in demonstrating, in Keon’s words, “his capacity to best others.” Most notably, within just three months, Park voluntarily Japanized his name to Takaki Masao.9 By the time he graduated from the Academy as dux of his class, Park was awarded a gold watch by Emperor Henry P’u-yi for academic excellence. In October 1942, Park, with three other Korean graduates, was admitted to the Japanese Military Academy in Tokyo, as was customary for tophonored students.10 Although the program of training and study at the Tokyo Academy involved thorough Japanization, Park appears to have had a wider agenda. According to Yi Sopchun, one of the four Koreans admitted that year, Park was deeply interested in the “February 26 Uprising,” the failed military coup by young Japanese Army officers on 26 February 1936. The influence of the February 26 Uprising, especially on Park’s reformist thought, seems to have been far greater than some have asserted. According to Park’s close associates, his mission-focused approach to socio-political and economic reform in his latter years was largely the product of self-taught lessons he had drawn from this incident, even though he publicly referred to the Japanese Meiji Revolution as his model (Interview with O Wonch’ol February 1995). 20

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In April 1944, after graduation,11 Park was assigned as Second Lieutenant to the 8th Corps of the Japanese Kwantung Army in Jehol Province near the Great Wall of China. A Chinese Colonel, T’ang Jirong, was the chief of the corps and under him were four Korean officers, including Park.12 Park was Colonel T’ang’s aide-de-camp, responsible for managing personnel and operational matters. According to Pang Wonch’ol, one of the four Korean officers in the 8th Corps, who has recently revealed this information, Park’s main duty was to deliver the chief’s orders to the troops. The 8th Corps was well known for its suppression of Korean and Chinese anti-Japanese guerrillas in the Manchurian region. One of the two most contentious versions of Park’s military activities in the Kwantung Army portrays him as a “front-man” for the Japanese. As intelligence officer, according to this version, Park played a key role in purging Korean liberation fighters (Chung Kyungmo 1987: 146). The other version portrays Park as a “secret agent” of the Korean Liberation Army in Manchuria (cited in Cho Kapche Choson Ilbo 27 and 28 February 1998). The latest evidence unearthed by Chungang Ilbo (Central Daily), however, shows that Park cannot escape the moral responsibility for his intelligence role in the 8th Corps. Because he carried out intelligence activities in office does not mean he was less guilty. The claim that Park was a “secret agent” of the Liberation Army is not proven, despite the latest analysis, which argues that Park played his “secret role” through the Manchurian subcommittee of the Korean National Foundation League (Choson kon’guk tongmaeng) in the year before liberation.13 Park, in fact, was a thoroughly colonized soldier whose attempt to deny essential elements of his personal identity through his membership of the Japanese military ended when Japan surrendered unconditionally on 15 August 1945.

Liberation and a new start Park reportedly returned to his home in Kumi on 8 May 1946 on an American LST ship, from Tianjin, China (Chungang Ilbo 1998: 98). On 23 September 1946, he entered the second class of the newly created Korean Constabulary Officers’ Training School (KCOTS) (Choson kyongbi sagwan hakkyo) in Seoul which later became the Korean Military Academy. The KCOTS enrolled 263 entrants. Of these, 36 were former officers of either the Japanese Army, the Japanese Kwantung Army, the Chinese Army or the Korean Liberation Army. KCOTS recruits also included many individuals with leftist backgrounds, a large number of whom harbored extreme hatred toward the avowed or alleged pro-Japanese officers who played a dominant role in the Korean National Police. To understand this indiscriminate blending of ideological extremes in the KCOTS, not to mention the Korean Constabulary and the subsequent 21

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Republic of Korea Army, it is important to note the revolutionary post-liberation conditions in South Korea after 1945. As the sole tutelage of South Korea during the transitional period (1945–8), the American Military Government (AMG) established the Korean military forces, the KCOTS, in 1946 as a “back-up resource for the Korean National Police” (Cumings 1981: 169). In this process, the AMG not only allowed Cho Pyongok, Minister of the Korean National Police, to maintain his protection of rightist military groupings, groups of Korean officers from both the Japanese and the Japanese Kwantung Armies, but also “selected leaders of private military groupings ‘who agreed with the plan’ to be the new leaders of the Constabulary” (Cumings 1981: 172). Under these circumstances, it is no surprise that Park, as a former lieutenant in the Japanese Kwantung Army, was not only recruited to the KCOTS, but was also encouraged to re-establish military ties with his former comrades from the Kwantung Army. The composition of the KCOTS, especially Park’s Second Class, represented a classic example of the strong group relationships that characterize the Korean people’s approach to social interconnection, either through school links (hagyon) or blood relationship (hyoryon) or regional connection (chiyon). The case of the Second Class provides a vivid illustration of hagyon, producing a total of six four-star generals, including Park, and nine three-star generals in the Korean Army hierarchy. After three months of officer training, Park, as a second lieutenant and as a platoon officer, was assigned to the 8th Regiment in Kangwon Province to guard the 38th Parallel. He was then aged 29, an older lieutenant among his peers who had an average age of 22–3. Park, as an elite militarist who had by then completed training in three military academies, would naturally have been resentful of his relatively lowly position.

Personal crises and war In the course of Korea’s transition from a colony to a republic, the nation became divided into the two politically hostile entities of North and South Korea, and then embroiled in civil war from 1950 to 1953. This turbulent ideological and political transition resulted in a profound personal crisis for many Koreans, including Park, who sought radical change by joining the South Korean Workers’ Party (known also as Nam Choson nodongdang or Namnodang). But exactly when Park joined the Workers’ Party is unknown, although many commentators observed that his Communist activities occurred while he was attending the KCOTS, sometime between September and December 1946. A key factor in this step seems to have been that only ten days after Park entered the KCOTS on 4 October 1946, his older brother, Sanghui, was executed by police in Kumi, where he had joined in the Communist riots 22

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instigated in Taegu on 1 October. His brother’s execution had an immediate impact on Park, both mentally and physically. At this time, Park is reported to have developed an intense resentment toward rightist Korean police and American military officers in Korea, both of whom he believed to have caused his brother’s death. His hatred toward the latter was so intense that, during his first posting at the 38th Parallel, he not only insulted his superior, a US military adviser, by dismissing the adviser’s suggestion as “Yankee interference” (Migug’nom kansop), but also objected to his regiment commander’s directive that all officers learn English. He allegedly asked: “Is this the American or Korean Army?” (Cho Kapche Choson Ilbo 12 March 1998). Ultimately, Park became a member of the Communist Party while training at the KCOTS. He thus played an active role, from the very start, in establishing the Communist network within the KCOTS. According to the retired general Yi Hallim (a former classmate of Park at the military academies in both Manchuria and Japan, and also first lieutenant and adjutant while Park was a cadet at the KCOTS), Park and First Lieutenant Yi Pyongju, a colleague in the Manchurian Army, tried to persuade Yi to become a Communist. Park even suggested to Yi, although in jest, “to bombard the Kyongmudae” (currently the president’s Blue House) where General John Reed Hodge, Commanding General of the United States Armed Forces in Korea, was in residence (Cho Kapche Choson Ilbo 11 March 1998). Park’s Communist activities at the KCOTS intensified when he was promoted to Captain14 and was assigned to cadet commander of the KCOTS – hereafter the Korean Military Academy. As cadet commander, especially during the training of the Fifth Class (of 420 cadets admitted on 23 October), Park consolidated his Communist network among his colleagues at the Academy. The four key training officers of the Fifth Class, including Park himself, for example, were members of the South Korean Workers’ Party. They were consequently arrested during the military purge of 1948 and all were executed except Park.15 The most notable factor about Park’s Communist connection was that those involved were mostly officers he knew from his Manchurian Army days. On 11 November 1948, Park was arrested in Seoul by a military investigation team on a charge of engaging in Communist activities in the army, including involvement in the Yosu-Sunch’on Military Revolt of 19 October 1948 (Cumings 1990: 259–67). Ironically, he had just returned from his posting as major (promoted on 1 August 1948), where he had been especially appointed as leader of operations in the suppression campaign against guerrilla movements set up in Kwangju in South Cholla Province. Park was charged with “mutiny” at the order of Colonel Ch’ae Pyongdok, then chief of staff. Park was sentenced to penal servitude for life on 8 February 1949 in a general court martial, having avoided the death sentence demanded by the prosecution. 23

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Articles in Kyonghyang sinmun on 17 February 1949 and in Seoul sinmun on 18 February 1949 are the only known surviving records of the case. According to the former, Park was one of four officers sentenced to “life imprisonment.” Park not only escaped execution by firing squad, but was also allowed to continue to work at Army Headquarters, albeit unofficially and unpaid, even after his “dishonorable discharge” from the army on 10 May 1949. It was even more bizarre that, on the day of Park’s dismissal, he was appointed head of the Operations and Intelligence Unit at Army Headquarters. Was Park guilty as charged or not? From the outset, the Korean Army appears to have worried little about Park’s security clearance, and seems to have been at pains “officially” to dismiss him and “unofficially” to assign him to the army’s highly sensitive anti-Communist counter-intelligence operations. These contradictory actions were taken at an extremely volatile time, less than a year before the outbreak of the Korean War, when Korea had already become caught up in the Cold War. Park’s trial and escape from execution was a lesson to him about the priority of survival, a lesson which his subsequent career shows he took to heart. Kim Anil, a retired brigadier-general who had investigated Park in 1949, claimed that by unconditionally collaborating with the AMG antiCommunist purge promoted by American policy shifts, and reportedly prompted by electric torture, Park impressed his investigators who, in turn, advocated that he should survive. However, in my view, the key factor that enabled Park to obtain clemency was neither his unconditional collaboration with the investigators nor any “proven” innocence regarding his alleged crime. It was, rather, the collective forces of Park’s personal connections. Those with the Manchurian group were especially important, both his “academy connection” and his military connection with the Kwantung Army. The campaign for Park’s clemency was entirely organized by the members of his own investigation team, namely Colonel Paek Sonyop, Major Kim Anil, and Captain Kim Ch’angyong.16 Paek played the key role, as the Chief of the Army Intelligence Bureau, recruiting Major Kim Anil, the second in charge, and Captain Kim Ch’angyong. Together, as joint surety liable for Park, they aligned other supporters of Park such as Colonels Chong Ilgwon, Kim Paekil, Won Yongdok, and Kim Chongyol, all of whom had developed their comradeship with Park through their postings in the Kwantung Army. The collective power of this Manchurian connection was even more potent when one considers the importance of the position each of these officers held in the Korean Army. In addition to Colonel Paek who, as far as Park’s case was concerned, held the most powerful position, Colonels Chong Ilgwon and Kim Paekil were also highly influential. They, together with Colonel Paek, were the “three top suppression commanders” of guerrilla movements in the South, including the Yosu-Sunch’on rebellion, and 24

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they worked closely with American military advisers (Cumings 1990: 287). Thus they had ready access to American advisers in the Korea Military Advisory Group (KMAG) which held supreme power in the Korean Army and was in a strong position to influence the President to grant Park clemency. Nearly forty years later, in 1989, Paek Sonyop, then a retired four-star general, recalled that he had not only campaigned internally but also lobbied external authorities, mainly the US military advisers in Korea, especially Captain James Hausman and General W. L. Roberts, to persuade President Rhee to grant clemency to Park (Paek Sonyop 1989: 348). Ko Chonghun, former assistant to both Ch’ae Pyongdok, the Chief of Staff, and W. L. Roberts, Commander of the KMAG, reportedly stated that one of the main factors which saved Park’s life was the attitude of certain Americans, including Hausman, toward him (Cho Kapche 1992: 164). According to Ko, American advisers warned President Rhee several times that an unreasonable degree of purification would destroy outstanding officers in the Korean Army. Another key determinant often overlooked was the personal relationship between President Rhee and the two leading campaigners for Park, Colonels Paek Sonyop and Chong Ilgwon. The influence of these officers over President Rhee was substantial because they, as the most well-known anti-Communist crusaders and as the most loyal generals of the rightist President, controlled the army at that time. On 30 June 1950, for example, Chong Ilgwon at the age of 32, became the army chief of staff for a year until June 1951. And Paek Sonyop, also at the age of 32, was promoted to army chief of staff on 23 July 1952, a post he held until 13 February 1954.17 Given their standing with the president, it is most likely that Park’s clemency was largely given to the two colonels as a personal favor by the president. In particular, Paek’s sponsorship of Park Chung Hee ranged from allowing Park to continue his duties as a “civilian officer,” albeit without salary, in the Army Intelligence Bureau after Park had been officially dismissed from the army in 1949, to his promotion to major-general in 1958, although it was categorized as “temporary” until 20 February 1961. Overall, Park certainly played his cards well: on the one hand, he disclosed all his secrets about the Communist network, thus betraying his comrades; and on the other, he impressed many important people, particularly his key investigators, appealing to their sympathy through his calm manner, even when facing the possibility of execution. Although Park saved himself from life imprisonment through his Manchurian connection, he was nevertheless dismissed from the army. As a result, he was forced to survive on the charity of others, mainly his colleagues and senior officers in the Army Intelligence Bureau where Colonel Paek Sonyop had given him shelter and allowed him to work as an unpaid civilian. According to one author, because of his “incorruptible character,” Park’s economic circumstances were close to “threatening his livelihood” (Yi Sangu 1993: 29). 25

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In addition to his economic difficulties, Park experienced profound disillusionment because of two incidents which, to a large extent, occurred as a result of his trial. First, on 13 August 1949, Park’s mother died as the result of an illness that had developed following the “shock” of learning about his military trial.18 Second, Park’s de facto wife, Yi Hyonnan, left him after discovering that he had been charged with Communist activities. (It is reported that the couple had been formally engaged since early 1948 and lived together until Park was arrested later that year.) Park’s psychological and economic traumas during this period seem to have toughened him further – by now he was a very experienced survivor – not just in defense of his life but in pursuit of his revolutionary reformist ideas. He is believed to have developed a view that Korean society at the time was plainly “rotten.” During this period, Park also uncannily demonstrated his capacity for obdurate self-management. On the one hand, for example, he thoroughly avoided open scrutiny and confrontation with those in power19 and, on the other, he developed a special circle of comrades, especially among junior officers from the 5th and 8th class of the military academy, which in fact provided two of the three most crucial groups involved in Park’s military coup of 1961.20 Kim Chaech’un, Pak Ch’iok, and Kim Chongp’il were among those included in this circle in late 1949. The outbreak of the Korean War on 25 June 1950 gave Park the opportunity to revive his career.21 In fact, Park was officially reinstated, under National Special Order No. 1, as head of the first section of the Army Intelligence Bureau on 30 June. Retired Lieutenant-General Chang Toyong, in recalling Park’s reinstatement, commented that on the morning of 30 June, he arrived in Suwon and saw Park and other officers in his temporary office set up at the Suwon Primary School. Chang was then chief of the Army Intelligence Bureau and Park was under his supervision. Park, added Chang, could easily have taken a different path, such as joining the North Korean Communists, because only two days earlier in the early morning of 28 June, North Korean soldiers had raided Seoul. This meant, claimed Chang, that he immediately ceased to have doubts about Park’s ideological soundness.22 As we have seen, however, the army was perfectly comfortable with Park’s “officially” tainted record. In fact, the army’s confidence in Park grew so fast that in less than a year after he had been reinstated, he had been promoted twice: from major to lieutenant-colonel in September 1950 and to colonel in April 1951. In this context, the Korean War provided Park with an extraordinary stroke of luck, enabling him to pull himself from the brink of personal disaster by saving his career, as well as creating rare opportunities for him to improve his military ranking. Park returned to Taegu as a colonel and as superintendent of the Army Intelligence School on 25 May 1951.23 26

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The transfer had been especially arranged as a personal favor by Brigadier-General Kim Chongmyon, then chief of the Army Intelligence Bureau, who had recently been Park’s supervisor as deputy commander of the 9th Division. Park’s activities during the Korean War reflected his unusual character. On the one hand, he was easily content with the simple pleasures of life and, on the other, he was extremely restless and liked to take risks. Unlike most soldiers who were at the frontline of the Korean War, for example, Park was at home enjoying family life with his new wife.24 On 10 December 1951, just six months after his transfer to the Intelligence School, he again secured a new post, this time as deputy chief to his former superior and long-time mentor, Brigadier-General Yi Yongmun,25 then chief of the Operation Training Division at Army Headquarters. This reunion with General Yi would develop into a partnership to plot a military coup.

The coup plot On 25 May 1952, President Rhee unilaterally declared Martial Law, without consulting UN military authorities, in three Provinces and Pusan, ordering the army to transfer two combat divisions to Pusan, where the government temporarily resided. This edict, designed mainly to advance the president’s personal plan of changing the constitution,26 was rejected by Lieutenant-General Yi Chongch’an, the Army Chief of Staff, who ostensibly insisted on the army’s neutrality in political affairs. Moreover, Yi challenged the president’s authority by issuing a special message to all army service personnel (classified as Army Headquarters Instruction no. 217) in which he stated: “The Army’s only mission is to guard the nation and its people. Thus the army does not belong to any institution, organization or person. It is not to be controlled by ever-changing politics.”27 Behind this bold statement lay the somewhat unfinished story of a plot by military generals to mount a coup against President Syngman Rhee, in which Park was allegedly involved. There are two versions of the level of Park’s involvement in the plot. One version portrays Park as a supporter of General Yi Chongch’an’s neutrality movement. The supporters of this version claim that Park was the author of Yi’s Message no. 217 (Chong Chaegyong 1992: 130). The other version goes further than just acknowledging Park’s role in drafting this message, by claiming that he was involved in the army’s coup conspiracy led by two generals, Yi Chongch’an and Yi Yongmun, Park’s chief. According to this version, Park was one of two key men selected to lead troops to Pusan and “volunteered” to lead the anti-government troops as long as his safety was guaranteed. As evidence, the supporters of this theory provide comments from several witnesses, including Chong Naehyok, then chief secretary to the chief of staff (also a former Minister of Commerce and 27

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Industry, from May 1961 to July 1962, and now a retired lieutenantgeneral) who mentions that he had given the coup plan the code name “panjong” (Cho Kapche 1992: 207). The conspiracy theory involving the two army generals is very persuasive, especially when we consider the Korean Government’s disclosure of a supposedly “declassified” document concerning the US Government’s plan to remove President Rhee from power during the Korean War.28 The generals’ conspiracy plan, nevertheless, was short-lived, and brought about an immediate reshuffle of three generals: Yi Chongch’an, Yi Youngmun, and Kim Chongp’yong.29 And, three months after the reshuffle, in October, Park was also moved. He was transferred to the artillery, a field totally new to him. It turned out, however, to be a lucky break for Park who was promoted to brigadier-general just over a year later, on 25 November 1953.30 And then, on 1 July 1955, Park, for the first time in his career, was appointed as commander of a combat unit, the Fifth Division (in Kangwon Province). Despite his promotion, Park was far from content with the army. In particular, he seemed particularly unhappy about the army’s trailing of his Communist record (although it was standard practice) which officially labeled him as “accomplice of those purged in the Army” (sukkun yolluja). In short, Park was never fully trusted by other elite military officers. Most commentators share the view that the Communist tag followed Park mainly because he had an unfriendly relationship with US military advisers. A veteran reporter of the Tonga Ilbo, Yi Sangu goes further by arguing that the US advisers repeatedly impeded Park’s promotion by acting through the commander of the UN forces, who was involved in the selection of generals in the Korean Army in the governments of both Rhee and Chang (1993: 30). In fact, US military advisers pressured the Chang Myon Government in many ways. General Carter B. Magruder, the UN commander in Korea, for example, demanded Park’s retirement on the grounds of his Communist past. He was suspicious of Park’s involvement in the young colonels’ reform campaign against corrupt generals – also known as the Haguksang Incident – in early spring and autumn 1960 (see Chapter 2). It seems clear, then, that Park’s resentment toward US officials must have been exacerbated by the exercise of American power over the Korean Army. Park’s resentment about American power over Korea, however, appears to have stemmed from more than just his lack of career opportunities or prestige due to American influence. As one who had been tortured and sentenced to life imprisonment for his Communist activities, he seems to have developed a deep-seated animosity toward any person or any institution he regarded as a threat to his independence. He showed no mercy to any individuals he viewed as a threat, even if they had once been the most trusted supporters of his military coup. His ruthless elimination of former 28

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comrades from his Manchurian connection after the May coup, for example, shows the extent of Park’s paranoia (Chungang Ilbo 1998: 100–5). Moreover, from childhood, Park had always been well known for his “unyielding spirit” (ogi). It seems that to Park American power stood as a reminder of his ill-fated past, his humiliating dependency during his lifethreatening trial, and his utter poverty immediately following his release from jail. In March 1958, Park was promoted to “provisional” major-general at the personal recommendation of the Army Chief of Staff, LieutenantGeneral Paek Sonyop. Park thus became the first to be appointed to the rank of major-general from the second class of the Korean Military Academy. His reputation in the army, by then, was well established in two regards. First there was his probity, reflected in his lacking the financial means to provide adequate support for his family. Yi T’agwan, who was Park’s driver for nearly twenty-five years from 1954 to 1979, recalled a prime example of Park and his family’s living conditions at that time. On 1 July 1955, according to Yi, Park’s family had to move to Seoul because Park had been appointed to the Fifth Division in Kangwon Province as division commander. Five days after Park had left Kwangju in south Cholla Province, his family received the message that he had found a place for them. Mrs Park and her two daughters, her mother and younger sister were driven by Yi T’agwan to Seoul. Yi’s recollection of that move sheds light on the early stages of Park’s penny-pinching family life in Seoul: When we arrived in Seoul, we found that the rented house was not yet vacant. Mrs Park and her family stayed at her brother’s place and I slept in a warehouse [at the Naryangjin train station] . . . Five days later, the family moved into a rented room attached to the front gate, with no kitchen. We cooked meals on a portable cooker because . . . the fireplace was located under the entrance. (Cho Kapche 1992: 223) The second reason for Park’s well-established reputation in the army derived from his “strong leadership,” especially among young reformist colonels, including the Eighth Class of 1949 of the Military Academy. Park’s “strong leadership” among these reformist colonels can best be understood in the context of his role in the army’s reform campaign known as “Clean-up the Military” in the aftermath of the April Student Revolution. In retrospect, this campaign appears to have been a contingency strategy to fill the hiatus left by the aborted coup planned for May 8 1960 (see Chapter 2), and as a lead up to the May 16 military coup in 1961. Park in fact initiated the army’s reform drive on 2 May 1960 when he demanded the resignation of the Army Chief of Staff, LieutenantGeneral Song Yoch’an, for his failure to prevent corruption in the army in 29

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the course of the presidential election of 15 March 1960. Park reportedly made this audacious move through a formal letter delivered to Song by Park’s aide on that day. Then, on 8 May, eight reformist colonels openly launched their “Clean-up the Military” campaign. On 20 May, General Song suddenly resigned. There followed a major shake-up in the Korean military hierarchy following the departure of the chiefs of staff of the air force and the navy, as well as the replacement of the Marine Corps Commandant and the deputy chief of staff of the navy, all less than two months after Park and the reformist colonels had engaged in their reform campaign.31 Despite Park’s daring activities behind the reformist colonels’ clean-up campaign, which developed into a military revolt known as the “haguksang sagon” (Revolt Against Seniors), however, the government did not take any firm action against either Park or the rebellious officers. On the contrary, the government appears to have been utterly misinformed, if not deceived, by its military advisers. At best, the government seems to have been left uninformed about the confused state of the army, especially concerning the reasons for Park’s frequent transfers. Within five months of his Pusan posting in January 1960, for example, Park was transferred three times: first, on 30 July, as commanding-general of the First Military District Command in Kwangju; second, on 11 September, as chief of staff for operations, ROK Army Headquarters in Seoul; and third, on 25 December 1960, as deputy-commander of the Second Army in Taegu. By being transferred to Taegu with the help of Major-General Chang Toyong, as we shall see in the following chapter, Park’s ambition to stage a military coup had come a step closer.

Conclusion The task of assessing the earlier part of Park’s career is contentious. The question it raises inevitably provokes emotive or judgmental responses. We saw that in his early career, first as a teacher and then as a soldier in the Japanese Imperial Army, Park pursued “two historically possible solutions” to his condition as a colonized man. But his subsequent capacity to change positions was quite extraordinary. He moved from the Japanese Army to the Korean Army, he joined the Namnodang Communists in the South while still in the Korean Army, he betrayed his Communist comrades to avoid execution, and then, relying on the influence of his old Manchurian connections, he rose to become a high-ranking officer in the conservative anti-Communist Rhee regime. Park’s switch in allegiances and his succession of ideological associations suggest that he was essentially a survivor, but a survivor who had a sharp eye for identifying emerging opportunities for his own betterment. There was almost nothing he would not do in order to save himself, to change his personal circum30

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stances and to follow his own path, no matter how risky or volatile the situation in which he found himself. For these reasons, Park’s critics view him as a collaborator and opportunist, who readily changed his ideological allegiance whenever his survival was threatened. Clearly this view is not unwarranted. In fact there is little evidence to suggest that Park at any stage abided by any given set of principles. It may be that it was the volatility of the Korean political scene over this period that motivated him to respond so instinctively to the rapid changes that confronted him, to make choices that were adapted to each new situation. We have seen that in his youth, Park was not at all the sort of exceptional individual who stood out among the crowd and showed potential as a future national leader, so his ultimate career trajectory is all the more extraordinary. And while Park was undoubtedly a skilled soldier with an eye for survival and the determination to further his ambition, he displayed many shortcomings and failures that could well have led to personal disaster at several stages. But he did survive and he always seized the moment, learning some salient lessons along the way. Park undoubtedly paid the price for his uncertain sense of identity as a young man, the disrupted state of the “colonized” soldier who is in need, as Memmi puts it, of “changing his skin.” But what is equally beyond doubt is Park’s development from a young and naive colonial “subject” into a reformist army general who, as this book will show, taught himself to draw lessons from his own history of survival and to apply those lessons in pursuit of his agenda in national development. In this process, he mastered the art of calculated risk-taking, right to the brink.

31

Figure 1 Park (second row, second from the right) with short hair as a school teacher.

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Figure 2 Park in teaching days dressed in military-style uniform.

Figure 3 The house in which Park was born.

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Figure 4 Park and his mother, when he was a student at Taegu Teachers’ College.

Figure 5 President Park and his eldest brother, Pak Tonghui.

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Figure 6 Park and his family soon after he became president.

Figure 7 Park meets President John F. Kennedy and his wife in 1963.

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Figure 8 Kim Chongp’il receives medal from Park soon after coup in 1961.

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Figure 9 Chong Chuyong, founder of Hyundai Conglomerate, briefs President Park.

Figure 10 Front left: Park T’aejun, first president of POSCO, President Park and Kim Hang’yol, Deputy Prime Minister 1969–72.

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Figure 11 Park inspects Korean-made weapons.

Figure 12 Park inspects Korean-made tank.

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2 THE EVE OF THE MILITARY COUP Intellectual debate on national reconstruction Again, let’s have another revolution. Revolution is the only way. If someone is suffering with an internal disease . . . the only way to [cure it] is to open his stomach and fix it, even though he might die in the middle of the operation (Ham Sokhon 1961a) While there were undoubtedly many intellectuals who mourned democracy’s passing, the coup was accepted with resignation by most of the populace, including the students. How did it happen that the obliteration of the whole apparatus of democratic government in one stroke elicited hardly a murmur when the rigging of a vice-presidential election under Rhee had led to a massive convulsion? (Palais 1973)

Introduction The eve of Park’s military rule, from April 1960 to May 1961, was marked by two revolutionary failures. One was the failure of the April Student Revolution of 1960 to bring about change in the national leadership elite, despite bringing down the Syngman Rhee regime (1948–60). The other was the failure of the new government (April 1960–May 1961) and ruling Democratic Party leadership to build public confidence in the government’s reform program, and to root out corruption and build the economy. In response, there emerged three notable developments: the rise of progressive reformist forces; the liberal intellectuals’ debate on national reconstruction; and the military reformists’ “Clean-up the Military” campaign which ultimately led to Park’s military coup of May 16, 1961. A careful consideration of these phenomena, as well as of the legacy of the Rhee regime, especially in terms of the continuance of conservative politics in a Cold War context, is important to understanding Park’s military coup and his management of national development built on 39

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nationalism. Despite the different priorities held by the various interest groups, the pre-1961 debate on national reconstruction that involved liberal intellectuals, progressive reformists, leading academics, media commentators and other politically active groups, such as the students, by and large reflected the view of the populace about national priorities, especially those that had prompted the April Student Revolution. The pre1961 debate, especially among liberal intellectuals, articulated the need for another “nationalist” revolution. The deliberations of the liberal intellectuals provided the basis for an ideology that Park would exploit for his military coup and subsequently in his approach to national development. Park, as we have seen, had been conspiring for a long time, waiting for the right opportunity to join with other disaffected military officers. He and his military reformist clique were fortunate in that the intellectual and political ferment that followed the April Student Revolution provided a convenient pretext for continuing his reform campaign in the military, and then the coup. Although initially second-in-charge of the coup, by offering strong leadership with economic development as the key national priority among others, Park was able to project himself as the type of leader demanded by many Koreans at that time. He was undoubtedly opportunistic, but he also had a genuine capacity to harness the people’s revolutionary expectations. This chapter explores the relevance of the pre-1961 intellectual debate to the revolutionary environment and the subsequent military coup, by analyzing its central issues and implications based generally upon materials published in Sasanggye (World of Thought), the most highly regarded monthly journal of that time among politically conscious Koreans, including liberal-thinking intellectuals.1 Although Sasanggye represented the thought of a group of liberal intellectuals, which may not necessarily have been the overall view of the populace, it is nevertheless a valuable record of the intellectual discussion which influenced, and reflected, public expectations of a “nationalist” revolution. Park later reflected: The intellectual activity at that time [pre-1961] was in fact exceptional, especially that of media commentators who put themselves on the line with the same patriotic sense of duty as that prevalent during the Japanese occupation. During this period they unearthed all forms of corruption and injustice while at the same time reproving political degeneration, and they implanted in the hearts of the people hatred and antipathy toward the Syngman Rhee Government. (Park Chung Hee 1971: 112)

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Post-April Revolution critique of government The April Revolution The anti-government student protests, known as the April Revolution, or simply sa-il-gu (4.19), came to a head on 19 April 1960. On that day, some 20,000 university and high school students, as well as citizens, marched on the presidential mansion, Kyongmudae (the old name of the Ch’ongwadae), demanding the censure of sitting politicians and a new election. The riot broke out in response to two main public concerns: first, the Rhee Government’s rigging of the election of 15 March and second, the discovery of the body of a 16-year-old high school student, Kim Chuyol, on the shore at Masan, South Kyongsang Province. Kim’s body had allegedly been thrown into the bay by police after he had been killed in a demonstration.2 Public outrage intensified into a revolutionary situation when, on 18 April, after three days of nation-wide student protests, a group of Korea University students was attacked, in the midst of their demonstration, by the Anti-Communist Youth Corps, an organized group of political gangsters. By midday 19 April, more than 100,000 citizens had joined the demonstration, but were met by a hail of police bullets. Across the city, about 130 demonstrators were killed and more than 1,000 were wounded (Yoksa pip’yongsa 1992: 381). The populace was outraged and horrified, and the United States was quick to express its concern over the Rhee Government’s actions. On 22 April, many eminent citizens began to demand President Rhee’s resignation and, indeed, three days later, about 300 university professors marched in the streets of Seoul and met in front of the National Assembly to demand that Rhee resign. The US also officially demanded the president’s resignation. Against this background, the Korean Martial Law Commander, Lieutenant-General Song Yoch’an, ordered his troops not to fire on anti-government demonstrators. On 26 April, Rhee resigned, placing government in the hands of his foreign Minister, Ho Chong. The Rhee legacy Many of the problems faced by Koreans after the War (1950–3) were, in their own eyes, attributable to the sheer incompetence of the Rhee Government and its monopoly control over political power. With antiCommunist Western-style “democracy” as his political ideology, Syngman Rhee was one of the most prominent Korean political leaders since the Japanese colonial era.3 He was inaugurated as the first president of South Korea on 15 August 1948. The problematic nature of Rhee’s idea of antiCommunist democracy derived from its feeble imitation of some elements of American-style liberal democracy. At the same time, the AMG in Korea 41

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(1945–8) had introduced a form of Western-style democracy under its strict occupation policy which, in effect, reduced Korea to the status of a colony of the US. This combination of democratic objectives, however, ran counter to Rhee’s personal ambition to rule Korea as an indigenous leader in typically East Asian fashion. Rhee’s attempt at imitating American-style democracy, while pursuing an anti-Communist policy in the Cold War context, highlights the political reality of that time, namely, the monopolization of political power by the conservatives. The conservatives generally comprised representatives of the landlord class, or “liberation aristocrats,”4 who formed political alliances such as the Korean Democratic Party (KDP – Han’guk Minjudang) which, by the end of 1947, had almost 86,000 members, including Kim Songsu, Cho Pyongok, Ho Chong, Yun Poson and many well-educated individuals.5 The KDP was especially popular among conservative Korean capitalists, with a US Army intelligence pamphlet describing it as a group of successful businessmen. In short, the conservatives maintained political control after liberation as a coalition, irrespective of political party affiliation, and many of them had been seen as “collaborators” by Korean standards in the late 1940s. Rhee’s success in acquiring his first presidency was due largely to his alliance with the KDP, which not only enjoyed a virtual monopoly of political power by holding key positions in the AMG in Korea, but had also secured Rhee as president to maintain its vested interests in Korean politics (Sim Chiyon 1983: 199–207). Having lived in the US for nearly four decades, Rhee had no particular base for his political activities when he returned to Korea in October 1945. Once he became president, however, Rhee effectively excluded the KDP from his cabinet by admitting just one KDP member, despite the KDP’s demand, as the largest elected group having 80 of the National Assembly’s 198 members, that they hold at least half of the ministries, including the post of prime minister (Han T’aesu 1961: 113). The establishment of the Liberal Party in March 1952, during the Korean War, reflected Rhee’s relentless efforts to maintain control over opposition conservatives. By the late 1950s, Rhee managed Korea’s political system without any serious rivals. Even the Democratic Party, which emerged in September 1955 from the old KDP in an effort to compete against Rhee’s Liberal Party, did not offer a significantly different political vision. In any case, Rhee ruthlessly crushed any opposition to his antiCommunist conservatism, and focused on his unification policy known as “March North and unify Korea” or simply the kugsi (national policy). The execution of Cho Pongam for alleged violations of the National Security Law just eight months before the 1960 presidential election was the clearest example of Rhee’s oppressive control over his potential rivals. As leader of the Progressive Party, Chinbodang, founded in November 1956, Cho had promoted peaceful unification in his 1956 presidential campaign 42

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and had surprised Rhee and his Liberals by obtaining more than 30 percent of the total vote.6 There were thus no real rivals to Rhee. As the most prominent Elder7 of Korean politics and society, Rhee commanded unchallenged respect and obedience from his subordinates, just as a traditional Confucian father governed his family. This phenomenon arose partly because the conservatives, including many prominent opposition leaders, had served Rhee at one time or another, and partly because, in accordance with Korea’s Confucian cultural and political tradition, the junior served the senior unconditionally. Pluralism in ideology and equality in human relationships were foreign concepts. Rhee’s image as a ruler of an autocracy, however, left him wide open to criticism. The influential US report by Conlon Associates in 1960, entitled “United States Foreign Policy – Asia,” observed: “Korea, as the opposition is threatened and suppressed, is a one-and-a-half party system, rather than two political parties” (K’onlon ossosieissu pogoso 1960: 122–9).8 This report by Professor Robert Scalapino and his team was frequently cited by Park in an effort to justify his coup. A summary made in 1967 by Ch’a Kibyok, a prominent political scientist, on the characteristics of the conservatives is revealing: The political power which has ruled this nation since liberation was the Conservatives, mainly the landlord class who were nurtured by the Japanese [colonial government]. Conservative power is the only one which has maintained its existence in the midst of national division devised by foreign powers and in the midst of the critical circumstances which resulted from the Leftists’ and the Rightists’ struggle to the extreme . . . In short, Dr Rhee made the privileged class his basis from which the Korean Government echoed the voice of foreign powers, but was separated from the people. The April 19 [Revolution] and the May 16 [military coup] were revolts against this conservative power . . . [and] saw the reappearance of nationalism. (Ch’a Kibyok 1967: 20–1) In the aftermath of the April Student Revolution, many Koreans, particularly urban citizens and students, concluded that their sitting politicians were untrustworthy and incapable of rooting out political corruption and exposing business leaders who had acquired assets illegally. In this context, some liberal intellectuals, including Chang Chunha, the ownereditor of Sasanggye and a staunch nationalist, regarded the April Student Revolution as an expression of collective feeling on the part of the citizens, defining it as a “simin hyongmyong” (civilian revolution), as well as a “chisongin ui hyongmyong” (intellectuals’ revolution) for democracy (Chang Chunha 1960: 36),9 a democratic revolution aimed especially at achieving 43

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political and economic freedom. Pak Chonghong, Professor of Philosophy at Seoul National University, stated: It is indisputable that through the April Student Revolution there emerged genuine intellectual thought, which was as yet obscure and immature, because it was only a bud. As an ideology, this intellectual thought had not yet reached the level of theory with a systematic structure. Nevertheless, it was an invaluable guide, a new thought that we must not throw away. (Pak Chonghong 1961: 46–7) Pak argued that the April Student Revolution succeeded because of “creative intelligence” and “many objective conditions.” According to him, the April Student Revolution was a genuine manifestation of Korean ideology, transforming into action the Korean people’s sense of justice in regard to their “minjokchok chuch’esong,” that is, their national independence or national self-reliance. He therefore identified the emergence of this populist “Korean ideology” as “our ideology” (Pak Chonghong 1961: 46–7). Its content was quick to find expression in the debate on national reconstruction that was to follow. The irony of the April Student Revolution, however, was that while the students were the victors, the spoils of victory again went to the conservatives, although this time to remnant conservatives who made up the Interim and Chang Myon governments. The Interim and Chang Myon governments Sin Sangch’o, a prominent political analyst in the 1960s, suggested that the April Student Revolution had four aims: to overthrow the dictator, President Rhee; to eradicate the old ruling power linked to Rhee; to establish a new economic order; and to reorganize the societal system which had provided the supporting framework for the dictator (1960a: 86). Of the four, only the first aim was achieved. Ham Sokhon, a well-known Quaker and a writer who was regarded by many leading intellectuals as an “elder of the eminent persons out of office” (Song Konho 1983: 162), argued that the April Student Revolution stopped with its first goal because both the Interim and Chang governments were too weak to take resolute action against corrupt politicians while exercising opportunism and factionalism for their own interests (1961a: 31). In a similar vein, Sin Sangch’o observed that changing government from one headed by the Liberal Party to one headed by the Democratic Party would achieve nothing (1960b: 87). For two main reasons, the Interim Government of Ho Chong had limited capacity to carry out the revolutionary tasks demanded by the people. First, Ho Chong, an old friend of President Rhee and a member 44

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of the former ruling Liberal Party, retained primary loyalty to his party. Second, the new Democratic Party, soon to constitute the Chang Government, put the Interim Government under pressure as early as July 1960. Nevertheless, the Interim Government quickly drafted a new constitution in order to redress the imbalance between executive and legislative power. Yun Poson (1897–1990) was elected on 29 July as a figurehead president devoid of effective power, while genuine political power was vested in the State Council headed by the Prime Minister, Chang Myon (John M. Chang). What was assumed in this process was Korea’s preparedness for liberal democracy or, at least, its readiness to adopt a democratic sociopolitical framework. Despite this bold beginning, the Chang Myon Government was inundated with challenges from within its own ruling Democratic Party as well as from the three major external reformist groups: the progressives, the Teachers’ Union which led the labor movement, and university students. Within the party, the challenges arose entirely from factional strife that had reached an irreconcilable stage when Chang Myon, leader of the “New Faction,” only succeeded by a margin of three votes in acquiring the prime ministership. Consequently, the government lacked the unity, political integrity and discipline necessary for exerting leadership. Members formed a divided and directionless legislature, which the media characterized as a body that, possessing no ideology, no integrity and no ability, behaved like a Don Quixote without self-understanding (Om Kihyong 1961: 131). Chang was not unaware of the task before him and, to his credit, his government introduced long-term economic planning for the first time, while also pursuing the decentralization of the political system. Despite these efforts, however, many critics, including Sin Sangch’o, argued that if the two factions of the Democratic Party had been united and had exercised their revolutionary power, the people’s enthusiasm would have been satisfied (Sin Sangch’o 1961: 146). Finally, in addition to political factionalism, the economy was far from healthy. Inflation was crippling: the price of rice increased by 60 percent and coal and oil prices by 23 percent in four months, from December 1960 to April 1961. Between November and February, national production fell more than 12 percent (Han’guk Ilbo April 23 1961). Simultaneously, the recorded crime rate more than doubled, while the felony arrest rate dropped from 90 percent to 68 percent. The rate of unemployment lingered at the unacceptably high levels of 23.4 percent in 1959 and 23.7 percent in 1960. At about the time of the April Student Revolution, the number of unemployed had reached two and a half million. The underemployed in rural areas numbered almost two million, with the rural economy in a perilous state (Han Wansang et al. 1983: 74–5). Some historians state that over a million farming households suffered food shortages in the spring of 1960 and more than nine million children 45

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throughout the country regularly went without lunch (Han’guk yoksa yon’guhoe 1992: 382). Clearly, a vicious circle of poverty had set in. This was exacerbated by low social morale which was not helped by the government’s inability to take the strong action necessary to achieve the sweeping changes that the public demanded. They wanted a thorough and rapid purging of all individuals and groups who were closely connected to the Rhee Government’s election-rigging, illicit profiteering and other forms of official corruption at high levels. Prime Minister Chang and his party, however, repeatedly compromised their position in this regard by tampering with the list of suspects, especially those who were high-ranking military officers and leading businessmen. In disgust, Ham Sokhon wrote: What is the achievement of the government of Chang Myon to date, not to mention the Interim Government of Ho Chong? Winter is nearly here while [the politicians] are busy with factional strife. There is not a single production line which runs properly while the minjung (masses) cry out only about their plight. The rats [corrupt politicians] captured in the cabinet have all run away. Not to mention the fact that they [the members of the government] are not capable of catching additional new rats while they lose those that were caught by others! . . . Anyhow, why is the government so hesitant to deal with the trapped rats? Is it that the cat is already too old or is it too stuffed with stolen food? (1961a: 31) The contrast between the clarity of this insight and the lack of strong action in the government is stark and shows why the public demanded the sweeping reform which then became unstoppable. In fact, their demand for revolutionary change inspired urban citizens, including the students, to accept the military coup less than nine months after the inauguration of the Chang Government with, in James B. Palais’ words, “hardly a murmur” (1973: 328) Progressive reformist movements One of the hottest socio-political issues of the pre-1961 intellectual debate was the progressive reformists’ campaign for the “peaceful unification” of North and South Korea. The left-inclined progressive reformists and nonpolitical groups, including university students, exploited the openness of the Chang Government. As discussed above, peaceful unification as an alternative policy had been quashed when Cho Pongam, leader of the Progressive Party, was executed in July 1959 and the progressive forces were thereby muted. In the campaign prior to the national election in July 46

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1960, however, the issue of peaceful unification was again promoted by both the ruling Democratic Party and the progressive political parties, such as the Socialist Mass Party (Sahoe taejungdang), the Socialist Reform Party (Sahoe hyoksindang) and the Korea Socialist Party (Han’guk sahoedang). A notable characteristic of these so-called “progressive political forces” was that, as one observer pointed out, they did not necessarily share the same ideological goals or background (Song Yubo 1983: 141). Members of the Socialist People’s Party, for example, included former members of the Progressive Party. In contrast, the Korea Socialist Party led by Chon Chinhan included former members of the right-wing union movement after Liberation. Thus the progressive forces at the time represented nothing less than every political group that had been excluded from the political system under the Rhee Government. While progressive reformists debated Korea’s unification, university students campaigned even more vigorously for this outcome. More than a dozen universities throughout the country, for example, formed the Society for the Study of National Unification (Minjok t’ongil yon’guhoe) within a few months of the formation of the League of National Unification (Minjok t’ongil yonmaeng or simply mint’ongyon) by Seoul National University students on 1 November 1960. By early 1961, more than twenty high schools had formed their own Society for the Study of National Unification. Amidst this unification craze, many Koreans, especially conservative politicians, intellectuals, businessmen and military officers, became increasingly anxious about the threat to socio-political stability posed by the widespread rejection of antiCommunism. Some of the media, such as the Minjok Ilbo (National Daily), first published in February 1961, followed a pro-active left wing policy. Communist sympathy, from the viewpoint of the conservative Koreans, had progressed far enough when, on 3 May, the members of the mint’ongyon from Seoul National University called for a meeting among students from both North and South Korea. The students openly appealed to North Korea: “Brothers, come to us and let us march together! . . . Let’s go to the North! Come to the South! Let us meet in P’anmunjom.” (Song, Konho 1983: 150) The anxiety of Koreans about the growing social unrest reached new heights when, on 13 May, over ten thousand citizens and students staged a public rally chanting “Old Generation Get Out!” and “Yankee Go Home!” and calling for unification.10 Despite serious problems and contradictions in the Korean social system, most Koreans were not prepared for the social disruption that came with free expression, especially the controversy surrounding the unification campaigns conducted by progressive reformist forces. Given that the military coup was staged amidst this social turmoil, it is not too difficult to understand how the coup leaders would have won over the public, particularly the conservatives, by their massive 47

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purge of left-wing progressive reformists just three days after their seizure of power,11 and how they were able to promote their coup as an act of “patriotism” to save the nation from crisis.

Debate pre-1961 Irrespective of the unification issue, by April 1961 many leading liberal intellectuals sought to build Korea around two themes: construction of economic prosperity and reformation of the national character. The minimum expectation of the April Student Revolution had been “a society which is at least capable of feeding and clothing its people” (Hong Isop 1961: 54). To achieve this goal, intellectuals argued for national stability and autonomy through labor management and free enterprise within a planned economy. In a special feature article in the March 1960 edition of Sasanggye entitled “Chayu kyongjenya, kyehoek kyongjenya?” (A free economy or a planned economy?), economic commentators, including Yi Ch’angyol, Professor of Economics at Korea University, argued that Korea should utilize a “mixed economic system” (honhap kyongje ch’eje) in which Korean industry would seek to absorb the unemployed most efficiently by focusing on certain industries. Furthermore, according to Yi, Korean industry also needed to find the most effective means of allocating materials, resources and demand to allied industries. Yi argued: The economic direction that we require must be a kind of mixed economic system. We obviously lack the necessary accumulation of national capital. We also lack endeavor and our natural resources are scarce. But we have an excessive surplus of labor. In order to lead this labor force near to full employment, there needs to be a kind of “supply effect.” This effect can be regarded as a form of imbalanced development. By selecting a certain group of industries, regardless of whether a market exists or not, and by maintaining their development through intensive investment, even by force – not through so-called free competition but through planned investment, it is intended to stimulate the productivity of other industries spontaneously with the supply of materials that would be produced through such development . . . It should be clear that it is very difficult to expect balanced economic growth in our current condition. (1961: 108) The planned economy argument was largely, although not exclusively, based on the West German model, seen by intellectuals as pre-eminent in the ideological conflict between East and West Germany. The much discussed “German economic miracle” was viewed as having been achieved 48

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by “developing economic strength to the maximum, utilizing a strategy which, on the one hand, adopted the principle of democratic free enterprise and, on the other, managed a planned economy under rationalized control” (Cho Kagyong 1961: 76). In viewing the Korean condition of Cold War politics, however, Cho Kagyong, Professor of Philosophy at Seoul National University, argued in Sasanggye in April 1961, “Communism is not a force which can be eradicated by [a theoretical] opposition. The infiltration of Communism can be blocked only by the strength of an economy which is self-reliant (charip) and self-sufficient (chajok)” (1961: 76). Similiary, leading historian Hong Isop in his 1961 essay, “Re-evaluation of the April Student Revolution” (Shawl hyongmyong ui chaep’yongkka), argued that Korean society must be “revolutionized” in order to establish economic prosperity. Referring to the Korean economy under various political systems throughout history, from the feudal dynasty to the Rhee Government, Hong observed that the present government (of Chang Myon) must concentrate immediately on changing economic structures. He called for reform in order to tackle three major tasks: first, the reorganization of debts in all farming and fishing villages; second, the reallocation of land to tenant farmers; and third, securing both fishery and agricultural products including fertilizer (1961: 58).12 In the end, many leading academics and intellectuals shared the economists’ view that, “All problems are due to economics” (modun munje nun kyongje ro t’onghanda) (Kim Sanghyop et al. 1960a: 54). The call for chuch’esong At the core of the call for Korea’s “chuch’esong” (independence/autonomy) in politics and the economy, especially government decision-making, there emerged a strong sense of self-awakening, as well as resentment about dependence on the United States. Many educated urban citizens argued that Korea’s foreign policy needed revision, particularly the lopsided ROK–US Status-of-Forces Agreement which proved incapable of preventing criminal activity by US soldiers in Korea, let alone respecting the Korean Government’s sovereign right to govern without US domination. In the May 1961 edition, Sasanggye published a letter submitted by a firstyear student from Korea University. It stated: It is said that Korea’s foreign policy is a ‘Yes, Sir’ policy . . . At a time like this when Korea is not even at war after the establishment of the armistice, US soldiers stationed in Korea cut Korean women’s hair at random and deliberately kill a perfectly normal boy. And yet, the Korean Government has neither the right to punish those criminals nor the status to voice its views on such 49

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conduct. [Under these conditions], how can Korea be an independent nation and not a dependency of the US? (Yi Sokhwan 1961: 31–2) An equally upsetting aspect of US policy in Korea, according to one technical executive, was US management of aid which, he argued, was lopsided, unilateral and managed with political coercion to maximize America’s own national and commercial interests (Yi Tonghong 1960: 62). Similarly, another economic observer argued that while the structure of the US aid program established an initial framework for the Korean economy, it nevertheless created what he termed, “dependent state monopoly capitalism” (chongsokchok kukka tokchom chabonjuui) (Im Wont’aek 1960: 78). (This phrase became one of the most powerful dicta of Korean democracy activists and university students in their struggle against Park’s state-led economic development during the 1970s.) By November 1960, criticism of US aid policy by intellectuals complemented the anti-American mood of the general public, with Sasanggye featuring this theme in its November 1960 and March 1961 issues. Under the heading “Is it Autonomy or Dependency?” (Charip inya? Yesok inya?), Pu Wanhyok, an economic analyst, and Cho Tongp’il characterized American aid policy in Korea and its inevitable consequences as the major factor weakening and undermining Korea’s political and economic chuch’esong, especially in terms of decision-making on national affairs. Cho commented: The American aid program hitherto implemented in Korea has failed to achieve any particular effect in creating economic conditions conducive to building economic independence. Instead, it has increased the degree of Korea’s economic dependence and intensified Korea’s dependency on the American economy . . . Because of this, the masses in Korea would, I suspect, think that the [Korea–America] Economic Aid Agreement this year was also intended to intensify Korea’s dependency [on America] even further. (Cho Tongp’il and Pu Wanhyok 1961: 207) Cho argued that Korea needed to take a new direction in accepting American aid if it aimed to establish national autonomy. He identified US aid policy as the main reason for the backwardness of countries in other regions such as Latin America and Southeast Asia. He believed the emergence of anti-Americanism among some countries was due to American aid policy designed primarily for America’s own economic interests (Cho Tongp’il and Pu Wanhyok 1961: 206–7). This criticism was not restricted to a handful of liberal intellectuals and their supporters. By March 1961, 50

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public resentment to the US aid program became so intense that it popularized anti-Americanism coupled with a new wave of nationalism emphasizing Korea’s chuch’esong. In observing this nationalistic anti-American climate, the U.S. Embassy in Seoul reported to its State Department as follows: During recent months there has been a growing questioning of the U.S. [sic] position in the ROK, focusing on the question of ROK sovereignty, U.S. economic aid, and on demands for a Status of Forces Agreement. In this climate of criticism there has developed a public hypersensitivity regarding the effectiveness of U.S. aid, especially as concerns a lack of long range economic development and of our involvement in the ROK economic decision-making process. The controversy over ratification of the economic aid agreement, the negative public reaction to press reports of Under Secretary Ball’s speech on March 7 in Chicago, and the disproportionately extravagant, favorable press treatment of the recently concluded ROK–West German Technical Aid Agreement, are illustrative of this public climate. (Macdonald 1992: 289; emphasis added in source text) It is true that the anti-American climate became a recognizable social phenomenon only after the April Student Revolution. But this does not necessarily mean that the Korean people as a whole bore no deep-seated resentment toward the US, particularly regarding its role in the division of their country into North and South Korea. In fact, just a month after the April Student Revolution, Cho Sunsung, Professor of Political Science at Seoul National University, openly blamed the US for the division of the Korean nation. He argued: Korea’s division was a tragedy created by the ‘politics of power’ between the Great Powers, which Korea could not help avoid . . . As a victorious nation of World War Il, America held hegemony in world politics through which she could exercise her dominance in any way she wished . . . [Therefore,] today’s tragedy [of Korea] would have been avoided if America had thought through the future implications for Korea and prepared for it by planning a resolute policy toward Korea, to defend her against the diplomatic offensives of the Soviet Union. (Cho Sunsung 1960: 57) Cho concluded that Korea had been a victim of the particular style of US foreign policy. President Harry Truman’s foreign policy, according to Cho, had been one of military diplomacy predominantly focused on 51

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producing immediate victories rather than long-term outcomes. As a consequence, Cho asserted, America made a “big mistake” when it suggested the 38th parallel to the Soviets, thereby scattering the seeds of tragedy on the Korean peninsula (1960: 65). This open criticism by liberal intellectuals of American foreign policy clearly influenced the Chang Myon Government and the ruling Democratic Party. On 18 April, for example, the National Assembly passed a three-point resolution which, in the words of MacDonald summarizing US State Department archives: (1) urged long-range economic planning by both the ROK and the United States to produce economic self-sufficiency and improved living standards; (2) asked the United States to ‘give the fullest consideration to the sovereign rights of the Korean Government in the administration of the economic aid plan,’ while Korea paid full respect to American advice; (3) called for a nation-wide austerity drive, emphasizing rehabilitation of the rural economy and of basic industries, with U.S. policies to support this goal. (Macdonald 1992: 289) This resolution is noteworthy because it showed the characteristic of the Chang Government’s long-range economic planning after Prime Minister Chang had instructed the Economic Development Council to draw up a five-year development plan at the end of 1960 (Wolf 1962: 23). In fact this resolution, according to Macdonald, did not reach the US Embassy until three days after the military coup. By then, Park and his military junta had already adopted its key elements as their platform for reform, including the first Five-Year Development Plan (discussed further in Chapter 3). The call for a people’s revolution Rather than looking for solutions in specific problem areas of the economy or particular aspects of national dependency, Ham Sokhon called for an all-out people’s revolution. Building a new nation, according to Ham, could not be achieved without a revolution of the national character. Historically, the fundamental cause of the Korean people’s sufferings, he argued, was due mainly to the weakness of their national character and the only way to change the national character was to have a people’s revolution (1961a: 31). Ham’s call for another revolution first appeared in the January 1961 edition of Sasanggye, and again in a threepart series of his essay entitled, “How Do We Build a New Nation?” (Saenara rul ottokke seulkka?) published in the April to June editions of the journal. In his discussion of the Chang Myon Government’s National 52

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Land Construction Movement, Ham called for what he termed a “revolution of the national spirit”: The National Land Construction [Movement] itself is in fact a revolution. This project cannot be accomplished without a revolutionary spirit. This is a bloodless revolution . . . Therefore, there are things to throw away and things to build anew. What should we throw away? Let us throw away our habits of factionalism, flunkeyism, fatalism and idleness, our prestige-oriented life principle and dependent mentality . . .What should we build anew? Let each of us develop ownership of ‘self’ before anything else; let us have the spirit of unity; let us cultivate an enterprising spirit; let us have a more inquiring mind; and let us positively build a new confidence. (Ham Sokhon 1961b: 50;13 emphasis added) Ham believed that a new revolution must be managed differently so that the ordinary people would be educated and empowered to participate in “nara il” (national tasks). According to Ham, this revolution required a change in the people’s attitude, including that of intellectuals: “no revolution is possible without intellectuals who represent the middle stratum of society. However, they have a weakness for wanting to rise up like a balloon. As a result, the people always become deluded” (1961b: 42). Stressing education, equality, and the need to instill a national sense of self-worth, Ham asserted that Korea’s social system, which he referred to as the “master frame,” had to change before anything else. He wrote: Men are the servants of a system, of a [value-system] framework, because they are social beings. There cannot be a society without a certain framework just as an individual cannot conceive his or her own mind without possessing a body. Although men create the [social] framework, it also in turn creates men . . . if anyone desires to form newborn babies into a new people, one must first of all change the whole framework of society. (1961a: 31) Ham added that this frame had to be built on two common principles: “hamyon pandusi toenda” (it will certainly happen if you try) and “minjung ui kasumman pogo kara” (proceed focused only on the feelings of the working masses) (1961a: 31). These mass-oriented community ideals subsequently became the conventional rhetoric of Korean nationalism as promoted by two major camps: the student-led working masses’ human rights campaign and their democracy movement, and state-led rapid development under Park and his successors. The fact that Ham never approved of Park, or served under him, is not important. What is significant, however, 53

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is that Ham’s call for a people’s revolution to rebuild the national character and spirit provided a basis for Park to justify his reform agenda after the coup – even though Park’s idea of reform was all top-down and thus the complete opposite of Ham’s idea of revolution in values from the bottom up, in which the mass of the people would undergo a transformation of values. In other words, Park used Ham’s language to appeal for “bottom-up” public support for, and confidence in, his junta leadership and his subsequent development policies. By October 1960, the established terminology of national independence/autonomy, whether expressed as minjokchok chuch’esong or minjokchok chajusong, referred to the state and the people’s pursuit of a “Korean-style” philosophy of life, ethics and social order. Professor Pak Chonghong’s interview with An Pyonguk, entitled “Philosophy Exists within Daily Life” (Ch’olhak un saenghwal sog e itta), discussed the search for “a new world view, a new value-system, new behavioral rules and a new morality, all of which had to be based on minjokchok chuch’esong” (Pak Chonghong and An Pyonguk 1961: 164). In a related article, Pak outlined his thoughts on why a nation requires an ideology and its essential criteria, and on the need for the Korean people to identify an ideology as “our ideology.” Pak stated: Ideology is something which can entirely determine one’s action and direction and something to which one cannot help but respond completely because it thoroughly touches one’s heart and soul. Ideology must therefore not only be part of one’s flesh and blood, but must also be defined in terms of matters which, for this nation, have been the subject of a universal cry from the heart . . . our ideology must be unearthed from our own thought and be defined by ourselves, not by others. In this way, our ideology becomes something by which we live and to which, if possible, we will give our lives without a second thought and for which we would die gladly with no regret. Only that sort of ideology can become our [very own] ideology. (Pak Chonghong 1961: 45) Accordingly, the terms minjok chuch’esong and Han’gukchok chuch’esong implied “our ideology.” These fundamentally nationalistic terms symbolized a new Korean perspective, which not only emphasized the importance of national autonomy and the rejection of foreign dominance, dependency and flunkeyism, but also promoted the value of hard work, creativity and patriotism. Importantly, historical and cultural tradition was called upon to serve as a foundation to the new ideology. The use of the words chuch’e and chuch’esong, however, calls for particular attention, especially when it is juxtaposed to North Korea’s adoption of “Juch’e sasang” 54

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(self-reliance ideology) as its “only ideology” after the Communist Party’s Fourth Congress in September 1961.14 I have found no evidence, however, of South Korean intellectuals during that period focusing on Kim Il Sung’s Juch’e (chuch’e) ideology. At the same time, it is reasonable to assume that intellectuals in South Korea were not entirely unfamiliar with North Korea’s promotion of the term minjok chuch’esong which was based on the historical notion of antiflunkeyism and national independence that held sway in the 1920s. Although Park may well have been familiar with the Japanese concepts of shutai and shutaiteki15 from his colonial days, he also adopted Pak Chonghong’s interpretation of the term chuch’esong as the official stance for the state’s economic nationalism. It was no coincidence that Pak Chonghong later authored the National Charter of Education which, in December 1968, was officially declared as a manifesto of Park’s leadership ideology.

Agenda for national reconstruction Chang Chunha, an ardent nationalist liberal intellectual and the publisher–editor of Sasanggye (1953–67), informed his readers in his February 1961 editorial that, “Hard Work is the Only Means for Survival” (1961a: 24–50). He argued that constructing an efficient labor system was the only way to transform Korea into an “Advancing Fatherland.” Chang called for a change in social ethics so that the nation would develop a genuine appreciation of diligence and hard work. To achieve such change, and in order to rebuild a society that was sluggish and lacked will, the government needed to cultivate a strong ethos among the people to promote practicality, plainness, saving, stability, trust and constructiveness. He stated that it was economically essential to establish a labor management system. However, Chang believed that in backward nations such a system was only possible: under a farsighted plan and thought-out policies provided by an empowered government [under] strong leadership . . . Therefore, Korea needs more desperately than ever a government that will effectively implement our historical tasks according to a plan which is not weak or temporary but thoroughly tested, and with strong leadership. (Chang Chunha 1961a: 24–50) By referring to “liberal democracy” as a precondition for national reconstruction, Chang’s prescription for social reform, proceeding under a “strong leader” and “guided democracy,” called for a morally superior political leader who would direct his people in the task of nation-building. Likewise, many other leading liberal intellectuals, including Kim 55

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Sanghyop, Sin Sangch’o and Han T’aeyon, also used the term “liberal democracy” in conjunction with “strong leadership.” Under the slogan “changing the national character for the better,” these intellectuals highlighted the fundamental necessity for the Korean people to adopt a spirit of “diligence and frugality.” They argued that a new Korean ethos founded on these two virtues, combined with strong leadership, was crucial for national reconstruction. The building of a “liberal democratic nation-state,” according to these liberal intellectuals, required a “young and revolutionary leader” (Kim Sanghyop et al. 1960b: 35). In the April 1961 issue, Sasanggye published the full text of “On heroic leadership and the dilemma of strong men and weak peoples” by Arthur Schlesinger Jr, aiming to reinforce public feeling about the government’s weak leadership. Sasanggye, attempting to stimulate intellectual debate, also featured the article, “A theory on the Korean people’s inferiority complex” (Chong Yangun 1961: 111–17). In the following month, Sasanggye focused on the Korean value-system by introducing five feature articles under the theme of re-examination of [Korean] value consciousness. The chaotic condition of Korean society was believed to be mainly “due to the absence of [strong] leadership” and to the “loss of harmony and consistency in new value-systems which have spread widely in Korean society” (Yi Man’gap 1961: 70). Intellectuals argued that the problems of weak leadership and poor national character were responsible for the low self-esteem of the Korean people. In examining the causes of the Korean inferiority complex and its psychological processes, Chong Yangun, a professor of psychology, described the contemporary images of Korea pre-1961 as follows: In the olden days, we were told that our neighboring countries admired our civilization so that they wished to learn from us. They regarded our nation as the ‘Eastern Land of Refinement.’ But what is the current situation? Some comments we occasionally hear about Korea from abroad indicate that Korea is seen as a nation similar to hell on earth: it is a nation of thieves, it is packed with beggars and vagrants, and it is a smelly nation covered with rubbish. (Chong Yangun 1961: 111) Chong proposed three reasons for the inferiority complex. The first was Korea’s long history of playing second fiddle to superior powers in the arena of world politics. Korea served China as her “servant” throughout the five hundred years of the Yi Dynasty (1392–1909); was then subject to Japanese colonial rule (1910–45) which led the “nation to her critical stage of ruin”; and finally was liberated, except that liberation was not obtained by the Koreans themselves, but rather was given to them by the 56

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American forces as an outcome of the US victory in the Second World War. Chong argued that the image created by the global perspective that Korea, historically, was an inferior nation inevitably affected the psychology of the Korean people. The second reason, Chong suggested, was the Korean people’s disillusionment with their own culture which, he asserted, seemed to be dispensable whenever a foreign culture invaded Korea. This phenomenon was blamed on the historical perception that Korea possessed no distinct culture of its own and consequently possessed no indigenous cultural basis. As a result, Chong concluded, Koreans were inevitably burdened with an inferiority complex caused by self-disillusionment. Chong’s third reason was Korea’s economic inferiority which, he argued, rendered the nation too easily subject to foreign dominance (1961: 116). Chong had put his finger on three factors which combined to produce a massive Korean inferiority complex. The intellectuals accordingly called for the Korean people to undertake a search for self-knowledge and understanding. Yi Man’gap, Professor of Sociology at Seoul National University, asserted that whoever wished to know the workings of the Korean mind had to “discover the psychological characteristics of the Korean people and know the objective circumstances in which Koreans are placed” (1961: 64). The “objective circumstances” referred to the complex and oppressive history of Korea’s “pre-modern value-system.” According to Yi’s school of thought, the Korean people’s self-image, especially that of the commoners, had been shaped entirely by despotic Confucian feudalism. In the words of Ham Sokhon, “the minjung [masses] were treated like filthy maggots” (1961b: 95) and so they perceived themselves. Up until the 1960s, common terms used by Koreans for describing themselves were “cheap cash” (yopchon) and “straw shoes” (chip’sin), which represented prevalent self-images of the ordinary Korean working masses. Yi Man’gap linked these perceptions of the Korean people to their flunkeyism: On the one hand, [the Koreans] abuse their own people but, on the other hand, cringe to powerful foreigners; or they tend to heckle and seek concessions relying on the influence of foreigners. In so doing, the Korean people willingly surrender unconditionally to powerful nations externally and, internally, to those who are in high-ranking offices, powerful, and senior. (Yi Man’gap 1961: 66) This introspective analysis of the Korean people’s national pride and character manifested a strong resemblance to that prevalent in China in the 1930s when the mood of cultural despair was so pervasive that it led to a period of “remorseless national self-flagellation” stimulated by Chinese 57

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intellectuals. Lloyd E. Eastman discusses the despairing assessments of the Chinese people’s character by many intellectuals of that time. He states: The Chinese were indolent, they feared difficulties, they lacked any progressive spirit, they assumed no responsibility but waited for others to act for them, they had no concern for the collective welfare, they lacked human-heartedness. (Eastman 1974: 158)16 Hu Shih, a prominent Chinese intellectual, argued that the Chinese failed to meet the new challenges of modern times because they had become “a spineless, worthless people” and because “our rottenness is so deep” (cited in Eastman 1974: 158). Therefore many writers and scholars concluded that the Chinese were becoming an “‘inferior race’ (lieh-teng min-tsu).” Some went further, drawing the radical conclusion that the “inferior races will inevitably be destroyed in the struggle for survival,” implying the inevitable ruin of the Chinese nation. The most radical analysis by intellectuals of the “despair and humiliation that Chinese felt in the early 1930s,” however, proposed a so-called “new style” dictatorship or despotism. Chang Hung, a writer and former student of Hu Shih, described the type of despotism that the Chinese wanted as follows: “[It] must not be a barbaric despotism, lawless despotism . . . a stop-freedom-ofspeech despotism, but an enlightened despotism, a meaningful despotism, a put-public-welfare-first despotism” (Eastman 1974: 145). No Korean intellectual, of whatever conviction, supported the idea of a dictatorship or despotism as openly and explicitly as the Chinese. Nevertheless, their idea of a strong leader was almost identical to that cited by Eastman as the Chinese intellectuals’ version of “the ideal dictator” who had to be “a national leader who stood above class strife, above economic interests, and would strive for the welfare of the entire nation. He would be . . . a ‘new-style’ dictator” (Eastman 1974: 145).

Military reappraisal and the May 16 coup “Clean-up the Military” campaign While most of the populace was demanding “total reform,” as expressed and articulated by many liberal intellectuals, what were members of the Korean military doing? Their activities, especially in terms of the military’s own demand for radical reform, were extremely audacious, much more so than those of any civilian progressive reformist or political group at that time. As early as 8 May 1960, less than two weeks after President Rhee resigned on 26 April, and just six days after the then Major-General, Park Chung Hee, had demanded the resignation of the Army’s Chief of Staff, 58

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General Song Yoch’an, eight lieutenant-colonels, who were also graduates of the Eighth Class of the Military Academy, launched their petition for what later became known as the “Clean-up the Military” campaign. The target of their campaign was the corruption, financial irregularities, incompetence and factionalism of a number of commanding generals. In fact, this intra-military campaign developed rapidly into an extramilitary clean-up movement of the entire armed forces, including the Marine Corps. This campaign, as noted in the previous chapter, resulted in the replacement of the three Chiefs of Staff of the armed forces (army, air force and navy), as well as the Marine Corps Commandant, within two months of its commencement. Of these changes, the replacement of the Marine Corps Commandant, Lieutenant-General Kim T’aesik, resulted not only in his retirement, but also in an open challenge, led by BrigadierGeneral Kim Tongha, the Commander of the First Marine Division, against his superior, alleging both political and financial corruption. Kim Tongha pushed for military reform among junior officers. When he was confronted with forced retirement, however, Kim Tongha aligned himself with other reformist colonels in the army and just one year later played a key role in the May 16 military coup. The military’s reform drive was determined and daring and, in retrospect, needs to be looked at in the context of the reformist colonels’ military coup plot, originally set for 8 May 1960 and known as the “May-8-Plan.” This coup plan was allegedly cancelled because of the unexpected student revolt of 19 April, which turned into the April Revolution. The army’s “silence” or “tolerance” toward the student demonstrations during this time was highly praised by the public, with some portraying the army as the “angels from Heaven” (Yi Man’gap 1960: 78). However, the real reason for the army’s silence and tolerance had less to do with the army being the “angels from the Heaven,” than with the army’s division into two camps, the mainstream group and non-mainstream group, each sitting on the fence protecting its longer-term interests. The mainstream group – largely senior-ranking generals who had been personally nurtured in their careers by President Rhee – did not wish to jeopardize their careers by supporting him since, by the late 1950s, Rhee was no longer favored by American policy-makers. The non-mainstream group – largely the reformist colonels and other junior-ranking officers in the army – was heavily involved in its own coup attempt. In any case, most Koreans believed – and rightly so – that the success of the April Revolution was due to America’s “moral and political support” (Pu Wanhyok 1960: 133). Some argue that the reformist colonels aborted their planned coup because they, especially Park Chung Hee, believed that they would have had no credibility with the public if they had carried out a military coup in the midst of the Students’ Revolution.

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Military grievances Of course, while the coup was cancelled for the time being, the reformist colonels’ coup plan was never entirely thrown out, but skillfully altered to incorporate a contingency plan in line with the popular demand for total reform. According to Kim Chongp’il in 1998, the “Clean-up the Military” campaign intended to “bring out into the open their method of reform struggle” so that the reformist colonels could promote the unity of officers in the armed forces.17 Kim’s claim need not be the only explanation. What it reveals, however, is the reformist colonels’ highly calculated, although extremely risky strategy, for mobilizing the military as their power base. In other words, the reformist colonels drew their power mostly from the collective grievances of the Korean military, especially those of junior level officers who, in the course of the rapid growth of the military,18 had been grossly disadvantaged in their career opportunities due to the lopsided hierarchical system. Most higher-ranking generals, for example, were the least trained (most for just forty-five days), and yet had been promoted to senior ranks, their experience of military service being for the most part in either the Japanese Imperial Army or Japanese Manchurian Forces. By 1960, all graduates of the First and Second Classes of 1946 had been promoted to ranks ranging from major-general to general. In contrast, graduates from later years, especially the Academy’s Eighth Class of 1949, had attained ranks from lieutenant-colonel to full colonel (Kang Ch’angsong 1991: 351).19 The difference in age between Lieutenant-Colonel Kim Chongp’il, who was undoubtedly the most well-known member of the Eighth Class, and the army’s chief of staff, Lieutenant-General Chang Toyong, was only one year, the former aged 36 and the latter 37 at the time of the May 16 coup in 1961. Despite their obviously checkered career paths, however, the Eighth Class was a highly respected elite group in the army with a strong sense of nationalism and an egalitarian mentality. They were immensely proud and ambitious and, interestingly, had mostly rural backgrounds (Nobyongdul ui chungon 1992; Hahn-Been Lee 1968: 146). The Eighth Class had the largest number of graduates of all the Classes in the Academy, a total of 1,345 officers of whom less than 450 survived the Korean War. Against this background, the lieutenant-colonels of the Eighth Class exerted themselves as a reformist pressure group, whose opportunity to exploit the military’s reform mood increased dramatically when the newly inaugurated Chang Government (23 August 1960) replaced the Defense Minister, Lieutenant-General Yi Chongch’an, with a civilian, Hyon Sokho. This was particularly evident when, on 10 September, eleven colonels, including Kim Chongp’il, Kim Hyonguk, Kil Chaeho, and others who had been involved in the “Clean-up the Military” 60

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campaign, pledged themselves to an armed revolution, thus forming the nucleus for a military coup known as the Ch’ungmujang kyorui.20 These reformist colonels claimed that they were driven to making their pledge after they had failed to see the Minister of Defense, Hyon,21 who had been out of his office when they had called on him. They reportedly planned to demand that all three-star generals – lieutenant-generals – transfer to the reserve army, and that the future army chief of staff and his deputy be appointed from within the rank of two-stars, which included Major-General Park Chung Hee (Yi Sangu 1993: 54). Such a daring challenge was now conceivable because, in the eyes of these campaigners, the government no longer held the authority to which they had formally owed allegiance once Lieutenant-General Yi had been removed from the Defense Ministry.22 These colonels, who were promised by Minister Hyon that a clean-up exercise would be carried out, became even more aggressive, despite being briefly interrogated by the military police, when the next Defense Minister, Kwon Chungdon, another civilian, announced that he would appoint a military screening committee to clean up the military, especially its upper echelons. Concurrently, Park Chung Hee, the ultimate leader of the clean-up campaigners, who had been demoted to the First Military District Command in Kwangju, a post known to the army as absurdly insignificant, was moved back to Army Headquarters on 11 September as Deputy Chief of Staff, Operations. This dramatic turnaround in Park’s posting was effected by the new Army Chief of Staff, Lieutenant-General Ch’oe Kyongnok, who, on 29 August, had replaced Lieutenant-General Ch’oe Yonghui, yet another new chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. From the campaigners’ perspective, this appointment had a psychological impact and signified a real change in military policy. Ch’oe Kyongnok publicly announced that, as the new army chief of staff, he supported the military’s clean-up campaign which eased the immediate pressure from the army hierarchy to contain the reformist campaigners. In this context, Park Chung Hee’s new assignment to Army Headquarters in Seoul was itself symbolic of Ch’oe’s intention to clean up the army.23 Psychologically, Park’s transfer from the First Military District Command in Kwangju to headquarters as the new deputy chief of staff had the immediate effect of lifting the spirit of the military clean-up campaigners “sky high.” Despite Choe’s initiatives, however, the fabric of the Korean military had begun to unravel by mid-September 1960. The progressive build-up of grievances among the two major groups within the military in the years immediately preceding this era of liberal thinking, and then the calls for reform, had led to a loss of stability and unity. The senior officers were aggrieved because of the military’s conflicting systems of seniority which made them feel resentful and insecure about their rank. And junior 61

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officers were aggrieved because of the stagnation of the military hierarchy. To them, the whole system was based on factionalism and favoritism which they saw as largely the product of the actions of both President Rhee and the US military advisers in Korea.24 The multiplicity of military grievances increased dramatically when the government notified the United States at the Korea–America high-level talks on 25 August 1960 that it planned to reduce the armed forces by 100,000 personnel – initially it had aimed at a reduction of 200,000. This reduction meant that 17 percent of the entire officer corps was under threat of losing their livelihood without the protection of a pension. In this context, the collective grievances of the military became a decisive factor underpinning the reformist colonels’ “Clean-up the Military” campaign. Plotting the military coup As if this were not enough to divide the military’s unity and harmony, an unexpected conflict emerged between high-level officials in Korea and the United States following a statement by General Williston B. Palmer, director of military assistance in the Defense Department. Palmer had visited Seoul for two days from 18 to 20 September 1960 as a personal guest of General Ch’oe Yonghui, chairman of the chiefs of staff. On the day before his departure, he made a public statement with the endorsement of General Ch’oe that he was personally opposed to the army’s purification campaign and that he also had doubts about the Korean Government’s policy of reducing military manpower. These remarks immediately sparked strong reactions from both the Army Chief of Staff, Ch’oe Kyongnok, and the Defense Minister, Hyon Sokho. The former condemned it as a “clear violation of Korean sovereignty” (Hapdong yon’gam 1961: 162) and the latter as “interference in internal affairs” (Han’guk Ilbo 22 September 1960). The loudest protest came on the morning of 24 September when sixteen colonels, led by Lieutenant-Colonel Kim Chongp’il, demanded the resignation of Ch’oe Yonghui on the grounds of alleged financial irregularities. This was a blatant counter-attack by the reformist colonels on Ch’oe, who had attempted to prevent Park Chung Hee’s return to Military Headquarters in Seoul and continued to be unsympathetic toward their clean-up campaign. This revolt, known as haguksang sagon (revolt against seniors), not only led to Ch’oe’s fall from his post on October 15, but more importantly accelerated the young colonels’ plot to overthrow the Chang Government (Kim Hyonguk and Pak Shawl 1985: 40). In February 1961, the two key players in the haguksang sagon were discharged from the army, albeit officially through “voluntary” resignations. One of these was Kim Chongp’il who offered his resignation under the strict agreement that the army would not punish Park Chung Hee for his connection with the haguksang sagon. 62

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Paradoxically, as Kim returned to civilian life, the reformist colonels’ military coup plot became even more audacious, but no one in the military or the government took any firm measures against it. The only plan the military contemplated, and then only briefly, was Park’s retirement in May 1960. According to Yi Ch’olsung, then chairman of the Armed Forces Committee in the National Assembly, who led the influential junior members’ faction, Sinp’unghoe (New Breeze Club) of the ruling Democratic Party, Park’s scheduled retirement was confirmed by Prime Minister Chang Myon when Park was at Army Headquarters in Seoul as chief of staff for operations. Yi went on to say that, instead of being retired, Park was transferred to Taegu as a result of his recommendation to the Prime Minister (1994: 254–6). A counter-claim was made by former LieutenantGeneral Chang Toyong, one of Park’s long-time supporters, who was then commander of the Second Army in Taegu. Chang claimed that he had directly requested Headquarters to appoint Park as his deputy commander after hearing that Park was about to be discharged (Cho Kapche Chosun Ilbo 18 July 1998). Although both claims need to be considered with caution, it is obvious that Park had received extraordinary support from someone in power, if not General Chang himself, who appears to have deliberately spread the rumor of Park’s imminent removal from active duty in an effort to camouflage Park and his reformist colonels’ secret coup plan. This hypothesis warrants close scrutiny because, by being transferred to the Second Army as Chang’s deputy commander, Park not only avoided retrenchment, if in fact the rumor was true, but also and more significantly, obtained his permanency as major-general on 20 February 1961, just one day before Chang’s appointment to Army Chief of Staff. Most notably, by being transferred to the Second Army under Chang’s obvious protection, Park was reunited with Major-General Yi Chuil, Chang’s chief of staff, who was one of Park’s oldest friends from their Manchukuo military training days, and who also played a key role in the May 16 military coup. Although the accounts surrounding this particular issue have never been questioned by anyone to date, Park’s transfer to the Second Army less than five months before the May 16 military coup seems too neat, in its timing and cause and effect, to accept at face value. But whatever the reason for the transfer, there is no doubt that the belief that these events underscore the final preparations for Park’s military coup has firmly taken root in the popular mood of the country. In regard to the timing of Park’s coup in May, insiders have portrayed Park as a desperate general trying to save his career by locking himself into a do-or-die race against the clock from the moment, on 12 January 1961, that he and his reformist colonels learned that the army had included him on a list of 153 officers to be moved to the Reserve Army in late May. These insiders argue that Park had no option but to pre-empt 63

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the army’s decision by staging a military coup before he was removed from the army. The transition from words to action was abrupt. And so it began: in the pre-dawn hours of Tuesday, 16 May, Park led a military coup by crossing the Han River into Seoul with a bandit-size revolutionary force of just 3,600 troops.

Conclusion The background to the May 16 military coup of 1961 needs to be understood in two contexts: the Korean popular demand for total reform, and the increasingly destabilized military after the April Student Revolution, due largely to a major shake-up of the military hierarchy. In the case of the former, demands for reform were expressed by civilians, especially liberal intellectuals, politically sensitive urban citizens and students who, in reality, had very limited means, if any at all, to put their demands into effect. The only means at their disposal was to promote a popular consensus for total reform. In the case of the military, however, the demand was quite specific: clean up the military. This demand was the subject of a bold campaign by Park and his reformist colonels who, in effect, caused significant disruption within the military hierarchy, and enough confusion in the ranks of the government to bring about its very downfall.25 Yet the coup was generally seen as inevitable and necessary to bring about change in Korean society. Even the most reputable daily newspaper, Tonga Ilbo, stated that Korean society at that time required total reform because it had lost its way due to “incumbent politicians’ corruption, incompetence, inefficiency and . . . chaotic factionalism” (Editorial 19 May 1961). As tempting as it is to dismiss this view as all too obviously biased, and perhaps written under the coercion of the military junta, it nevertheless reflects an important aspect of the popular mood concerning the Chang Government. Similarly, the liberal intellectuals’ demand for strong leadership (perhaps more so than their desire for liberal democracy) provided a strategic basis for Park to seize upon that demand. Most notably, Park justified the coup on the same grounds that the liberal intellectuals had provided, the need for national reconstruction, while also pursuing his own reform agenda right to the brink on the same grounds, in both rhetoric and action. This is not to say, however, that the thought of liberal intellectuals focused on national reconstruction, which is discussed in this chapter, is a comprehensive representation of their ideas, or fully explains the overall opinion of the majority of Koreans in the aftermath of the April Student Revolution. I have deliberately focused here on the intellectual debate on national development during the eleven months between the April Student Revolution and the May 16 military coup because of its relevance to Park’s 64

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reform agenda after the coup and to his subsequent policies. To appreciate and understand the intellectual debate of the time, it is important to note that little did the intellectuals know, especially those whose articles on national development had been published in Sasanggye and who actively participated in the debate, that their ideas would be misappropriated to justify a military coup. This was evident when, in the July edition of Sasanggye, drafted in June – only one month after the coup – Chang Chunha argued that the military had to return to democratic politics as soon as possible, and Ham Sokhon bluntly stated that the people were silent because they were anesthetized by the sound of gunfire and that true revolution was something that neither students nor the soldiers could achieve, but only the people.26 What Ham and most Koreans did not realize, however, was that the road to the Korean people’s revolution had already begun and that Park would be at the helm for the next eighteen years.

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Part II MILITARY RULE AND NATION-BUILDING

3 THE MILITARY JUNTA A quest for legitimacy and control I want to emphasize, and re-emphasize, that the key factor of the May 16 Military Revolution was to effect an industrial revolution in Korea . . . I must again emphasize that without economic reconstruction, there would be no such things as triumph over Communism or attaining independence. (Park Chung Hee 1963a: 259)

Introduction Following the military coup, Park immediately sought international legitimacy by adopting a strongly anti-Communist stance and policies focused on economic development and national reconstruction. Park’s “Administrative Democracy” or “Koreanized Democracy” was the public rationale for his military-style administration which, he claimed, was necessary to root out the past and to construct a new generation of national leadership comprising former military officers, technical engineers and other experts with professional qualifications. In his reconstruction, Park established a new bureaucracy which, even though it had a number of internal contradictions, promoted an achievement-oriented approach with military-style discipline and efficiency. Park’s most serious challenge, however, came from Korea’s ally, the United States, which had revised its policy on Korea under the Kennedy administration. Park’s efforts to establish political legitimacy, without compromising national security given the threat posed by North Korea and the unacceptability of loss of US aid, generated direct conflict with US policy advisers. They, for their part, understood and accepted that Park and his junta supporters were conducting a nationalist campaign for economic development focused on “anti-flunkeyism” and associated themes of national autonomy.

A question of legitimacy As seen in the previous chapter, Park’s military career had reportedly been scheduled to end by late May 1961. At the same time, social and political chaos had made Korea’s conservative establishment extremely nervous and 69

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unstable. Park therefore claimed to have “disregarded the peril to my life” (Park Chung Hee 1963a: 153) and led the military coup of 1961. He saw his mission as that of finding a solution to the prevailing socio-political and economic chaos, and ultimately removing the Communist threat from North Korea. Of course, he also saved his own career and those of his colleagues. He claimed that his “revolutionary tasks” were also to “eliminate corruption and eradicate other social evils . . . [and to] inculcate [a] fresh and wholesome moral and mental attitude among the [Korean] people” (SCFNR 1961: title page). The objectives of the coup, as shown in the junta’s Six Pledges included: anti-Communism; strengthening international relations, anti-corruption, economic reconstruction, unification and returning power to a civilian government (MHHCPW 1962: 26). The first task of the coup leaders, however, was to consolidate power. To do so, they needed to obtain the acquiescence of both the populace and the international community as quickly as possible. It was especially important to reassure the US, which financed over 50 percent of Korea’s national budget and 72.4 percent of the defense budget (Korea Annual 1969: 109). The pledges, therefore, largely addressed immediate concerns rather than enunciating long-term strategies to solve national issues. Similarly, the tough anti-Communism and anti-corruption pledges were intended to give public credence to the junta’s commitment to addressing these concerns, and to establish the junta’s legitimacy in government and its ability to command public compliance to the new order. Securing US approval was more difficult. The pledges, therefore, gave priority to anti-Communism and to a reaffirmation of the UN Charter, emphasizing the friendship between Korea and the US. The US apparently acquiesced in the establishment of the junta as early as 20 May 1961, when President Kennedy sent a message to the Supreme Council for National Reconstruction (SCNR), the interim governing authority formed two days after the coup, confirming the friendship and cooperation between Korea and the US. On this day, the SCNR and General Carter B. Magruder, commander-in-chief, United Nations Command, jointly announced the return of all rights of operational command of the Korean Army, temporarily in abeyance during the coup, to the United Nations Command in Korea (MHHCPW 1962: 351). Such a rapid and positive response to the perpetrators of the clearly illegitimate, treasonous coup shows that Kennedy was more interested in his Cold War policy of maintaining anti-Communist regimes around the periphery of the Soviet empire than concerned about the US commitment to creating democratic politics in South Korea. In fact, Kennedy’s Cold War policy that US interests would be best served by not interfering in domestic politics has been consistently maintained by US policy-makers ever since.1 Thus US acquiescence in Park’s military coup would further 70

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encourage him to plan his future political ambitions, mainly by positioning himself as a caretaker of the Cold War political paradigm instructed by the US. On 3 July, Park Chung Hee consolidated his leadership over the junta government when he was appointed Chairman of the SCNR, with the support of Kim Chongp’il. Park took steps to convince US representatives of his political intention by relaxing the extreme anti-Communist purges that he had imposed and by declaring his willingness to return power to civilian control. These gestures were mainly in response to pressure from the new American Ambassador, Samuel D. Berger who had arrived in Seoul on 24 June 1961. Berger had recommended easing US pressure on the Park regime to allow him “a breathing spell to work out his problems and test his sincerity and ability to deliver on his assurances” (Macdonald 1992: 219). In Berger’s second meeting with Park, he reportedly stated that the US would like to support Park’s junta leadership publicly “to give it strength and reassurance, but could not do so while arrests, purges and recriminations continued.” Responding to Berger’s statement, Park announced the release of 1,293 individuals held without charge for left-wing activities, plus other commutations of sentence (Macdonald 1992: 217). Park’s anti-Communist policy was also calculated to conceal his personal vulnerability over his Communist past. On 9 June 1961, when Park, as deputy chairman of the SCNR,2 first met with the American Chargé d’Affaires, Marshall Green, the main concern he raised was the effect in the United States of allegations of “former Communist connections.” In response, Green reportedly reassured Park that there was no need for repressive measures to prove his anti-Communism (Macdonald 1992: 216). Earlier, American officials in Korea had voiced their disapproval of a possible coup and announced that the US would only “support duly constituted authorities here [in Korea]” (Macdonald 1992: 208). US suspicion was understandable because its involvement in the Cold War left it vulnerable to exploitation by strategically located countries. Moreover, Park’s purging of forty generals from the military in July raised speculation among US policy advisers in Washington that Communists might have been behind the May 16 coup.3 Park, however, treated the priorities of anti-Communism and economic development as inseparable prerequisites for national reconstruction and he depicted his military coup as the “only means” to save the nation and the people, who were pushed to the limit. He developed his antiCommunist stance into a dogma and promulgated it as a precondition for the people’s “freedom and democracy.” Park declared: Compromise with the Communist Party is the beginning of defeat. It must be remembered that the advocacy of territorial unification while the society is in a state of chaos – as it was under 71

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the Chang Regime – is the way to national suicide. Theories about unifying the country under neutralism, such as those loudly proposed by the students, provide the opportunity for a bloodless Communist coup d’état. We must defend to the last the democracy and freedom that we now enjoy. (Park Chung Hee 1962a: 184) It was highly contentious for Park to portray his military regime as a defender of democracy and freedom when, in reality, these two essential elements of the Korean people’s social and political life had been abrogated by the military coup. Park’s portrayal of his military regime, however, reflects the capricious condition of the Cold War in Korea, in which the illegality of Park’s military coup was willingly traded for the antiCommunist aims of US foreign policy. At a press conference on 27 July, US Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, officially acknowledged US acquiescence in Park’s leadership, welcoming Park’s “prompt and vigorous steps” announced on 19 July 1961 that promised the restoration of civilian rule (Macdonald 1992: 217). On 12 August, Park further impressed the US Government by reaffirming the pledge that his regime would transfer power to a civilian government in May 1963, a step to be preceded by a referendum on a new constitution in March the same year. Park obtained the ultimate form of US approval when President Kennedy invited him to Washington for a working visit from 14 to 16 November 1961.

“Administrative democracy” Despite his public pledges to return to a civilian government, however, Park set about tightening his grip on the institutions of government. His mode of military junta rule, known as “administrative democracy” (haengjonggok minjujuui) was, according to Park, intended to meet Korea’s “social and political reality, and not to introduce unworkable West European democracy” (Park Chung Hee ONP 1962b: 198). Its stated objective was to weed out corruption, strengthen the autonomous ability of the people, and establish social justice. Park asserted that the fundamental problem of Korean society under the Chang Myon Government had been its failure to eradicate three major evils: (a) pro-Communism and antistate opportunism; (b) the mushrooming of political parties and newspapers, both of which he considered irresponsible and corrupt; and (c) the indiscriminate acceptance of foreign culture (Park Chung Hee ONP 1962b: 188). Strong leadership in an “administrative democracy” was deemed by Park to be essential to maintaining control as he went about the task of national reconstruction. On 22 May, exactly a week after the coup, the SCNR began its “cleanup” operation by arresting 51 illicit profiteers, 4,200 alleged racketeers 72

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and 2,100 suspected Communist sympathizers (Han’guk Ilbo 22 May 1961). Much of this process was symbolic. Many of those arrested were soon released again under various amnesties. Businessmen among them were also released, but under strict conditions. They were soon prominently engaged in the national reconstruction program, under an economic system that Park termed “guided capitalism.” During this period, the martial law commander also issued a series of decrees covering a wide range of social and political measures, including the dissolution of all political parties and social organizations (Decree No. 6).4 Two months after the coup, the SCNR announced the dismissal of 6,900 civil servants: 6,700 had evaded military duty and 200 had kept mistresses (MHHCPW 1962: 40). An additional 1,863 civil servants were charged with offences by the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA), established by Decree No. 619 on 10 June 1961 and headed by Kim Chongp’il. The KCIA, responsible for domestic as well as international security, reportedly investigated 41,712 leading members of the civil service and other government-run businesses (HKHPW 1963: 1746). These extreme measures were possible because the SCNR had designated itself as the supreme power with the right to overrule the constitution if it “conflicted with the Law regarding Extraordinary Measures for National Reconstruction” promulgated on 6 June 1961.5 Park referred to these measures as a “surgical operation,” a term which Ham Sokhon had used during the pre-1961 period. As seen in Chapter 2, Ham had urged the nation to undergo a major “surgical operation,” a total reform of society to save Korea’s very existence. Park’s call for a total reform of Korea, however, was aimed primarily at getting rid of old politicians and consolidating his political power base with members of a new elite from the younger generation. The SCNR later banned 4,374 former politicians from political activities for six years in accordance with the political “purification” law declared in March 1962.6 Park called this process “human revolution.” In order to counter public fear about the impact of his junta government on democracy, Park stated: The Military Revolution is not the destruction of democracy in Korea. Rather it is a way of saving it; it is a surgical operation intended to excise a malignant social, political and economic tumor . . . Once the patient has recovered, the physician advises him to return home for convalescence. It is for this reason that the revolutionary troops have made a firm pledge to return governing power to civilians. (Park Chung Hee ONP 1962b: 189) Park’s reference to the need for a surgical operation reflected the nationalistic rhetoric used by many world leaders in the late 1950s, 73

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including Gamal Abdel Nasser. Park’s rhetoric also reflected that associated with Sun Yat-sen’s modernization of China and, as Park claimed, that of the Meiji Reform in Japan. However, it would seem that Park’s administration, both in concept and structure, was most closely modeled on Sukarno’s “Guided Democracy.” The junta’s “clean-up” operation was so effective, in terms of public perception of prompt government action, that even the popular conservative press expressed its support for the coup (Tonga Ilbo 28 May 1961). The intellectuals’ principal mouthpiece, Sasanggye, congratulated the military for “making the citizens respect the law, reinvigorating sagging morale, banishing hoodlums” (June 1961: 4), and featured many positive comments from readers. One such comment stated: Did they [old politicians] fail to run this country because its politics was too difficult? It was too difficult because they tried nothing but stealing and cheating about matters that were selfevident . . . No doubt there will be danger ahead on this rough road. This certainly is a miracle, even though danger risks failure. Is it not a miracle for us to live? (Won Songik 1961: 12) Many Koreans believed the clean-up activities to be temporary prior to the return of power to civilian government, as pledged. However, Park’s restructuring of the state and his dismantling of democratic political structures was far from temporary. Park saw this restructuring as necessary to empower the state, to carry out reforms in order to “systematize efficiency in administrative management,” and to prevent the “personalization of official positions” (Park Chung Hee 1962a: 234–5). Park’s strong state nevertheless remains an enigma to many. According to one researcher, the most “puzzling and intriguing aspects” of a strong state, such as the Park regime, have to do with how such a government obtains “bureaucratic autonomy in the first place and why it was subsequently directed to developmental goals as opposed to the self-maximizing or predatory forms of behavior so common in other contexts” (Önis 1991: 114). In the case of Park, the developmental goals were directly linked to how he perceived his political leadership and thus his administrative strategy. Park was convinced that bureaucratic autonomy was the most effective means of achieving national reconstruction and the consolidation of his own political leadership, for it established disciplined bureaucracy set into a framework of reciprocal obligation. In other words, Park as the political master, as the symbol of the state, empowered and guaranteed bureaucratic policy autonomy in return for undiluted loyalty and productivity from bureaucrats. What came to be termed “administrative democracy” established the foundations of Park’s military dictatorship for many years to come. Park 74

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repeatedly claimed that administrative democracy offered Korea the opportunity to make a new beginning and to achieve closure with its past, especially to bring an end to Korea’s “slavish mentality” toward strong foreign countries and eradicate national poverty due to foreign dependence. He observed that a fundamental flaw persisted in Korea’s democracy as a consequence of two major national characteristics. The first was the Korean people’s subservient mentality (sadae juui) toward the old conservative “ruling forces” such as the “Liberation Aristocrats”, the provincial landlord class and yangban who, after liberation, had dominated both the Rhee and Chang Governments (Park Chung Hee 1962a: 130). The second characteristic, Park observed, was “Korean-style capitalism” which had modeled itself on colonial capitalism following Japanese colonial rule. It had led to collusion between government officials and corporate entrepreneurs. Park argued: Korean-style capitalism under Japanese colonial rule had guaranteed the pursuit of foreigner-colonialists’ interests and, post-liberation, had degenerated into a hot-bed of corruption and dishonesty which assisted illicit profiteers who pursued profitmaking with their government allies. (Park Chung Hee 1962a: 130–1) Park demanded the elimination of the established conservative power base which had been built on privilege, status, class and wealth, as a precondition to establishing “Koreanizing democracy.” He argued that the construction of a non-elitist and “bottom-up” democracy in Korea must be achieved over time, so that his military junta could implant “democratic factors” in stages, which would then be “developed among the general public as far as possible” (Park Chung Hee 1962a: 198). In this process, Park blatantly contradicted all accepted democratic principles. To explain why our [junta] activities must become an “administrative democracy,” I should say that it is our immediate goal to materialize social justice by eradicating the corruption of the past and by strengthening the people’s ability to be autonomous. As a step toward this goal, we should not, during this transitional period, aim to establish democracy in the political sense in all respects, but rather in an administrative sense. This is so because the democracy that we must aim to build is not one imposed from “above,” but one that must emerge from “below”. (Park Chung Hee 1962a: 229–30) A key element in the attempt by Park to implement his idea of a “bottom-up” democracy was the nation-wide program known as the 75

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People’s Reconstruction Movement (PRM – kung’min chaegon undong) launched on 12 June 1962. In practice, however, the PRM was used as a means of building the military junta’s network at the local level and was no reflection at all of the people’s voice. In just over two years, the PRM claimed to have secured a body of solidarity for national capability and the basis of national unity, with over 5,060,000 individuals trained in “democratic” national reconstruction (HKHPW 1963: 1,699–1,700). Despite its massive structure and ambitious intentions, however, the PRM was dissolved on 24 July 1964, and converted into a private organization on 5 August 1964, mainly because of a critical shortage of government funds.

Park’s technocracy In addition to pursuing reform at the local level, reform of the bureaucracy continued to be a top priority for the military junta. In conjunction with the purges discussed earlier, the recruitment of new elite officers to the junta government laid the foundation of Park’s strong state. According to one source, the number of professors involved totaled 470, many already involved in sub-committees of the SCNR’s National Planning Committee, including sub-committees on politics, the economy, culture, law and planning (Yi Sangu 1993: 320). This figure does not include professors who were invited separately by Park, then Chairman of the SCNR, and his personal advisers, and those mobilized by Kim Chongp’il for the establishment of the Policy Research Institute, which became the Korean Central Intelligence Agency on 10 June 1961. The SCNR undertook further comprehensive restructuring of government administration in October 1961, modeled ostensibly on US Military Planning and Programs (Choson Ilbosa 1996: 228–31). The SCNR had been particularly active in recruiting the nation’s outstanding talent to plan and implement economic and industry development programs. Many individuals from the private sector who became leading technocrats, like Kim Chongnyom and O Wonch’ol, were among those recruited. An examination of the structure of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MCI)7 prior to 1961 helps to understand the lack of Korea’s bureaucratic capacity under post-war governments to boost industrial development. Until the May 16 coup in 1961, the MCI had been headed by a minister and deputy minister and four directors-general who managed four bureaus: Industry (Kongopguk), Mining (Kwangmuguk), Electricity (Chon’giguk) and Commerce and Trade (Sangmuguk). Below the directors-general stood middle-ranking officers, with the title of kwajang (directors or heads of departments), and then kyejang (section heads). Technological officers were graded under the category of kukchang, with the highest rank in this category being that of kigam (technological supervisor).8 Most senior positions in the ministry were 76

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held by administrative staff while the technological experts were systematically sidelined or weeded out. Against this background, Minister Chong Naehyok, a Major-General and a graduate of the Japanese Military Academy who took over the MCI in May 1961 under the junta administration, instigated a radical clean-up of the ministry, dismissing many senior officers. This purge, undertaken under one of the Six Pledges of the junta government, was carried out under the slogan, “Sweep away old evils” (Kuak ilso). The outcome was a thorough restructuring of the MCI. Two assistant deputy ministers, Ham Inyong and Song Ch’anyong, were appointed, the former in charge of mining, industry and electricity, and the latter in charge of commerce and trade.9 The Office of Planning and Management was added in August 1962. The significance of Minister Chong’s restructuring was that, unlike his predecessors of the First and Second Republic (1948–60 and 1960–1), he appointed elite technicians as director-general to three of the MCI’s four bureaus (other than the Bureau of Commerce and Trade). As a result, both assistant deputy ministers and three out of the four directors-general in the MCI were highly qualified technological experts, or simply technocrats. Director-level appointments were also filled with young elite engineers and experts from other areas, especially commerce and economics. Many had worked for the US military in Korea. For example, a large number of senior officers in the MCI in 1962 (including Deputy Minister Pak Ch’unghun, an assistant deputy minister, two directors-general and two directors) had been technical officer cadets in the class of 1950 conscripted for the Korean War who had worked with the US Air Force.10 A highly self-disciplined military-style administrative structure was thus established with a range of extraordinary disciplines and controls on staff, some of which were clearly politically motivated. In the case of the MCI, the entire Ministry undertook compulsory “thought training” for a week at the National Defense College in Susaek, Seoul. This “training” was, in effect, similar to that required by Kim Il Sung in North Korea, and amounted to a cultural revolution at the corporate level. In addition, the entire public service was subject to tight scrutiny by the “Joint Investigation Team” led by the SCNR’s Inspection Committee on Irregularities of the Public Service (Kongmuwon piwi chosa wiwonhoe).11 It has been claimed that in this process almost one-sixth of the entire civil service of 240,000 was dismissed (Oh 1999:124). Indeed, the 1963 National Civil Service Law marked the beginning of Korea’s meritocratic bureaucracy in which, according to Lee Hahn Been, civil servants were promoted on the basis of merit rather than seniority (1982: 223–4). Accordingly, the newly formed Park technocracy consisted of two “new generation” elite groups: (a) technocrats and (b) a blend of former military generals, corporate managers and professional administrators. As a whole, these groups displayed three distinct characteristics. First, they 77

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were highly qualified professionals with a strong sense of self-discipline and a focus on efficiency and achieving goals. Second, they had a clear understanding of the essential difference between their own bureaucratic managerial power and that of their political masters who held ultimate governing power. Third, they had no illusions about Park’s national development agenda. This is not to say that Park’s technocracy was not criticized for disturbing Korea’s value-system and for instilling a “short-cut mentality” (p’yonpob juui) in the minds of the Korean people, the bureaucracy and the business community (Han Wansang 1989: 194–202).12 Another source of criticism was the application of familism and regionalism in Park’s technocracy. The former applied familial or school ties to the allocation of career opportunities in the bureaucracy and other state enterprises.13 Regionalism meant the allocation of sites for the construction of industrial complexes, as well as appointments to high-ranking political and military positions, to Park’s home region, North and South Kyongsang Provinces, which, by the mid-1970s, would become the center of Korea’s industrial development. In addition to these areas of concern, the economic bureaucrats of Park’s technocracy were divided, as early as the mid-1960s, into the economists of the Economic Planning Board (EPB) and the engineer technocrats of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MCI). This split became particularly evident when, in March 1967, the Ministry of Science and Technology (Kwahak kisulch’o) was established and the EPB was left with no engineering technocrats after the closure of its Bureau of Science and Technology. From that time, there emerged a difference in approach to economic policy between the EPB’s economists and the MCI’s technocrats. Whereas the economists in the EPB preferred a macro-economic approach, the technocrats in the MCI pursued micro-economic policies. This difference in policy approach would subsequently lead to Park shifting his preference in terms of economic policy from the EPB policymakers on whom he had relied at first to those of the MCI, especially after the appointment of Kim Chongnyom as his chief of staff in October 1969 (see Chapter 7).

Guided capitalism and the first Five-Year Plan From the outset, Park planned to manage economic development through state-led intervention in industrial enterprises under his guided capitalism. According to Park’s writings in 1962, guided capitalism was a system of economic management designed to create an economic order that would guarantee the “equalization of income and public benefit from the economy” (1962b: 217). Park claimed to uphold simultaneously the egalitarian ideals of equality in distribution and free competition. 78

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However, he saw the government’s role in the ment as that of an industry manager or a opportunities for all can be guaranteed by 218). Thus he contradicted his own rhetoric ance and control. He noted:

course of national develop“guardian” so that “equal free competition” (1962b: with his concern for guid-

Where the appalling power of mammoth enterprise is concerned only with private profit under a self-assumed assertion of contribution to national development, there is no free competition . . . Therefore, the state’s coordination and supervisory guidance of mammoth economic strength, especially that of private enterprise, becomes a key issue in a free economic policy.14 The greatest challenge to Park in implementing his economic strategy was to establish a bureaucratic system powerful enough to resist the “overwhelming pressure on legislative and administrative organs [from proprietors of large enterprises] to get laws favorable to them” (Park Chung Hee 1962b: 217). He believed that the negative activities of these business tycoons in the past had simply represented “a head-on clash with free economic activities and . . . a betrayal of democratic principles” (Park Chung Hee 1962b: 217). This is not to say that his own method was any different. For example, Park introduced “guided capitalism” through the first FiveYear Economic Development Plan which, according to him, was designed to ensure that the activities of leading businessmen (chaebol) did not “betray” so-called “democratic principles.” To initiate a draft of the first Five-Year Plan, Park is known to have directed, within a week of the coup, three young economists – Kim Songbom, 37; Chong Soyong, 29, who held a Ph.D. in economics; and Paek Yongch’an, 32 – to complete a draft plan within 80 days, that is, before 15 August, Liberation Day. Like many elite economists and technicians at that time, they had been specially recruited by the Supreme Council for National Reconstruction (SCNR). According to Chungang Ilbo (Daily), Paek was the only one of these with previous experience in longterm planning, having drafted two long-term seven- and five-year development plans under the Rhee and Chang Governments respectively (Chungang Ilbo 1998: 124). The draft plan was in fact completed within 60 days and was designed to double gross national product (GNP) and national income within ten years by maintaining economic growth at an annual average rate of 7.1 percent. On 22 July 1961, the SCNR officially announced the draft plan now formally known as the “Comprehensive Economic Development Five-Year Plan” (Chonghap kyongje kaebal 5-gaenyon kyehoek), as well as the establishment of the EPB which took over responsibility for the Five-Year Plan. It was at this time that Park apparently directed the EPB to draw up an 79

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“operational plan” in detail. Song Chongbom, who was the first deputy director of the EPB, stated that, in the course of drawing up the “operational plan,” the planners referred to several models, including the Nathan Report (published in 1954 and the basis of the Rhee Government’s three-year plan that was overtaken by the April Revolution) and the five-year plans of Malaysia and India (Chungang Ilbo 1998: 128).15 Thus Park’s five-year development plan was by no means the first in Korea’s development planning history.16 However, some researchers’ suggestion that Park and his military junta’s final draft plan, known as the “May 1961 plan,” “drew heavily” from the Chang Government (Wolf 1962: 24) needs to be understood in the context of the stage in planning reached by the Chang Government. The Chang Government had no longterm development plan until April 1961 when the National Assembly officially adopted a resolution calling for “long-range planning” which did not reach the US Embassy until two weeks after the military coup. Given this background, it is reasonable to assume that the planners of the military junta’s final draft, the May 1961 plan, may well have drawn ideas from available sources, including long-term plans of both the Chang and Rhee Governments. The May 1961 plan, nevertheless, attracted severe criticism for various reasons. Some members of the SCNR, for example, ridiculed it saying, “What sort of happy-go-lucky Five-Year Plan is this, while right now [the nation] has nothing to eat?” (Chungang Ilbo 1998: 127) In its first draft, according to Professor Song Ch’anghwan, a member of the Advisory Committee of the EPB at that time, the plan “tended to lean excessively toward a planned economy (kihoek kyongje)” and thus, after some consultation, the EPB revised it so that it “focused on [the framework of] a mixed economy (honhap kyongje)” (Chungang Ilbo 1998: 127). The harshest criticism, however, came from the US in November 1961 when Park took the final May 1961 plan with him on his visit to Washington. The US State Department reportedly labeled it a mere “shopping list.” The May 1961 plan was formally announced in January 1962 as the first Five-Year Plan (1962–6).17 Despite radical revision in mid-1964,18 the first Five-Year Plan (FYP) was a most important blueprint for the initial phase of Park’s guided capitalism, directing the workings of the Park administration, especially in its dealings with owner–managers of leading business groups, the chaebol. Park established a Confucian military-style master–student relationship between the government and the business community. Moreover, the first FYP provided Park with the public policy required to impose what he termed “administrative controls” (Park Chung Hee 1962b: 214) over every business group, and simultaneously shielded him from any unwanted challenges from the business community. Nothing would illustrate the effectiveness of the “administrative con80

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trols” on the business community more than the SCNR’s arrest of fifty-one prominent businessmen on the charge of “illicit profiteering,”19 and thus the confiscation of their property, following the “Special Measure for the Control of Illicit Profiteering” on 28 May 1961. These leading businessmen were released on 30 June, only after they had signed an agreement stating: “I will donate all my property when the government requires it for national construction” (Cited in O Wonch’ol HGKKS vol. 1: 19). Yi Pyongch’ol, founder of Samsung and Korea’s largest business conglomerate, who was in Tokyo at the time, reportedly sent his agreement from Japan.20 In effect, most Korean businessmen were placed on parole. Their freedom depended strictly on their business performance and their cooperation with the SCNR, which had to fit Park’s notion of “serving the nation.” In return, Park’s guided capitalism offered extensive measures of industry support, such as unprecedented protection and privileges, including foreign loan guarantees, financial subsidies, protection from independent unionism and a fixed-wage system.21 These measures were specifically designed to create large-scale national enterprises through existing chaebol. In particular, the government’s foreign loan guarantee system (enacted in July 1962) allowed big business to access massive borrowings from abroad. O Wonchol commented in 1994: On 16 August 1961, only three months after the coup and on the date when the Promotional Committee for Economic Reconstruction was changed into the Federation of Korean Businessmen, the race among business leaders had just begun not only for Korea’s industrialization, but also for their own great leap to become chaebol. This was so because these so-called “illicit profiteers” were the government’s choice to become the owner-developers of industries under the Five-Year Plan. (Interview with O Wonchol, October 1994) By convicting business leaders, nationalizing the five major banks (Emergency Banking Measure, 16 June 1962) and declaring currency reform (Emergency Currency Measure, 9 June 1962), Park swiftly imposed government controls over the key mechanisms needed for state-guided capitalism. The declaration of these Emergency Measures infuriated US representatives in Seoul because the Park regime had neither consulted nor informed the US before they were announced. In fact, the US became so furious with Park’s currency reform that Edward Rice, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, warned Korean ambassador Chong Ilgwon that: “If U.S. efforts are to be nullified, we must reassess assistance policy” (Quoted in MacDonald 1992: 218). Five weeks later, on 13 July, the Park administration announced the cancellation of the currency reform. 81

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Park’s attempts to raise domestic capital stirred up numerous political, economic, social and diplomatic crises without achieving his primary objective: to establish immediate economic capacity based on Korea’s own “national capital” (minjok chabon). By recalling all Korean cash and exchanging it for new cash, Park and his military clique aimed to trace and mobilize the Korean people’s savings, whether deposited in the banks or privately hidden. However, Park quickly discovered that no Korean, regardless of whether rich or poor, had much cash in hand. As another desperate effort to mobilize capital, Park also proclaimed the Stock Exchange Act (on 15 January 1962), but this reform measure also failed to help the state raise the required revenue. Nevertheless, by pursuing a comprehensive strategy of guided capitalism through the first Five-Year Plan and various reform measures, Park succeeded in establishing state control over the banks, thereby laying the foundation for long-range economic development planning. A critical factor in stable control over longterm planning was the business agreement between Park and the thirteen most prominent “illicit profiteers.”

Chaebol training On 17 July 1961, three days after their release from nearly two months’ detention, Park commissioned thirteen “illicit profiteers” to establish the Promotional Committee for Economic Reconstruction (PCER), the forerunner of the Federation of Korean Industries. The thirteenmember PCER’s aim was to implement a program of industry development by drawing up a plan for six key industries: cement, synthetic fiber, electricity, fertilizer, iron and oil refinery. The PCER decided that these industries, except for oil refining, which was to be managed directly by the government, would be divided among its 13 members. Accordingly, cement went to Kumsong Textile (presently Ssangyong); fertilizer to both Samsung and Samho Textile; electricity to Taehan Milling; iron to Taehan Cement, Kukdong Marine, Taehan Industry, and Tongyang Cement; and synthetic fiber to Hwasin, Choson Silk Mill and Han’guk Glass. The business leaders, led by Yi Pyongch’ol, the first Chairman of the PCER, proposed to build factories first in order to maximize their available capital, and after that to pay their allotted penalties, due by 31 December, by donating company shares. The requirement that they venture into areas of production unfamiliar to their established operations appears to have been a deliberate tactic by the PCER to “force” new commercial links, new ideas and new technology. Although the promise to pay penalties by “donating company shares” was rarely kept, these leading business leaders had no illusions about the state’s absolute power over their businesses. The consequences of challenging or resisting the 82

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state’s first Five-Year Plan were severe, whether in terms of their business or their personal safety. For example, Ku Inhoe, the founder of Lucky-Goldstar and one of the “illicit profiteers,” was ordered to build a cable factory. He would have preferred to build a textile factory, similar to that operated by Pak Hungsik, owner–manager of Hwasin Department Chain Stores. But in April 1962, exactly four years before the completion of Lucky-Goldstar’s Han’guk Cable Company, Ku was summoned by Colonel Yu Wonsik, Chairman of SCNR’s Commerce and Industry Committee, and ordered to build the cable factory. He was also ordered to conclude a foreign loan contract for its construction “within a week” (Interview with O Wonch’ol, October 1997). Ku apparently struggled to explain to Yu the difficulty and complexity of loan negotiations with a foreign company, let alone completing a loan contract within a week. All he achieved was a one-week extension with some harsh “lessons.” Although details of this episode are not documented, which is not surprising, Ku, like many industrial proprietors at that time, seems to have received much more than “verbal” lessons. It took around just ten days for Ku’s company, Lucky-Goldstar, to complete a loan contract of US$2.95 million with Fuhrmeister, a West German company, which had clearly taken extraordinary steps to help address Ku’s needs. This incident undoubtedly was one example of what Park later termed a “surgical operation,” which he imposed on many prominent people, especially leading chaebol who were “punished severely,” in Park’s words, “in the name of our nation” (1962b: 201).22 Here Park’s low tolerance toward business leaders, especially in the state’s planning and implementation of industry development, is noteworthy because it was the application of this state-guidance paradigm that Park would further intensify from January 1973 when he declared heavy and chemical industrialization under the Yusin system (see Chapter 8). After this incident, no business leaders, including Ku, dared to resist directly the directives that emanated from the SCNR’s industrial planning committees. Ironically, this less-favored option of a cable factory laid the foundation of the Lucky-Goldstar chaebol. The most remarkable aspect of Lucky-Goldstar’s building of the company Han’guk Cable, however, was that it became a “test” case for Park’s single-minded industry development carried out in Korea’s “own” national interest in the face of US opposition, and led to a court case that lasted for nearly three years from May 1963 to the company’s completion in April 1966.23 In this respect, although it unfolded some years later, the widely known story behind the construction of Pohang Iron & Steel Co., or POSCO, also reflects Park’s mode of industry development, focused on Korea’s own interests and own decision-making.24 The dramatic change in business leaders’ attitudes toward the SCNR and, more specifically, to Park’s leadership, came about 83

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through this process. Moreover, leading members of the Federation of Korean Industry (FKI) such as Yi Pyongch’ol, Nam Kungyon, Yi Chongrim, and Chong Chaeho subsequently played active roles in both advising on industry development, as well as traveling overseas to attract foreign capital for investment in Korea (Kim Yongt’ae 1990: 146–9).

Leadership challenge On 27 December 1962, Park announced that the transfer of power to an elected civilian government would take place in August 1963, and that presidential and National Assembly elections would be held in April and May 1963 respectively. This announcement was made on the day after Park’s declaration of the newly revised national constitution. By then, Park and his fellow junta leaders, especially the young colonels, already intended to dominate any future “civilian” government. Park signaled this future plan not only by announcing his own intention to retire from the military to run for the presidency, but also by encouraging the SCNR members to do likewise if they desired to run for the National Assembly elections. At this stage, however, Park had come up against many obstacles both internally and externally. Internally, he was caught up in the power struggle within the military junta between the progressive young colonels led by Kim Chongp’il, then head of the KCIA, and moderate senior members of the SCNR. This power struggle reached crisis point in early January 1963, when the senior members or the Moderate Faction of the SCNR joined the government’s newly formed Democratic Republican Party (DRP), formally founded on 26 February 1963, and discovered that the Party had already established a centralized structure, with Kim Chongp’il dominating its power base. Externally, and most relevant to his financial capacity, Park struggled with pressure from US policy advisers to restore civilian government and to comply with changing US aid policy. Park’s political leadership ambitions, however, were still far from realized. The renewed crisis within the junta was primarily motivated by a struggle for control over the DRP’s infrastructure and management and, in this process, Park stumbled because of his own ambition. Park had made a risky but very calculated choice to rely on Kim Chongp’il for consolidating his leadership position, especially following the elimination of the initial nominal coup leader, General Chang Toyong, and his supporters in July 1961. At this time, Park was managing most of his secret reform projects and negotiations through Kim as his most trusted and astute chief negotiator and as director of the KCIA. One of the most controversial negotiations Park initiated through Kim was the secret agreement with Japanese Foreign Minister Ôhira Masayoshi – on 12 November 1962 – to outline a basis for restoring relations between Japan and Korea.25 84

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In late January 1963, however, this secret agreement, as well as the “four big scandals”26 through which Kim had allegedly financed the DRP, were brought into the open, especially with the resignation of Marine General, Kim Tongha, from the DRP in protest on 21 January. Although the party was not yet formally inaugurated, Kim Tongha’s resignation stirred up many leading members of the Moderate Faction as well as many top-ranking generals. On 17 February, a group of moderate leaders, including Kim Chaech’un, a leading member of the SCNR, Pak Pyonggwon, Minister of Defense, and four armed forces’ chiefs of staff delivered their “ultimatum” to Park that he cancel his plans to run for the presidency in the forthcoming election. They also demanded that Kim Chongp’il withdraw from the new DRP and that he leave the country at once. Having received an in-depth report on each of these moderate leaders’ recent activities and having briefed himself thoroughly through a lengthy meeting on that same day with Kim Chongp’il and his other key supporters, Park apparently accepted their demands. He seems to have realized the overwhelming weight of opinion behind the moderate leaders’ ultimatum. He had also been under constant pressure from US Ambassador Berger who had repeatedly insisted on Park returning power to a civilian government. Berger had also put pressure on Park, since the announcement of currency reform in June 1962, to “downgrade” Kim’s influence over the military junta (Macdonald 1992: 219). On 18 February, Park announced that if civilian political leaders agreed with “nine conditions” he would not participate in future civilian politics and would completely nullify the blacklist of political leaders banned from political participation. He also promised to postpone the date of the general election until after May. Moreover, Park proposed to hold a formal ceremony to which he promised to invite representatives of political parties, civilian political leaders, and leaders of the armed forces, to pledge their agreement to implement the “nine conditions” for a return to civilian government (Kyonghyang sinmun 18 February 1963). This epic announcement quickly impressed civilian politicians and they agreed to the “nine conditions.” The US also endorsed Park’s announcement. This warm acceptance gave Park breathing space and time, which appears to have been the primary motive for his announcement in the first place. Two days later, Kim Chongp’il resigned from all public positions and, on 25 February, left the country. But the calm before the storm was brief.

Dependence on US aid On 16 March 1963, Park announced a decree proposing a national referendum to extend the military government’s term by an extra four years. This announcement once again shocked the nation. Ambassador 85

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Berger was particularly annoyed with Park because he realized that Park had blatantly ignored his request to delay the announcement until the US could prepare its position. After the announcement, Berger and other US embassy officials in Seoul strongly urged Park to abandon his plan. When Berger was informed that the date for the referendum would be announced the following day, he threatened to withhold economic aid. Berger also warned that if Park announced the referendum date, the US would retaliate within an hour by publicly announcing that US support for Park “had been predicated on the fulfillment of pledges given to the Korean people and to us to hold elections and restore civil government. If these pledges were not fulfilled, we would be forced to re-examine our attitude toward Park’s regime.”27 Berger’s threat to withhold economic aid seems to have taken effect immediately. From late March to early April, Tonga Ilbo reported that the military government’s negotiations for food were being used by the USA to force Park to cancel his March 16 announcement (Tonga Ilbo 19, 20, 22 March and 4 April 1963). Indeed, this was the beginning of what seems to have been a US anti-Park strategy during the nine months from March to November 1963 designed to force Park not to break his pledges to “hold elections and restore civil government.” The anti-Park strategy had primarily emerged out of the Kennedy administration’s aim to redirect US aid to economic development assistance, focused on long-term economic, political and social development, and away from military development. In their series of memoranda in March 1961 to Walt Rostow, who was the deputy national security adviser to the White House, Robert Komer and Robert Johnson, both of whom were National Security Council (NSC) aides, had urged redirecting US policy from military aid to economic development assistance. To secure aid money for economic development, they supported Prime Minister Chang Myon’s proposal for a reduction of 100,000 in the Korean Army.28 Similarly, the outgoing US Ambassador, Walter P. McConaughy, cabled a long report to Washington on 11 April 1961. In it, he reported on the Chang Myon Government’s weakness and on the “absolute necessity” for a long-range economic development plan for Korea, while at the same time pointing out the possibility of Japan playing a key role in Korea’s economic development. To allow Japan to take such a role, however, McConaughy stressed the need for the US to play a more active role in bringing about a normalization treaty between Korea and Japan.29 When Samuel D. Berger was appointed the new US ambassador to Korea on 12 April 1961, his primary task, therefore, was to implement this new US policy. This included proposals for Korea to obtain assistance from Japan and Germany, for a substantial reduction in the Korean Army, and for the USA to act as a catalyst for normalization talks between Korea and Japan.30 What Berger could not have anticipated himself, however, 86

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was the staging of a military coup in Korea, which forced him to pressure junta leaders, especially Park, to return to a democratic form of civilian government by election. Berger’s approach in this process appears to have been too “heavy-handed” (Reischauer 1986: 252), to the extent that Park not only stood up to US policy advisers, including Berger, but also promoted his counter-strategy using the rhetoric of “anti-flunkeyism.” In October 1961, Park clearly feared a reduction in US aid and felt US pressure on him to effect a rapid return to civilian rule and settlement with Japan, when the US invited him to visit President Kennedy the following month. Berger was at pains to convince Park of the value of the visit, both in terms of the world recognition that it would bring and the fact that the State Department was examining ways to recompense Korea for the reduced aid.31 Berger’s power over Korea at that time was extraordinary because, as one researcher, basing his conclusions on US archival sources, pointed out, Berger not only had “all non-military operations under his control as a country team, but also had the overall authority given him by the ‘Kennedy Letter’ of May 1961” (Macdonald 1992: 290). On 8 April 1963, Park rescinded his March 16 decree and deferred a decision on election dates until September. Almost immediately, Berger recommended that Washington should release an immediate grant of additional PL 480 [food aid program] aid of wheat and barley to help the Korean Government control a rice market racked by inflation. Berger suggested that US aid during this period would assist in persuading Japan to settle a bilateral agreement with Korea and pointed out that the Park Government was already “intent on settling with [the] Japanese during these months.”32 Between late April and late May, Berger seems to have come to some compromise with Park, which was significant enough to warrant the ambassador making a special trip to Washington in order to urge President Kennedy directly to provide additional aid. This was a remarkable development because Berger’s assessment of the Korean political situation at that time, which he discussed with Kennedy on 31 May, was that it was extremely volatile, so much so that Roger Hilsman, US Assistant Secretary of State, described it as “balanced on a knife’s edge.”33 Berger’s changed attitude toward Park and his military junta government appears even more remarkable when one considers Berger’s awareness about his own government’s desire “to see Park defeated in the election” (Macdonald 1992: 224). Berger nevertheless believed that there was a strong need for political and economic stability, and that Park had little option but to give priority to Korea’s economic difficulties because he knew, just as the US did, that his country’s food supplies would run out by mid-July if aid were not forthcoming.34 Berger understood Park’s weakness accurately, at least concerning the critical food shortage in Korea at that time. (From March 1963 Korea had faced 87

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food shortages as a result of a severe drought in 1962 and floods in 1963 in the south-west Honam area.) Berger’s sudden change of approach toward Park and his military government appears to have been motivated by the US Government’s deadline for the settlement of normalization between Japan and Korea. On 12 February 1963, Berger and ambassador Reischauer in Tokyo received firm instructions from the State Department that they should “press hard on [the] Korean–Japanese negotiations despite political factors.”35 On the same day, the Assistant Secretary of State for the Far East, Averill W. Harriman, also sent a personal message to Berger. Harriman wrote: “[I] underline to you personally [the] importance which is placed here at [the] highest level on the ROK–Japanese settlement being achieved [by] this spring.”36 Therefore, it appears that Berger’s changed attitude toward Park and his military government emerged out of mutual self-interest, and that Berger agreed to release US aid in return for Park’s agreement to settle Korea–Japan normalization as soon as the elections were over. This does not mean, however, that Park and Berger trusted each other. Evidence shows that each honored his part of the agreement strictly on a quid pro quo basis. For example, Park flatly refused to make an “announcement of elections in the Fall . . . until Korean demands for U.S. foodstuffs were met” (Macdonald 1992: 224). When they were met, but only partially, Park announced the election dates on 27 July, but nonspecifically, by declaring, “mid-October for the presidential election and late November for the National Assembly (NA) elections” (Chong Chaegyong 1994: 115). In August, Park and Berger engaged in some more incremental bargaining, including the temporary handing over of an alleged North Korean “spy,” Hwang T’aesong, whose case is discussed below, to US intelligence for questioning. The US, in return, released 115,000 tons of additional wheat under the PL 480 program. At this point, Japan stepped in and also donated 40,000 tons of rice, wheat and barley (Reischauer 1986: 252). Park finally announced the election dates as 15 October and 26 November for the presidential and the NA elections respectively. Further aid was sought with Berger’s support, but Washington rejected this request on the ground that unless Korea drew up a sensible development plan and a balanced budget, additional aid would only be misused and increase dependency on the US.37 On 31 August, one day after his resignation from the army, Park officially accepted the DRP’s presidential nomination. His acceptance initiated a new phase in Korean politics because, for the first but certainly not the last time in Korea’s contemporary history, a military figure was nominated for the presidency.

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Anti-flunkeyism rhetoric in the presidential campaign In contrast to his own position as military junta leader, Park characterized the opposition’s stance, during the election campaign, as “pre-modern, feudalistic and flunkeyist” in the face of foreign powers. He proposed to introduce “a new uniquely Korean way” and a new political leadership system opposed to “Western-style” democracy with a total transfer of political leadership from the old “privileged class” to the masses (Nam Chaehui 1963: 54). With this rhetoric, Park launched his presidential election campaign which was focused primarily on Korea’s fundamental problem: national dependence on the US and flunkeyism (sadae juui). He built his campaign mainly on the national priority of winning Korea’s autonomy over dependence, especially on US aid. Park argued: The total size of the (1961) budget was 608,800 million hwan, of which the United States counterpart funds supplied 316,900 million hwan . . . to finance national construction development projects. This represents 52% of the total budget . . . Thus, more than half of the national budget . . . depended upon the United States . . . Though nominally independent, the real worth of the Republic of Korea, from a statistical point of view, was only 48% . . . In other words, the U.S. had a 52% majority vote with regard to Korea, and we were dependent to that extent . . . It showed, dramatically, that our government would have to instantly close down if U.S. aid were withheld or withdrawn. (Park Chung Hee 1963b: 21–2) The key issue implicit in this statement, albeit carefully downplayed, was US intervention with respect to Park’s leadership and his “dangerous deficit for 1962” (MacDonald 1992: 294) due largely to the high investment level demanded by the first Five-Year Plan (1962–6). Park tackled this issue on two fronts: he urged the Korean people to “wake up” from old habits of dependence and to work for economic development, and he demanded that the US Government change its aid policy to allow Korea to “obtain more of the kind of aid we want and to utilize it independently” (Park Chung Hee 1963a: 45). He declared, “We reject any begging-style aid” (Nam Chaehui 1963: 57). In campaigning for Korea’s autonomy, free from US intervention linked to foreign aid, Park set about systematically eliminating US influence on Korean Government affairs. To support his bid to win the presidency, Park introduced a new concept of democracy in September 1963, termed “Nationalistic Democracy” (minjokchok minjujuui) or “Koreanized democracy” (Han’gukchok minjujuui). According to Park, the future of Korea had to be built on two priorities: “Korea-first” and “economy-first.” These two priorities were akin 89

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to the agenda for national reconstruction articulated by leading Korean intellectuals during the pre-1961 period (as outlined in Chapter 2). How, then, was Park’s agenda different from the “liberal democracy” promoted earlier by Korea’s intellectuals and what were Park’s key objectives for Nationalistic Democracy? To address these questions, it is important to consider Park’s second book, Kukka wa hyongmyong kwa na (The Nation, the Revolution and I), released in September 1963, a day after his announcement of the presidential election. This text was reportedly drafted by a scribe who claimed that Park wanted to explain frankly to the people the national condition at the time of the coup, especially vis-à-vis North Korea’s economic and military power (Nam Chaehui 1963: 194–5). In the book, Park launched into open criticism of US aid policy in Korea and its management, especially through the United States Operations Mission (USOM). Park also declared his position on national reconstruction in terms of his political ideology, vision and strategy. Park’s terminology of “Nationalistic Democracy” symbolized the primacy of national independence and sovereignty over foreign dominance and interference, especially in domestic affairs. He claimed to be a “commoner” (somin), and thus a protagonist of the people’s autonomy and people’s democracy. The Korean people’s quasi-feudal and quasi-colonial mentality toward their “Masters” in the past, whether pro-Japanese or proAmerican, reflected the extent of their economic deprivation. To put it starkly, the government’s holdings of foreign reserves by the end of 1961 were a mere US$205,206,000. By the end of 1962, the Park administration, with its heavy investment in facilities and infrastructure, held only US$166,793,000. National Treasury holdings, by September 1963, had been reduced to US$105,405,000, of which the holdings of US currency amounted to a mere US$93,298,000 (Han’guk unhaeng chosabu 1994: 204). Plainly, Korea verged on bankruptcy. The election campaign thus boiled down to an ideological debate on democracy. Park argued: “This [presidential] election is . . . a contest between false liberal democracy, which has been based on forgotten nationalist ideals, and liberal democracy based on intense nationalism” (Kim Kyongnae 1963: 103). Park’s statement immediately stirred his opposition, especially Yun Poson, former President and leader of the Civil Rule Party (Minjongdang), who represented one of the most conservative political groups in contemporary Korean politics. Yun declared: This election is a contest between democracy and impure democracy. Everything will be obvious when we examine each person’s past record in regard to who is and who is not a nationalist, who is and who is not an adherent to democracy and, who is and who is not a Communist. (Sin Sangch’o 1963: 119) 90

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According to each candidate, the other did not represent the principles of genuine liberal democracy, Yun arguing that Park’s concept of democracy was “impure,” and Park arguing that Yun’s was “hypocritical.” A notable feature of this dispute was the public exposure (although minimal) of Park’s Communist past (see Chapter 1). In particular, Ho Chong, one of the seven presidential candidates and the leader of the People’s Party (Kungmin ui dang) exposed the Democratic Republican Party (DRP) links with a mysterious man known as “Hwang X” from North Korea. Hwang X was quickly identified as Hwang T’aesong, the North Korean Vice-Minister of Foreign Trade, who had supposedly arrived in Seoul on 1 September 1961 to “propose” negotiations with the North. Contrary to this purpose, however, Hwang was allegedly involved in the DRP’s special training program undertaken in advance of the Party being officially established. Ho Chong argued that the DRP’s prearranged organization, with a “cell structure” framework known as chomjojik, had been prepared by Hwang. This cell structure apparently had been modeled on the structure of the North Korean Workers’ Party. Ho therefore demanded that the government should clarify the Hwang X Incident. There emerged growing public criticism of Park, and Yun Poson exploited this public mood in his campaign speech in Chonju on 24 September 1963 when he accused Park of “trampling on democracy” (Kim Kyongnae 1963: 104–5). On 10 October, just five days before the election, Park revealed that Hwang was an old friend of his elder brother, Sanghui, who had been executed by police for his role in a Communist riot in October 1946. He also revealed that Hwang’s secret mission to Seoul had been “to propose a [political] negotiation between South and North Korea.”38 He had been found guilty of spying for North Korea. Park insisted that, “It is also a fact that a certain foreign organization was involved in the process of fabricating false facts and spreading them as if Hwang T’aesong was related to me” (Yi Sangu 1993: 142). Park’s reference to a “certain foreign organization” pointed to the US Embassy in Seoul, especially the CIA which had been pressuring Kim Hyonguk, then Director of the KCIA, to hand Hwang over to US Army intelligence for questioning. Park subsequently exchanged Hwang for large-scale economic and military assistance. In return, Kim Hyonguk claimed, a cargo of wheat, brought in under the PL 480 program, which had been anchored offshore at Inch’on since early August, was also finally unloaded. Kim also claimed that 115,000 tons of additional wheat were allocated as well, to give effect to the fourth Korea–US Agreement for Surplus Agricultural Commodities, which had been concluded on 13 August 1963 (Kim Hyongwuk and Pak Sawol vol. 2 1985: 60). Overall, the Hwang episode reflected Park’s vulnerability to criticism for his Communist past. In order to rid himself of this stigma, Park approved Hwang’s execution.39 91

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In October 1963 Park won the presidential election over Yu Poson by a mere 151,595 votes or 1.5 percent, obtaining 46.6 percent of the total vote (Yun Hyongsop 1980: 332–3). As many commentators have noted, a united opposition, instead of a field of six candidates (even though two of them withdrew just before the election), would certainly have defeated Park. Despite widely noted bribery, election fraud and irregularities, the presidential election was generally seen as “fair.” On 18 October, the United Nations Commission for the Unification and Rehabilitation of Korea stated, “the voting was properly organized and held in an orderly and regular manner” (Macdonald 1992: 225). Ironically, however, the narrowness of Park’s victory seems to have shocked ambassador Berger. He seems to have been particularly worried about the Korean people’s lack of confidence in Park and his military government as a result of the American anti-Park strategy and the withholding of US aid. What Berger wished least was another narrow victory to the government party in the November elections. Berger therefore strongly recommended to Washington that the US release economic aid prior to the Assembly elections. He believed that such a demonstration of good faith was necessary because the American Government’s “[anti-Park] attitude and withholding aid had become a major issue in [the presidential] campaign” and that unless the US defused the issue by releasing “some supporting assistance . . . the government party might not gain a majority in the Assembly” (Macdonald 1992: 226). Accordingly, the US released $10 million from its 1963 supplement funds in November, even though “the $15 million of scheduled Fiscal Year 1964 US aid was still withheld” (Macdonald 1992: 226). On 26 November, the DRP won an overwhelming victory in the National Assembly elections, obtaining 110 of the 175 seats. By then, the Party was once again under the management of Kim Chongp’il who had returned from his short exile in the US just a week before Park’s election in October, and subsequently ran for election to the National Assembly as DRP chairman. To what extent the sweeping victory was due to the urgently released $10 million in US aid is difficult to tell. At the least, it could not have been entirely unrelated. The astounding victory was even reported by the DRP itself as the result of “the timely and efficient distribution of campaign funds” (Joungwon A. Kim 1975: 254; Kwangbong Kim 1971). The victory confirmed the achievement of Park’s most important priorities in his two-year military junta leadership: to establish his political legitimacy and to obtain US support.

Conclusion Park, improbably, had indeed got away with grand larceny. Why? Mainly because President Kennedy was concerned with worldwide Cold War 92

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policy, not with Korea’s domestic affairs. The US, therefore, wasted no time in effectively endorsing Park’s military junta as the bulwark of its Cold War bloc, focused on the maintenance of anti-Communist regimes around the periphery of the Soviet empire. In this context, Kennedy betrayed his own country’s commitment to creating democratic politics in Korea by acquiescing to Park’s military dictatorship. The flaw in US Cold War policy in Korea was that it not only enabled Park to establish the legitimacy of his essentially illegitimate political leadership, but it further encouraged him to insist on a measure of independence in his negotiations with the Americans, especially on aid in relation to Korea’s economic development. From the viewpoint of Washington policy-makers, Park was recalcitrant, to say the least. But, as we have seen in this chapter, recalcitrance was Park’s tactic in order to win “quid pro quo” negotiations with the Americans. Park thereby created his own leverage, however annoying from the viewpoint of Washington officials, in insisting on Korea’s independence from US intervention, especially in Korean affairs. Park’s “quid pro quo” approach upset Washington officials from the very beginning. They were also suspicious about Park’s earlier record of Communist activity. Yet, Washington had no illusions about the importance of Park’s role to its Cold War policy. Similarly, Park had no illusions about the importance of Americans to Korea. He thoroughly appreciated that without US support and cooperation he could not maintain and strengthen his hold on power and his domestic and international legitimacy. Thus despite the continuing dominance of American policies through the provision of aid, Park relentlessly promoted US-led antiCommunist capitalism, while also articulating economic nationalism in his dealings with the US. For Park, the US represented an absolutely necessary resource for Korea’s economic development and the US presence in Korean affairs therefore became a defining parameter in the formulation of Park-style modernization.

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4 THE LEAP FORWARD Alliance with the USA More than anything else, [we] need money. Even though the US helps us, I can’t expect that the US would double its aid and I can’t trust the US. But we can justifiably demand money from Japan. It’s a huge loss for the nation if anyone destroys that [financial source] in the name of anti-Japanese sentiment or humiliation. (Park Chung Hee)1

Introduction Once the elections were over, and his legitimacy confirmed as the newly elected President of the Third Republic of Korea, Park wasted no time in tackling his two most challenging tasks: reversing the direction of Korea’s relationship with Japan and the development of Korea’s defense security. With extraordinary prudence, Park sought to achieve these goals by making his government’s priorities dovetail with US policy in East Asia, especially as regards US interests in Japan and Vietnam. Park thus commenced fundamentally altering Korea’s relationship with Japan while at the same time negotiating with the Americans about the terms and conditions for the deployment of Korean troops to Vietnam. These moves enabled Park to kick-start his national development program as an integral part of the US-led Cold War initiatives in East Asia. They also enabled him to play an active role in regional politics to the extent that, in the words of James C. Thomson, “Korea [was] no longer a fragile and isolated U.S. ward, but reconciled with its traditional enemy and potential protector [Japan], [and a] participant in [a] new Asian regional initiative.”2 For the Park Government, therefore, the first half of the Third Republic, from 1963 to 1967, was epoch-making, especially in terms of securing US support for Korea, which was given as a “pay-off” by the US for Park’s policy of alignment with US security policy in East Asia. For Koreans, this period was marked by high expectations, as well as by misgivings about US intentions, and by rapid economic growth mixed with a equally rapid change in the character of Korean society. One change that was clearly 94

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apparent was the rise of national confidence on the part of both the government and the people. The reins of political power, however, remained firmly in Park’s hands, as reflected in his overwhelming victory in the 1967 presidential election. It was during this four-year period that Korea’s development really took off. But the second half of the Third Republic, from 1968 to October 1972, when Park declared the authoritarian Yusin Reforms, provided a radically different context for Park’s strategy internally and externally. Internally, Park faced a number of problems due largely to the rapid erosion of the people’s confidence in the government that occurred during this period, while at the same time he struggled with factional strife within the governing Democratic Republican Party (DRP). This is not to say that Korea’s economic growth was in any way less impressive than that of the first half of the Third Republic. In 1970, the government achieved its third consecutive export goal. This goal of reaching one billion dollars in annual export earnings had, in fact, been brought forward by several months from the original set time frame as we shall see. Rapid economic growth, however, generated a new social phenomenon: the growing assertiveness of the workers in voicing their demands. They, together with university students and many leading intellectuals, not only demanded higher wages and better working conditions for workers, but also conducted social campaigns for human rights based on democratic principles. The Korean people as a whole were discontented with the government. Social discontent, especially toward Park, dramatically worsened in October 1969 when he managed to win the national referendum for a constitutional amendment, permitting him to run for the presidency for a third term in 1971. The flaw in obtaining this constitutional amendment was that the DRP had passed it unilaterally using irregular methods (see Chapter 5). In this process, Park not only exposed his personal ambition for prolonged one-man rule, but also ruthlessly purged anyone who disagreed, or was seen to disagree, with him. Therefore, political restructuring to consolidate the so-called “Guidance System” (chido ch’eje) within the DRP and the state bureaucracy became inevitable, as did the introduction of hard-line policies to constrain anti-government forces. Externally, and with less opportunity for flexibility, Park faced extremely challenging problems that demanded radical policies, especially concerning national security. Two key conflicting factors contributed to Korea’s security crisis: an increase in North Korea’s armed provocation on the one hand and what was seen as a policy of appeasement by the US of North Korea on the other. The former was a consequence of Kim Il Sung’s hard-line unification policy which promoted the armed Communization of South Korea, and the latter was due to the changing focus of US foreign policy introduced by the Johnson administration during its 95

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very last phase. The US policy of disengagement from direct participation in Asian conflicts became official in early 1969 when the newly elected President Nixon announced his new foreign policy, the Guam (or Nixon) Doctrine.3 In the face of apparently declining American hegemony in North-East Asia, the Nixon Doctrine primarily aimed to reduce the cost of military expenditure in Asia. The Nixon Doctrine became a core element in the East–West détente of the 1970s, when the United States and the Soviet Union globally adjusted their diplomatic relations on the overt basis of peaceful coexistence, with China and Japan regionally following suit. However, these countries’ motives had little to do with this rhetoric of peaceful coexistence at the global level. The Sino-Soviet dispute that had emerged around 1959–60 was a significant factor in Nixon’s rapprochement with China, for he saw rapprochement as an opportunity to promote the SinoSoviet split. Mao went along with this development because of the difficulty of his relations with the Soviet Union. This strategic maneuvering to weaken the Soviet Union’s claim to control all of the Communist world was something quite different to peaceful coexistence. The changed relationship between world powers meant that the politics of the Cold War changed irrevocably, and was now dominated even more by the US. There is no doubt that Western Europe’s economic powerhouse and Japan’s emerging one made them important players on the world scene. But Western Europe was tied up in US-dominated NATO, with Eastern Europe part of the Communist bloc, and Japan was by no means a world power with military control over its own destiny – a control it still does not command to this day. The change was critical for lesser powers around the globe, but it was especially critical for Korea, where superpower intervention had resulted in national division and the subsequent rivalry between the two Koreas in a zero-sum game. In this strategic context, the second half of the Third Republic of Korea was a period in which Park was driven to seek an alternative to the apparently declining value of the US security commitment as a consequence of US rapprochement with China, just as Kim Il Sung sought a way to guarantee the survival of North Korea in this same context.4

Japan–Korea normalization By February 1964, just a little over a month after Park’s presidential inauguration on 27 December 1963, normalization talks between Japan and Korea were well under way, following heavy pressure from the Kennedy administration, especially on the part of Secretary of State Dean Rusk.5 In his first visit to Korea in November 1961, Rusk had personally assured Park of continued US support and had promised that the Korean military would not be “reduced.”6 Normalization of Korea’s relations with Japan 96

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had been US policy from 1947 as part of the US containment strategy, which was designed to make Japan a partner in the Cold War against Communism. The US policy in regard to normalizing Korea–Japan relations also meant that the emphasis in US policy shifted away from demilitarization and democratization toward economic rehabilitation in order to create a powerful anti-Communist force in North-East Asia. However, the US Government made very little progress in bringing the Japanese and Korean Governments together for normalization negotiations prior to the Kennedy administration. Between 1951 and October 1960, for example, there were a total of five meetings between the governments of Japan and Korea, but no progress was made, mainly because neither government showed the political will to tackle the controversial issues surrounding the negotiations. President Rhee, in particular, maintained his uncompromising anti-Japanese stance despite his appointment to government positions of many well-known former Japanese collaborators. Park, on the other hand, visited Japan’s Prime Minister Ikeda in Tokyo – even if this visit was brokered by Rusk – on his way back from Washington in November 1961. This visit was a bold move when one considers the anti-Japanese sentiment of the Korean people and Park’s already tainted reputation as a “Japanophile” if not “Japanese collaborator.” Park not only held talks with Ikeda on two occasions, but also met many Japanese business leaders, including Kishi Nobusuke, former Manchukuo bureaucrat and postwar Prime Minister, who had been responsible for initiating preliminary negotiations between Japan and Korea in October 1960. Why did Park so willingly expose himself when he was so vulnerable? As the quotation heading this chapter shows, Park’s main interest in normalizing the relationship with Japan was economic. His keen interest in Japanese money is understandable in light of the near bankrupt state of Korea at the time as well as the fierce struggle between Park and US policy advisers who had been pressing Park to comply with their new aid policy. US economic aid under the Kennedy administration had fallen dramatically from $216.4 million in 1963 to $149.3 million in 1964, the largest decrease since 1955 (Sungjoo Han 1978: 59). Hence Park needed an extra source of economic and financial assistance that would be strong enough to support Korea’s first Five-Year Plan and provide for his own political survival. We should be careful, however, not to judge Park’s motive for “quick normalization” to have been solely that of financial urgency, an aspect of which was the need to address the substantial trade deficit with Japan. For their part, the Japanese, especially private companies, were quite willing to support Park and his ruling party. According to American CIA information, Japan had provided the DRP with $66 million, two-thirds of the party’s entire budget, between 1961 and 1965 (Jung-en Woo 1991: 107). 97

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A further pressing motive for Park’s push for normalization is to be found in US policy in North-East Asia which, in effect, placed Japan in the new role of economic power in North-East Asia and accordingly forced Japan to share in the responsibility of regional economic development, especially of Korea. Thus, according to the US embassy in Tokyo, strong US pressure finally forced not only Park, but also the Japanese, “to push ahead toward Korean settlement as necessary in Japan’s own interests” (MacDonald 1992: 134). Japan’s readiness for normalization also came at a price to the US, skillfully negotiated by Prime Ministers Ikeda (1960–4) and Sato (1964–72). Ikeda in particular sought balance-of-payments concessions from the US. In addition to economic concessions, Sato also sought the restoration of Okinawa to Japanese sovereignty, on which he had “staked his political future” (Havens 1987: 132). This latter objective was finally achieved in May 1972. Therefore, Park’s interest in normalization with Japan was tightly balanced by trade-offs between Japan and the US. Within this triad of interests, Park pushed toward normalization with Japan but at great political cost, including head-on clashes with internal opposition forces who rejected this policy. Park reassigned Kim Chongp’il to Japan in March 1964 to negotiate final arrangements for signing a treaty, despite mounting suspicion among opposition parties over Kim’s activities, especially following the “secret agreement” in November 1962 between Kim and Japanese Foreign Minister Ohira Masayoshi. In this agreement, Korea agreed to restore relations with Japan in return for a total package valued at $800 million. Of this, Japan agreed to provide $300 million in grants payable over ten years; $200 million in government loans; and $100 million in commercial credits, which amount was later increased to $300 million (Yi Tosong 1995: 124–40 and 266). On 23 March, Kim made a significant breakthrough in the negotiations during his meeting with Prime Minister Ikeda and Foreign Minister Ohira, setting a timetable for concluding a treaty by the end of May. But, on 24 March, this timetable was quickly annulled when a nation-wide anti-treaty protest, involving university students, politicians, civic leaders, church leaders and high school students swept through Seoul and other major cities (Ch’oe Ch’anggyu 1976: 208–324). The protestors demanded the cancellation of the “secret agreement” between Kim and Ohira, the details of which had been revealed, and Kim’s recall from Tokyo. They also condemned the agreement as “humiliating and unequal diplomacy.” On 27 March, Kim was recalled from Tokyo and, on 31 March, Park suspended normalization talks. The most serious protests, however, broke out on 3 June when university students calling for Park’s resignation clashed with police in Seoul. These protests, later known as the June 3 Struggle (yuk-sam hangjaeng), had been building up since 20 May when Seoul National University students conducted the so-called “funeral of 98

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Nationalistic Democracy,” symbolizing the death of Park’s ideological flagship and his government. During this mock funeral service, the students also conducted the now legendary shamanist ritual, Exorcism to Invoke Native Land Consciousness (hyangt’o uisik ch’ohon kut), which, together with mask-dance drama, marked the beginning of the Korean people’s cultural movement, more commonly known as the Minjung Culture Movement (Minjung Munhwa Undong) in the 1980s (Van Leest, Kim Hyung-A 1992; Choi Chungmoo 1995: 105–18). From the viewpoint of the protesters, including the students, the state was selling national sovereignty to Japan and the blood of Korean youth to serve the purposes of the US in the war in Vietnam (see below). Therefore, in their eyes, the Park regime was “traitorous” for having engaged in a “proxy war” (Sim Yungt’aek 1973: 341). Fearing another student revolution, Park declared martial law which continued until 28 July. On June 5, as the situation had become extremely volatile, Kim Chongp’il resigned from his position as Chairman of the DRP and left the country for a second exile, spent this time at Harvard University (New York Times 7 and 15 June 1964). Even in this chaotic situation, however, Park continued his push for early rapprochement. In addition to normalization negotiations led by special negotiators stationed in Tokyo, Foreign Minister Chong Ilgwon engaged himself actively, visiting Ikeda and Ohira and seeking their “sincere response.” Behind this move stood, as one Korean researcher noted, the “invisible hand: America’s Mighty Force”(Yi Tosong 1995: 210–62). Nevertheless, not much progress was made until 9 November, when Ikeda resigned due to poor health and Sato Eisaku, a younger brother of Kishi Nobusuke, became Prime Minister of Japan. Almost immediately, Kim Tongjo, the newly appointed chief negotiator in Tokyo, successfully sought Kishi’s help,7 and then convinced the newly appointed Foreign Minister, Shiina Etsusaburo, a long-time confidant of Kishi since the 1930s, and Prime Minister Sato to resume direct negotiations from 3 December.8 The most decisive factor in enforcing these Japan–Korea treaty negotiations, however, came from the US when Sato and Park were invited, although without agreed dates, to visit President Lyndon B. Johnson. This “carrot,” as the invitation was termed by McGeorge Bundy, special assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, was strictly conditional on progress toward the conclusion of the normalization treaty. On 26 December, Bundy wrote to President Johnson regarding Park’s visit: We ought to use the carrot of such a visit to draw him toward the Japanese–Korean settlement which means so much to us both politically and financially. We propose therefore to keep this one indefinite in the hopes of progress of this sort.9 99

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Not surprisingly, Park was determined to take advantage of this “carrot.” Japanese Foreign Minister Shiina’s four-day visit to Korea on 17 February 1965 was a significant step in Park’s efforts to this effect. To convince Shiina to accept the government’s invitation to visit Korea and to make an “apology” to the Korean people for their oppression during Japanese colonial rule, even though it was a diplomatic gesture, Park released, as demanded by Shiina, the three Japanese fishing boats and their sixteen crew members who had been recently captured for entering Korean waters inside the “Rhee Line” (a fishing zone previously declared unilaterally by President Rhee). In his statement of arrival in Korea, Shiina made an official apology by stating that “[Japan] sincerely regrets that an unfortunate period existed in the long history of the two countries, and deeply reflects on such a past.”10 The Korean Government until then had absolutely refused to release these boats and their crews, despite US pressure. Moreover, Park approved the initialing of a draft treaty by Shiina and Yi Tongwon, the Korean Foreign Minister, in the face of mounting anti-normalization protests and violent clashes between the anti-treaty campaign group, the Pan-National Struggle Committee Opposed to Humiliating Diplomacy with Japan (hereafter the Pan-National Struggle Committee), and the police. Just two days after Shiina’s apology to Korea, ambassador Brown delivered President Johnson’s invitation to the US, setting 17 May as Park’s day of arrival. Park accepted the invitation immediately.11 One of the key objectives of Park’s visit to the US to meet with President Johnson was to “re-affirm” continued US commitment to Korea, especially military commitment, which, as Dean Rusk had already twice assured him since November 1961, would not be reduced as a result of Korea’s normalization with Japan (Yi Tosong 1995: 367–70). Park’s objective was clearly understood by James C. Thomson, a member of the National Security Council. In his memorandum to Johnson, Thomson wrote that the “paramount reason” for Park’s visit was to secure “the strongest possible indication from us, both through our courtesies to him and through tangible evidence of continuing U.S. assistance that we have no intention of abandoning Korea to Japanese control in the wake of a Japan–Korea settlement [emphasis in original].”12 It is no surprise, therefore, that the normalization treaty and Korea’s participation in the Vietnam War were the two topics that dominated Park’s two meetings with Johnson. Park’s scope for bargaining leverage with the US increased, however, when Johnson requested Park to deploy to Vietnam a division of Korean combat forces in addition to the currently deployed non-combat troops. Although Park did not respond with a firm offer, other than expressing his personal hope that “Korea would increase its commitment to one division,”13 he appears to have taken very little time in deploying the requested division. Considering the massive anti-normalization protests at 100

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that time and a twenty-four-hour hunger strike by the entire opposition in the National Assembly as well as the leaders of the Pan-National Struggle Committee, on the day after the Kim-Ohira signing, Park’s action to deploy troops could be seen as a tactic to temporarily divert public attention. But such a view is too simplistic. The key factor was the opportunity afforded by the change in US policy in Vietnam, which led to an escalation in US troops there to nearly 75,000 by July 1965 (Pentagon Papers, 1971: 414). On 11 August, the ruling DRP gained approval in the National Assembly for the normalization ratification bill through a highly orchestrated “lightning coup” (Kim Kwangbong 1971: 115) which took place close to midnight. The following day, sixty-one enraged opposition members resigned and walked out of the Assembly. The DRP quickly seized this opportunity to have a “one party” sitting of the Assembly on 13 August to submit and pass the deployment bill and, on the following day, to ratify the normalization bill. By the time Korea established diplomatic relations with Japan on 18 December 1965, more than 18,000 Korean troops, including a marine brigade, had been deployed to Vietnam.

The Vietnam War Just as the various Korean governments have claimed, until recent times, that the deployment of Korean troops to Vietnam was an act of patriotic “mission” against Communist aggression, many observers, especially progressive leftist intellectuals in the West, have referred to the Korean troops in Vietnam as “rented troops,” “hired guns” and “mercenaries.”14 This view received prominence in Korea in April 2000, when the progressive Korean newspaper Han’gyore Sinmun and its sister weekly Han’gyore 21 published an exhaustive investigation into atrocities by Korean forces in Vietnam. The Han’gyore 21 characterized the Korean troops in Vietnam as “mercenaries who were more cruel than US troops” (Cited in Yi Tongwuk 2000: 352).15 Such views take on an economic as well as moral significance when we consider that Korea’s economic gain from the Vietnam War was greater than $380 million by the end of 1968 and, as one researcher noted, “represented 16% of the total receipts of foreign funds and 2.8% of South Korea’s GNP” (Se Jin Kim 1970: 519). This huge increase in the availability of foreign currency reserves, which reached an “all-time high of $386 million in October 1968” (Se Jin Kim 1970: 520), compared to $138 million in 1965, and less than $100 million in 1963, provides an important complementary perspective, in sheer economic terms to the ethical issues concerning the Korean involvement in the Vietnam War. The total sum Korea received from the US for dispatching troops to Vietnam between 1965 and 1970, according to a US Senate Committee inquiry, was $927 million (Jung-un Woo 1991: Chapter 4, note no. 68). Thus the 101

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deployment of Korean troops to Vietnam was undoubtedly one of Park’s key strategies. It was aimed not only at securing US approval for his regime, but also at maximizing the economic and security opportunities to be gained from US policy, especially by tailoring Korean goals to fit US Cold War policy in East Asia. Although Park undoubtedly had economic motives for sending troops to Vietnam, declassified (March 1991) sources reveal that he also sought to secure US commitment to a continuing military security posture in Korea, especially after the completion of the Korea–Japan normalization treaty. What Park feared most, even more than American plans to reduce the Korean armed forces at that time, was the withdrawal of US troops from Korea to meet the rapidly escalating demand for US deployment in Vietnam. Given the history of US–Korea policy at that time, Park’s fear of a withdrawal of US troops seems to have been justified. In June 1963, for example, President Kennedy had seriously considered the reduction of its military forces in Korea.16 In fact, US plans to reduce its forces in Korea remained under consideration until 1965 when ambassador Berger succeeded in blocking them, arguing that a reduction could not be concealed for long and would have adverse political as well as military effects. Given these circumstances, it is questionable whether Korea’s bargaining with the US in order to prevent the “turning-off of the economic and military aid spigot” (Jung-un Woo 1991: 121) really began in the late 1960s. Evidence suggests that Park actually began his bargaining with the US in the early 1960s, very soon after he took power and learned about US foreign policy, especially that which emanated from President Kennedy’s Task Force on Korea. As early as 14 November 1961, for example, Park had suggested to President Kennedy, at their first meeting, that Korea was willing to deploy troops to Vietnam.17 This proposal was repeated by Prime Minister Song Yoch’an on 17 March 1962, when US Assistant Secretary of State, Averill Harriman, visited Korea. Although Park’s proposal was not accepted by the US until 1964, these ongoing negotiations between Park and the US Government demonstrate Park’s ability to anticipate US policy maneuvers in East Asia. By 1966, a total of 23,865 Korean troops had been dispatched to Vietnam. Between 1969 and 1972 a maximum of 47,872 Korean troops were based in Vietnam at any one time, and a total of more than 300,000 had served there by the time Korea withdrew its troops altogether in July 1971. Park’s well-anticipated and shrewd negotiations with the US not only delayed the “turning-off” of US military and economic aid, but also extracted a commitment from the US to modernize the Korean armed forces, as outlined in the “Brown Memorandum.”18 Although the slowness of the US commitment to Korean military modernization frustrated Korean policy-makers, especially Park, to the extent that they were driven to planning Korea’s “own” defense-related industries (discussed in 102

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Chapter 8), under the provisions of this Memorandum, Korea is said to have earned more than one billion dollars from Vietnam between 1965 and 1970.19 In addition, in February 1966, Park also began a network – building campaign within East Asia through a carefully planned tour of three key nations: Malaysia, Thailand, and Taiwan. It was Park’s attempt to establish an anti-Communist bloc among “free” nations through economic, cultural and social ties. The establishment of the Asian and Pacific Council (ASPAC) in June 1966, which Korea hosted for its first meeting in Seoul with a membership of eight nations, was a direct outcome of Park’s campaign. In October the same year, Park toured another three countries, including the Philippines, where he attended the Manila Conference alongside seven other Vietnam War allies. Although this Conference did not play any specific role other than the staging of a symbolic gathering of the US-led anti-Communist bloc in East Asia, Park impressed President Johnson enough for him to pledge publicly that “the United States has no plan to reduce the present level of United States forces in Korea.”20 The relationship between Korea and the US was indeed cozy enough for Johnson to describe it as a “brotherly relationship” for which Park was willing to deliver many favors, although at a calculated price. In his reply of 9 September 1967 to Johnson’s request for a dispatch of yet more Korean troops to Vietnam, Park stated: With regard to the question of an additional dispatch of our forces to Vietnam, I have already instructed my Minister of National Defense to examine and report on the possibility as to what size of forces and how we would be able to contribute if we are to make such an additional dispatch of forces to Vietnam. My decision naturally will be based on such a report. As a prerequisite to this, however, I am faced with two important problems which I must solve. One problem is the apprehension widely entertained by the general public here that our capability for Korea’s own defense might be jeopardized in case additional Korean forces are sent to Vietnam. The other is another apprehension that, in view of the marked increase of infiltration by Communist armed agents from the North, we are not yet psychologically accommodated to feel secure unless some effective counter-measures are taken in this field if we are to send additional forces to Vietnam.21 (Emphasis added) On 22 December 1967, Park struck a more specific deal with the US at his meeting with Johnson in Canberra22 At this meeting Park agreed that he would deploy Korea’s third “light division”23 to Vietnam, on the condition that the US, in turn, provide a wide range of assistance to Korea to 103

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strengthen its military and economic security. In his letter to Park, Johnson stated: During our luncheon in Canberra you told me of the problems that confront you in connection with the dispatch of additional Korean forces to Vietnam. I fully understand the need for you to be able to assure the Korean people that their country’s security, political stability, and economic progress will not be adversely affected . . . Towards meeting this goal, my government will provide as promptly as possible appropriate assistance, including furnishing two destroyers and helicopters for this purpose . . . I am prepared to provide a special program of assistance . . . to strengthen the Korean national police . . . to assist you in the construction of . . . a major modern highway between . . . Seoul and . . . Pusan . . . I agree in principle to assist in the establishment of a civilian Korean logistics service corps for the support of the ROK armed forces in Vietnam. My government stands ready to help you meet the costs of this corps.24 (Emphasis added) This letter, however, did little to convince Park about US commitment to Korean security. In fact, the harmonious relationship between the Johnson administration and the Park Government came to an abrupt end less than a month after Johnson had sent him this letter. Park was furious at US indifference following an assassination attempt on his life by North Korean commandos (see below). He immediately cancelled his agreement to deploy a third division of Korean troops to Vietnam and instead began a serious reassessment of US policy in Korea, while at the same time launching his nation-wide mobilization campaigns for military, economic and socio-political strengthening.

Strained alliance On 21 January 1968, a squad of thirty-one armed North Korean commandos made a daring assassination attempt on Park by attacking the Blue House, the presidential residence. Of the commandos, twenty-seven were killed, three escaped, and one, Kim Sinjo, was captured. Twenty-three South Korean soldiers, including one colonel, were also killed and fiftytwo injured.25 Park reportedly called for immediate retaliation against the North and demanded US support from the US ambassador, William J. Porter. Porter’s response was: “Do it alone if you want” (Chae-Jin Lee and Hideo Sato 1988: 44; Yi Sangu 1984: 88–9). The Park Government became even more alarmed about security when it observed the unilateral response by the US to the North Korean seizure of their spy ship, Pueblo, on 23 January, just two days after the raid. 104

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Holding fears for the safety of the eighty-one crew members, the US decided, less than a week after the seizure of the ship, not to retaliate against North Korea. Furthermore, the US engaged itself directly in negotiations with North Korea, excluding the South, which shocked the Park Government. Foreign Minister Ch’oe Kyuha stated: “[The Korean Government] is totally opposed to US policy which places higher priority on the Pueblo incident than that of the presidential residence” (Yi Sangu 1984: 89–90). This statement pointed to two issues. The first concerned the undermining of Korea’s defense system as a consequence of US reluctance to act in the face of a major provocation, which was demonstrated in their refusal to retaliate against North Korea’s armed attack on the presidential residence. Ironically, the key reason Korea desisted from retaliation against the North was that the US (which held command over the Korean Army) objected to it. The second issue concerned US unilateralism in its negotiations with North Korea on the Pueblo incident. Bombarded with protests from Korea, President Johnson sent messages of reassurance on 3 and 5 February, offering an immediate increase in US military assistance. Park responded that he would not remain passive if the North provoked the South again. Johnson, alarmed with Park’s response, sent his personal representative, Cyrus B. Vance, to Seoul on 12 February 1968, to attempt to secure Park’s personal assurance not to take unilateral action against the North. The key interest of the US had been to repatriate the captured crew members. Park reportedly demanded that Vance provide a “written guarantee” of Korea’s defense security from the US Government. He also demanded that the US hand over its operational control of the Korean Armed Forces, and that the US provide the same level of security as that held by North Korea through treaties with the Soviet Union and China (Interview with Yu Hyogin, President Park’s senior political adviser, May 1994). Vance flatly refused. After acrimonious negotiations, however, Park and Vance issued a joint communiqué which stated: “the two countries would consult immediately whenever the security of Korea was threatened and . . . annual meetings of defense ministers would be held to discuss defense and security matters of mutual concern.”26 Although Korea received several gifts as appeasement from the US, including financial support for the construction of a munitions factory to manufacture M-16 rifles, plus an extra $100 million in military aid, this assistance did very little to allay Park’s doubts about US policy on Korea. In fact, Park quickly adjusted his government’s priorities and decided to build a comprehensive defense system, the Homeland Guard, with an armed militia of 2.5 million men (see Chapter 5). He also intensified the government’s drive to promote nationalism by introducing the National Charter of Education, declared in December 1968, and a $1 billion export earnings target with the support of various national mobilization campaigns (discussed in Chapter 7). Through his 105

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meeting with Vance, Park seems to have confirmed his fears about US policy on Korea, particularly in regard to North Korean armed provocation. At this critical point, Park repeatedly warned, “there is a limit to [our] patience and self-restraint” (Chong Chaegyong 1994: 253). In April 1969, US reluctance to take action against North Korean provocation became even further apparent when North Korea shot down a US spy plane, an EC-121, in the Sea of Japan. Despite Henry Kissinger’s urging that the US should immediately retaliate by bombing several North Korean airfields, Nixon refrained from confrontation. Kissinger, who regarded the EC-121 incident as the first major crisis in the Nixon administration, later referred to the USA handling of the incident as “weak, indecisive, disorganized.” Kissinger’s note, the contents of which were not disclosed until 1979, ironically reflected the Korean view of the Nixon administration. He stated: [The spy plane incident] showed major flaws in the [US] decision making – [the Nixon Administration] made no strategic assessment; no strong leadership; no significant political move; lacked both machinery and conception; made no demands that North Korea could either accept or reject. (Kissinger 1979: 321) To understand the US position on the Korean problem here, however, it is necessary to appreciate President Nixon’s final decision to oppose any military retaliation against North Korea. He may have cautioned strongly against the US being dragged into another Korean War because of feuding between North and South Korea. In any case, as Kissinger himself pointed out, Nixon’s decision was unanimously shared by his key policy advisers, including Secretary of State Rogers, Secretary of Defense Laird, and Helms, head of the CIA (Kissinger 1979: 319). In retrospect, Nixon’s non-retaliation approach to North Korea turned out to be only a prelude to a dramatic change in US foreign policy on Far East Asia. On 29 July 1969, President Nixon announced his new foreign policy known as the “Guam doctrine” or “Nixon Doctrine.” The New York Times of 26 July 1969 reported on the text of President Nixon’s statement given at an informal news conference: As far as the problems of international security are concerned, as far as the problems of military defense, except for the threat of a major power involving nuclear weapons, that the USA was going to encourage and had a right to expect that this problem would be increasingly handled by, and the responsibility for it taken by, the Asian nations themselves.27 106

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From the Korean perspective, this doctrine confirmed the long held fear of a US withdrawal from its security commitments in Asia. The only question was when. On 26 March 1970 Park was given advance notice by US Ambassador Porter that the US was reducing its forces in Korea by one infantry division (Clifford 1994: 78). Park was then already convinced that Korea could no longer expect “miracles” from the US, especially in terms of military security against Communist threats from North Korea. Therefore, he pushed all out for adjustments to the conduct of his government, his party and foreign policy, especially where it focused on the hostile relationship between North and South Korea, this situation ultimately leading him to propose North–South dialogue (discussed in Chapter 5). He also began diversified negotiations with the US by utilizing a variety of tactics. These ranged from making a personal appeal through carefully chosen prominent US policy figures such as Professor Robert Scalapino, who was at that time influential in the formulation of US foreign policy on the Far East, to organizing daring lobbying activities through the CIA which was becoming more powerful in the mid-1970s.28 In 1995, Scalapino described his early 1969 meeting with Park as “most unforgettable,” especially in terms of how precisely Park predicted the withdrawal of US forces from Vietnam. Scalapino said: In my meeting with the President, who was accompanied only by an interpreter, he said, “I think that your government is soon going to withdraw its forces from Vietnam.” I then replied, “My government has no such plan in any circumstance.” Despite my firm denial, the President repeated his position and said, “Please tell your government I need more time.” (Author interview, December 1995, in Canberra) As early as April 1968, Park is reported to have anticipated the US intention to withdraw forces from Vietnam after his meeting with President Johnson in Honolulu (Yugyong chaedan 1990: 298). On this understanding, Park increased his efforts to modernize the Korean military while appealing for “more time” throughout the 1970s. The appeal always had the same theme: I do not expect the US forces to remain in Korea indefinitely. But the timing is too early. It is truly awkward that such an issue has arisen in the present circumstance while the modernization of the Korean military is not yet on track.29 Park had three major concerns about the US decision to reduce its forces at that time. First, the tension between the two Koreas was rising rapidly; second, the North had far superior military capability to that of 107

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the South; and third, the South Korean Army was simply incapable of defending the country by itself with existing military equipment and weapons because they were too antiquated and dilapidated. These critical conditions ultimately led Park to establish the “Big Push” program for heavy and chemical industrialization, which essentially constituted a largescale defense industry in the mid-1970s, and put in place Korea’s own contingency measures, including a nuclear weapons capability program in case of the withdrawal of US forces from Korea. By the time the US Government delivered formal notice of the withdrawal of its 7th Division to the Foreign Minister Ch’oe Kyuha on 5 July 1970, the withdrawal had already been under way for at least six months and the Park Government had not even been officially informed. Park was “devastated” (Boettcher with Freedman 1980: 95). The US Government had taken this action unilaterally without prior consultation, in breach of the agreement known as the “10-point List” made five years earlier in June 1965, and “reaffirmed” in August 1965 when the US Government had made further concessions to Korea in an attempt to prompt the earliest deployment of Korean troops to Vietnam.30 Given these circumstances, it is no wonder that Park was “brutal and absolutely offensive” in his six-hour marathon meeting with US Vice President Spiro Agnew on 24 August 1970 – a meeting conducted without even a visit to the men’s room.31 The purpose of Agnew’s visit was to ease tension between the two countries and to negotiate the terms and conditions attached to the planned US reduction of forces in Korea. In compensation, Park demanded, among other things, approximately $3 billion over five years for the modernization of Korea’s military equipment. Negotiations on this issue, however, turned out to require far more time and effort than Agnew was prepared to give. After intense negotiations until mid-January 1971, for example, the US finally promised to pay $1.5 billion, but the disbursement of these funds was so painfully slow that Park ultimately introduced the National Defense Tax in July 1975, three months after the fall of Vietnam, to finance the program of military modernization, including the procurement of high-technology military equipment, in the face of North Korean attacks on west coast islands (discussed in Chapter 9). In any event, Agnew seems to have deliberately confused the Koreans by reassuring them, on the one hand, that the US would not withdraw more than 20,000 servicemen and, on the other, by indicating that the US would withdraw all of its remaining troops in Korea within the next five years which was, in fact, the actual plan (Kim Chongnyom 1990: 318). Three days after Agnew left, the Korean Government learned that “some ten thousand American troops had already been withdrawn right out from under their noses” (Boettcher with Freedman 1980: 95). Because of the complete withdrawal of the US 7th Division from the west coast of the demilitarized zone (DMZ) from a front of 29 kilometers, 108

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Korean troops began to defend the entire DMZ – 250 kilometers – from 8 February 1971. Strategically, the withdrawal of US troops from the DMZ meant that Korea would be left vulnerable without immediate US support if and when war broke out between the two Koreas. Thus Park sought the radical restructuring of Korea’s defense system, coupled with a comprehensive reform of the country’s political and economic systems, which he saw as essential to building Korea’s own capacity to defend itself. Park’s intensified rhetoric of economic nationalism echoed throughout the country: “Independence is the only way for survival” (chaju mani salgilida).

Conclusion Since the Korean War, US policy had been designed to strengthen South Korea to the point where it could assume responsibility for its own defense. Involvement in the Vietnam War, however, had put economic pressure on the US and led to a shift in policy. President Johnson’s “guns and butter” policy, which meant that the US Government had to fund both the Vietnam War and an ambitious social welfare program, had led to huge budget deficits. These deficits were pressing on Nixon and no doubt were a major factor behind the Nixon Doctrine. Park clearly believed that the US had failed to provide enough military aid to enable Korea to defend itself before the Nixon Doctrine was declared. Thus he may well have thought that Nixon, through his new Doctrine, could be abandoning the US commitment to South Korea in the case of a North Korean invasion of South Korea and that this would involve the breaking of the armistice agreement. The US, for its part, may well have been guilty of failing to build up the South Korean military because it did not trust Park to pursue a rational policy toward North Korea, and may even have thought that Park wanted to control crucial weapons necessary to pursue an all-out war against the North. The irony of the US lack of trust in Park was that in effect it increased Park’s resolve to build Korean capability to conduct all-out war against the North.

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5 GLOBAL CHANGE The nation in transition, 1968–72 We must take [the lesson] to our hearts and minds that international society from now on will not spare either sympathy or support to any nation which does not have a strong spirit of chaju (independence) and charip (economic self-reliance) . . . And we must also renew our determination and will to maintain the spirit of self-reliant national defense by uniting the government and the people. (PPCHS vol. 8 1971: 102)

Introduction On 27 March 1971, just a month before Korea’s seventh presidential election, the US completed the withdrawal of one-third of its 62,000 servicemen in Korea. On this date, Park issued a “special statement” announcing the government’s Five-Year Military Modernization Plan (1971–6) and making an open appeal to the US Government to meet its obligations in regard to Korea’s defense security. Park unambiguously demanded that the US honor its Cold War commitment to the Korean problem and accordingly give Korea a “guarantee of security first and then reduce the Army.” He believed that the US had an obligation to help transform the Korean Army into a modern force. Park’s statement was his first open appeal to the Korean people in connection with the changing US policy toward Korea which, he argued, had to be understood and responded to in all seriousness in order to protect Korea’s independence (PPCHS vol. 8 1971: 102). On 15 July 1971, just a little more than three months after the withdrawal, President Nixon made the historic announcement that he planned to visit China, which he did in February 1972. By then, Park’s campaign to build Korea’s independence in economic and defense capability, by mobilizing national reserve forces for both defense and industrial construction, was in full swing. This radical campaign would develop into the all-out reform known as Yusin (Restoration), less than five years after Park had established the Homeland Guard with a 2.5 million civilian reserve force following the North Korean commando attack on the presi110

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dential Blue House in January 1968. Between 1968 and 1972 Park probably introduced more radical change to Korean politics and bureaucratic management, especially in relation to industrial development, than most observers appreciated at the time. This chapter outlines key features of Park’s national mobilization campaign in regard to defense and economic development during this period, as well as of his restructuring of the ruling party, government and relations with North Korea. Park sought to restructure the apparatus of government into an emergency state system primarily as a counter to US détente politics that, paradoxically, increased military conflict in Asia,1 while promising peaceful co-existence between the super powers at the global level.

National mobilization: the Homeland Guard On 7 February 1968, Park announced that the government would establish a civilian force of 2.5 million Homeland Guards (Hyangt’o yebigun) throughout the country and would arm them with Korean-made weapons to guard their own villages, towns and cities. Just as Kim Il Sung aimed to build a “flawless defense system” through the establishment of the Worker-Peasant Red Guards (Nonong chongwidae) with more than 1.2 million workers, peasants and civilians, and the Red Young Guards (Pulgun ch’ongnyon kunwidae) with 700,000 members, so too was the Homeland Guard in South Korea established in order to build a “flawless” self-reliant defense force that would be especially trained and equipped to combat Communist guerrillas from the North. Park called for fundamental change in the people’s attitude to national defense. Even farmers were encouraged to carry weapons to rice fields and to apprehend strangers suspected of spying (PPCHS vol. 5 1969: 80). Park introduced slogans such as “construction on the one hand, national defense on the other” (Ilmyon konsol, Ilmyon kukpang) and “our national land, with our own strength” (Uri ui kukt’o nun uri ui himuro). These slogans uncannily resembled those of Kim Il Sung, as if Park had deliberately adapted Kim’s methods and language as an antiCommunist tactic. The well-known North Korean slogan, “arms on the one hand and hammer and sickle on the other,” is a clear example. Park asserted: The organization of the Homeland Guard . . . is targeted at a national problem instead of a problem of individuals, and a problem of [South Korea’s] survival instead of a political problem . . . Only all-out defense, risking our lives, can protect our freedom. (PPCHS vol. 5 1969: 146) 111

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Two key factors motivated Park. The first was the need that Park perceived to prepare Korea for a final showdown with North Korea. Park argued that the South faced an “unusual form of aggression” from the North similar to the war in Vietnam. Second, he aimed to build up Korea’s “own” defense system. He said: What is the best way to fight [against North Korean Communists]? Is it possible to compromise with them? There is absolutely no possibility. If there were, would we be prepared to concede and retreat? That would be as good as a death sentence for all of us. In this case, there is only one solution: to fight with [our own] strength! That is the only way for us to survive. The enemy will hesitate to invade [us] only when they realize that we are equipped with strength and determined to fight to the end. (PPCHS vol. 5 1969: 117) According to Park, the Homeland Guard represented the “pan-national defense force of freedom” for national “self defense.” It in fact became the most comprehensive anti-Communist intelligence network in Korea, encompassing entire communities, even the smallest units in rural and coastal areas, as well as government agencies and business communities. In defining citizens’ responsibilities regarding national defense, Park argued that “The primary responsibility for our national defense rests on us, and it is the sacred and compulsory duty of each individual citizen” (PPCHS vol. 5 1969: 142). By 1970, the government’s policy of antiCommunist vigilance had led to the introduction of weekly military drills and lectures for all male high school and university students throughout the country (Mun’gyosa 1974: 419–20). Following the same principle, all female high school and university students also undertook education programs in first aid and nursing. The entire nation was engaged in Park’s mobilization campaign, whether in the Homeland Guard or in achieving increased export targets.

National mobilization: export targets Much has been said and written about Korea’s rapid economic growth based on export-oriented strategies. Some commentators argue that Korea’s rapid expansion of exports was not the result of the Park Government’s economic planning but was due to “external forces,” namely “the integration into the Japan-centered regional division of labor and the demand generated by the U.S. intervention in Vietnam” (Lie 1998: 74). According to this view, to portray Park’s policies as the main cause of Korea’s economic growth spurt in the 1960s is misleading. Others argue that the Park Government’s adoption of its export112

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oriented strategy came about “almost by accident” (Clifford 1994: 54) and that the “leading roles” in this strategy were played by the Agency for International Development and the World Bank (Mason et al. 1980: 47; Koo 1987: 169). Still other commentators argue that the Park Government adopted US advice, especially from Walt A. Rostow, then deputy National Security Adviser to President Kennedy, who came up with the idea of a “take-off” in economic development which, they say, led Korea to take advantage of its underutilized human resources. According to this argument, Korea’s initial development in the mid-1960s was unquestionably the outcome of Rostovian ideas on Korea and a form of “crash economic development” (Jung-un Woo 1991: 77). The problem with this view, although it is superficially convincing, is that it fails to present hard evidence of how exactly the early Korean policy-makers reacted to Rostow and how they actually formulated economic policy. While its proponents provide US archival evidence of how Korean policy-makers often quoted Rostow to argue their case with US aid mission directors in Korea as early as 1966 (Jung-un Woo 1991: 99), this does not of itself prove that they had necessarily adopted Rostow’s position. It is worth noting that in August 1964, soon after James Killen, director of the US Operations Mission (USOM), had left his post in Korea, the Korean Government launched an open attack on his administration “as unresponsive to Korea’s needs” (Macdonald 1992: 295). Referring to the remark Killen made in his speech on the prospect of Korea attaining selfsufficiency in five to eight years, the editorial of Han’guk Ilbo, a newspaper owned by Chang Kiyong, the then newly appointed Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of the Economic Planning Board (EPB), made these comments: If the United States is not to repeat her mistake in Vietnam, it is hoped that the United States will not overlook the fact that many economic tasks remain in this land – problems which are more important than the financial stabilization program that US aid officials in Korea would refer to so often. Unless this is solved, economic self-sufficiency can hardly be expected even in ten years. (Cited in Macdonald 1992: 295–6) With this unabashedly critical attitude toward the US position on Korea’s economic priorities, it seems highly unlikely that Korean policyplanners adopted US economic advice without question. The American sources need to be consulted, but Korean sources are equally important in determining the precise Korean reaction to Rostow and other US advisers. Available Korean sources on the Park Government’s shift in policy from an import–substitution to an export-led growth strategy paint quite a 113

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different picture from that to be formed from US sources, and one that is important in revealing the independence and creativity of Park and his economic policy-makers. In light of the uncertainties and disagreement that are apparent in regard to this change in fundamental economic strategy, Park’s export-oriented growth policy, later known as “export-oriented industry construction” (EOIC), needs to be examined in some detail. I shall focus particularly on two key issues: first, the timing of, and motives for, the adoption of export-led growth policies, and second, the role and influence of the economic managers.

EOIC The Park Government adopted an EOIC policy in mid-1964 as a radical measure in the face of financial crisis. As noted in Chapter 3, Korean National Treasury holdings had dropped to only $105.4 million by September 1963, of which US currency amounted to less than $100 million. Korea was on the brink of national bankruptcy. This crisis came just a month before the presidential election of 15 October, at a time when Park was caught in the grip of dependence on US aid. Moreover, the Korea–US relationship, especially between Park and US aid authorities, was so strained that by October during the election campaign Park found it necessary to defend his position publicly by announcing: “I am not an anti-American.”2 Park’s financial and political isolation, especially in respect of US support, had thus become very extreme indeed. Forced with this set of circumstances, Park made a second cabinet reshuffle in May 1964, in which two new economic ministers were appointed: Chang Kiyong, the charismatic entrepreneur–owner of the Han’guk Ilbo (Korea Daily) as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the EPB, and (for the second time) Pak Ch’unghun as Minister of Commerce and Industry. Within a month of their appointments,3 on 12th June, these two ministers handpicked Kim Chongnyom, the former Vice Minister of Finance (1962–3) and an aspiring financial technocrat, as Vice Minister of Commerce and Industry. Kim apparently did not know of his appointment until it was announced because, in his words, the two ministers “knew I would refuse if given the chance” (Kim Chung-yum [Chongnyom] 1994: 37). In fact, Kim had earlier been asked by Chang to become Vice Minister of his ministry, the EPB, and refused because he had been appointed a Professor at Yonsei University. Just as Chang had been forceful in recruiting Kim, Minister Pak was also bold and strategic in appointing talented young technocrats to head up his ministry’s new export policy team who were to focus on light indus114

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try development. The appointment of O Wonch’ol, then a 36-year old chemical engineer, to director-general of the First Industry Bureau (Kongop che-il kukchang) was one of Pak’s many such appointments. In fact, Pak had a private discussion with O shortly after he learned about his appointment to minister and exchanged ideas about export strategies as the future direction for the MCI (Interview with O Wonch’ol, May 1995). With this new team of economic mangers in charge, Park sought to develop the Korean economy. His anxiety to have a genuinely capable industry and export manager can be seen in the frequent turnover in the post of Minister for Commerce and Industry. Five ministers held that office in the three years from the May 16 coup in 1961 to 11 May 1964.4 In the case of the minister for the EPB, turnover in that post was even more frequent. The Minister for the EPB changed seven times within thirty-four months from July 1961, when the EPB was established, to May 1964 when Chang was appointed (discussed below).5 The three new Ministers, Chang Kiyong, Pak Ch’unghun and Kim Chongnyom, apparently supported a free-market system, which the government had been reluctant to introduce despite the International Monetary Fund’s recommendation, because it feared that it would impose an intolerable burden on Korean enterprises and generate a negative political response (Kim Chongnyom 1990: 110). The new ministers pushed economic liberalization through “export-first,” or what Kim Chongnyom described as “liberalizing imports and fulfilling export goals” (1994: 39). This policy led to the MCI becoming the driving force behind Korea’s EOIC-based industrial revolution mainly because, according to Kim, “the liberalization of imports fell under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry” (Chung-yum Kim 1994: 39). Many insiders within the MCI particularly noted the role of Minister Pak Ch’unghun who became known as “the Export Minister.” Pak apparently urged President Park as follows: Exports are the only means to save us. I believe, from now on, we as a nation must strive to implement the export-first policy by designating it as the supreme priority of the nation. And, I urge you, Mr. President, that you lead us as the Supreme Commander. I also urge you to encourage us as well to eradicate bottlenecks [to facilitate exports.] (O Wonch’ol HGKKS vol. 1 1995: 229) The extent to which Korea’s adoption of the EOIC policy was influenced by Minister Pak’s urgings cannot, of course, be quantified. President Park, for his part, certainly encouraged the bureaucracy to focus on Korea’s export drive. By personally chairing the Monthly Export Promotion Meeting and many other regular reviews,6 Park not only directly 115

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managed the performance monitoring of all firms in the “promoted” industries, but also personally saw to the alignment of each ministry’s plans with the state’s EOIC policy and strategies. In this context, Park’s New Year Tour of Inspection of all ministries and provincial government offices served the special function of officially “approving” or “rejecting” each ministry’s yearly project plans. In the case of the MCI, for example, its comprehensive export industry expansion plan for 1965 was announced on 19 January immediately after Park had approved it during his official New Year Tour of Inspection (O Wonch’ol HGKKS vol. 1: 240–2). With the Pak Ch’unghun-Kim Chongnyom team as the driving force of the MCI’s export targets, Korea achieved $100 million in export earnings in the year to end November 1964. As a result, the MCI formally declared 5 December as Export Day. In January 1965, Park announced that increasing national exports would be the highest priority for his administration. He also designated 1965 and 1966 as Working Years (Ilhanun hae) with the goals of increased production, exports and construction (chungsan, such’ul, konsol) (PPCHS vol. 3 1967: 29–48). By the end of 1967, under the Pak-Kim team, with Pak as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the EPB and Kim as Minister of the MCI,7 Korea had achieved the government’s second export earnings target of $300 million. From 1968 to 1970, Korea recorded an average annual increase in export earnings of 37.6 percent (see Table 5.1). This high-speed economic growth was not an accident of historical circumstance, or solely the product of technocracy. In many respects, it was the result of innovation in industry development and a radical reform of government institutions and economic management. Kim Chongnyom wrote, “In 1968 exports reached a value of US$350 million, an eleven-fold increase over 1962, but achieving the export goals of US$500 million in Table 5.1 South Korean exports 1963–71 Year 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971

Export target ($m) 100 300 1,000

Exports ($m)

Growth rate (%)

86.8 119.1 175.1 250.3 320.2 455.4 622.5 835.2 1,067.6

58.4 37.2 47.0 42.9 27.9 42.2 36.7 34.2 27.8

Source: Bank of Korea, Monthly Economic Statistics, various issues as cited by Wan Soon Kim 1978: 138.

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1968 and US$700 million in 1969 required an all out effort.” It followed from this, Kim went on to say, that, Export promotion policies were urgently needed to dispatch sales missions to overseas markets, stage expositions and exhibitions in Korea, send delegations to overseas functions, develop packaging and product design, and modernize test equipment for exports examination institutes. (Chung-yum Kim 1994: 60) The MCI’s twice “revised” $1 billion export target for 1970 reflected not only Korean policy-makers’ strategic skills, but more importantly, Park’s political will and his confidence in the feasibility of Korea’s rapid growth. This does not mean, however, that the general public supported Park’s EOIC policy. In fact, the government was subject to heavy public criticism at that time due to discontent with its “preferential” foreign loan arrangements and the associated corruption, especially between politicians and chaebol. Moreover, financial instability, due largely to economic recession and excessive foreign loans in the late 1960s, became increasingly serious. The deregistration of thirty insolvent companies by Presidential Secretary Chang Tokchin in April 1969, was symptomatic of the many problems underlying Korea’s rapid economic growth.8 In hindsight, despite the high risks accompanying EOIC, Park’s statement delivered on the occasion of the Sixth Export Day on 1 December 1969 says much about Korea’s strong sense of purpose and focus through economic planning and target-setting, not just during the 1960s, but also in regard to the heavy and chemical industrialization of the 1970s, and the radical measures that came with the declaration of Yusin reform in 1972. Park stated: The government will achieve at any cost the $1 billion export goal, which is a turning point of great importance, and is preparing a carefully thought-out plan based on 1972 as a new starting point. In so doing, [the government will ensure] that by 1976, when the third Five-Year Plan, which is focused on the development of fishing and agrarian villages and increased exports, is completed, $3.6 billion [in exports earnings] will be exceeded. (PPCHS vol. 6 1969: 325) There is ample evidence to show that Korea’s plans and targets, as outlined by Park, were realistic and fully achievable. In fact, the Korean economy even surpassed the goals Park originally set. Export earnings in 1976, for example, totaled $7,715 billion, more than double the figure he projected in 1969 (Source: Economic Planning Board, cited in Sungjoo Han 1978: 75). 117

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Export managers Policy cannot be understood fully without reference to policy-makers. To understand the characteristics of Korea’s economic management in the 1960s, it is relevant to consider the personal backgrounds of Pak Ch’unghun, Kim Chongnyom and, of course, Chang Kiyong, who headed the EPB for more than three years (May 1964 to October 1967) during the peak of Korea’s acquisition of foreign loans. Pak Ch’unghun was born on 19 January 1919 on Cheju Island. He graduated from Toshisha Commerce College in Kyoto, Japan and entered the MCI in August 1948 at the age of 29 as a director in the Trade Bureau. During the Korean War, Pak served in the air force as officer-in-charge of accounting and ultimately attained the rank of major-general. In May 1961, immediately after he retired from the air force, Pak was appointed Vice Minister of Commerce and Industry. He reportedly earned his staff’s respect almost immediately when he supported a staff member’s proposal for the 1962 budget at a meeting with the Supreme Council for National Reconstruction (SCNR). Opposing the SCNR’s decision that the Mining Bureau had to reduce its budget by half, Pak apparently stood up to the Council by insisting that the Bureau “could not work if the budget were reduced without proper consideration.” Pak was adamant that “the SCNR must reconsider its decision” (Interview with O Wonch’ol, May 1997). He was ultimately promoted to Deputy Prime Minister in October 1967 and he managed the EPB as its head until his abrupt resignation in June 1969. Unlike his predecessor, Chang Kiyong, who, as we shall see, was a heavy-weight political broker with an unusually bold character, Pak was well-known for his “textbook administration” and transparency, especially in his management of foreign loans. Minister Kim Chongnyom was born on 3 January 1924 in Seoul and grew up in a strong financial environment as the third of four sons of a banker. In fact, his lifetime ambition was to follow in his father’s footsteps. At the age of 20 in 1944, Kim graduated from Oita College of Commerce in Kyushu, Japan, and became a clerk at the Bank of Choson which had been initially known as the Central Bank of Korea during the colonial period and became the Bank of Korea (Han’guk unhaeng) after June 1950. He was simultaneously conscripted into the Japanese Army, however, and after a short period of hospitalization as a victim of the nuclear attack on Hiroshima, Kim returned to the Bank of Choson in November 1945. As a section chief (kwajang) in the planning and research department in 1952, he was responsible for drawing up a draft of Korea’s first currency reform (carried out in February 1953). In January 1958, as deputy chief of the research department, he enrolled at Clark University Graduate School in Worcester, Massachusetts, where he obtained an MA in economics, conferred in January 1959. Kim 118

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studied under Professor James A. Maxwell, then Head of the Economics Department of Clark University Graduate School and a well-known scholar in the fields of fiscal policy and public finance. In April 1959, less than three months after his return from the US, Kim began his career as a bureaucrat in the Ministry of Finance as director-general of finance (ichaegukchang), a post which, at that time, was equivalent to deputy governor of the Bank of Korea. He was personally recruited by Song Insang, the newly appointed Minister of Finance. In October 1961, Kim was recruited, like many other young, highly qualified members of the Korean elites, by the military junta and began working for the KCIA. In spite of his initial reluctance to enter the military junta government, Kim’s career advanced very swiftly. In June 1962, he was appointed as Vice Minister to the Ministry of Finance (June 1962 to June 1963) and as Vice Minister to the Ministry of Commerce (June 1964 to January 1966) before he was promoted to Minister of Finance in January 1966. In March 1967, six months after his resignation as Minister of Finance in September 1966, Kim was appointed as Minister of Commerce and Industry. Kim’s role in Korea’s rapid economic development increased dramatically from October 1969 when he was appointed chief of staff of the Presidential Secretariat and was entrusted by Park with the role of “Economic Manager” of all ministries, including the EPB. Kim managed the Korean economy for over nine years until December 1978, an era which many Korean policy-makers characterized as that of the “Kim Chongnyom Economic Team,” or more broadly as that of the “Blue House Secretariat” (ch’ongwadae pisosil) which will be discussed in Chapter 8. Unlike Kim’s steady rise to the top of Korea’s bureaucracy, the promotion of Chang Kiyong in May 1964 to the positions of Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the EPB came about much more dramatically and in desperate national circumstances. As noted above, the government was experiencing a critical shortage of funds, and was close to bankruptcy. Park had therefore staked the entire future of Korea’s economic development, not to mention his own political survival, on acquiring foreign capital. To attract foreign investors, for example, the government had introduced a foreign loan guarantee system in July 1962 because no individual Korean entrepreneur was financially strong enough to secure a loan from the international money market. Moreover, according to Kim Chongnyom, he had himself advised Park in 1962 to adopt the foreign loan guarantee system, mainly due to the fact that “the U.S. aid authority was planning to terminate grants by 1965 because Korea was considered hopeless in terms of economic development” (Chung-yum Kim 1994: 30). Once the gate was open to business owners for foreign loans under the government’s guarantee, President Park needed an extremely competent technocrat who, as Minister of the EPB, could not only develop Korea’s acquisition of foreign capital, 119

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but more importantly, could also improve Korea’s economic management, especially through the first Five-Year Plan. However, the EPB’s management of the national economy showed no improvement and, in 1963, the government was forced to revise dramatically the Five-Year Plan. To solve this problem, as already noted, Park had resorted to changing the Minister of the EPB seven times in just under three years from July 1961 when the EPB was established, to May 1964 (see note 5). The average term served through each appointment was less than five months and the shortest just twenty-two days. In an attempt to strengthen the EPB Minister’s authority, from the appointment of Kim Yut’aek, the seventh minister (December 1963 to May 1964), the government upgraded the EPB minister’s status to Deputy Prime Minister. These efforts, however, brought no improvement to Korea’s economic management. Thus when Chang Kiyong was appointed as the eighth minister of the EPB in 1964, he was apparently assured by Park of his full support on free market policy as well as his willingness to provide an economic management team at any time as Chang wished (Kim Chongnyom 1990: 111). Chang also convinced Park to guarantee his managerial control over the bureaucracy on the grounds that: The economy must be thoroughly consistent. And the ship will run aground if each minister acts solely according to each ministry’s point of view. (O Wonch’ol HGKKS vol. 1 1995: 69) Chang was known among his staff and upper echelon technocrats as Wangch’o (Big Fish) or “bulldozer” for his heavy political influence and unflagging energy in pursuing his goals. He did not report to the Prime Minister on economic affairs. Instead, he reported directly to Park and received direction from Park only. Similarly, Chang is said to have “ignored” most standard rules of process and protocol in economic ministries and, when necessary, also used the EPB to complete the business of other ministries, just as he mobilized staff, as he wished, from other ministries. As a highly respected expert in managing the “real economy,” Chang is said to have frequently ignored his vice minister, Kim Hang’yol, a US-trained macroeconomist who, as a consequence, had to endure a very bleak period (O Wonch’ol HGKKS vol. 3 1996: 80). Chang regularly skipped consultation with Kim and often settled business without any consideration of Kim’s opinion.9 It seems that Kim was not the only economic minister Chang ignored or frustrated. Over a little more than three years, from May 1964 to October 1967, while Chang was Deputy Prime Minister, the Minister of Finance was changed six times.10 120

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A telling example of Chang’s unorthodox decision-making style was his approval of the foreign loan of $4.1 million applied for by Han’guk [Korea] Fertilizer Company in March 1966, then the largest cash foreign loan ever borrowed by Koreans. Around the same time, Korea Fertilizer Company – headed by Yi Changhui, oldest son of Pyongch’ol, founder of Samsung – also obtained a $43.9 million business loan from the Japanese business conglomerate (zaibatsu) Mitsui (O Wonch’ol HGKKS vol. 1 1995: 200; Kim Hyongwuk and Pak Sawol vol. 2 1985: 145). It is hardly surprising that the Chang-style selection and approval of business recipients of government-guaranteed foreign loans led to political–economic collusion. Chang approved or allocated foreign loans mainly to chaebol, who, in return, paid “commission” to the ruling party’s political fund. The scale of corruption linked to foreign loans in the late 1960s was so vast, and the returns to the fund so great, that Park’s victory in the 1967 election was seen as the clear result of kickbacks ( Jung-un Woo 1991: 108). An equally significant consequence of this loan arrangement, was that it ignored due planning and evaluation processes which outraged non-political technocrats. In 1999, O Wonch’ol, who had been directorgeneral of the First Industrial Bureau in the MCI in 1967, wrote: The problem of the political fund led many technocrats in the Ministry of Commerce and Industry to feel a sense of shame, because pressure from Chang’s office came down demanding that we implement the business he chose because he had already received the political funds. He was stubborn, even if the business did not coincide with the national interest . . . or even if the cost of machinery [which he wanted to purchase] was absurdly expensive. The most blatant case was the construction of Korea Fertilizer Company. The order came down that we should complete the technological examination of that giant factory within a single day. In conclusion, as long as the issue of political funding intervened, no technocrat could examine business feasibility scientifically. (O Wonch’ol HGKKS vol. 7 1999: 105) Chang was dismissed in October 1967, more than a year after Korea Fertilizer Company was caught smuggling saccharine and the subsequent resignation of two cabinet ministers, including Kim Chongnyom of the Ministry of Finance, in September 1966.11 Overall, as can be seen in Table 5.2, Korea’s high-speed development in the 1960s was managed by the three ministers of the EPB and the three ministers of the MCI. Of these, the role of the Pak Ch’unghun-Kim Chongnyom team was the most prominent in achieving the export earnings targets, of $100 million in 1964, $300 million in 1967, and $1 billion in 1970. Kim’s role in 121

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Table 5.2 Deputy prime ministers and ministers of Commerce and Industry (1964–79) Deputy prime minister/minister of Economic Planning Board (EPB)

Minister of Commerce and Industry (MCI)

Chang Kiyong Pak Ch’unghun Kim Hang’yol T’ae Wanson Nam Togu Sin Hyonhwak

Pak Ch’unghun Kim Chongnyom Yi Nakson Chang Yejun Ch’oi Kaggyu

May 1964–Oct. 1967 Oct. 1967–June 1969 June 1969–Jan. 1972 Jan. 1972–Sep. 1974 Sep. 1974–Dec. 1978 Dec. 1978–Dec. 1979

May 1964–Oct. 1967 Oct. 1967–Oct. 1969 Oct. 1969–Dec. 1972 Dec. 1973–Dec. 1977 Dec. 1977–Dec. 1979

Korea’s high-speed development in the 1970s illustrates the prominent role of the engineer–technocrats of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry – whom I have termed MCI technocrats – in heavy and chemical industrialization during the Yusin era (1973–9). It also illustrates the bureaucratic authoritarian character of the Blue House Secretariat which became a “cabinet behind the scenes” (paehu naegak) for Park’s quasiwartime state (chunjonsi chongbu), formally known as the Yusin State (see Chapter 7).

Domestic adjustments Despite the government’s strong economic performance, Park’s situation on the political front at the beginning of the Third Republic was far from secure. His restructuring of the Democratic Republican Party (DRP) began in June 1964 immediately after the student protest of June 3 against the Korea–Japan normalization talks (known as the June-3-Struggle), and after the subsequent resignation of Kim Chongp’il as chair of the DRP.12 Park decided that he would reorganize his power base. Instead of relying on the “young colonels’ group” – of the Eighth Class of the Army – or the “mainstream faction” of the party led by Kim Chongp’il, Park equipped himself with two main support groups: his own presidential guards made up of members of the Presidential Secretariat and the Korea Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA), and the “new mainstream” of the DRP. The Secretariat and KCIA, headed by Yi Hurak and Kim Hyonguk respectively, were responsible for controlling the cabinet, bureaucracy and private sectors, and the “new mainstream” looked after party management. This new power structure inevitably reduced the power of the “old” mainstream faction (OMF) led by Kim Chongp’il, particularly within the DRP. The OMF was quickly dominated by the new mainstream. Kim Songgon, a leading member of the new mainstream faction (NMF), for example, was put in charge of the party’s finance committee, which had the effect of significantly weakening Kim Chongp’il’s influence in the 122

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party. By 1968, the factional struggle between the OMF and the NMF had become critical. It is clear that Park’s restructuring of the party, as well as his system of power management was strategically designed to achieve his own political agenda: to build support for the constitutional amendment, which would enable him to run for the presidency for a third time in 1971. In this context, the shake-up of the DRP under the so-called cleanup of “disobedient” party members between 1968 and 1969 had more farreaching political implications than was publicly appreciated at that time. On 25 May 1968, Kim Yongt’ae and two other high-ranking members of the OMF were expelled from the party for recruiting support for Kim Chongp’il’s bid to succeed Park as President in 1971 (Ye Ch’unho 1985a: 195–202). They were charged with recruiting some 900 supporters from within the party through an organization named “People’s Welfare Study Association” (Kungmin pokchihoe) which Park reportedly believed to be “an opposition party within the Democratic Republican Party . . . [which] had been secretly developing operations to support Kim Chongp’il for the 1971 presidential election” (Yi Yongsok 1985b: 232). Subsequently Kim Chongp’il, Chairman of the DRP, resigned from politics on 30 May 1968.13 The OMF’s prospects further deteriorated on 8 April 1969 when, despite Park’s direction to reject it, a motion of “no confidence” against the Minister of Education, Kwon Obyong, was passed in the National Assembly. This “revolt” had been instigated by the OMF itself and involved at least 48 of the 111 DRP members in an attempt to demonstrate the strength of opposition to the constitutional amendment Park had been seeking.14 Park immediately expelled five leading members of the OMF from the party.15 Many leading members of the OMF were known to have been tortured by the KCIA. Even Kim Chongp’il, who was related to Park by marriage, was under severe scrutiny, as his house was searched seven times and his chauffeur and personal secretary tortured (Yi Yongsok 1985: 184–5). The OMF ultimately supported the constitutional amendment which was passed in the National Assembly on 14 September 1969.16 By then, the OMF had clearly lost its leadership position in the party. By dissolving his alliance with Kim Chongp’il in the DRP and strengthening his own support groups, Park changed the basic structure of the party so drastically that it became a mere rubber stamp to serve his own agenda. This change was particularly evident in the DRP’s orchestration of the situation in the National Assembly in order to pass the constitutional amendment. Park’s shake-up of the DRP went further. On 2 October, he undertook a comprehensive “clean-up” of the party when, despite his strong injunction, a motion against the Interior Minister, O Ch’isong, was passed in the National Assembly at the instigation of the NMF. Two key figures in this revolt, Kim Songgon, Chairman of the Central Committee of the DRP, and Kil Chaeho, Chairman of the Policy Committee of the DRP, were forced to resign from the party and from the National Assembly in 123

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accordance with party rules (Yi Kyongjae 1985: 162–97). Their resignation in the context of the NMF’s role in the motion, was a clear indication of the demise of the NMF’s dominance within the DRP. It also signaled the assertion of Park’s direct rule over the party under the principle of what he termed the “Guidance System” (chido ch’eje). As President of the DRP, Park demanded absolute obedience and loyalty from all party members, just as Kim Il Sung expected it from the Communist Workers’ Party. He left no room for challenge and, what is more, made certain that no individual, especially his close associates, could seize any opportunity to plot against him by virtue of their position. As early as 20 October 1969, just three days after the constitutional amendment was passed by national referendum, Park dismissed his two most powerful guards who had served him since 1963: Yi Hurak, his Chief of Staff, and Kim Hyonguk, Director of the KCIA. In so doing, Park not only effectively removed any potential opposition to his national leadership, but also completely reneged on his initial commitment to two-party politics in favor of his authoritarian “Guidance System.” The demise of the so-called “gang of four,” namely Kim Chongp’il, Kim Songgon, Yi Hurak and Kim Hyonguk, thus marked the beginning of Park’s new “Guidance System.” To complete this system, however, he restructured the Presidential Secretariat which, as we shall see in Chapter 7, emerged as the headquarters of his highly centralized technocracy backed by the intelligence agencies. By late 1970, however, challenges against Park were not restricted to his party leadership. The strongest challenge came from workers who formed a solidarity movement following the death of a young textile worker, Chon T’aeil, who set fire to himself on 13 November 1970 in protest against the poor working conditions at Seoul’s Peace Market. The workers’ challenge impacted at the popular level in two distinct ways. First, it inspired university students, intellectuals and church leaders to link their human rights and democracy movement activities with the workers’ labor movement (discussed in Chapter 7). Second, it mobilized opposition politicians, especially Kim Dae Jung, the leader of the New Democratic Party (NDP) and President Park’s bitter opponent in the 1971 presidential election. As key policies in the presidential election campaign, Kim Dae Jung promoted what he termed “mass-participatory economy” and national security built on the joint guarantee of the “Four Powers”: the United States, the Soviet Union, China and Japan. In promoting these policies, Kim generated a groundswell of popular support. The former policy, according to Kim, would give effect to three major economic objectives: growth efficiency, equitable distribution of income and price stability. The latter policy proposed the total abandonment of unification by armed force (Kim Dae Jung 1985: 2). Kim proposed accelerating national unification by utilizing more effective approaches such as reducing tension 124

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between the two Koreas. He extended his peace proposals by pledging to abolish the Homeland Guard as well as the military training program for university and high school students. Kim’s policies stood in sharp contrast to those of Park, and acted as a rallying point in generating popular consensus against Park’s military expansionist policies, especially the establishment of the Homeland Guard and compulsory military training for university and high school students. Underneath his immensely nationalistic rhetoric, Park was clearly unnerved by Kim’s progressive policies and his popular support. On 25 April 1971, two days before the election, Park pledged to the public, “this is my last public campaign for politics wherein I would ask you: Please vote for me once more” (PPCHS vol. 8 1971: 321). The narrow results of the presidential election on 27 April 1971 undoubtedly eroded Park’s political confidence. With Park receiving 51.2 percent of the vote and Kim Dae Jung 43.6 percent, the margin was just 946,928 votes (Tonga Ilbo 29 April 1971).17 The poor results of the National Assembly elections on 25 May 1971 further deflated Park’s confidence when the DRP obtained only 113 seats, while Kim Dae Jung’s NDP obtained 89 seats, giving the DRP just ten seats more than the minimum required for a majority. The NDP, in contrast, exceeded by 20 seats the 69 required by the constitution to block the ruling party whenever a two-thirds majority was required. Park’s poor result, in retrospect, was no surprise, especially when we consider the formidable role played by pro-democracy forces known as the “extra-parliamentary opposition forces,” or “chaeya,” led by civic leaders such as the clergy, academics, lawyers, writers and journalists, and underpinned by increasingly militant student protests.18 The chaeya, in fact, were responsible not only for increasing Kim’s popularity to such an extent that his support was referred to as the “Kim Tae-jung Whirlwind,” (Hak-kyu Sohn 1988: 78) but also for conducting a nation-wide “Election Watch Campaign” through the National Council for the Protection of Democracy (NCPD – founded in April 1971). Hak-kyu Sohn (Son Hakgyu), an active student leader of the democracy movement, who later became an influential politician in the 1990s and Governor of Kyonggi Province (2002– ), summarized the role of the chaeya during the 1971 elections as follows: “It was the first time in the history of opposition movements that unofficial political organizations directly motivated by an election were formed and, in effect, explicitly supported one candidate” (1988: 67). This “one candidate” was of course Kim Dae Jung. The anti-Park campaign did not end with the presidential election. In fact, it transformed into a widespread social and political protest movement following the election. After the journalists’ campaign for freedom of speech in April and May 1971, a range of riots and protests challenged the government for its failure to address the social and economic ramifications of rapid development. The residents’ riot at Kwangju Estate, a 125

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suburb of Seoul, in August and the arson attack on of the Korean Airlines building in September 1971 reflected the depth of popular discontent with the government. Many people, especially from among the working class and the poor, violently protested against their sub-standard working conditions and fixed low wages. From 1970 to 1971, the number of labor disputes increased tenfold, from 165 to 1,656, the highest annual level of the decade (Han’guk Kidokkyo Kyohoe Hyobuihoe 1984). By the late 1970s, these protests turned into a highly organized and morally inspired labor movement aligned with champions of the human rights movement, including church leaders, intellectuals and university students. At the same time, Korea’s financial crisis was especially manifest in economic recession and widespread failures of business firms capitalized by foreign loans. These developments were the factors behind the rebellion against Park by Korean capitalists who ultimately convinced him to declare a massive state-sponsored bailout of Korean corporations on 3 August 1972 – known officially as the “August 3 Decree.”19 In the midst of these crises, professionals, including judges, professors and medical practitioners, also protested against the state’s interference, especially against those regulations that undermined their autonomy as professionals. University students, however, led the most active and persistent protests of all. They were particularly opposed to the requirement to undergo compulsory military training. They also campaigned against corruption among the privileged class. This had become one of the hottest social and political issues at that time following the arrest in June 1970 of the young poet, Kim Chiha, for the publication of his satirical poem, “The Five Bandits” (Ojok), which satirized corporate owners, cabinet ministers, National Assemblymen, high-ranking government officials and generals (Kim Chiha 1974: 1990). Social unrest deepened, student demonstrations intensified and, on 15 October 1971, the government declared a “garrison decree.” It was specifically aimed at controlling major universities in Seoul. As a result, 1,889 students were arrested and 177 expelled from universities, 74 student circles were dissolved and 14 student publications were banned under the category of “underground publications” (Tonga yon’gam 1972: 467). Student demonstrations during 1971 reportedly involved 62,264 individuals in 225 rallies with 326 public statements issued (Tonga yon’gam 1972: 102). This was a period when every possible meeting place, whether university campus, private company, government office, or even restaurant, was watched closely by a network of informers and intelligence agents. University campuses were often covered by a smoky haze of tear gas. Park’s most extreme measures, however, were yet to come. On 6 December, Park declared a state of National Emergency and, shortly after, the National Assembly passed the Law Concerning Special Measures for Safeguarding National Security as well as other related 126

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legislation, including the Military Secrets Protection Law, the Military Equipment Protection Law and the Amendment to the Requisition Law. These laws in effect vested Park with extraordinary emergency powers which, as George Ogle noted, he used “to restrict civil liberties, mobilize the whole populace for the purpose of national security and set wages and prices for economic needs” (cited in Cumings 1997: 371). Park claimed that these hard-line measures were necessary to prevent a “second Korean War,” referring to the North Korean unification policy to “liberate” the South by force (PPCHS vol. 8 1971: 369). Park’s fear of a second Korean War should not be dismissed as a purely self-serving excuse or as anti-Communist rhetoric. He was acutely aware of the ongoing threat from the North, including to his own person, which he had experienced in the commando attack on the Blue House in January 1968, the first of four North Korean assassination attempts on South Korean presidents during a fifteen-year period (1968–83). While the 1968 raid may not have been an outright invasion of South Korea, it was certainly a clear act of aggression by North Korea on the South Korean leadership. And in fact, in the course of a later assassination attempt on 15 August 1974, Park’s wife was killed when she was struck by a bullet that had been aimed at Park by a Japanese–Korean with alleged links to North Korea. This was the third North Korea-linked attempt on Park’s life.20

North–South dialogue While Park seems to have accurately estimated Korea’s security dilemma and as a response made substantial domestic efforts to secure political stability and military superiority over North Korea, he also realized the implications of changing US foreign policy. As early as December 1970, Park had begun his own form of clandestine diplomacy, opening North–South dialogue through Yi Hurak whom he had brought back from Japan and appointed as head of the KCIA.21 Some months earlier, in his address on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Korea’s liberation on 15 August 1970, Park announced a policy of “peaceful coexistence” with North Korea. He proposed to the North a “well-intended competition,” that is, that “the ROK would not oppose North Korea’s presence at the discussion on the Korean issue at the United Nations, as long as the North recognized the efforts of the UN to pursue democracy, unification, independence and peace on behalf of Korea, as well as the authority and competence of the UN” (PPCHS vol. 7 1970: 234). Park’s proposal was a complete reversal of his earlier hard line antiCommunist policy, especially after the so-called “Hwang Yongju article incident” in 1964, followed by the arrest of So Minho, National Assemblyman and Head of the Democratic Socialist Party in May 1965.22 The state, before and after these incidents, had strictly implemented a single policy 127

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in relation to North Korea under the ideological banner of “unification by rooting out Communists” (myolgong t’ongil). North–South dialogue commenced on 12 August 1971, about three months after Park was elected to the presidency for a third term, when Ch’oe Tuson, President of the South Korean National Red Cross, proposed to convene Red Cross talks to explore the possibility of reuniting families dispersed in the North and South. By then, the North Korean attitude toward the South had changed dramatically, with even Kim Il Sung expressing his willingness for dialogue. On 6 August 1971, in an address welcoming Prince Sihanouk, Chairman of the National Unification Federation of Cambodia, Kim stated: “In order to accomplish Korea’s peaceful unification, [I] am willing to meet anytime with every political party, including the DRP, mass organizations, as well as individuals in the South” (cited in O Silim 1984: 61). The sudden change in Kim’s attitude undoubtedly came about in response to the official announcement on 15 July, of Nixon’s visit to China. On 14 August, the North Koreans agreed to Ch’oe’s proposal and, on 20 August, representatives from both Koreas met in P’anmunjom for the first time since Korea’s division and exchanged credentials. At about the same time, Prime Minister Kim Chongp’il made a speech to the National Assembly stating that South Korea, in the course of pragmatic diplomacy to pursue the national interest, was willing to open dialogue with Communist countries, including China. Behind the scenes, however, secret exchange visits were undertaken in May 1972 by Yi Hurak, director of the KCIA, to Pyongyang, and by Pak Songch’ol, Deputy Premier of North Korea, representing Kim’s younger brother, Kim Yongju, to Seoul. Their specific mission was to pave the way for discussions between Park and Kim on reunification. On 4 July 1972, the two Koreas simultaneously issued a dramatic joint communiqué stipulating the three principles for achieving unification. The first principle was that unification should come about through independent Korean efforts without the interference of external forces; the second principle was that of peaceful means; and the third, great national unity transcending ideological and systemic differences.23 In addition to the communiqué, both sides agreed to install a “hot line” between Pyongyang and Seoul. On 4 November, they also agreed to establish a North–South Coordinating Committee, which subsequently held its first meeting in Seoul from 30 November to 2 December 1972. Contrary to this ostensibly “peaceful” dialogue, however, the leaders of both sides made no change in their old strategies concerning the other. Just as Kim Il Sung continued his revolutionary tactics intended to achieve unification with the South, Park remained firmly committed to his own brand of anti-Communism. In fact Park stiffened South Korea’s antiCommunist laws by proclaiming several emergency decrees. The most 128

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decisive move came in October 1972 when Park introduced a quasiwartime constitution, officially known as the “Restoration Constitution” (yusin honpop), under martial law. Almost simultaneously, Kim reinforced the North Korean Communist structure by himself declaring a new constitution in December. In the context of these dramatic changes in the political systems of both the North and the South, it is not surprising that the dialogue between the two sides lapsed. It was officially suspended in August 1973.

Conclusion Having observed the brief encounter of their respective lieutenants we might well wonder what motivated both Kim and Park in the first place. Park’s primary goal, according to his policy-makers, was to “earn time” to build up Korea’s defense posture, so that it was strong enough to stand by itself (Interview with Kim Chongnyom, May 1994). Indeed, Park had been searching for foreign loans since July 1970 to finance the construction of four defense-related industries known as sadae haekkongchang. This defense program ultimately led Park to create the Second Economic Secretariat in the Blue House in November 1971. Thenceforth, the South Korean defense industry program took off swiftly as a core component of the heavy and chemical industrialization program, which Park finally unveiled in January 1973 (see Chapter 8). Overall, Park clearly sought time not just to build Korea’s defense posture, but also to change the political system to guarantee his presidency for life with absolute supremacy and no time limit. This would enable him to implement comprehensive rapid industrialization, combined with political reform, which he had repeatedly promoted as a “national and historical task”: the task of Korea’s modernization. In this context, Park’s well-known slogan, “Economic construction is the foundation of national strength” (PPCHS vol. 8 1971: 19), implied comprehensive strategic objectives, especially in terms of building the capability to surpass North Korea in both economic and defense strength while also reducing dependence on the United States. If this was what he sought, Park certainly achieved it, but it came at the high price of both Korea’s democracy and his own assassination seven years later. Kim Il Sung’s self-interest in the North–South dialogue seems to have been even more blatant than that of Park. Throughout the period of the North–South dialogue, Kim maintained his fundamental animosity toward the leaders and government of South Korea. Moreover, Kim’s motive in opening the dialogue appears simply to have been to create opportunities to condemn or to accuse South Korean leaders, especially Park. It became clear that each leader was totally committed to his own system. Like Park, Kim also effected dramatic change to his state’s political system by 129

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introducing a new constitution in order to further strengthen his position. Kim elevated his status from Premier to President while legalizing past practices and strengthening his control over the North Korean Communist Government by shifting its emphasis from the operation of the party to the affairs of state (Dae-Sook Suh 1988: 269–82). Overall, the unification talks represented a great paradox. Under the pretext of peaceful unification, both the North and the South in effect signaled the official beginning of Korea’s reinforced “division system” which would see the peninsula sundered indefinitely between “Kim Country” (McCormack 1993: 21–48) and Park’s Yusin State.

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Part III ALL-OUT REFORM

6 SAEMAUL MOVEMENT From top-down rural development to Yusin reform The Saemaul movement is a training ground for Korean democracy to become acclimatized to our native soil. It is the breeding ground for genuine patriotism, and at the same time the workshop for putting into reality the spirit of the October Revitalizing [Yusin] Reforms. (Park Chung Hee 1972) The paradox of a top down, centrally directed mobilization campaign such as the Saemaul Movement is that it cannot escape its essentially bureaucratic characteristics, even when the policy goal is to create self-sufficient, independent, selfreliant villages . . . It [nevertheless] is probably unique in the developing world in terms of results, as measured by rapid improvement in the quality of rural life. (Brandt 1981)

One of Park’s pledges in the Special Martial Law Declaration of 17 October 1972 was to give priority to Saemaul Undong (New Village Movement) in anticipation of the imminent Yusin (Restoration) reform (PPCHS vol. 9 1972: 326). The pledge affirmed Park’s ongoing reform program of mass training, especially as a tool for boosting the rural economy and inculcating a new set of national values and mental discipline as a prerequisite for state-led rapid development and modernization. This chapter describes and analyzes the Saemaul Movement, which Park initially launched in April 1970 as a top-down rural development campaign and then, after 1973, broadened into a community mobilization campaign to consolidate the “Yusin system” (yusin ch’eje). By promoting the renewal of the Korean people’s spirit of self-reliance and independence (chaju) and their determination to strive for their own betterment through national development, Park sought to build a new antiCommunist industrialized modern state as the means to solving the “Korean problem,” namely the Communist threats from North Korea, in a 133

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rapidly changing international environment, particularly vis-à-vis American policy in North-East Asia.

The Saemaul Movement: a top-down rural development campaign The inauguration of the Saemaul Movement (hereafter New Village Movement) was first announced by Park on 22 April 1970 in his address to a meeting of provincial governors and mayors. It was seven months after severe floods in the Kyongsang region of south-eastern Korea, which Park had visited to make a personal assessment of the damage. There he had visited an unusually tidy village. Despite the flood, this village had not only recovered from the devastation, but had also constructed a noticeably better standard of infra-structure and living conditions. There were wider roads and each house had a tidy roof and walls. Park learned that the villagers had achieved this outcome mainly by volunteering their time and labor for the community. Drawing on this experience, Park initially suggested a rural campaign under the title “New Village Furtherance Movement” (saemaul kakkugi undong) or “Campaign to Make Frugal Villages” (alttulhan maul mandulgi) with the specific aim of improving rural living conditions. During the initial period, from October 1970 to June 1971, the government distributed some 300 free bags of cement to each of 33,267 South Korean villages, to be used only for communal projects. This governmentfinanced campaign, although supplied entirely from Korea’s surplus cement at that time,1 stimulated a high degree of interest and enthusiasm at the local government level in rural communities. Encouraged by this somewhat unexpected response at the local level, the state, especially the Ministry of the Interior, swiftly intensified state-guided activities in rural communities using a relatively simple monitoring system (Naemubu 1973: 70; also 1981: 109). On 12 March 1970, prior to the official unveiling of the New Village Movement (NVM), Park had directed that, in future, government funds for rural investment should firstly be given to those people who “demonstrate the spirit of self-help, participation, cooperation, unity and the determination to work for themselves” (Park Chung Hee 1979b: 30–1). Accordingly, the NVM was shaped into a strictly goal-oriented top-down rural development program under which villages were ranked by the state into three categories: basic villages (kich’o maul), self-helping villages (chajo maul) and self-sufficient villages (charip maul). Thus classified were 18,415 basic villages, 13,943 self-helping villages and 2,307 self-sufficient villages. Government assistance was given mainly to “self-sufficient” and “selfhelping” villages, while those identified as “lazy” or lacking self-reliance 134

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were repudiated.2 This unambiguous “sink or swim” strategy, based on principles similar to those of the state’s export-oriented industry construction policy (see Chapter 5), primarily aimed to restructure the management of rural communities through a centralized system. The strategy also established a competition dynamic between villages in the course of implementing this centralized state-guided development program. By supporting village development projects financially and by sharing some of the burdens of the rural community, the government rapidly consolidated its centralization of the governing structure of rural villages, while at the same time increasing its intervention in rural affairs. At the end of the initial 14-month period (April 1970 to June 1971), the state estimated the value of rural “improvement” projects to be almost three times the initial investment, at $32 million. The state also claimed that some 16,000 of the 35,000 villages, about half the total rural populace, had been categorized as having “very actively participated” in the NVM (Kyong-Dong Kim and On-Jook Lee 1978: 27). Although this claim may well be true, it should still be viewed with some caution because, as Professor Han, among others, has noted (see below), the extraordinary degree of mass participation did not necessarily mean that the NVM in the countryside was effective (Han Sangbok 1987: 41–52). Rather, the mass participation in the NVM reflected the intensity of state control in NVM projects, the government’s specific goals being to develop the stagnant rural economy and integrate it into the national economy. With these national goals in mind, state officials, and Park in particular, heavily promoted and enforced the “cooperation” of individual villagers as a prerequisite for the success of the NVM. They insisted on villagers’ conformity to “community will” and “community decisions.” The more villagers conformed with “community will” – that is, with administrative guidance from central office directed at the village level – the more their villages were rewarded with financial support for local development projects. Conversely, the consequences for individual villagers of refusing to conform were severe. They were subjected to various forms of peer pressure and, in some cases, direct coercion by various authorities, ranging from village leaders and/or leaders of the NVM program – Saemaul Leaders – to numerous official and unofficial groups. One telling example, reported by a Western observer, was that “several recalcitrant families” who had refused to co-operate with community decisions had been “evicted from the village – their belongings were taken from their homes and they were told to move elsewhere if they would not abide by community decisions” (Goldsmith 1981: 434). Based on his study of the impact of the NVM program on 28 villages (209 households with 551 persons) from seven provinces (excluding South Cholla and Cheju Islands) over two consecutive years, Professor 135

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Han Sangbok argued that the most active participants in the NVM programs over the ten-year period from 1970 to 1980 were in fact the leaders of the Movement, more commonly known as Saemaul Leaders, and wealthy farming households. In contrast, Han asserted, the less active participants were poor villagers and non-farming households. This may have been because the Saemaul Leaders and wealthy farmers stood to gain significantly from NVM activities. Increases in income in these villages, Han added, correlated closely to the size of farm households during the ten-year period covered by his study – that is, the larger the size of the farm household, the higher the increase in income. The increase in income of the “poorest farmers” (pinnong), for example, was 69 percent, the “medium-size farmers” 76 percent, “rich farmers” 99 percent, and “industrial farmers” (kiopnong) – who ran businesses such as rice mills, dairy farms or orchids – 190 percent. The agrarian capitalists therefore enjoyed increases in income of almost three times that of poor traditional farmers. Thus Han concluded that the NVM had resulted in “the rich becoming richer and the poor becoming poorer” (Han Sangbok 1987: 48). How did the NVM come about, and where did it fit within Park’s overall national development strategies? The NVM was Park’s second attempt, since the collapse of the People’s Reconstruction Movement in 1963 (see Chapter 3), to “make everybody well-to-do.” His first attempt, known as the “Second Economy Movement” (SEM: che-2 kyongje undong), was launched in January 1968 as an attempt to build the national ethos, with a particular emphasis on Korea’s traditional spirit of self-reliance, cooperation and frugality. Accordingly, he urged the people to “discard the mental habit of dependency and explore a brighter future image of the fatherland by uniting all our strength” (Sim Yungt’aek 1973: 227). Park was particularly keen to promote the SEM in the rural community as an income booster to assist the ongoing four-year rural development program (1968–71) known as the “Special Project for Increasing the Income of Agrarian and Fishing Villages” (Nongomin soduk chungdae t’ukpyol saop).3 But, in contrast to earlier rural development efforts, the SEM mainly concentrated on the people’s attitudinal change focused on the so-called “second economy” ideals, such as frugality, diligence and saving-consciousness (Taet’ongnyong pisosil 1978: 15). Despite, or perhaps because of, this elaborate rhetoric in its early stages, however, the SEM received a very poor response from the public. The term “second economy” generated a strong sense of cynicism and confusion among the media which saw Park’s use of this term as typifying the government’s economy-driven priorities, and thus questioned whether Park considered the human spirit to be subordinate to material things (Editorial of Kyonghyang sinmun 10 January 1968). Because of this criticism, the SEM barely survived several months 136

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and, in December 1968 when the National Charter of Education was declared, it quickly sank into obscurity. Park’s interest in rural development through mass campaigns, in fact, can be traced back to as early as 1961. Available documents show that one of his official activities immediately after the coup was delivering a personally drafted speech entitled “Campaign to make everybody well-to-do” (Chal sara bojanun undong) which focused on the improvement in farmers’ living standards (Park Chung Hee 1993: 520–1). Park seems to have been genuine in wanting to boost the rural economy and to achieve a more equitable balance in the income distribution between the rural–agricultural sector and the urban–industrial sector. Having come from an impoverished farming village, Park was driven by the desire to improve the plight of the poor in both rural and coastal areas. Moreover, his wider vision for the Korean people’s revolution was built on his idea of the state of being “well-to-do” or “chalsalgi” which he defined as, “for neighbors to love each other, by helping and supporting each other and creating a village environment full of mutual care, governed by the cardinal rules of age-old good customs” (Park Chung Hee 1979b: 157). Park’s idea of chalsalgi was also deeply rooted in traditional communal values that promoted harmony in both the physical and spiritual sense. He claimed that adherence to these customs encouraged a community spirit of “mutual aid” (sangbu sangjo) and led to basic harmony at both the village and national level through the practice of social ethics. These customs, asserted Park, were an essential element in achieving the Korean people’s “chalsalgi.” Park listed a set of values that were essentially ascetic and egalitarian, such as self-help (chajo), diligence (kunmyon), cooperation (hyoptong), unity (tan’gyol), independence (charip) and teamwork (hyomnyok). These values were set down as criteria by which villagers would be judged in order to qualify for government assistance to improve their livelihood. In particular, the principle of “self-help” became the focus of Park’s NVM slogan. To sharpen his message, Park publicly denounced individuals who were seen to be lazy, observing that, “Even the government can do nothing about lazy people” (Park Chung Hee 1979b: 42–3). In his message to mayors and county commissioners on 17 September 1971, Park defined the New Village Movement as “a fundamental concept of national development, one in which economic development and spiritual enlightenment go together hand-in-hand” (Park Chung Hee 1979b: 83–4). In the same month, Park also identified three specific qualities of human conduct – “diligence, self-help and teamwork” – as synonymous with the “Saemaul Spirit” (saemaul chongsin) or the “guiding spirit” of the Saemaul Movement.4 In his New Year Press Conference on 11 January 1972, Park again referred to the Saemaul Spirit when presenting the 137

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end-of-year report for 1971, as well as the report on the completion of the second Five-Year Economic Development Plan (1967–71). He noted that a substantial 10.2 percent growth in GNP had been recorded in 1971, with the $1.35 billion in exports exceeding the government’s 1971 target, and per capita GNP “doubling from $130 in 1966 to $253 last year (1971)” (Park Chung Hee, 1979b: 108). What he did not make public, however, was that this phenomenal increase in GNP was due mainly to Korea’s rapid export growth which, in reality, highlighted an increasing disparity in income between the rural and urban population (or the industrial and agricultural sectors). Agricultural income, for example, declined substantially from 33 percent of total national income in the period 1963–9 to 25 percent in the period 1970–5. This decline is consistent with the findings in Professor Han’s study referred to earlier, which found that the NVM had resulted in “the rich becoming richer and the poor becoming poorer.” Han noted an unequivocal skepticism among rural people about their income and savings in the course of the NVM. Of respondents in his study, 17.4 percent saw “no change” in their income level and 5.4 percent concluded that their income level had dropped. In regard to savings, 30.9 percent of respondents claimed to have made an “improvement,” 58.8 percent saw “no change,” and 4.5 percent concluded that their savings had dropped (1987: 46). The gap between the industrial and the agricultural sectors was significantly widened by the focus of the third Five-Year Economic Development Plan (1972–6) on the heavy and chemical industrialization program. Without giving details, Park claimed in his 1972 New Year Conference at the Blue House that the completion of the third Five-Year Plan in 1976 would increase per capita GNP to “around $400,” and achieve employment growth of “around 1.9 million to 2 million additional jobs” (PPCHS vol. 9 1972: 57). The NVM may well have reduced the urban–rural income gap initially (Wang In Keun 1986: 238), as it had been set up, in part, to counter the impact on rural communities of the rapid expansion of the industrial sector under Korea’s export-oriented industry development in the late 1960s. This had resulted in a sharp decrease in the agricultural population from 55.1 percent of the total population in 1965 to 43.8 percent in 1972, while the percentage share of agricultural employment in the total labor market declined from 56.1 percent to 48.4 percent (and by 1978 had dropped further to 36.5 percent).5 Despite the rhetoric and aims of the NVM, the third Five-Year Plan focused investment largely on industrial development, with very little allocated to agricultural development. In reality, Park saw only limited scope for growth in the rural sector where he focused rather on attitudinal change in local communities as a step toward supporting the state’s rapid-development initiatives through a national mobilization of the 138

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masses. In this context Park equated the state-led mass mobilization through Yusin reform to the New Village Movement. He said: The October [Yusin] Reforms are . . . the Saemaul Movement, and the Saemaul Movement is the same as the October [Yusin] Reforms . . . there should be no bystander or dropout in this nation-wide movement, in which everyone should participate voluntarily and of his own accord. (Park Chung Hee 1979b: 202) The supposedly “voluntary” Yusin reform activities soon imposed a structured program on the working masses about their attitudinal training, referred to officially as “spiritual enlightenment” or “spiritual revolution” (chongsin hyongmyong). The NVM was now no longer a rural development campaign applicable mainly to the rural sector. It represented nation-wide spiritual mobilization for state-led heavy industrialization, and for learning the required virtues of “Saemaul citizenship” associated with Yusin reform.

Yusin: restoration reform On 17 October 1972, Park declared martial law, dissolved the National Assembly and announced that the Emergency State Council of Cabinet would act with the Assembly’s authority. Ten days later, Park promulgated the comprehensive reform known as the “Yusin” (Restoration) or the “Siwol Yusin” (October Restoration) system. Inspired by the Japanese Meiji Restoration (ishin in Japanese), the Yusin reform sought to achieve comprehensive socio-political and economic reform. The ultimate aim of Park and his key policy advisers was to “restore,” as they saw it, the prestige and strength of the Korean nation. Their vision of Korea’s modernization fundamentally rested on Park’s governing ideology: “Minjok Chunghung” (National Restoration). According to Park’s advisers, the Yusin system was initially designed to establish a one voice system to prevent a split in national opinion in the course of North–South dialogue (Kim Songjin 1994: 53–4). This claim largely reflects Park and his advisers’ strategic stance at that time, given that the Yusin reform was declared only three months after the announcement of the historic seven-point communiqué on North–South relations of 4 July 1972. It also reflects, in part, a modification of Kim Il Sung’s unitary self-reliance ideology, “Juch’e.” As I argued in the previous chapter, however, the Yusin reform was, more than anything, the outcome of Park’s adjustment of the state apparatus, including his party, the bureaucracy and the Blue House Secretariat (discussed in Chapter 7), to changes in US foreign policy, as well as to changes in domestic conditions, 139

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including his dramatically weakened public support, which had almost cost him the 1971 presidential election. The Yusin system, in essence, was Park’s mechanism for restructuring the apparatus of government into that of a quasi-wartime state. It was aimed at minimizing national dependence on the United States on the one hand, and maximizing his centralized governing structure on the other. Behind these undoubtedly bold aims lay Park and his key policy advisers’ ambitious plan for defense-related heavy and chemical industrialization. Park’s official declaration of the Yusin system, however, conspicuously said nothing about changes in US policy on Korea and the impact on that policy of US rapprochement with China – mainly because US officials specifically requested that Park “omit” any mention of the subject from his initial draft, which they had received three days before Park’s official declaration on 17 October 1972 (Interview with O Wonch’ol, October 1996). On 27 October, the Emergency State Council announced draft constitutional amendments and the schedule for a national referendum, which was subsequently approved on 21 November 1972 with a 91.5 percent vote of support (Tonga Ilbo 24 November 1972). Such a high level of support was no surprise considering public awareness of the activities of the KCIA, and Park’s tight control over the bureaucracy and governmentowned or -controlled institutions, including the police, the army, army security agencies, the media, the press, the banks and the chaebol. Park’s statist supremacy now resembled that of many dictatorial heads of state, including Kim Il Sung. On 27 February 1973, the ninth National Assembly elections were held and a total of 146 members – or two-thirds of the National Assembly members – from four political parties, were elected, including seventy-three DRP members.6 According to the new constitutional provisions, Park appointed a further seventy-three members and fourteen reserve members – that is, about one-third of the National Assembly. The appointed assemblymen made up the “Yusin Political Fraternity” (Yusin chonguhoe), the official rubber stamp for Park’s Yusin policies in the National Assembly. In summary, Park had unlimited power with an absolute majority. The new Yusin constitution established the President above the other two branches of government, the legislature and the judiciary, and placed no restriction on the number of times he could be re-elected. The Yusin constitution in effect also resulted in Park gaining a two-thirds majority, enabling him to declare martial law whenever he saw it necessary.

The Saemaul Movement: mass mobilization for Yusin reform Park’s declaration of the state’s heavy industrialization program in January 1973 effectively unveiled the conversion of the rural NVM into a national 140

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campaign of mass mobilization for Yusin reform. As we have seen, Park openly stated that the NVM was the same as the Yusin reform and vice versa, the basic objective of both being to induce every Korean to work hard to construct a prosperous welfare state (Park Chung Hee 1979b: 188–202). Accordingly, the NVM, as the state’s campaign of mass mobilization for Yusin reform, left no room for any loose ends in the government’s organization of the masses. In this new universalized incarnation of the Saemaul Movement, the entire nation was systematically organized under three categories: work places and social institutions, broadly known as the Office Workers Group Saemaul Movement; residential areas; and schools (Im Kyongt’aek 1991: 192–8). The armed forces were not exempt and were affiliated under the Armed Forces’ Saemaul Movement. Each category had a strictly top-down, pyramidal cellular structure resembling the totalitarian structure of the Workers’ Party in North Korea.7 The resemblance was particularly notable in the infrastructure of the “pansanghoe,” the government-led monthly meeting of neighborhood meetings consisting of between ten and twenty households, under which Saemaul Education courses were conducted on the Yusin reform. There were reportedly 261,774 pan8 (the smallest administrative zone) involving 7,027,078 households in pansanghoe by April 1978 (Kim Chongho 1978: 67–8). The pan functioned as the basic administrative unit of Park’s Yusin state. The pansanghoe, in terms of its inner workings, also bore a striking resemblance to the burakukai and cho¯naikai in wartime Japan and Korea, which, as Berger notes, the Home Ministry had created in 1939 “to carry out the thrust of important national policies – the National General Mobilization Law” (Berger 1977: 281). Indeed, Berger’s analysis of the role of both burakukai (in the villages) and cho¯naikai (in the cities), which were designed to function as the principal channel through which the people could “assist the imperial rule” identifies features with close parallels to the pansanghoe in the Yusin system. Ultimately the Saemaul Movement constituted nothing less than a cultural revolution imposed from above, specifically aimed at inculcating a remodeled national ethos or what Park termed “Saemaul spirit” or “the nation’s spirit.” In November 1973, Park noted: We must somehow help our posterity learn how their forefathers worked to build the country, how the entire village rose up, without distinction as to sex or age and, fired by the Saemaul spirit of diligence, self-help and teamwork, made it prosperous and well-to-do. Then our descendants will know, ‘We too cannot afford to remain idle. We would shame our forefathers.’ This is what I mean by ‘the nation’s spirit.’ (Park Chung Hee 1979b: 207) 141

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Park’s push for a cultural revolution, however dictatorial or contradictory in terms of democratic principles, grew more and more rigid as the government’s tasks of economic mobilization and maintenance of public order became increasingly critical as a result of the first oil crisis of 1973. The crisis not only left Korea in economic chaos but, more seriously, led to a significantly increased national security threat from North Korea. Against this background, the infrastructure of the Saemaul Movement enveloped the entire country like a vast, densely woven web, from the tiniest family unit to the Saemaul Movement Headquarters in the Blue House.9 Similarly, structures such as the Urban New Community Movement (tosi saemaul undong – hereafter Urban Saemaul Movement) and the Factory New Community Movement (kongjang saemaul undong – hereafter Factory Saemaul Movement) reflected the military-style organization of the Saemaul networks after 1973. The Urban Saemaul Movement, for example, incorporated many sub-organizations such as District Saemaul, Suburban Saemaul, Business Saemaul and Residential Saemaul.10 The Factory Saemaul Movement, in this context, was a special element of the Saemaul Movement, aimed specifically at “guiding” the efficiency and productivity of industrial communities. Park stated: The [Factory] Saemaul Movement as practiced in offices and factories is nothing different [from the Village Movement], since its basic spirit is one of diligence, self-help and cooperation . . . There should be close labor–management cooperation, with the company president making maximum efforts to improve pay and welfare for his employees and the latter fulfilling their duties with a sense of responsibility and sincerity, doing factory work as if they were doing their own personal work, and caring for the factory as if it were their own. (Park Chung Hee 1979b: 210 and 216) The purpose of the Factory Saemaul Movement, in Park’s words, was to instill a new family culture within the corporate state, incorporating “family-like labor–management ties,” the philosophical nexus being that “my cooperation ⫽ my family ⫽ my fatherland.” This Korean-style concept was adopted as an official guideline for the Urban Saemaul Movement by the Ministry of the Interior. The Factory Saemaul Movement was also a mechanism used by Park for managing labor disputes and maintaining industrial order, which proved particularly effective during the 1973–4 oil crisis.11 Unlike the Saemaul Movements of other public and social organizations, the Factory Saemaul Movement was coordinated independently by the Korean Chamber of Commerce, with a chapter established in each province or city or equivalent area. Similarly, there were a total of twelve 142

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Factory Saemaul education centers throughout the country. Of these, two centers, located in Seoul and Pusan, were run by the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, which managed to train a total of 46,531 “high and middle level managers” between 1973 and 1979. During the same period, the other ten “private” centers, including Ganahan Farmers’ Schools, trained a total of 144,733 leaders of the Factory Saemaul Movement (Ki Hyuk Park 1981: 185). Upon the completion of their training, these leaders were responsible for organizing training for their fellow workers in their respective factories. The training aimed, as already noted, to promote harmony and unity between employers and employees, while increasing productivity. Its ideals were reflected in the slogan, “Sawonul kajok ch’orom, hoesarul naejip ch’orom” (Employees like family; the company like my home).12 This slogan, and others like it, spread widely among large-scale Korean chaebol companies throughout the late 1970s and 1980s, and undoubtedly served a purpose, especially for the state’s control over the labor movement. In fact, many key policy-makers of the time claim that the phenomenal success of the HCI program was due largely to the Factory Saemaul Movement, particularly in its “attitude” training for management. This view, of course, was not that of the majority of workers, the “minjung,” who believed that the success of the HCI program was due to their unmitigated exploitation. The increasing industrial disputation and related activity of the labor movement in the late 1970s, especially the female factory workers’ struggle that ultimately played an important part in Park’s demise (see Chapter 7), reflected the severity of the impasse between the state–employers and workers. As a means to solving the mounting conflict, Park made Saemaul Leaders’ Training compulsory, the South Korean version of Kim Il Sung’s political thought training of the masses.

Saemaul Leaders’ Training Saemaul Leaders’ Training (hereafter SLT) began in 1972 and was offered initially to leading participants in the rural Saemaul Movement. A total of 85 SLT institutes were established around the country – forty-nine government and thirty-six non-government. Directed by the Saemaul Leaders’ Training Institute in Suwon (opened in July 1972), these institutes provided a strictly uniform two-week course for Saemaul leaders and a one-week course for public officials, members of the social elite and intellectuals. The course provided training in five main areas: military discipline, “successful” Saemaul activities (presented by “selected” village leaders), group discussion, meditation, and Saemaul training methodology (Ji Woong Cheong 1981: 558). Designed to promote the government’s Yusin policy, especially economic development and security strengthening, the SLT provided the populace with formal training in 143

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Park’s political thought, just as in North Korea mass training focused on Kim Il Sung’s political thought. Participants in the course were required to listen intently to Park’s speeches on the Saemaul Movement and then analyze them, as well as to write a report on their own training experience, with a critical self-examination and suggestions, if any, for the future direction of the Movement at the end of each course. In July 1974, two years after the commencement of SLT for leaders of the NVM in rural areas, Park ordered the same training for those at the managerial level in all sectors in Korea. The first SLT class under the category, “Saemaul Training for Minister and Deputy Minister Level, First Class” – hereafter First-Class trainees – included fifty-three high-ranking public figures for a one-week course. The First-Class trainees in this group were aged between 39 and 65, and their high-ranking members comprised twenty-eight cabinet ministers and deputy ministers, four religious leaders, including a Catholic bishop and a senior Buddhist monk, nineteen presidents of universities and colleges, and two presidents of leading daily newspapers in Seoul (Chang-ch’agwangup saemaul kyoyuk, che 1-gi, 1974). This training aimed to educate the ruling elite about the Saemaul Movement, especially in regard to the Movement’s execution of Yusin reform. “Once the education is completed,” Park later claimed, “the participants [should] go across the nation to disseminate what they have learned and felt” (Park Chung Hee 1979a: 84). Given the opposition he so often encountered from the universities, Park ranked intellectuals as “the most important block of people” in Korea’s social leadership class, and thus urged not only the ruling elite but also intellectuals to lead the state’s Yusin reform campaigns in their communities. The training for this “First-Class” group was also aimed at gathering new ideas for the future direction of the Saemaul Movement. In fact, participants were told that everyone’s final written report on their Saemaul training experience, including any suggestions, would be personally “checked” by the President. Many officials therefore put in a special effort, often exchanging ideas with one another. The idea of the Factory Saemaul Movement, for example, was put forward by two prominent FirstClass trainees: Yi Nakson, Minister of Commerce and Industry, and O Wonch’ol, President Park’s senior economic secretary, who was also in charge of the HCI program (see Chapter 8). By the end of 1974, all office workers, public officials and leading corporate executives aged up to 65 had been conscripted into SLT. There were virtually no exceptions other than those who were seriously ill. To my knowledge, the only person other than Park who was exempt from this compulsory training was Kim Chongnyom, Park’s chief of staff. Not surprisingly, this compulsory training raised much complaint among leaders of the business community, as well as the heads of many leading economic 144

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institutions. After receiving notice to undertake SLT, for example, Pak Ch’unghun, former Deputy Prime Minister (1967–9) and then chairman of the KITA (Korea International Trade Association), warned the officerin-charge of the SLT arrangements of a possible backlash. Nam Keyong, then Director of the Business Guidance Bureau in the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, recalled: After I sent an admission notice [for the SLT] to heads of large corporations, including Chong Such’ang, Chair of the KCCI (Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry), Kim Yongwan, Chairman of the FKI (Federation of Korean Industries) and Pak Ch’unghun . . . [Pak] who has been always kind to me, said: ‘If you push too far, it could cause you harm. It’s not good to ask Elders [wollo] of the business community, who are now over sixty years old, to undergo training of every sort, including early morning jogging.’ Amidst this protest from the leading Elders, even the Minister of the MCI, Chang Yejun, expressed his concern and dissuaded me. (O Wonch’ol 1997: 9) But the Presidential Secretariat in the Blue House, known commonly as the “Blue House Secretariat,” stood by this operation, and no exception was allowed. Oral and documentary evidence13 indicates that the spread of the SLT to the upper echelons of government and society was perceived as the outcome of a “genuine demand” articulated at the grass-roots. Apparently, it was the rural Saemaul Leaders who initially requested, through the self-evaluation of their own SLT, that their counterparts in their communities, such as local officials at various levels, should be exposed to identical “education.” Accordingly, when local officials completed their training, they too requested that senior officials in the central government, including cabinet ministers, company executives and other members of the elite should be given the same training. Thus the nationwide SLT operation was seen as a vox populi response, which indeed was accurate in part. Unquestionably, though, this was the kind of outcome that Park had sought for his ongoing socio-political reform agenda since 1968, if not earlier.14 The successful expansion of the Saemaul Movement meant that the entire populace was submerged in political thought training, either through SLT or, more generally, through Saemaul Education courses. According to one report, the Saemaul Education courses amounted to an average of 2.2 Saemaul Education courses per person over a six-year period for the entire Korean urban population of 23,230,000 by the end of 1978 (Im Kyongt’aek 1991). Schools also took an active part in implementing “Schools’ Saemaul Projects,” as a compulsory part of the 145

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curriculum (Kwon Kapchu 1974: 70–92). Universities concentrated on voluntary activities focused on the spirit of the Saemaul Movement and national security.

Conclusion The methods that Park employed in the Saemaul Movement appear to have been drawn in part from the tactics of military-reformists in wartime Japan and the Communist modes of mass mobilization promoted by Kim Il Sung (and Mao). Indeed, Park’s tactics of rapid development through the Yusin Reforms bear a striking resemblance to Japan’s Daisho Democracy characterized by Minichiello as “Totalistic Reform” (1984: 81–127). As in wartime Japan’s Daisho Democracy, Park’s “Koreanized democracy” during the Yusin Order was primarily focused on the building of national power. The political concepts, implementation, and methods of the Saemaul Movement are likewise reminiscent of Kim Il Sung’s mass mobilization campaign of the 1960s, the Ch’ollima (Flying Horse) Movement. This Movement, according to Kim, represented “a great revolutionary movement of the working millions of our country, sweeping away everything antiquated from all spheres of the economy, culture, ideology and morality” (Kim Il Sung: Selected Works vol. 3: 100).15 Like Kim, Park also promoted the need for change in the people’s “mentality” (chongsin) to create a collective mindset focused on national strengthening and independence. They both sought to re-educate the masses in accordance with their own “leadership principle.” Irreconcilably opposed as each was to the other’s ideology, they both prescribed the same principle of “self-reliance,” officially termed “Juche” (chuch’e) in the North, and “Chaju” or “Minjok Chunghung” (National Restoration) in the South. Park’s chaju/minjok chunghung ideology promulgated antiCommunism and guided capitalism, whereas Kim’s chuch’e ideology sought to maintain one of the most rigid forms of political and economic autarchy in the world, which, as many have noted, resembled an “emperor system” or what Cumings characterized as the “Corporate State” (1993: 197–230). These two ideologies resembled one another as vehement expressions of nationalism whose common terms were: Korea’s self-strengthening, cultural tradition, historical lessons learned from Japanese imperialism, ideological threats at the border, and the state’s commitment to “anti-flunkeyism” (pan-sadaejuui) in relation to foreign powers. Both leaders called for the “sacred mission” of national revolution in their own way: Park through the Saemaul Movement and Kim through the Ch’ollima Movement. And in the process of revolution both leaders violated the people’s democratic rights. The effectiveness of Park’s education and indoctrination programs 146

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through the Saemaul Movement, however, was in stark contrast to the effectiveness of Kim’s programs. Unlike the North Koreans who had adopted Kim as their “oboi suryong” (Father Leader) and who subsequently became Kim’s “perpetual children,” the working masses (minjung) in the South emerged as a political force against Park’s authoritarian rule. Paradoxically, the state’s education and indoctrination programs in the Saemaul Movement taught ordinary people that political freedom was inseparable from their pursuit of economic freedom, empowerment and happiness. Thus the workers’ labor movement, coupled with the dissidents’ anti-Yusin campaigns, grew more and more influential, especially following the notorious abduction of Kim Dae Jung in August 1973 by the Korean CIA – so much so that it ultimately led to Park’s assassination in 1979. During this period, Park was under extreme pressure to “listen” to the anti-Yusin forces and to abolish the Yusin system.16 Instead of tempering the Yusin system, however, Park bulldozed ahead enforcing draconian measures, especially against demonstrations by university students. In this regard, the declaration of Emergency Decrees 1 and 4 in early 1974 was only the beginning of the tumultuous era of developmentalism under Park’s Yusin State – and the beginning of Park’s own demise.

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7 THE YUSIN STATE The imperial army if we succeed, Bandits if we fail. (“Kateba kangun, Makereba zokugun” in Japanese) (Park Chung Hee)1

Introduction By mid-1974, the state and the Korean people were sharply divided. Park had become increasingly isolated from the working masses (minjung), who constituted a powerful and active anti-Yusin force. An unexpected calamity was to give Park some breathing space – but it came at the cost of his wife’s assassination by a bullet meant for himself. On 15 August, at the ceremony for the twenty-ninth anniversary of national liberation in the National Theatre, Park’s wife, Yuk Yongsu, was shot by Mun Segwang, a Korean resident of Tokyo allegedly connected with North Korea. The First Lady died later that night. The Korean people were outraged by both North Korea and Japan, believing that such an incident could have been avoided if the Japanese Government had exercised appropriate measures to control North Korean activities in Japan, particularly those of the League of Korean Residents in Japan of which Mun was said to be a member. Nation-wide rallies in ten major cities on 27–28 August, involving 1.5 million people, reflected the groundswell of anti-Communist and anti-Japanese feeling, even though these rallies may not have been entirely spontaneous (Tonga Ilbo 6 September 1974). On 30 August, Park personally warned the Japanese Government, through its ambassador in Seoul, Ushiroku Taro, that Japan must take responsibility for the death of his wife. He demanded that Japan restrict the activities of the League of Korean Residents in Japan. Minister Kim Tongjo of the Foreign Affairs Ministry publicly announced that unless Japan changed its “insincere” attitude toward the murder of the President’s wife Korea would sever diplomatic relations.2 The death of his wife profoundly affected Park’s approach to national unity and harmony, and led him to ease the emergency measures as a way of reaching out to the public. On 23 August, Park announced the withdrawal of Emergency Decrees Nos 1 and 4 which prohibited anti-Yusin activities. 148

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This undoubtedly conciliatory measure was also intended, in part, to please the US Government, especially in deference to President Gerald Ford, who had been scheduled to visit Korea on 21 September. The delay of this visit by two months until 22 November 1974, however, inspired anti-Yusin campaigners to “herald further activation” (Hak-kyu Sohn 1988: 129). Support from external sources, especially from the US Government, was linked to a series of House Committee Hearings in the Congress from July 1974, headed by Donald Fraser, who argued that the US Government should consider either a reduction or termination of military assistance to Korea (House Committee on International Relations 1974: 2–3). This period was one of the lowest of Park’s Presidency, as it found him struggling for sheer survival, in the midst of his personal grief over the loss of his wife.3 His grief, however, appears to have brought about a profound change in his anti-Communist strategy. Park’s defense policy, known as “Yubi muhwan,” meaning “Be prepared, and you will have no cause for regrets,” became the ideological basis for the building of a national defense state, or the Yusin State, a key element of which was Korea’s defense-oriented heavy industrialization under the Yusin system. Nevertheless, the dissidents’ campaign for human rights and freedom rapidly increased. In particular, the united forces of the anti-Yusin movement targeted the abolition of the Yusin constitution. They were led by eminent representatives of the Protestant and Catholic churches affiliated to the National Council of Churches and linked to international church organizations, including the World Council of Churches, the East Asia Christian Conference,4 the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the US and the National Christian Council in Japan. Furthermore, on 25 December 1974, 71 leading dissidents from various fields, including Kim Dae Jung, Kim Young Sam (leader of the opposition New Democratic Party) and Yun Poson (the former President), launched the National Congress for the Restoration of Democracy (NCRD), which was sponsored by the Catholic Church in South Korea. The NCRD was further strengthened by the mushrooming of branches throughout the country which numbered about 50 by March 1975 (Tonga Ilbo 8 April 1975). In the face of this coordinated challenge from opposition forces, not to mention the university students’ anti-government movement, the government resorted to counter measures. In order to control student demonstrations at Korea University, for example, the government declared Emergency Decree No. 7 on 8 April 1975. Under this Decree, the government not only temporarily closed Korea University by authorizing the army to occupy the campus but, by mid-April, the Decree had led to the subsequent closure of all twenty-five major universities following the suicide of the Seoul National University student, Kim Sangjin, in protest against the government. Similarly, on 9 April, the government executed, 149

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without appeal, eight of the People’s Revolutionary Party (PRP: Inmin hyongmyongtang or Inhyoktang) in an attempt to eliminate the public perception that “the PRP itself was a complete fabrication of the security services extracted under torture” (Hak-Kyu Sohn 1988: 146). In this context, the declaration of the infamous Emergency Decree No. 9 of 13 May 1975 for national security and public order reflected the desperate position into which Park had locked himself to obtain national stability and “unity.” Decree No. 9 prohibited any form of anti-government activity, including fabricating or disseminating false facts, or making false representations of facts as well as denying, opposing, distorting or defaming the constitution, or asserting, petitioning, instigating or propagating the revision or repeal thereof, by means of assembly, demonstration or by the use of mass media such as newspapers, broadcasts or news correspondence, or by making documents, pictures, records or other publications (Korea Annual 1976: 328–9). Within the next two months, the National Assembly had passed four wartime laws: the public security law, the civil defense law, the defense tax law and an amendment to the education law, the last of which enabled the revival of the student defense corps on the one hand but restricted re-employment of university professors on the other.

The bureaucracy clean-up The effect of Emergency Decree No. 9 (hereafter ED No. 9), as well as the four wartime laws, was far-reaching, especially on public and private organizations, as the state utilized these laws to restructure the bureaucracy, officially known as the “purification of officialdom” (sojong swaesin), from March 1975. The state claimed that this bureaucracy “clean-up” was aimed, inter alia, at establishing in Korean society the principle of “selfregulation” (chayul). On the socio-political level, the program was allegedly aimed at “restoring” the bureaucracy by sweeping away opponents in all areas. Under this program, the state introduced the so-called “interrelated collective liability system” (kyeyol yondae ch’aegimje) and the “disciplinary system for both briber and bribee” (ssangbolche). The former was a collective liability system, involving the official concerned and their supervisors. Under this system, 17,562 bureaucrats were collectively punished over a three-year period from March 1975 to March 1978. Overall, a total of 119,000 individuals in official positions were disciplined (Yi Chongsik 1978: 366). This figure is comparable to Park’s claim that a total of 127,000 people were disciplined over three years from 1976 to 1978 (PPCHS vol. 16 1979: 85). This clean-up was undoubtedly a major program in Park’s socio-political and economic reform agenda, and was closely tied to the state’s HCI program. In fact, in the midst of the oil shock and burgeoning foreign 150

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and domestic debt, Park sought reform of the bureaucracy as a prerequisite to implementing his extremely bold Third Five-Year Plan (1972–6). To Park and his policy-makers, Korea’s survival was at risk unless the stateled HCI program was successful. Hence, the state’s bureaucracy clean-up campaign was extremely rigid, being especially directed against those bureaucrats with a “negative attitude,” whether real or perceived, toward the government’s Yusin policies. At the same time, Park relentlessly promoted a high standard of work performance by awarding material incentives, Saemaul awards, “export towers” of gold, silver and bronze, and various medals for distinguished public service. A total of 159,726 individuals received these awards in 1976 and 1977, which, according to the Ministry of Government Administration, represented approximately 30.8 percent of public servants (519,000) as at end of March 1978 (Yi Chongsik 1978: 371). Along with this carrot-and-stick approach, the state implemented a comprehensive revision of administrative ordinances concerned with public welfare services. A total of 1,487 ordinances were amended between April 1975 and the spring of 1978. Park commented on the importance of bureaucratic discipline under the Yusin “Guidance System” (chido ch’eje) as follows: In watching the rise and fall of many countries in history, one realizes everything is dependent on one fundamental factor, that is . . . a country’s official discipline . . . Everyone knows the old axiom, “Only when upper [stream] waters are clean do down [stream] waters also become clean.” (Chong Chaegyong 1991: 127) And in this Confucian patrimonial mode, the “upper” waters of Park’s “Guidance System” signified none other than the office of the president, especially the Presidential Secretariat known as Ch’ongwadae pisosil (Blue House Secretariat).

The Blue House Secretariat Until 1968, the Blue House Secretariat (BHS) comprised only one senior staff member, the Chief of Staff, Yi Hurak (1963–9), whose rank was equivalent to that of cabinet minister.5 However, the status of the BHS was raised dramatically in October 1969 when Park increased its personnel to nine senior-ranked staff and replaced Yi Hurak with Kim Chongnyom, Minister of Commerce and Industry (1967–9). Kim subsequently became Park’s official “Economic Manager” of all economic ministries, including the EPB. As we saw in previous chapters, Park made this new arrangement primarily to strengthen his executive power, which he saw as necessary in order to reorganize Korea’s defense structure in the face of global 151

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change, with US hegemony in North-East Asia declining and Korea facing massive security threats, real and perceived, from North Korea. In this context, the role of the BHS headed by Kim Chongnyom reflected Park’s managerial system under what he called an “ultraemergency situation” (ch’o-pisang sat’ae) in which he governed the country like a commander-in-chief and his secretariat acted as a quasi-wartime cabinet. The BHS was highly centralized, tailor-made, and de-politicized. Its most prominent characteristic, however, was that it managed economic and industrial policy, especially the “Big Push” of HCI, strictly in accordance with Park’s “Presidential Guidance” (taet’ongryong chisi) or “Blue House Guidance” (ch’ongwadae chisi). While the former referred to the authority coming directly from President Park and the latter to that coming from his secretariat, both carried Park’s presidential authority based on the Yusin constitution including, most pertinently, his authority in regard to the de-politicization of key economic and industrial decisionmaking. Many Korean observers of recent decades are familiar with the extraordinary circumstances that led to the rise of Kim Chaeik in early 1980. As a relatively unknown director-general in the EPB, Kim was appointed by President Chun Doo Hwan as “president of economic affairs,” and subsequently implemented a surplus national budget (Clifford 1994: 182). What these observers do not seem to appreciate, or simply overlook, is that Chun was not the first president to adopt the radical method of appointing a humble non-political technocrat as “president of economic affairs.” In fact, Park had set such a precedent more than a decade earlier. It was Park’s way of focusing his own energies on politics and national security, while Kim Chongnyom, Park’s newly appointed chief of staff, took charge of economic affairs. Kim recalled Park’s reasons for this chief executive officer-like arrangement as follows: Because he [the President] had to occupy himself with national defense and diplomacy, he would like to leave me the task of dealing with the economy, which I should direct in co-operation with the economic ministers. He asked me to create good policies with an emphasis on export promotion and agricultural development, and brief him about them frequently. (Chung-yum Kim 1994: 66) This arrangement quickly became the basis of the “Kim Chongnyom Economic Team,” the driving force behind Korea’s high-speed economic development in the 1970s, at least until December 1978. Immediately after his appointment, Kim took over the restructuring of the BHS, establishing four main divisions: the First Political Secretariat (Chongmu-1 152

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pisosil), the Second Political Secretariat (Chongmu-2 pisosil), the First Economic Secretariat (Kyongje-1 pisosil), and the Second Economic Secretariat (Kyongje-2 pisosil). The First Political Secretariat dealt with politics, national defense, foreign affairs, political party matters and justice, while the Second Political Secretariat was put in charge of home affairs, education, health and social affairs. The First Economic Secretariat managed finance and the economy, agriculture, trade and commerce, and construction. The Second Economic Secretariat (SES), which had been abolished in November 1969, was re-created as the President’s “task force” in November 1971 to take charge of defense industry development, although the SES was officially known to be in charge of heavy and chemical industry development.6 The Third Economic Secretariat, another presidential task force, which had been in charge of reorganizing insolvent companies from April 1969, was closed in December 1970. The BHS was strengthened further in December 1970 when the post of presidential special assistant (PSA) was formally established and nine PSAs at the ministerial and vice-ministerial level were appointed. These PSAs were responsible for various policy areas, including domestic politics, international politics, the agricultural economy, tax reform, public opinion, national security and private affairs concerning Park’s personal and family matters.7 They provided advice and recommendations to Park on a more informal basis than that of secretaries or cabinet ministers. As the headquarters of Park’s extremely moralistic and achievement-oriented administration, the BHS took little time to reinvigorate the bureaucracy and other governmentconnected institutions in accordance with Yusin policy. Just like a Confucian royal household, the BHS rigidly followed the traditional approach to loyalty and hierarchy, and combined it with military efficiency and precision.8 Kim Chongnyom, for example, not only used royal household language and etiquette in his relationship with Park, but he also regarded himself as, in his own words, equivalent to the Tosungji, the Chief Royal Secretary of the Choson dynasty (1392–1910), who was in charge of the transmission of memorials from below and edicts from above (author interview with Kim, January 2000). He adopted a military-style administrative approach to such an extent that he, like any military officer before his general, never failed to stand still with his hands to his sides when receiving Park’s orders. Kim’s idea of efficient management, and most likely Park’s and that of many of his top economic secretariat, including O Wonch’ol, called for “a small number of elite officers” (sosu chongye) with proven performance records. The primary reason for this essentially elitist approach was, Kim believed, to produce the maximum result within the shortest time available. 153

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Contrary to his Confucian manners and widely admired “mild” character, Kim was known to have been quite uncompromising, almost “cold-hearted,” in managing his official duties. In an effort to continue to work during lunch breaks, he is said to have “never” taken lunch outside the Blue House throughout his entire term as chief of staff. Except when there was an official lunch at the Blue House, he would lunch on noodles – which Park apparently loved to eat, and for which the Blue House was therefore well known. But for Kim Yonghwan, one of Kim’s aides, who later became Minister of Finance (1974–8), eating noodles for lunch everyday with Kim was the “drudgery of drudgeries” (O Wonch’ol HGKKS vol. 3 1996: 227). With this extremely self-disciplined approach, Kim managed not only the BHS as Park’s highly centralized commanding agency, but also all economic ministries for over nine years, from 1969 to December 1978. During this period, Kim managed three consecutive deputy prime ministers (who were also ministers of the EPB): Kim Hang’yol (June 1969 to January 1972); T’ae Wanson (January 1972 to September 1974); and Nam Togu (September 1974 to December 1978). In dealing with his staff, Kim is said to have done nothing but issue orders to his underlings, never conceding anything to anyone, and acted as if he expected everyone to adopt his own approach to Park, that of absolute obedience. In this respect, Kim’s totally subservient approach to Park and his patriarchal approach to his own staff and to other ministries, as well as big chaebol, reflected Park’s idea of “Koreanized democracy” (Han’gukchok minjujuui) or, more specifically, that of the “Yusin Guidance System” (Yusin chido ch’eje). Kim’s concept of democracy, like that of many well-educated Koreans, including many high-ranking officials, technocrats, business leaders, and academics, placed more emphasis on conformity and selfdiscipline, and less on diversity. The primary goal of “Koreanized” democracy to Kim and to many senior Blue House elite technocrats was to achieve Yusin reform as articulated by Park, namely to increase national strength and to systematize national power. According to Park, the result of this would be, in effect, “to afford a greater measure of stability and prosperity for each individual and each family” (Park Chung Hee 1979b: 185 and 209). Thus the essential position of the BHS was statist: its members believed that “The individual can thrive only when the country prospers” (Park Chung Hee 1979b: 209). As such, the BHS vehemently promoted the state idea of economic nationalism in controlling the cabinet and, of course, the chaebol. In fact, the BHS was regarded as the “house of houses” (oksang ok) or the “cabinet behind the scenes” (paehu naegak).

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Blue House Rules As a strategy for completing the HCI plan within the shortest timeframe and with maximum efficiency, Park and the Blue House Economic Secretariat deliberately chose a national model, Korea Inc., and they specifically assigned chaebol as their industrial warhorse in each particular field of investment. This strategy was similar to that adopted in the early 1960s when every leading chaebol was assigned to a particular field of investment within a planned timeframe. The chaebol had very little choice but to complete their assigned industry development target as the price of their “conditional freedom” from charges of “illicit accumulation of wealth,” as I discussed in Chapter 3. This sink-or-swim strategy, ironically, made many chaebol, both big and small, very successful not only in generating economic wealth, but also in gaining new expertise and broadening their knowledge of Park-style or Blue House-style rapid development.9 By the early 1970s, many chaebol had more hands-on experience in industry construction than anyone in the country, which meant that they also had more experience with Park and Blue House-style business rules and criteria. The rise of Hyundai as one of the three largest chaebol conglomerates in Korea in the 1970s, a position which it has held into the twenty-first century, would reflect the nature and mode of Park’s developmentalism. In the authorized biography of Chong Chuyong (Chung Ju Yung), the founder of the Hyundai Corporation, US economics Professor Steers wrote: Hyundai thrived under President Park’s rigidly controlled regime. To business executives, Park’s government was seen as having a clear and realistic plan for economic development. The rules were well known to all, and companies could invest with reasonable confidence. Moreover, despite Park’s autocratic style, his government was largely free of graft and corruption. It was clear that Park was committed to enriching Korea, not himself, and the business community trusted him. They also feared him. The only requirement for companies was that they meet their production target without excuse. Failure to do so removed the company from Park’s inner circle and from future government loans and contracts. (1999: 69) As in the case of Hyundai, however, not all companies began their business as “big” chaebol. In 1965, Hyundai was not included in the top ten chaebol and yet, by 1975, it had become the third largest after Samsung and Lucky. The Blue House’s key rule for chaebol in the 1960s and 1970s was that they meet their assigned targets as a matter of national obligation. 155

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In this way they built their credibility with both the Blue House elite technocrats and with Park as deserving of national support. If a chaebol failed to accomplish its given targets, however, it received no further privileges, and ultimately had no future. Moreover, like Hyundai, they did not need to be large to receive the state’s favors. For example, Daewoo rose from nowhere to number seven in the chaebol hierarchy due largely to Park’s personal support for its founder, Kim Ujung (Woo Jung), based on his trust in Kim’s entrepreneurial vision and innovation. Park was therefore not concerned about size, but about achievement through entrepreneurship and innovation. Indeed, seven chaebol from the 1965 top ten list, including P’anbon, Samho and Samyang, had vanished from the 1975 list.10 It could be said that the Blue House-style business rules were highly unconventional, with Park acting as on-the-job superintendent. Steer’s interview with a former engineer, who worked closely with Park during the construction of the Seoul–Pusan (or Kyongbu) Expressway completed by Hyundai in June 1970, illustrates the Park-style or “Korean Way” of state-guided development: Mr Park is not an easy man at the best of times, and he certainly was far from that during our project. But after a while, I found myself thinking of him as a sort of conductor of an orchestra – with a helicopter as his baton. Up and down he would go, this time with a team of geologists to figure out what was wrong with some mountainside that had crumbled on our tunnel-makers, the next time with a couple of United Nations hydrologists to figure out how our surveyors had got some water table wrong. If he didn’t know the answer on Tuesday, Mr Park was back with it on Thursday. (Steers 1999: 68) To orchestrate his extremely complex and comprehensive HCI plan without much know-how, experience or resources, and with massive opposition from both politicians and the majority of the working masses, not to mention US opposition, Park relied heavily on his security agencies, not only the KCIA, but also the Military Security Command, the police, the Blue House Security Service and the Counter-Espionage Operations Command. In fact, under the Yusin system, Park unilaterally controlled both national security policy and all political funds through his secretariat and the KCIA.11 In this way, the BHS had sole management of the distribution of political funds to both ruling and opposition parties. To prevent any “undesirable” activities among any political, economic or social groups, the KCIA watched everyone, just as these same five intelligence agencies watched each other. Many executive policy-making bodies such as the Cabinet Council and 156

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the National Assembly had limited constitutional authority under the Yusin system, and thus had minimal influence over the state’s policymaking processes. Kim Chongp’il, Prime Minister from June 1971 to December 1975, for example, was kept in the dark to such an extent that he later claimed he had been under surveillance throughout the entire period he served as Prime Minister (O Hyojin 1987: 294 and 296). Kim’s claim was not unwarranted. As will be seen in the following chapter, Kim’s role in the Yusin state, especially in the course of implementing heavy industrialization, was minimal. Like most cabinet ministers, party officials and National Assemblymen, his role was merely to sign documents and carry out administrative orders from Park mostly issued by the presidential secretariat on Park’s behalf. Park’s personal rule through the Presidential Secretariat intensified as he and his economic secretariats frantically drove their strategy for the HCI program as a counter-measure to the apparent national security “crisis” in the wake of the fall of Indochina. On 23 April 1975, US President Ford declared the end of the Vietnam War. It was less than a week after the fall of Cambodia on 17 April and the resignation of Vietnamese President Thieu on 21 April. Coinciding with this domino effect, Kim Il Sung visited China (from 19 to 28 April). These external events gave rise to open speculation in Korea that the US was considering changing its East Asian “defense perimeter,” and subsequently might sell out Korea (Tonga Ilbo 21 April 1975). This worried Park greatly. On 29 April, he issued a special statement on national security wherein he appealed for national unity in support of the government’s efforts to guarantee national security. He claimed that national unity was imperative because “this is the year in which the North Korean Communists are most likely to provoke reckless playing with fire” (Tonga Ilbo 29 April 1975). Park appears to have been shocked to see the fall of Vietnam. And in particular, he saw Vietnam’s inability to defend itself against Communism as the fundamental cause of its downfall. In his diary on 30 April 1975, he wrote: Now the Republic of Vietnam . . . has been erased from the earth . . . We saw the inevitable and cruel reality, and the truth that any country without the national determination and strength to guard its own existence for itself will not survive. These rivers and mountains . . . are [the Korean people’s] fatherland . . . Forever, forever until the day this world ends, we must stand guard . . . We must all die on the day when we fail to keep guard. We can guard as long as we are prepared to die [for Korea]. (Chong Chaegyong 1994: 474–5) Park appealed to Koreans to face their true reality, that is, “living in a de facto state of war” and thus “to equip themselves for a wartime 157

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mentality” (PPCHS vol. 11 1974: 36). For many commentators, it seems much easier to attribute political motives to Park and to question his sincerity in his reactions toward rapid change in the international arena, and therefore to dismiss him as paranoid, than it is to question the absurdities and vicissitudes of Cold War politics. With Seoul only 40 kilometers away from the demilitarized zone, however, Park’s declaration that the state would “defend Seoul to the death if invaded by North Korea” (Chong Chaegyong 1994: 472)12 moved the sentiments of many Koreans. In fact, ordinary people were so frightened that, in the words of one opposition politician, “some citizens were even preparing roasted rice-powder as emergency food” (Tonga Ilbo 3 May 1975). On 10 May 1975, the media launched a nation-wide campaign for contributions to a national defense fund. In a resolution of the National Association of Newspapers on National Security, journalists stated that they would take responsibility for leading public opinion toward unity and national consensus. On 10 May, 1.4 million participants held a rally sponsored by the National Conference for National Security with Total Strength which had been established on 8 May by 38 civic organizations under the leadership of Ho Chong, one-time head of state.13 In this extraordinary situation all political activities, including among opposition parties, were dramatically curtailed. Such political castration was nowhere more obvious than in the capitulation of the NDP, especially after the meeting between the leader of the NDP, Kim Young Sam, and Park on 21 May, just a week after the declaration of ED No. 9. The NDP’s conciliatory approach toward the government’s security policy was further softened in September 1976 when Yi Ch’olsung was elected NDP president. With his political mottoes, “reformation under participation” and “integration in the middle way,” Yi’s leadership of the NDP was such that the Tonga Ilbo, one of the most influential daily papers, criticized the party as having “complacently settled down as a constitutive opposition party within the Yusin system” (Hak-Kyu Sohn 1988: 168). Political displacement, or “de-politicization,” took a more dramatic form when, on 24 February 1976, the ruling DRP announced a restructuring plan to cut its secretariat staff by a quarter after it had already dismissed half of its personnel only four months earlier (Tonga Ilbo 23 October 1975 and 24 February 1976). This staff cut, driven by a thirty percent reduction in the Party’s budget, reflected the severity of the DRP’s dependency on the executive power. Overall, the role of both the ruling and opposition parties was so reduced that the role of parliament itself was decidedly compromised with the establishment of the Yusin constitution. During the period of the ninth National Assembly (February 1973 to December 1978), for example, a total of 633 bills were passed. Of these, 479 bills (or 76 percent) were “official” government proposals, leaving just 154 bills or 24 percent to the members of the National Assembly (Chong Sangho 158

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1988: 128). The Yusin State, in short, unmistakably represented one “united” voice: Park’s.

Yusin adversaries: the “Minjung,” President Carter The Yusin system under Park’s monolithic “presidential guidance,” however, came up against two unstoppable developments: President Jimmy Carter’s policy of troop withdrawal from Korea and the rise of the human rights and labor movements. The former particularly worried Park and his policy-makers, not only because of Korea’s vulnerability to invasion from North Korea, but also because of the open hostility in Korea–US relations fueled by Carter’s public attacks on Park’s abuse of human rights. In fact, Carter not only criticized the human rights situation in Korea during his election campaign, but also implemented his withdrawal policy in Korea almost immediately upon gaining office because, as Vice President Mondale noted, he felt “discomfort . . . with the suppression of human rights by the Korean Government” (cited in Hak-Kyu Sohn 1988: 200). On 14 April, for example, the US commenced the withdrawal from Korea of its Sergeant Missile Unit, which was capable of handling nuclear weapons. There was, of course, more to Carter’s moralistic castigation than met the eye. The American people, thoroughly demoralized by the Vietnam War, and only just recovering from the scandals of the Nixon era, sought solace in the moral righteousness of President Carter. They were therefore extremely sensitive about US dealings with Park, especially after the Koreagate bribery scandal, which had exposed the unsavory conduct of US congressmen in Washington in the early 1970s. A Korean businessman, Pak Tongson, with the help of the KCIA, had bribed so many influential Americans in order to win US congressional support for Korea that, in October 1976, the US Justice Department announced that about ninety US congressmen and officials, including the recently disgraced President Richard Nixon, had been included on Pak’s bribery list. To make matters worse, the American CIA reported that it had planted secret electronic bugging and tape-recording devices at the Blue House and, on the basis of information thus obtained, it insisted that President Park had been personally involved in the Koreagate operation (Washington Post 26 October 1976; New York Times 9 November 1976). Archival sources show that the Park Government was haunted by the domino effect of the Koreagate scandal, especially in terms of US intervention in human rights issues.14 President Carter’s human rights policy profoundly influenced Korea’s democracy movement. The joint Catholic–Protestant prayer service, known as the “declaration for the democratic salvation of the nation,” held in March 1976, for example, was so effective in unnerving the Park Government that it went into panic 159

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mode, arresting many prominent politicians and human rights activists, including Kim Dae Jung, then undoubtedly the most prominent Korean democracy advocate, and Reverend Mun Ikhwan, who later became chairman of the United Minjung (People’s) Movement for Democracy and Unification. The government also charged former president, Yun Poson, and nine other prominent dissident leaders, but without detention. Such actions inevitably only added to Park’s growing reputation as a dictator. Amidst this political crisis, Park was placed under severe pressure by the US Congress, which demanded that the Korean Government send Pak Tongson to the US to assist with its investigations into the Koreagate incident. Not surprisingly, Park flatly refused through his foreign minister who, on 8 September 1977, publicly stated that his government would not co-operate with the US investigations into Pak’s bribery scandal (Tonga Ilbo 8 September 1977). The two governments, nevertheless, agreed finally on 10 January 1978, that US Justice Department officials could interrogate Pak in Korea in the presence of a Korean prosecutor, on the condition that they would not raise questions concerning any incumbent Korean or third-country officials (Tonga Ilbo 21 January 1978). In late 1978, the US Government officially closed its two inquiries: that conducted by the senate committee which disclosed the names of nine senators suspected of receiving bribes from Pak Tongson; and that by the House of Representatives which passed a resolution to reprimand three incumbent congressmen. In the course of these investigations, the role of US ambassador William Gleysteen appears to have been particularly effective in convincing Kim Yongsik, Korean Ambassador to Washington, to secure his government’s cooperation in obtaining testimony from Kim Tongjo, former Minister of Foreign Affairs, on the understanding that a military aid bill before the US Senate for the transfer of military equipment worth 800 million dollars to Korea would not be jeopardized (HakKyu Sohn 1988: 204). The irony in President Carter’s human rights crusade, imposed on Korea through a policy of troop withdrawal – although Carter never made the link between them explicit – was that it enabled Park to exploit his Yusin agenda, especially the construction of defense industries, despite US opposition and often-strong interference. In fact, Park’s bold pursuit of weapons development, as well as Korea’s purchasing of advanced technology weapons and military equipment from non-American sources such as France, Britain, and Canada, had become a matter of major conflict between the two governments from the early 1970s (Interview with O Wonch’ol November 1997). Moreover, Park was fully aware of Carter’s dilemma in carrying out his withdrawal plans, which received fierce opposition not only from his own countrymen, including the military and conservative politicians from both the Republican and Democrat camps (Hayes 1989: Chapter 5), but also from Japan. Prime Minister Fukuda, in 160

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fact, openly opposed Carter’s withdrawal policy well before the President’s inauguration (Newsweek 10 January 1977). Similarly, Major-General John Singlaub, Chief of Staff of the US Forces in Korea, warned, in his interview with the Washington Post in May 1977, that “if U.S. ground troops are withdrawn on the schedule suggested, it will lead to war” (19 May 1977).15 Concerning the economic situation in Korea, CIA Director Stansfield Turner, in his report to a closed hearing of the military committee of the US Congress on 13 July, warned that a US troop withdrawal would lead to an increase in Korea’s defense expenditure. Turner noted that this had already increased from 6.1 percent to 6.9 percent of GNP and that any further increase in defense expenditure would be a serious obstacle to Korea’s economic development, especially in terms of foreign investment.16 On the whole, Carter’s withdrawal policy was most vehemently opposed by his own military generals at the front line on the Korean peninsula. General John Vessey, the US military commander in Korea, according to a recently available source, advised Park and his military advisers to demand a compensatory aid package of a sum which the US Government could not possibly pay in return for the withdrawal of US troops (Yi Tongbok 2001: 260–87). His strategy was that such a package – later confirmed to be $1.5 billion – would tie Congress up in debate on its cost vis-à-vis withdrawal, forcing the abortion of the planned withdrawal. Vessey’s commitment to this almost mutinous tactic was very evident in one Defense Department staffer’s comment that Vessey would resign if the withdrawal of troops were to proceed without the compensation package (Oberdorfer 1997: 93). Carter’s withdrawal policy also stirred up vehement opposition among the Korean people, including opposition parties and representatives of the six leading Christian denominations, who appealed in writing to many influential people, including Donald Fraser, chair of the US Koreagate scandal inquiry, and Carter himself. Given this groundswell of opposition nationally and internationally, Carter’s withdrawal policy acted, paradoxically, to strengthen Park’s resolve to implement his Yusin agenda: the “Big Push” for heavy and chemical industrialization and political reform. The big push enabled Park to stimulate and mobilize the Korean people’s shared sense of nationalism. By early 1979, however, the situation had changed significantly in both political and economic terms. Politically, Park was shocked by the results of the National Assembly elections on 12 December 1978, which left the ruling DRP with 1.1 percent less votes than the 32.8 percent obtained by the NDP. Thus, although the DRP secured seven more seats than the NDP’s 61 seats, this poor result was enough to shatter Park’s confidence, despite the fact that he had won the challenge-free presidential election for a second term in July. 161

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More troubling than his political dilemma, however, was the economic problem of soaring inflation fueled largely by fierce competition for skilled labor which, according to many analysts, pushed real wage increases ahead of the increase in productivity during the 1977–9 period. Amsden, for example, argues that, during the 1975–9 period, real wages for production workers and other professional, technical and managerial workers rose 16.8 percent and 15.3 percent respectively (1989: 199). In 1978, the level of inflation had risen to 22 percent from 16 percent in 1977. Ultimately, the factors behind this economic instability led Park to dismiss Kim Chongnyom as his chief of staff in December 1978 and to appoint Sin Hyonhwak to replace Kim as “Economic Manager” and as deputy prime minister. Kim’s dismissal, together with the dismissal of his two closest supporters, Deputy Prime Minister Nam Togu and Minister of Finance Kim Yonghwan, represented a fundamental shift in Park’s economic policy from the high-speed growth of the HCI program to economic stabilization.17 For example, the EPB-led new economic “policy package” – known as the Comprehensive Stabilization Plan – announced in April 1979, was concrete evidence of Park’s new direction in economic policy. Although this policy was postponed twice – initially because of the second oil price increase in July, and again because of Park’s assassination, in October – it was this policy and its architects that rose to center stage of Korea’s political economy for nearly two decades, until the financial crisis in December 1997. Meanwhile, party politics under the Yusin Guidance system was thoroughly stymied because the opposition NDP had been “buried under [its agreement] to compromise [with the government] and struggle only within the system” (Yi Kwangil 1998: 187). This did not mean, however, that the dissidents’ protests were dead. On the contrary, workers’ protests in various companies, both big and small, had been mushrooming since the self-immolation of a textile worker, Chon T’aeil, in November 1970, as we have seen. This incident had given impetus to the subsequent proliferation of workers’ unions in many large companies, which together with the workers’ organized activities, ultimately led to the formation of a mass labor movement. The intensity of the labor disputes at the Pangnim Textile Company (1977), the Peace Market (1977) and the Tongil Textile Company (1978), among half a dozen major labor disputes,18 reflected the mood of such disputes prior to the now legendary textile workers’ labor dispute, the YH incident. This dispute not only exposed the inhuman working conditions of female textile workers since the mid-1960s,19 but also resulted in the opposition NDP adopting labor issues, particularly social justice, as the major item of its political agenda. The subsequent conflict between the government and the NDP sparked massive urban anti-Yusin protests. In less than two months, this large unrest had led to Park’s assassination. To 162

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understand how this development came about, a brief recapitulation of the YH Incident is pertinent. The YH Trading Company, located in east Seoul, was a medium-sized export company for Korean-made wigs. It was founded in 1966 with only ten workers, and grew into the largest exporter of Korean wigs in the late 1960s. By 1970, the company employed 4,000 workers, mostly young females. But when it was hit by a sharp decrease in exports in the midst of the economic slowdown discussed earlier, YH initially cut back its workforce to 1,800 in 1975, and again to 500 in 1978. In March 1979, YH attempted to shut down the factory, but did not finally succeed in doing so until 7 August. By then, the owner of the company had already absconded to the US with the company’s remaining liquid assets. The workers, on the other hand, were evicted by force despite their desperate attempts, through a sit-in strike at the company’s premises, to prevent its closure. Subsequently, some 200 young female workers approached the NDP at its headquarters for support. At two o’clock, on the morning of 11 August 1979, however, about one thousand police stormed the headquarters of the NDP, and arrested the women. The police brutality that night was extreme. The women were severely beaten and scores of other people, including six assemblymen and some thirty party members, who held their own sit-in alongside the women, were injured. Fifteen media reporters who had been in the building to cover the incident were injured as well. One woman was killed. As if this were not enough, President Park ordered the government to investigate the Urban Industrial Mission (UIM), a well-known Protestant Christian organization, which had been closely involved in the Christian workers’ union movement, including the workers’ strike at the Tongil Textile Company. Park claimed that, “certain impure forces . . . under the pretence of religion, infiltrate factories and labor unions to agitate labor disputes and social disorder” (Jang Jip Choi 1990: 289). Subsequently, a special task force, headed by the chief of the security section of the supreme public prosecutor’s office, charged the UIM with having “encouraged class consciousness among the workers and conducted a consciousness-raising movement which was aimed at promoting the spirit of class struggle among the workers” (Tonga Ilbo 14 September 1979).

Conclusion Suppressing workers’ protests and party politics was one thing, but attacking Christian activities, particularly those of the UIM, was a totally different matter. It meant confronting US missionaries and thus indirectly challenging Carter’s personal human rights crusade. Why did Park take this potentially explosive action? I have found no material to provide direct evidence of Park’s reasoning. But two scenarios are quite plausible. 163

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One is the observation put forward by US ambassador Gleysteen that Park had given up his “tactics of patience” with the protestors in favor of a crack-down. Gleysteen noted: After a few weeks of post-summit relaxation, labor activists, students, dissidents, and left-leaning politicians resumed their protest efforts . . . In the face of this resumed protest . . . some normally moderate political leaders got swept up in a rising swell of antigovernment activity . . . Confronted by these forces, President Park abandoned his tactics of patience. Rather than indulging his opposition with further concessions, he sided with hard-liners on his staff, cracking down hard on protesters. (Gleysteen 1999: 51) The second scenario would foreground Park’s self-destructive obstinacy (ogi) in relation to Carter. After all, it was little more than a month since the two presidents had quarreled bitterly over the US troop withdrawal policy when Carter had visited Korea (in late June). Despite their final agreement to each side’s terms and promises, Park was furious with Carter’s conceit, or what Oberdorfer termed “Carter Chill” (1997: 84–108). In fact, the Carter Chill was so influential that by May 1977 Park had changed his tactics. Instead of begging to delay the troop withdrawal, he told his military advisers, including So Chongch’ol, Minister of Defense, “Tell them to go if they wish!” (kalt’aemyon karago hae!). It is clear in retrospect that this dangerously daring response signaled Park’s absolute determination to search for Korea’s own solution even at the risk of breaching US security policy, especially concerning nuclear weapons development.

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8 PRESIDENTIAL GUIDANCE AND HEAVY AND CHEMICAL INDUSTRIALIZATION You are free to make your own assessment of the Korean model of heavy and chemical industrialization. As an author of the HCI Plan and its manager, however, I must tell you that Korea succeeded in HCI because it had clear goals and approaches – the Engineering Approach – for achieving the set aims. To achieve these collective goals without a hitch, I advised President Park to declare the HCI Plan as integral to the Yusin reform agenda. Without a guarantee of that caliber, I was afraid that the Plan could easily be changed or even stopped as soon as the “political will” changed. If that had happened, Korea would have been ruined. (Interview with O Wonch’ol, October 1996) Development elites are generated and come to the fore because of the desire to break out of the stagnation of dependency and underdevelopment; the truly successful ones understand that they need the market to maintain efficiency, motivate the people over the long term, and serve as a check on institutionalized corruption while they are battling against underdevelopment. The Republic of Korea is an excellent example. ( Johnson 1987)

Introduction In his New Year Press Conference on 12 January 1973, Park declared the government’s Heavy and Chemical Industrialization Policy (HCIP: chunghwahak kongop’wa chongch’aek) that would underpin the state’s plan for the Big Push program under the Yusin reform. He also declared that Korea aimed to achieve $10 billion in export earnings and per capita GNP of $1,000 by the early 1980s. He stated: I declare the “Heavy and Chemical Industry Policy” through which the government hereafter will focus on the development of 165

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the heavy and chemical industries. I would also like to call on the people of the nation so that all of us from now on begin a campaign for national scientization. I urge everyone to learn technological skills, master them and develop them . . . If we wish to achieve our export goal of $10 billion in early 1980, heavy and chemical products must exceed well over 50 percent of total export goods. (PPCHS vol. 10 1973: 58–9) This message clearly set out Park’s agenda for long term (ten-year) HCI development and the massive expansion of vocational education, especially the training of scientists, engineers, and other technologically skilled workers, which Korea achieved with outstanding success (Amsden 1989: Chapters 7 and 9). This comprehensive program of development was designed, in part, as countervailing policy to offset the consequences for Korea of the Nixon Doctrine. As we saw in Chapter 5, Park created a Homeland Guard of 2.5 million reserves immediately after the North Korean commando attack on the Presidential Blue House in January 1968. Thenceforth, Park was determined to build weapons factories to arm the Homeland Guard. His determination grew even firmer, fueled by personal outrage when, in early June 1970, North Korean speedboats abducted a South Korean patrol boat near Yonp’yong Island on the west coast. Immediately after this incident, Park directed Kim Hang’yol, Deputy Prime Minister, to construct a defense industry, later known as the “Four Great Core Factories” (sadae haekkongjang) which was a pseudonym for security reasons. Park also created the Agency for Defense Development (Kukpang kwahak yon’guso) with a clandestine “Weapons Exploitation Committee” on 16 August 1970, as well as directing the speedy construction of an M-16 rifle factory (for which the construction contract was signed in March 1973.) Unlike these more immediate developments, the construction of the “Four Great Core Factories” required a large amount of capital, which the EPB was given the responsibility to raise through foreign loans, mainly, the Koreans hoped, from Japan. Despite more than fifteen months of vigorous negotiations for foreign loans, not only with Japan, but also with the United States and various European countries, EPB officials reported to Park on 10 November 1971 that they could not raise the required capital. Park’s response to this report was such that everyone at that meeting became extremely concerned. In particular, Chief of Staff Kim Chongnyom appears to have been so shocked that he called for suggestions from O Wonch’ol, then Assistant Vice Minister in the MCI and one of the Four-Member Committee for Defense Industry Development founded in June 1970.1 This call led to an immediate meeting between Kim and O at Kim’s office (interview with O Wonch’ol October 1994).2 Kim was impressed with O’s “excel166

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lent technocrat’s idea,” so much so that he immediately took O to Park’s office.3 At this extraordinary meeting, O explained to Park his idea on how weapons could be manufactured immediately, using Korea’s existing pool of resources and technological skill, and how defense industries could be developed within the framework of heavy and chemical industry development. The key points of O’s weapons manufacturing concept were as follows: 1

2

3

4

5 6

All weapons can be disassembled into parts and these parts can be separately produced, as long as they are manufactured in accordance with a plan and with specified materials. The problem in manufacturing weapons is the requirement that machinery deliver precision to one-hundredth of a millimeter. Korea’s capacity to manufacture precision machinery is only onetenth of a millimeter. Thus, Korea needs to build a system to manufacture precision machinery to one-hundredth of a millimeter. A means to establishing this capacity would be the government choosing the most prominent private manufacturing companies currently available, and assigning them to manufacture either weapon parts or specified quantities. Each company can thus aim to do its best to manufacture quality precision machinery for the assigned components or assigned quantity. To maximize production, the promotion of the Korean defense industry should be managed within the framework of heavy and chemical industry development. The Agency for Defense Development will inspect every product and only successful products will be used in the final assembly of weapons. If the government adopts this method, the manufacture of weapons is possible immediately. Moreover, the government can save the cost of building factories, as well as minimizing costly problems arising from any variations in the quantity of weapons required.4

Kim had been captivated by O’s weapons manufacture idea, but Park seems to have been even more convinced, especially with O’s assurance that he could immediately begin weapons development if Park agreed with his proposal. O assured him that he could complete the development of individual firearms, such as small guns and machine-guns, as well as trench mortars, within about six months (as was in fact achieved). After nearly four hours of intense discussion, Park agreed on the following five points with O and Kim: 1

Build up military capacity by arming 2.5 million reserves with Koreanmade weapons (individual weapons and trench mortars). To achieve this, the development of weapons will begin immediately. 167

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2 3 4 5

The defense industry will be based on a production system undertaken by private companies. The promotion of Korea’s defense industry will be managed as an integral part of heavy and chemical industrialization. The training and securing of engineers and skilled workers are as important as the construction of weapons production facilities. The activity to construct the “Four Great Core Factories” hitherto promoted by the EPB is now canceled. (Interviews with O May 1994, October 1996 and January 2000)

Rise of HCI triumvirate Almost immediately after their long discussion, Park appointed O as his Senior Economic Secretary in the Second Economic Secretariat (SES: Kyongje che-2 pisosil). In his position as head of a kind of special “task force,”5 O was answerable only to Park on those affairs which Park had specially assigned to him. O’s first assignment was to develop the defense industry, although it had actually been announced in the media that he was to be “in charge of heavy and chemical industries.” This deliberately misleading description was chosen for security reasons, so as to avoid public use of the term “defense industry.” As chief of the SES, O was to be charged with half a dozen additional duties once the Big Push – the HCI program – commenced at the beginning of 1973. These included: the HCI program, development of skilled manpower, nuclear weapons and missile capability development, re-planning of national land development, and modernization of the military – which became known as the Yulgok Operation (discussed further below). O’s new responsibility for these duties was significant because it signaled a comprehensive restructuring of Korea’s industry system. Moreover, O’s focus on industry restructuring led to a fundamental shift from Park’s reliance on the EPB economists to a reliance on technocrats of the Presidential Economic Secretariat as well as the MCI. Kim Chongnyom was key adviser on general economic matters and O key adviser on the Big Push and military weapons programs. Overall, the combined role of Park, Kim and O, as the presidential triumvirate managing the HCI program (hereafter the HCI triumvirate), was crucial because it provided three essential ingredients for HCI implementation: Park’s strong leadership, Kim’s financial–economic expertise and O’s industrial vision and skills. The role of the HCI triumvirate is hard to overemphasize because, essentially, it institutionalized “presidential guidance” (taet’ongryong chisi) as the main means of implementing HCI Policy, and this, in effect, created Korea Incorporated through the mobilization of big business groups (chaebol) as Korea’s industrial pillars. In this process, the HCI triumvirate spearheaded a relentlessly nationalistic “Korean-style” techno168

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cracy, just as Sahashi Shigeru and his team spearheaded Japanese technocracy through their institutionalization of “administrative guidance” (Johnson 1982: 242–74). What made Korea’s “presidential guidance” distinctive, however, was that it gave the HCI triumvirate almost as much dictatorial power as the Yusin constitution gave Park presidential authority. This was why, according to O Wonch’ol, he advised Park to declare the HCI Policy as the top priority of the Yusin Reform. Accordingly, the authority of the HCI triumvirate paralleled the rise and fall of the Yusin State. On the one hand, the HCI triumvirate engineered the “Korean model” of industrialization that recorded unusually high-speed economic growth but, on the other, it lost support because of its draconian methods. The triumvirate began to crumble at the end of 1978 when Park appointed Sin Hyonhwak, the newly nominated Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the EPB,6 to take over economic management, while Kim Chongnyom was sent to Japan as ambassador. Less than ten months after this change, in October 1979, Park was assassinated and O would be totally “silenced” until 1992 (see Introduction). Given this background, it is not surprising that so few people, even researchers, knew anything at all about O, whether in his role as Park’s Senior Economic Secretary or as the chief of the HCI program and the most important figure in charge of military modernization, including Park’s nuclear weapons and missile development program. O was born into a wealthy family of landowners on 2 October 1928 in the coastal village of P’ungch’on in Hwanghae Province – now in North Korea. As the oldest son of seven children, O grew up following traditional Confucian customs and gaining a colonial education on his family’s estate until the completion of a four-year high school program, at Haeju Tongjung Hakkyo, in Haeju. The year Korea was liberated from Japan in 1945, O entered Kyongsong Technical College, the precursor of Seoul National University, majoring in chemical engineering, in which he graduated in September 1951. Other than a brief visit home during the college break in December 1945, O lost contact with his family as Korea’s division between the North and South became permanent. O’s family members in the North were expelled from their village some time between the end of 1945 and early 1946, and the family’s property, like that of all other landowners in the North, was confiscated. During the Korean War, O’s father escaped alone to the South by swimming along the coastline, and was rescued by the South Korean Navy, but his mother and six brothers and sisters remained in the North. As a university student, O expected to go to Japan for further studies in chemical engineering with a view to becoming a professor, but in December, after the outbreak of the Korean War, when he was in his final year at university, he sat for and passed the examination for entry to the Korean Air Force as an engineering cadet. In June 1951, after six months of 169

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training, O was commissioned as second lieutenant in the air force, where he served until he was transferred to the reserve list as major in August 1957. During this period O spent most of his time in both the management and construction of aircraft maintenance depots in various locations, including Masan, Chinhae, and Taegu. This experience, O later claimed, taught him many valuable skills, especially US Air Force-style technological operations and efficiency-oriented management. O’s first employment as a civilian was at Sibal Auto Company (1957–60), the first automobile manufacturer in Korea. After the April Student Revolution of 19 April 1960, however, O moved his employment to Kuksan (Korea-made) Automobile where he worked as factory manager until the military coup of May 1961. Just a week after the coup, O was summoned by the Military Revolutionary Committee and in July appointed to the Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MCI). As Director of the Chemical Industry Section (hwahak kwajang), O drew up the early drafts for the chemical industry components of Korea’s first Five-Year Economic Plan which was announced on 13 January 1962. In June 1964 when the government adopted an “export-oriented” policy, O was promoted by Pak Ch’unghun, who had become Minister of Commerce and Industry for the second time in less than ten months, to the position of Director-General of the First Industry Bureau (kongop cheilgukchang). The Bureau was responsible for light industry which, at that time, was the main area for export production. O was promoted for strategic reasons, more specifically, to implement the MCI’s export policies. As a 36-year-old chemical engineer with a strong sense of industrial nationalism, O’s ingenuity and managerial skills surprised everyone during this embryonic period of industrial development, a period highlighted by Korea achieving export earnings of $100 million for the first time in its history in 1964. In the first Export Day celebration on 30 November that year, O was awarded a medal by President Park in recognition of his role “converting industry into export industries” (Interview with O, May 1994). O headed the First Industry Bureau longer than any other official, serving for three years and ten months from June 1964 to April 1968. While on a working trip to the United States, O was again promoted, this time as chief of the Planning and Management Bureau (kihoek kwallisiljang). Together with other responsibilities, he was charged with managing ten government-owned companies which were under the care of the MCI. Despite his promotion, however, O continued his chemical industry development activities, in which he had been involved since 1965 when he drew up a chemical industry development plan. Overseeing the construction of Korea’s first oil refinery in the Ulsan Industrial Complex was one of O’s main responsibilities in this area. During this period, he later claimed that he devoted himself to developing what he termed an “engin170

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eering approach” to the formulation of heavy industrialization policy within the MCI. In January 1970, O was promoted to the position of Assistant Vice Minister in charge of mining, heavy industry, and electronics (kwang-gong-chon ch’agwanbo), where he played a key role in developing and implementing industry policies until November 1971 when he joined the Blue House Secretariat.

Weapons development: Park’s goal On the morning of 11 November 1971, O received a formal letter advising him of his appointment to the Blue House Secretariat, as well as his first “emergency command” (pisang myongryong) from Park that he was immediately to organize weapons production to arm 20 divisions of reserve forces with light weapons. Park instructed O, among other directives, that as Korea was in a “state of extreme emergency,” he was to gather information about North Korean defense capability through Yi Hurak, then head of the KCIA. It seems that O instinctively adapted his style to that of the military staff of Park’s presidential clique. The intense mood of Park’s office was so contagious that O, in his own words, “trembled all over” when he visited Yi that afternoon and pledged commitment to Park’s antiCommunist mission, as if he were a soldier at war. O described the managerial structure of the HCI triumvirate in the following military terms: “President Park was the Supreme Commander, Kim the Chief of Staff in charge of economic strategy, and I the Chief of Operations for defense industry development” (interview with O Wonch’ol, October 1996; also O Wonch’ol, 1994a: 470). On 16 December, under the light weapons development program, code name “Lightning Operation” (pon’gae saop), the production of eight items, including M1 carbines, M19, A4 machine guns, and 60 mm trench mortars, was completed and the products first displayed at the Blue House. These weapons were produced by the Agency for Defense Development (ADD), which established a twenty-four-hour continuous working schedule for a full month from 17 November. This streamlined development process shows the authority of Park’s “presidential guidance.” On the same day as O’s appointment, Park directed his chief of staff, Kim, to convey his order to both the Minister of Defense and the chief of the ADD to begin weapons development immediately. And Park ordered Kim to tell them: “It’s Presidential Guidance.” On 3 April 1972, after further testing and refinement, Park and his cabinet ministers, as well as high-ranking officials, military personnel and heads of the media previewed the weapons. This took place only five months after O had received Park’s order to manufacture “Korean-made” weapons. More significantly, through their trial demonstration of weapons, Korea finally convinced US policy-makers to assist Korea’s own 171

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production of weapons by providing not only technological advisers from the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), but also technical plans for the development of various other weapons, including 105 mm cannons (O Wonch’ol HGKKS vol. 7 1999: 410–13; also vol. 5 1996: 48–51). The production of light weapons, however, was only a preliminary step in Park’s all-out defense-related big push program. On 30 May, after attending the Export Promotion Meeting at Capital Hall, Park summoned O to his office and expressed his view that Korea could easily expand its export earnings to $10 billion because Korea was continually developing new export products. He then asked O what industry policy direction the government should take to achieve this level of exports. In his unpublished collection of memoirs entitled Kongop kujo kaep’yonnon (On the Restructuring of the Industry System),7 O claimed that he instantly realized that Park was searching for a long-term plan for structural redevelopment, and a new paradigm for government policy. O replied to Park’s question: “It’s time to begin heavy and chemical industrialization.” O was confident that the development of HCI would achieve the outcomes Park sought both economically and politically (O Wonch’ol Collection: 7). He used the example of Japan’s experience of HCI development when advancing his proposal. Park’s initial response to the proposal was that O should “explain it again on the basis of data” (O Wonch’ol Collection: 7). O took three extra days to complete a new brief and then secured Kim Chongnyom’s support for his draft HCI plan. Popular skepticism, even in the 1990s, has been the usual response to Park’s “absurdly optimistic” (Clifford 1994: 105) goal of $10 billion in exports and per capita GNP of $1,000 by 1981. However, despite Korea’s exports in 1972 amounting to just $1.62 billion, with per capita GNP of only $318, the HCI triumvirate believed that the Japanese economic model would be applicable to Korea and could achieve Park’s long-term economic vision. Their confidence was based largely on the experience of Japan, and calculated risk, rather than on unfounded speculation. The triumvirate was acutely aware of the respective economic records of Japan and Korea, especially concerning each country’s export records prior to attempting heavy and chemical industry development. For example, the government’s Master Plan for HCI entitled Chunghwahak kongophwa chongch’aek sonon e ttarun kongop kujo kaep’yonnon (On the Restructuring of Industry in Accordance with the Declaration on Heavy and Chemical Industry Policy) noted that in 1955, two years prior to Japan’s declaration of its commitment to heavy and chemical industrialization, Japan earned $2 billion in exports. But, it continued, in 1967, ten years after the declaration of its HCI policy, Japan had reached $10 billion in export earnings, 78 percent of which was earned by heavy and chemical industries, and 22 percent by light industries.8 172

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Similarly, in 1970, Korea reached $1 billion in export earnings, which was just two years before Park declared Korea’s HCI program in January 1973. On the basis of the clear parallels between the trajectories of Korea and Japan, Kim and O convinced Park to give his approval to O’s draft HCI plan. According to O, Park stated: “You should now draw up a detailed plan” (O Wonch’ol Collection: 10). Here we should note the inner workings of the Yusin Reform, especially in terms of Park’s role in the state’s implementation of the HCI Plan. While Park had set a $10 billion export target for 1980, the actual means to achieving this goal was planned by O Wonch’ol and supported by Kim Chongnyom. Once Park had approved the proposal put by O and Kim, he gave O a free hand in running the HCI program while Kim ran the general economy. The drawing up of a detailed HCI plan coincided with the drafting of the Yusin constitution, which was reported to have commenced in May 1972 under the code, “good harvesting operation” (p’ungnyon saop) (Tonga Ilbo 11 October 1991). Park thus forged a two-edged sword: heavy and chemical industrialization together with the Yusin constitution.

HCI plan and its managers As noted at the beginning of this chapter, the state’s HCIP was the final refinement of O’s original draft proposal, Kongop kujo kaep’yonnon (On the Restructuring of Industry). Known loosely as “Kaep’yonnon,” the HCIP put forward three key strategic priorities: one, export-orientation; two, longrange (ten-year) and large-scale planning; and three, the establishment of a fixed investment fund of $10 billion. The HCIP designated five main industries to be developed intensively as priority industries: (a) industrial machinery; (b) shipbuilding and transport machinery; (c) iron and steel; (d) chemicals; and (e) electronics (CKTKKK: 15). These areas, the HCIP noted, had to be developed as a priority and required comprehensive structural integration of technological industries in Korea, such as chemical plants, power plants, shipbuilding and automobile production. The HCIP aimed at four main developmental goals: (a) economic construction; (b) cultivation of human resources through the modernization of education and a cultural revolution; (c) national land development; and (d) self-reliant national defense. These goals were integrated to achieve a “comprehensive national industry” planned and implemented at the national level. Thus the end product of the HCIP was the construction of what the state defined as a “National Industry Standard Model” (NISM: kukka sanop kibon model). The five-point guidelines for drawing up this national model required: Firstly, that a national industry standard model be designed to achieve $10 billion in export earnings and $1,000 per capita GNP. 173

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(A) (B)

In each target year, industry structures and the volume of production must be managed together in the model. The NISM must be planned within the state’s long-term vision and with a view to utilizing national resources comprehensively and rationally.

Secondly, that a study be carried out on the question of what initiating mode should be utilized in order to construct successfully a basic model for the 1980s; Thirdly, that a [Master] plan be drawn up, which will outline a year-by-year process for achieving the specified goals over a ten-year period. (A)

(B)

(C)

By drawing up a year-by-year plan, any matters which require action in advance must be settled promptly. (e.g. It takes ten years to train skilled workers.) There is no established theory in regard to economic development in underdeveloped countries. In viewing the experience of our country over the past ten years, whenever the government provided strong support by drawing up a series of detailed plans for factory construction and industrial land planning, private businesses followed and produced the desired results. The need for a plan for state-led factory construction is unavoidable in the planning of economic development in underdeveloped countries.

Fourthly, that the goals of the plan not be achieved by merely promoting individual private businesses left to their own resources. (A)

(B)

(C)

Planning must be considered on a national level in regard to scale, quality, and price etc within a framework of a comprehensive national industry development plan. And then, the people and the state must sweat blood so that there is no setback in achieving the set goals. Comprehensive development planning in underdeveloped countries must choose the least costly method for overcoming the huge problem of financial resources. The government must take an active role in addressing challenging problems which will emerge in the future and posit solutions either in the planning stage or in the course of business operations.

Fifthly, that the goals and contents of the plan be clearly defined and promptly made public when finalized. (CKTKKK: 4–5) 174

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The HCIP intentionally stirred competitive nationalism. Japan’s success with its ten-year HCI development program (1957–67) was viewed as indicative of what Korea could achieve. “If the Japanese did it, Koreans can do it too!” Thus the state’s slogan, Hamyon toenda, was promoted as the symbol of Korea’s collective nationalism while Park and his two HCI triumvirs, O Wonch’ol and Kim Chongnyom, practised an even more extreme form of statist approach known as “milobuch’o” (“Push to the limit and beyond!”) in every aspect of the state’s HCI program. The HCIP also exploited a collective sense of anti-Americanism, focusing on the national interest and an insistence on non-interference from the USA. However, this anti-Americanism did not imply, in any way, a refusal to receive further American technological and security assistance, or investment in Korea. To the contrary, the HCIP was highly contingent on inflows of foreign capital, especially American capital. Most importantly, the HCIP competed against North Korea’s industrial-military strategy. By 1974, in fact, Park held nine volumes of data and analysis on North Korea, which the KCIA had taken five years to compile (Kang Indok 1996: 261–4). While the HCIP matched Park’s ideological vision, namely of a “Korean Way” nationally planned economic and industrial system aimed at achieving international competitiveness of domestic industry, its planning, according to O Wonch’ol, was based on what he referred to as the “engineering approach” (konghakchok chopkunpop). The “engineering approach,” O claimed, represented a “science whose basic principle is finding the most reasonable, profitable and least risky method for the construction of factories using various data [emphasis added]” (O Won-Chol [sic] 1995: 346). O added that this approach required a serious consideration of relevant conditions, including government policy, and a thorough investigation of key factors such as priorities, engineering requirements, scale, construction period, and expansion plans in stages. The most important characteristic of the “engineering approach,” O concluded, was that it left no room for either politics or emotion. The only indicator of success was the maximization of economic–industrial efficiency and profit. Here, O was implying that authoritarianism was a prerequisite to HCI in Korea, and that HCI was ultimately successful mainly because technocrats were provided with a free hand to implement agreed plans without political interference or opposition. In this context, Park’s Yusin system was the price Korea paid for high-speed economic growth. In an unusually open interview with the author in October 1996, O commented: These days, many say that President Park succeeded in economy but failed in democracy. Even former ministers under the President openly separate HCI from Yusin reform. I tell you: the bitter truth is that HCI was Yusin and Yusin was HCI. One did not exist without the other. Korea succeeded in HCI because the President disci175

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plined the state to implement HCI precisely as planned. And the President could not have disciplined the state if there had been no Yusin [Constitution]. It is unconscionable to ignore this fact. (Interview with O Wonch’ol, October 1996 and January 2000) This discipline was nowhere more evident than in Park’s control of the state in relation to the implementation of HCI. Park’s tough tactics in this regard set a new benchmark when he maneuvered his cabinet ministers to approve the HCI Plan. At 1.00 p.m. on 31 January 1973, just a little more than two weeks after his declaration of the state’s HCIP at his New Year Press Conference, Park assembled the second meeting of the defense industry at the Blue House basement shelter. The Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, seven key cabinet ministers and other senior officials, including the chief of the ADD, plus Park’s special aides and senior secretaries had been ordered to attend. Park had never before held a cabinet meeting in such a tiny room, or basement, but he chose it deliberately. Everyone needed special directions to get there. It had been turned into a temporary “weapons’ showroom.” When the officials arrived and saw a large quantity of weapons all around the room, they were reportedly genuinely taken aback. Needless to say it was Park who had ordered this intimidating display of weapons and, in this warlike atmosphere he directed O Wonch’ol to present his draft proposal for the Big Push program, namely, kongop kujo kaep’yonnon (A Study of Industry Restructuring). Based on a total of 137 briefing charts, 57 on the defense industry and 80 on the HCI, O took almost four hours to outline the inseparability of the defense industry from heavy and chemical industry development (O Wonch’ol Collection: 64–76). During this marathon session, O recalled, there was just a brief break halfway, and the room was filled with cigarette smoke because the entrance was shut and there was only a tiny window in the room. It was said to be the first time that Park had spent an entire afternoon at one session, canceling his normal schedule. At the end of the briefing, O was asked by Park, “How much will the HCI Plan cost?” O replied as in earlier discussions: “It will cost approximately $10 billion in both domestic and foreign capital” (O Wonch’ol Collection: 71–2). As if scripted, Park’s question and O’s reply signaled the Plan’s “unanimous approval” by cabinet subject to anyone having the audacity to object. No one dared. Park apparently asked Nam Togu, then Minister of Finance, whether he could raise the capital. Nam hesitated by expressing his concerns about the large amount, but Park silenced him by declaring, “I am not suggesting a war!” (Naega chonjaeng ul hajanun’gotto aniji annayo!) Park then ordered the Prime Minister, Kim Chongp’il (1971–5), to form an HCI advisory committee and to take the necessary steps for the acquisition of foreign capital required for the HCI program. 176

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The HCI Planning Corps On 2 February 1973, a special committee named Heavy and Chemical Industry Promotion Committee (HCIPC: Chunghwahak kongop ch’ujin wiwonhoe) was established in accordance with presidential decree No. 6675. Despite the Prime Minister being the chair of the HCIPC, Park directly managed the Committee – as he had declared, “Naega chikchop ch’aengigetsso!” (I’ll take charge myself!) – during its early stages. HCIPC members included the Prime Minister, O Wonch’ol (as its secretary), plus ministers of the six key ministries: the EPB; the MCI; the Ministry of Finance; the Ministry of Education; the Ministry of Construction; and the Ministry of Science and Technology.9 One of the HCIPC’s roles was to examine the HCI draft plan and to make final decisions which, in practice, had the same effect as decisions made by the state council. In other words, the HCIPC functioned as a state council or a cabinet within the cabinet for HCI implementation. Three days after the establishment of the HCIPC, the Committee founded its own task force named Heavy and Chemical Industry Promotion Committee Planning Corps (Chunghwahak ch’ujin wiwonhoe kyehwoektan – hereafter the HCI Planning Corps), and O Wonch’ol was appointed as its chief. So it was that O came to assume two offices: one in the Blue House as Park’s senior secretary in charge of the Second Economic Secretariat; and the other in the Prime Minister’s Department as chief of the HCI Planning Corps. In terms of function, these two offices could be considered as the Korean version of the Taiwanese “pilot agency,” which Robert Wade equates with the “economic general staff” of Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) as described by Chalmers Johnson (1982). Wade also equates the two offices with Taiwan’s two leading economic agencies: the Industrial Development Bureau and the Council for Economic Planning and Development. According to Wade, the role of “pilot agency,” among other activities, performs think tank functions, charts the route for economic development, decides which industries ought to exist and which industries are no longer needed in order to promote the industrial structure which enhances the nation’s international competitiveness, obtains a consensus for its plans from the private sector, acts as gatekeeper for contacts with foreign markets and investors, and provides positive government supports for private economic initiative. (Wade 1990: 195) The role of O’s two offices in Korea’s rapid development through heavy and chemical industrialization fits well with this description. Moreover, 177

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just as Japan and Taiwan had other highly talented economic agencies in addition to the ones mentioned above, Korea also had elite managerial staff, including those of the EPB and the MCI. In terms of the state’s system of control, however, Korea did not follow any country’s model, Japan not excepted, even though Park and his key policy advisers borrowed heavily from Japan in terms of ideas and methods – both from 1930s Japan and from its industrialization of the 1960s. Park’s “Presidential Guidance” system under the Yusin Order, as I have explained in the previous chapter, was specifically designed to strengthen the Yusin state’s centralization of economic governance. The extraordinary role of the Blue House Secretariat, especially the Second Economic Secretariat and the HCI Planning Corps under O Wonch’ol (as we shall see below), cannot adequately be understood in isolation from the Yusin state’s Presidential Guidance system. The role of these two offices essentially reflected O’s amazing freedom in running the HCI program, exactly as he had envisioned. Most of all, he was able to operate without significant political interference or resistance. In brief, O and his team of technocrats achieved what they had set out to achieve: the implementation of the heavy and chemical industrialization program. The replacement of the HCIPC with a more functional working party named Assistant Deputy Ministers’ Meeting (ADMM: ch’agwanbo hoeui) was just one of many changes O made soon after his appointment. Under the new arrangement, ministries involved in the implementation of the HCI Plan were represented in the ADMM by each ministry’s assistant deputy minister, while the Prime Minister was represented by his director of planning and coordination (interview with O Wonch’ol by correspondence on 11 June 1996). Overall, O was solely responsible for communication with both the President and the Prime Minister on behalf of the ADMM while overseeing the implementation of the HCI Plan. With this extraordinary level of administrative authority and Park’s unwavering confidence in him, often expressed as “O, the National Treasure” (O Kukbo), O and a handful of the most highly qualified technocrats – all directors-general seconded from various ministries, including An Yongch’ol and others from the MCI – began preliminary work to give shape to the draft HCI plan in a temporary office at Kung’min University, Seoul. The plan was to be finalized by the end of April and the HCIPC had less than two months to complete their task. Toward this tight schedule, the HCIPC mobilized the required support from various research institutions and from Korea’s leading experts, especially members of the Investigation and Research Committee (IRC: Chosa yon’gu wiwonhoe) of the Yusin Policy Council (YPC: Yusin chongch’aek simuihoe) led by the Prime Minister. A total of forty-six university professors from heavy and chemical fields, for example, were appointed as members of six sub-committees, each repre178

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senting the respective industries of iron and steel, chemicals, machinery, electronics, shipbuilding, and nonferrous metals. Of these, thirty-six members held Ph.D.s.10 It was clear that the country’s top experts in heavy and chemical industries were participating in the deliberations of the HCIPC’s think tank. In this process, however, there seem to have been strong efforts to confine O Wonch’ol’s role to HCI planning. Chief of Staff Kim Chongnyom appears to have been particularly influential in replacing O, in his position as Chief of the HCIPC, with Kim Yonghwan, then Vice Minister of Finance, who had also been Kim’s former aide. At the same time, Kim Yonghwan was appointed Presidential Special Aide, and thus he too held two offices simultaneously as O had done. Despite the claim that this change was necessary to enhance the government’s task of raising domestic investment capital required to implement the HCI program, Kim held his position – as Chief of the HCIPC – for about eight months from June 1973 to February 1974, when O again replaced Kim as Chief of the HCIPC. Park obviously realized that O, as chief architect of the HCI plan, was vital to its successful implementation, even given his other role in managing defense industry development. During this period, the HCIPC was formally registered on 3 September 1973, employing forty-three hand-picked technocrats. A notable characteristic of these technocrats was that they were predominantly engineers, who were either former staff of the MCI or, at least, had a high reputation among MCI’s elite technocrats. The HCIPC also engaged leading economists from the EPB. One of them was So Sokchun, an elite US-trained economist and one of the directors-general temporarily transferred from the EPB in May 1973. He was subsequently promoted to Deputy Chief of the HCIPC in September. However, So returned to the EPB as Assistant Vice Minister in April 1974, less than two months after O had been reappointed Chief of the HCIPC. The reasons for So’s return to the EPB may have been mostly personal. What is noteworthy, however, is that his departure from the HCIPC may have reflected the difference in economic approaches between EPB economists and MCI technocrats led by O Wonch’ol. As noted in earlier chapters, MCI technocrats advocated a microeconomic approach, focused on state planning and management of industrialization, whereas the EPB economists preferred a macroeconomic approach, and especially objected to intrusive government control over the economy and industry development. Like oil and water, the two groups did not mix. The EPB economists were primarily American-trained experts on economics, preferring a liberal open market strategy. The MCI technocrats, in contrast, were predominantly hands-on reformists, with a special interest in rapid defense-oriented industrialization as an instrument for constructing a modern industrialized state. To them, the 179

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construction of such a state was also the means of solving Korea’s problems in relation to North Korean threats, while at the same time preparing for the weakening of US military interest in East Asia, as articulated in the Nixon Doctrine. The unabashedly statist mentality of the MCI technocrats was nowhere more evident than in the management of the Blue House Second Economic Secretariat, or O’s office. As such, the HCI Planning Corps’ approach under O’s leadership was indistinguishable from that of the MCI. The staff of both the HCIPC and the Second Economic Secretariat exemplified the modus operandi of “sosu chongye” (a small number of elite) of the Blue House Secretariat. These elite technocrats identified themselves as the “Industrial Corps” (sanop kundan), and were convinced that there was no leeway to make errors in their nationalistic, anti-Communist and, most of all, securitysensitive mission, just as if they were industrial combat troops at war. Indeed, no one engaged in HCI projects without signing an oath of secrecy. Ch’on Pyongdu, a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering and a senior researcher at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), who was responsible for investigating the suitability of Ch’angwon, South Kyongsang province, as a site for an industrial complex, later to become Korea’s largest, commented, “I can’t forget signing an oath before Colonel Kang [Yongt’aek] after I arrived in Ch’angwon. Although I assumed that such a measure was taken because of the problems associated with the defense industry, I suddenly broke into a sweat while signing an oath for the first time in my life” (O Wonch’ol Collection: 106). There is no question that the HCIPC technocrats filled the hearts of many senior bureaucrats, chaebol, economists, high technology researchers and high-ranking military generals with fear and trepidation. O, for example, made so many enemies, knowingly and unknowingly, that many high-ranking EPB officials and military generals loathed him. The military generals, in particular, attempted to “execute” him in the middle of the Kwangju Uprising in May 1980 (see Introduction). O’s no-nonsense “engineering approach” in planning and managing the HCI program, as well as the military modernization program, seems to have created two opposing camps. In one, O had a cult-like following, while in the other he aroused a deep hatred. One former high-ranking economist of the EPB, for example, in his interview with this author, was very abrasive, exclaiming, “That bulldozer, he ‘kneaded’ [chumullotta] the entire HCI program all by himself and almost ruined our country!”11 In contrast, Yu Hansik, Senior Vice President of KIA Heavy Industries in Ch’angwon, described O as “one of the most brilliant engineering technocrats with vision and dedication that I have ever served” (interview, January 2000). In any event, the HCIPC technocrats generated an unprecedented level of energy, efficiency and expertise for HCI implementation. In this highly competitive environment, many EPB economists, 180

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including So Sokjun, were particularly critical about the MCI approach to the HCI program. In July 1983, for example, when So finally rose to become Deputy Prime Minister after serving as presidential economic secretary (1979–80) and Minister of Trade and Industry, formerly the MCI (1980–2), he pushed economic reforms which, as Clifford notes, “EPB technocrats had been urging since 1977” (1994: 206). One of the key reforms that So implemented with the help of his economic team, Kim Chaeik and Kang Kyongsik, was the restructuring of economic ministries under the control of the Economic Planning Board (EPB), by dismantling “industrial controls administered by the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) and the financial controls supervised by the Ministry of Finance” (Clifford 1994: 206). As a committed practitioner of market liberalization, So, like most members of the EPB, vehemently opposed excessive government control over the economy, preferring more openness in the market and more freedom of choice in the business community. This radical reform took just nine months and as early as mid1980, Korea’s economic control had entirely shifted from the Blue House Secretariat led by former MCI technocrats to the EPB economists. Despite the tragic deaths of both So and Kim Chaeik in Burma in 1983,12 Kang and EPB economic management continued through nearly two decades of Korea’s rapid economic growth, at least up until the financial crisis of December 1997.13

MCI connection Another important factor arising from the close link between the HCI Planning Corps and the MCI during HCI implementation was the cooperation and influence of Minister Yi Nakson, one of Park’s revolutionary clique and former Commissioner of the Office of National Taxation. Yi was well known for his military style in managing tax reform in the late 1960s and MCI’s $1 billion export earnings drive in 1970. Having already conducted a radical staff restructuring in the MCI immediately after his appointment,14 Yi initiated another major personnel change on 19 January 1973. This included the establishment of an extra department, as well as the recruitment of five executive technocrats from outside the MCI. The division of the heavy industry department into two separate departments of heavy and chemical industry (chungkongop-guk) and machine industry (kigye kongop-guk) was an outcome of the restructuring. Similarly the recruitment of Kim Chaegwan, a German-trained Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from KIST, and Han Chaeyol from the EPB who were among the five new executive technocrats. The former was appointed assistant deputy minister (chung kongop ch’agwanbo) in charge of the two newly formed departments, which were each divided into four divisions. The latter was appointed director-general of the heavy and chemical industry department.15 181

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In carrying out this fundamental reform, Yi frequently referred to “presidential guidance.” The institutions and the people who were involved in this reform clearly understood that Yi was Park’s messenger. In fact, Yi’s role as Park’s messenger in enforcing the HCI Policy had only just begun. His compliance with Park’s “presidential guidance” was extraordinary. Two days after O Wonch’ol had given his briefing on the HCI Plan in the basement of the Blue House, the MCI was due to be inspected by Park. Having been given no time to alter the ministry’s own plan, which had itself taken several months to prepare, Minister Yi passed Park’s inspection simply by displaying a copy of the HCI Plan next to the MCI’s own plan. The message was clear: the MCI was committed to implementing its program, in both the long and short term, within the framework of the HCI Plan. Thus the MCI’s presentation not only satisfied Park, but also set an example for other ministers to emulate. The impact of the MCI’s presentation on the attitude of most ministers toward the HCI Plan is reflected in the remarks of Minister Chang Yejun (1972–3) of the Ministry of Construction (MOC), who, in December that year, moved to the MCI, with Minister Yi moving to the MOC: From now on, the MOC will not proceed with any program planned on a project-by-project basis. Instead, the Ministry will design a comprehensive plan that will link national wealth such as land, population and resources with our nation’s long-term vision. I shall thus direct my Ministry in taking up its leadership role in the future direction of the nation in conformity with the national [HCI Plan] policy. (O Wonch’ol Collection: 75) Even the Economic Planning Board, which had been publicly promoting a market liberalization policy as a solution to overcoming Korea’s balanceof-payments difficulties,16 reaffirmed its commitment to the HCI Plan. The change in policy direction, especially by EPB economists, however, must not be seen either as one of their own choosing or as a reflection of their genuine commitment to the HCI program. As noted above, the EPB economists fundamentally disagreed with the HCI program, and they ultimately persuaded Park to revise his economic policies at the end of 1978. In this context, the EPB economists’ cooperation with the HCI Plan was merely a reflection of their subordinate position in relation to the HCIPC-led technocrats. The technocrats directed and the economists strictly complied with the “guidance” from above, but only while biding their time, their patience finally being rewarded at the end of 1978. By early August 1973, the HCI Plan was finalized, including the direction of HCI development, strategies such as zoning for industrial complexes, development of manpower and technology, plus the method of 182

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raising “investment capital” which posed the greatest challenge. The HCI Plan was estimated to require a total investment fund of $9.6 billion spanning a nine-year period from 1973 to 1981. Of this, $5.8 billion was to be raised through foreign capital and $3.8 billion from domestic sources (O Wonch’ol Collection: 138; Ch’angwon kigye kongop kongdan 1979: 55). The HCI Plan specified that “any company which became involved in the development of the HCI must, in principle, secure its own capital to the tune of more than 30 percent of the total investment” and, where foreign capital was introduced, it should be “restricted, in principle, to within 50 percent” (Ch’angwon kigye kongop kongdan 1979: 55). The strategy to attract large corporations both domestically and from abroad was bold. The government particularly concentrated on attracting US corporations because it was Park’s belief that “One large US company’s investment in Korea is as effective as the posting of one US army division to Korea” (interview with O Wonch’ol, October 1995).

Raising $10 billion: HCI investment capital In late May 1973, even before the HCI Plan was finalized, a promotional team (hereafter Promotional Mission) led by the Deputy Prime Minister T’ae Wanson left for the US to promote the HCI Plan. A total of seventeen members from the government, leading chaebol corporations and the media included O Wonch’ol, Chief of the HCI Planning Corps, Han Sangjun, Director of KIST, Chong Inyong, Chairman of Hyundai Construction, and six high-ranking economists from the EPB. The primary aim of the Promotional Mission was to raise $5.8 billion in foreign capital, largely through foreign borrowing as well as foreign investment. Unless this high level of foreign capital was raised, the Korean technocrats believed that their HCI Plan could not be completed. For this “do or die” operation, therefore, the Promotional Mission conducted a series of “Korea Investment Seminars” in the US, including New York, Washington DC and Chicago. The Promotional Mission attracted many US government officials and private entrepreneurs and convinced them to support its two key proposals: first, to send an investors’ mission to Korea and, second, to establish a Korean–American economic council. Both proposals were put into effect within ten months. The Korea–America Economic Council (Hanmi kyongje hyopuihoe) was established in September 1973 and, in April 1974, a total of twenty-six heavy machinery company representatives – all members of the KAEC – visited Korea.17 The Promotional Mission also conducted a series of seminars in Japan on its return to Korea from the US. The success of the mission reflected the level of interest in both foreign direct investment (FDI) in Korea and the provision of foreign loans to Korea in both the US and Japan. 183

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During the first three years from 1973 to 1975, for example, Korea raised $3.1 billion. Foreign direct investment over the same period totaled $415.3 million (Sungjoo Han 1978: 76). In early June, immediately after the Promotional Mission had returned from the US and Japan, the government began activity to raise the targeted domestic investment capital of $3.8 billion. At this time, as mentioned earlier, the position of chief of the HCI Planning Corps was transferred from O Wonch’ol to Kim Yonghwan, who was then Vice Minister of Finance. Although Kim held this position for only about eight months before O replaced him again in February 1974, he clearly impressed Park in raising domestic investment capital, as well as in establishing the National Investment Fund which issued bonds from January 1974. In September the same year, Kim was appointed Minister of Finance while Nam Togu, the former Minister of Finance, was promoted to Deputy Prime Minister. The HCI triumvirate took no short cuts in promoting the HCI Plan. In particular, they took maximum advantage of all available intellectual input both from Korea and abroad. In November 1973, in the midst of one of the most critical periods of Park’s leadership following the kidnapping of Kim Dae Jung from Japan on 28 August 1973, the government, through Korea University, co-sponsored with the Hudson Institute, a leading US think tank, a four-day international conference taking the theme of “Korean Futures.” In fact, the Hudson Institute led by its Founding Director, Herman Kahn, appears to have functioned as the unofficial agent of the Korean Government. The Institute not only produced comprehensive research on the future prospects for Korea’s economic development, but also actively promoted the Park Government’s high-speed HCI Plan, although it made no mention of the HCI Plan itself (Asiatic Research Center and Hudson Institute 1975). The 98 participants – 42 foreign guests and 56 Koreans – included top policy-makers, economic experts and professors, media heads and business consultants from Canada, Italy, Japan, Korea and the US. Key participants in this conference, an extended version of the “Korea Investment Seminar,” included Shimomura Osamu from the Japan Development Bank, Mimura Yohei, President, Japan–Korea Chamber of Commerce, and James C. Abegglen, President of the Boston Consulting Group, as well as economic experts from the Hudson Institute. The key Korean speakers at this conference included Deputy Prime Minister T’ae Wanson, Nam Togu, Minister of Finance, and O Wonch’ol. Many other prominent people attended as well, including Kim Manche, President of the Korean Development Institute, Kim Sangman, President of Tonga Ilbo, and Professors Cho Sun and Yi Hanbin, Yi later becoming Deputy Prime Minister in the spring of 1980. The primary goal of this conference was clearly to generate optimism and investor confidence by promoting a long-term development plan guaranteed by Park’s Yusin state. 184

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To illustrate Korea’s strategic goal, O Wonch’ol’s paper (delivered in absentia) provided two charts detailing the government’s industry development plans, including the HCI. The charts were entitled: (1) “Three Stages of Industrial Development in Korea: For Selected Industries,” and (2) “Long-term Industrial Development Policy.” The former outlined the government’s intervention strategy in three stages of industry development and the latter outlined details of Korea’s Five-Year Plans, from the first (1962–6) to the fourth (1977–81).18 HCI implementation entered a new phase on 19 September 1973 when Park ordered the commencement of the construction of the Ch’angwon heavy machinery industrial complex. This complex was allocated a total of 160 million pyong of industrial land (approximately 53,000 hectares), comprising 76 million pyong (25,200 hectares) of industrial space and 84 million pyong (27,800 hectares) of housing land, near Masan Harbor in the south-east of Korea. The complex plan aimed to construct 104 factories employing over 100,000 workers and with an annual estimated output of $1.5 billion by 1981 (O Wonch’ol Collection: 80–123). The original population of Ch’angwon was about 10,000, comprising 1,700 households occupying about 42 million pyong (13,900 hectares) of farming land. This massive transformation of what was mostly farmland into one of the largest industrial complexes in the world brought new momentum to the strategies of the HCI triumvirate, especially to their strategy of “Koreanizing” industries to build “Korea Incorporated.” In this respect, the state’s promulgation of the Industrial Parks Development Promotion Law on 24 December 1973 established a strong legislative underpinning for the construction of five additional industrial complexes, each focused on a specific target industry. Yoch’on was focused on petrochemicals, Okp’o on shipbuilding, Kumi on electronics, P’ohang on steel, and Onsan on nonferrous metals. In this mammoth development, especially of defense-related industries, a total of eighty-four companies, including Korea Heavy Machinery, KIA Industries, Daewoo Heavy Industries and Lucky-Gold Star, participated as an act of “patriotism.”19 The rapidly growing industrial and military production capacity in South Korea, however, drove the leaders of North Korea into a state of panic. In February 1974, less than six months after the breakdown of the North–South dialogue, North Korean forces – after sinking a South Korean fishing boat with twelve on board near the west coast island of Paeng’nyong – kidnapped another fishing boat carrying a crew of thirteen. This incident was in fact part of the persistent guerrilla warfare conducted by North Korea in the South throughout the 1970s. Incidents of incursion and aggression were many and are well recorded. The assassination of the President’s wife in August 1974, the construction of tunnels along the demilitarized zone (DMZ) and the Axe Murders at P’anmunjom in the DMZ in August 1976 are examples of such “warfare.”20 In the 185

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Paeng’nyong Island incident, North Koreans intruded into the waters surrounding this and four other neighboring islands over eleven times from October 1972. At the 346th Military Armistice Meeting at P’anmunjom in December 1973, North Korea even insisted on their ownership of Paeng’nyong Island. In response to the North Korean incursions near the five islands, Park reportedly sent his personal message to the armed forces and the islanders: “If North Korean troops invade [your] islands, fight them to the last. Hold out just for a week, because the Army, Navy, and Air Force will recapture [your islands] in no time with their all-out efforts” (O Wonch’ol 1995b: 415). The state was so alarmed by the North Korean incursions that it armed every member of the Homeland Guard and the Student Defense Corps on the islands with an M-16 rifle at a time when the army was still in the process of replacing old style M-1 rifles with M-16s. Even many soldiers on active service had not yet replaced their old rifles with new ones. The state went as far as to build an underground fortress as a refuge in the event of an invasion, and stored several months’ supply of food for the islanders. Against this background, Park and his military production advisers, especially O Wonch’ol, may well have been encouraged to exploit the Paeng’nyong Island incident in order to speed up their long-awaited military modernization program. In fact, as early as 26 December 1971, Park gave O a “missile development directive” which he had drafted himself. It was less than two months after O had become head of the Second Economic Secretariat and only ten days after the ADD had displayed its eight light weapons at the Blue House. O’s subsequent trip to six European countries, including France, Luxembourg and Israel during May in 1972 resulted in Korea’s “emergency purchase” of French anti-ship Exocet missiles, in spite of strong US opposition. The US subsequently became so furious that it refused to allow the Koreans to install their newly obtained Exocet missiles on Korean Navy vessels on the basis that those vessels were US property, except for two “Korean-made” vessels known as “KIST Boats,” one with 120 ton PKM and the other with 70 ton PKM. For this reason the former became Korea’s first naval vessel loaded with a missile. One notable benefit which came as a result of Korea purchasing the Exocet missiles was that the US suddenly and unexpectedly agreed to sell their latest model anti-ship missile, the Harpoon. Korea had been trying to purchase Harpoon missiles for several years without success. Previously US officials had offered only old model missiles. This purchase of Harpoon missiles enabled Park to arm the Korean Navy with modern US missiles.21 Korea’s purchase of the Rockheed propellant plant in 1975–6 was another example of Park following his own agenda to achieve desired outcomes, despite the State Department’s strong opposition, and ultimately enabled him to develop a clandestine nuclear weapons and missile capability program (see Chapter 9). He thus thoroughly exploited the 186

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inconsistency of US policy exposed through this complex missile purchasing exercise. In fact, Korea under Park went down the path of clandestine programs without communicating with the US because Park and his technocrat advisers were convinced that the US often made concessions to Korean demands when they realized the Koreans would go ahead anyway, that is, “only when we prove our ability to complete things ‘for ourselves,’ even if the US does not help us.” 22

Conclusion Heavy and chemical industrialization under the Yusin Order was notable in two respects. The first was the sheer intensity of the application of Park’s political will to the HCI program. The program represented the official form of cut-throat competitiveness by means of which Park publicly challenged North Korea from August 1970, in his aim to achieve total supremacy over the North. The program also represented Park’s equally fierce determination to reduce Korea’s dependence on the US. But to accomplish this ambitious task, Park and his key advisers, especially his HCI triumvirs, took a calculated, but substantial, risk on the safety and wellbeing of the South Korean State and its people. In this regard, the Yusin Order, especially Park’s institutionalized “Presidential Guidance” system, functioned as a tool assisting Park and his technocrats to proceed with the state-led HCI program. Indeed, many Korean technocrats believed that the Yusin system, under the grip of Park’s supreme power, was necessary for them to carry out a radical industry restructuring in order to achieve a fundamental national goal – the construction of a strong and industrialized state – while also reducing dependency on the US. This belief was the logic behind Park’s developmental state, but it can also be seen as self-serving, and flawed, especially in terms of Korea’s capability to defend itself without the continued support and presence of the US military. The other noticeable aspect of HCI under the Yusin Order was the role of the MCI and its engineer–technocrats. As this account has shown, the pilot agency of Korea’s economic bureaucracy in the 1970s was the Blue House Secretariat, whose members were mostly former MCI technocrats. Their approach to national development was thoroughly statist and authoritarian, and relied heavily on economic nationalism. They had little interest in individual freedoms or in the nation’s democratic processes of government. Like Park, they were committed first and foremost to the construction of national wealth and power, even if, as they believed, this could only be achieved under the authoritarian regime and centralized control that was a defining feature of the Yusin system. The events described in this chapter have shown that the Yusin system and the excessively nationalistic “Korean Way” promoted by the developmentalist elites was the price Korea paid for rapid industrialization. 187

9 MILITARY MODERNIZATION 1974–9 “Challenge us with an arrow or a gun” [“Ya demo tepo demo motekoi” in Japanese] (Park Chung Hee)1

Introduction Korea’s security had always been the highest of Park’s priorities, but after the pronouncement of the Nixon Doctrine and the subsequent fall of Vietnam, Park became even more concerned, especially about the strength of the US security commitment to the Korean peninsula. This chapter examines Park’s response to this concern and how that ultimately led to severe tension between himself and the ambivalent President Jimmy Carter, and perhaps even to his own assassination. Park’s initial strategy was to establish a Korean-resourced military modernization capability through what was known as the “Yulgok Operation.” The chapter examines several aspects of this program, including its objectives, its various management committees, special measures for raising funds and corruption concerns. It relates how Park and his key policy advisers maintained a strict code of financial transparency and established mechanisms for scrutinizing military development deals and projects. But, as I go on to describe, the final episode of Park’s military modernization involved nuclear weapons: with the increasing likelihood that, under Carter, the US nuclear umbrella could be removed, Park embarked upon a comprehensive nuclear capability program, including heavy water fuel rod processing and guided missile development. The chapter traces how these programs led to major conflict with the US, and how the US decided to exert “maximum pressure” on Korea to abandon its plans. Reminiscent of the North Korean situation in 2003, US emissaries were told to employ the heaviest threat ever wielded by the US against Korea. And reminiscent, too, of the Iraq situation in 2003, the US sent numerous “inspection tours” to Korea to assess exactly what Park was up to. The chapter shows how the mangled process of communication between the US and Korea, and Carter and Park in particular, led to quid pro quo concessions on both sides, but that ultimately Park’s clandestine 188

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insistence on a nuclear capability for Korea caused Washington to turn its back on Park. In fact, Washington backed yet another military dictatorship led by Chun Doo Hwan as reward for his and his clique’s dismantling of Park’s nuclear program.

The Yulgok Operation: the top-secret military modernization plan On 15 March 1974, Park approved the secret defense project known as the “Yulgok Operation” (Yulgok saop) to purchase advanced military weapons and equipment, as well as to modernize the military. The Yulgok Operation was an emergency measure that Park had initiated in February, immediately after the North Korean Navy attacks on Paeng’nyong Island. He ordered the state to establish a National Defense Fund (pangwi songgum), while at the same time directing the Ministry of National Defense (MOND) to create a “new measure” for the procurement of military weapons and equipment. Park’s directive to the MOND essentially signaled his direct control, that is, Presidential Guidance, over the MOND’s purchase of military weapons and equipment. To implement Park’s directive, the MOND formulated a three-point measure which Park approved (see below). With the support of the media, the National Defense Fund raised a total of 16.13 billion won (approximately $32 million) between 1974 and 1975 (O Wonch’ol 1995b: 422). This Fund became the financial basis of the Yulgok Operation. On 16 July 1975, three months after the fall of Vietnam, however, the state introduced a compulsory National Defense Tax (pangwise) as the new revenue base for the Yulgok Operation. Korea spent 6 percent of national GNP between 1975 and 1976 on the Yulgok Operation and, by 1980, the government had collected a total of 2,600 billion won (equivalent to US$5.158 billion) (O Wonch’ol 1995b: 480). In January 1998, Sindonga argued that the Yulgok Operation was being continued even to the present time and that the total estimated expenditure on the Operation from 1974 to the end of 1996 was “close to 50 trillion won” (Ha Chongdae 1998: 375). The term “Yulgok Operation” was initially used as a top-secret security code by the Defense Ministry when it submitted a report to Park about the Ministry’s newly formulated three-point measure. The MOND recommended that, first, a Five-Member Committee (FMC: oin wiwonhoe) should be established as the “promotion force” of the Operation. Second, it recommended that the FMC should consist of the deputy minister of the Defense Ministry as its head and four other representatives. These four included the chief of staff of the joint chiefs of staff; the assistant deputy minister of the Defense Ministry responsible for war supplies; the head of the agency for defense development; and President Park’s senior secretary 189

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of the Second Economic Secretariat (kyongje che-2 susok pisogwan), O Wonch’ol. The third and final recommendation of the three-point measure was that each armed force should set up its own Yulgok Enforcement Agency (YEA: Yulgok chiphaengdan).2 Park approved the report (on 15 March 1974), and the Yulgok Operation subsequently emerged as the government’s military modernization program. Every military program under the Yulgok Operation, in whatever branch of the military involved, required co-ordination by the YEA in order that the Agency plan each project and submit it to the FMC, which in turn examined the project and made relevant decisions. Any item recommended by the FMC required further approval by the Minister of Defense, the Prime Minister and finally Park. Park seemed concerned about the potential for fraud and corruption inherent in the Yulgok Operation, as it was free from official inspection by either the EPB or the National Assembly because of the military secrecy surrounding its activities. Park’s specific concern seems to have focused on misconduct, especially financial corruption, by officials implementing the Yulgok Operation. As a counter-measure, Park ordered the establishment of an extra committee comprised solely of his special aides and senior secretaries. This committee, named the “Blue House-Five-Member-Committee” (Ch’ongwadae oin wiwonhoe), included two special aides, in charge of national security and the economy and three senior secretaries, in charge, respectively, of political affairs; economic policy concerned with what Park officially referred to as the “first economy” (kyongje 1); and defense industry and heavy and chemical industry development officially referred to as the “second economy” (kyongje 2). The programs that came under the Yulgok Operation were therefore subject to a dual system of inspection. The first was carried out by the FMC of the MOND, and the second by Park’s own senior aides and secretaries who made up the Blue House FMC. To make this dual inspection system even more transparent, Park designated O Wonch’ol as Secretary to the Blue House FMC so that every project approved by the two committees had again to be checked and cleared by O before obtaining Park’s final approval.3 Park’s concern about bureaucratic corruption and mismanagement led to the promulgation of the “Special Measures for Military Supplies” in 1973. In his attempt to prevent any irregularities within the MOND, Park also promoted a young civilian diplomat, Ch’oe Kwangsu,4 as deputy minister and directed him to lead the MOND’s restructuring during 1972. Moreover, as the Yulgok Operation proceeded apace, funded by the defense tax after July 1975, Park introduced several extra measures to keep it thoroughly transparent. These were especially directed against any financial mismanagement or corruption that might occur in the process of purchasing weapons and military equipment from abroad. 190

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The “Measures for Weapons Supply with Foreign Loans” (oeja-e uihan pyonggi chodal pangch’im) introduced in May 1975, for example, were designed to ensure that all purchasing under the Yulgok Operation involved direct dealings with the manufacturer only, and guaranteed, under contract, the exclusion of any commission, brokerage or any other intermediary fees.5 Park also took extreme precaution in the selection of weapons to be developed. He established a further committee that was so secret that even US intelligence knew little about it. According to a former US military attaché in Seoul, the US Embassy received a report that described the “secret” committee vaguely as the “Arms Development Committee” comprising top-ranking officers within the Blue House (Young 1994: 488). Indeed, this committee had no name and consisted of five members: the HCI triumvirate, Park, Kim and O, plus the Minister of Defense and the chief of the Agency for Defense Development.6 This three-tiered committee system and its extraordinary measures, however, were abolished shortly after Park’s assassination in October 1979, by Major-General Chun Doo Hwan, Commander of Military Security, and his military cohort who seized power through a military coup on 12 December that year (also known as the 12–12 Incident). After the coup, the MOND took sole charge of the Yulgok Operation, a development officially announced on 14 December 1980 by Chu Yongbok, the new Minister of Defense. To what extent the corruption of the military generals involved in the Yulgok Operation in the 1980s, known as the “Yulgok Piri” (Yulgok Corruption), was attributable to the abolition of these measures and the committee system, has not been explained and may never be known, despite lengthy hearings conducted by the National Assembly. These hearings about details of political slush funds of the two former Presidents, Chun Doo Hwan (1980–88) and Roh Tae Woo (1988–92) ultimately led to their imprisonment in 1996. Chun was sentenced to life imprisonment and Roh to seventeen years’ imprisonment on various charges. These included financial corruption in the misappropriation of Yulgok funds, their involvement in the military coup of 12 December 1979 and the massacre of the pro-democracy demonstrators in the Kwangju Uprising.7 The former presidents were also convicted of controlling a political slush fund of $276 million in Chun’s case and $350 million in Roh’s case. However, it is general belief among many Koreans that Chun in fact amassed $900 million and Roh $650 million by accepting bribes and kickbacks from leading chaebol, including Hyundai, Samsung, Daewoo, and others (Jordan 1995: 16; also Pollack 1996: A4). The anti-corruption campaign during the period of the Kim Young Sam Government (1993–8), which exposed details of many corruption scandals, including the Yulgok Corruption, ironically revealed an unexpected characteristic of Park’s Yusin reform, namely the relative financial transparency of Park and his key policy advisers, including Kim Chongnyom and O Wonch’ol. Despite 191

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his eighteen years of military dictatorship, which featured many highly publicized financial corruption scandals, especially in the 1960s, Park was found to have amassed very little personal wealth of any significance. Almost a quarter century after his death, there is no new evidence that challenges Park’s financial probity. In this context, Park’s dictatorship, particularly under the Yusin system, was non-corrupt, a kind of “clean dictatorship” or “benevolent militarism.”8 Similarly, the probity of both Kim and O – the longest and the second longest serving presidential secretaries under Park, and members of the HCI triumvirate – is reflected in the plainness of their respective residences. Kim has lived in the same very modest house for over sixty years and O in his equally modest residence for over thirty. In an interview with this author, Kim stated that he was 14 or 15 years old when his family moved into the house. It is a plain Korean-style house located near Sinch’on interchange. It had no heating system when I visited in January 2000 and I kept my overcoat on throughout the interview. O’s probity, unlike that of most of Park’s former senior secretaries and officials who advanced their careers under the Chun and Roh Governments, became the object of severe political scrutiny in the aftermath of Park’s death. On the night of 17 May 1980, O was arrested by the Military Security Command. He was one of nine allegedly “corrupt officials” at the highest level, including former Prime Minister Kim Chongp’il (Kim Jong Pil), who were pre-emptively purged by Chun and his fellow generals in the course of their political take-over.9 Needless to say, these eight “corrupt officials” were Park’s closest associates. On the same night, other chief opposition politicians, Kim Dae Jung and Kim Young Sam, were also arrested, Kim Dae Jung being subsequently sentenced to death, and Kim Young Sam barred from political activities for eight years, as were 567 other political leaders.10 This incident is known as the “5.17 Measure” or “second military coup.” O was charged with receiving about 40 billion won (equivalent to US$ 100 million) from political funds. In an interview with this author in 1998, O said that he had no idea what this figure had been based on. He suspected, however, that as the total cost of the HCI program had been $10 billion, equivalent to 4,000 billion (4-jo) won, the military generals might have assumed a one percent level of “commission” or bribery, amounting to 40 billion won. Accused of amassing this huge amount, O was tortured and interrogated for over eight weeks. On top of this, O’s family members, including his wife, father and son, were investigated by four different intelligence agencies, including the Korean CIA, the Military Special Investigation Team and the Supreme Public Prosecutor’s Office. On June 18, the martial law commander Chun Doo Hwan formally charged the nine “corrupt officials” with illegally amassing almost 85 billion won. O was charged with illegally taking $4.5 million, including a bribe of 2.2 million won from a president of a chaebol electronic 192

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company.11 Subsequently the government seized O’s assets, including his wife’s inherited property, all in the name of a “voluntary contribution” in exchange for him not going to jail. Since 1971 O has lived in a modest apartment located near the National Cemetery across the Han River. In response to my question about his work-related gifts, O commented: “I have never received any bribes from any foreign contractors. It’s unthinkable. But I did receive some small gifts, ‘ttokkap’ (rice-cake expenses), at festive times from some chaebol who were my close friends.” O also told me about his self-conduct ‘rule’ which, he said, became his cardinal rule while managing both the HCI program and the military modernization program, including the Yulgok Operation. O stated: I guess you want to know how I kept myself untarnished. Well, being an old-fashioned Korean and a jingoist, I believed in the shamanistic sense of “taboo.” Therefore, whenever I started a new task, whether it was related to the HCI program or the Yulgok Operation, I first prepared myself to avoid “impure” thoughts and behavior. I was too terrified of my work being subject to “pujongt’a” [the evil coming from breaking the taboo of uncleanness], which could make everything go wrong. To avoid this disaster [from Heaven], I religiously disciplined myself to keep away from evil thoughts and behaviors, such as accepting bribes, drinking and even sleeping with my wife, at least during the cleansing period. Above all, I prayed everyday almost obsessively that I would complete my tasks successfully. No case was more serious than when I was selecting the location for the Ch’angwon Industrial Complex. Any tiny mistake, I thought, would cause national ruin. Therefore, it was my “mission” not to fail my country. (Interview, December 1998)

Nuclear Weapons and Missile Capability Program In July 1975, Korea concluded an agreement with France for a loan for the construction of nuclear reprocessing facilities and two nuclear power plants (O Won Chol [sic] 1994): 14). This was undoubtedly the most risky action taken by Park in his attempt to reverse the effects of the withdrawal of US forces from Korea. In his interview with the Washington Post on 12 June, for example, Park declared that, “Although Korea has the capacity to produce nuclear weapons, we do not develop them presently.” This statement was repeated two days later at the time of a visit to the US by a delegation of six Korean National Assemblymen, including Chong Ilgwon, former Prime Minister. And Park went further, stating publicly, as well as in a meeting with Washington officials, that, “if the U.S. nuclear umbrella is to be removed, Korea will have to develop nuclear weapons.”12 This 193

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public display of Park’s intentions – especially in affirming that Korea’s nuclear option would entirely depend on a US security commitment – clearly unnerved key policy-makers in Washington. In this context, Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger’s rushed visit to Seoul on 27 August was one of many activities specifically aimed at restraining Park’s nuclear weapons plan. Just as he wasted no time in assuring Park about the US security commitment by assuring him of President Ford’s “unequivocal . . . support of Korea,” he made it blatantly clear that “the U.S. attached extreme importance to the NPT [Nuclear Proliferation Treaty].”13 During this meeting, Schlesinger obtained Park’s memorandum of agreement not to develop nuclear weapons (No Chaehyon 1992: 80). The way in which officials in Washington countered Park’s nuclear weapons plan was unrelenting and hardnosed, particularly in relation to the loan agreement between Korea and France. On 4 November, for example, US representatives “unconditionally” opposed France’s export of a reprocessing plant to Korea at the International Economic Cooperation Organization on Korea (IECOK) meeting in London. Furthermore, the US Government, according to a Korean source, succeeded in convincing French President, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, to cancel the plan to sell the reprocessing plant to Korea.14 On this controversial issue, US national security files declassified between May 1997 and January 1998 reveal that it was US policy “to exert maximum pressure on the ROK to abandon its plans” to purchase a French reprocessing plant, while also pressuring Korea to reverse its plans to develop any sort of nuclear development. Korea at that time was in the process of purchasing a Canadian reactor, CANDU (see below).15 In respect of Korea’s dealings with the French, the files focused extensively on the issue of “who would reimburse the French for their four million dollars in development costs . . .” and then suggested two options: one, “[the US] paying the French directly” which, the files noted, would be “interpreted in Congress as buying them off,” or two, “compensating” the Koreans through “AID or Military Assistance.”16 In this light, it is not surprising that a US source suggests that “Park reluctantly canceled the contract” (Oberdorfer 1997: 72) and yet, according to an extensive investigation in 1992 by one of Korea’s leading dailies, Chungang Ilbo, the cancellation was requested by France and accepted by Korea on the condition that Korea forego the penalty for cancellation.17 In any case, regardless of whether the contract was canceled by the Korean or the French side, the US put extreme pressure on Korea not to develop a nuclear program, as well as on nuclear weapons-producing countries not to sell nuclear-related material or skills to Korea. During the fierce diplomatic confrontation between Korea and the US under President Gerald Ford over the French contract, Philip Habib, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs and a former US ambassador 194

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to Korea (August 1971 to August 1974), is known to have played a key role in pressuring the Koreans to cancel the contract. Some American observers note that Habib made threats to the Koreans (Young 1994: 489). On this issue, Oberdorfer’s analysis matches my survey of Korean sources. Oberdorfer notes: “both Sneider [US Ambassador to Korea] and Habib were authorized to employ the heaviest threat ever wielded by the United States against South Korea” (1997: 72). US pressure on Park did not come only from Sneider and Habib. In May 1976, Donald Rumsfeld, the newly appointed Secretary of Defense, bluntly warned his Korean counterpart that the US “will review the entire spectrum of its relations with the ROK” (Oberdorfer 1997: 72). In fact, this review was already in force, delaying security and economic arrangements. The US Congress’ withholding of Korea’s loan application for the construction of a light water reactor, Kori No. 2, which had been approved in 1974, was one of many examples. In this strategic environment, it is important to consider the Korean perception of US interest in Korean security. To many Koreans, the US was seen as rarely doing anything unless it involved its own national interest. Professor Sungjoo Han, who was also foreign minister in the early 1990s, for example, argued that it was the opportunity for the US to maintain operational control of the Korean armed forces, while holding on to opportunities for weapons sales under the FMS (Foreign Military Sales) program, that motivated the US to “continue to be interested in Korean security while being watchful lest South Korea might develop sophisticated weaponry on its own or negotiate their purchase from other countries” (Sungjoo Han 1978: 78). Han’s argument echoes O Wonch’ol’s claim: With Korea’s decision to purchase a CANDU power plant from Canada [concluded in January 1975 by O], the USA was not only suspicious of South Korea’s intentions regarding the development of nuclear weapons, but was also anxious about US commercial interests. This was because, from the US perspective, the construction of nuclear power plants and the supply of enriched uranium for these plants would provide a substantial commercial market. The USA at that time had a long-term plan to earn $20 billion by 1985 and $100 billion by the year 2000 through the export of nuclear power plants. In addition, the USA expected to earn $5 billion by 1985 and $45 billion by the year 2000 through the supply of enriched uranium. (O Won Chol 1994: 13) This claim is focused on US commercial interests which were clearly significant. But other factors come into play in assessing US security interests in Korea, interests that were, and remain, an indispensable part of US 195

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policy in North-East Asia. It is no secret that US policy-makers always feared their country being dragged into another Korean War, especially if Park had a completely independent military force. Thus US intelligence services kept their eye not only on Park, as was widely publicized in 1976–7, but also on the various other prominent Korean politicians and senior officials, especially as Park had relentlessly pursued Korea’s interest in high-technology weapons development throughout Europe. In order to stop the US spying on Park – according to the telegrams sent from the US embassy in Seoul to the State Secretary – Prime Minister Ch’oi Kyuha is reported to have formally demanded from President Ford a “personal letter to President Park reiterating assurances of denial of bugging and expressing regrets about press speculation.”18 As it happened, O Wonch’ol had been watched by US intelligence during his weapon’s purchase visit to Europe, including Israel in 1974, as was later revealed in a US Congress hearing. Given this level of distrust in Korea–US relations, it is no surprise to see Park’s hypersensitivity in his dealings with Washington officials. In fact, Park’s confidence in the US commitment to Korea had been declining drastically, especially since the collapse of South Vietnam. Having witnessed the US abandonment of South Vietnam, Park seriously feared that the US might also abandon Korea, especially in light of President Nixon’s troop withdrawal policy. After all, Nixon had already reduced US ground troops in Korea in 1971, at the height of North Korean infiltration into the South. Park was particularly nervous about the reduced reliability of the US nuclear umbrella which, he suspected, might be withdrawn from Korea. Park and his key advisers therefore did not hesitate to challenge the US limitations on the Korean State’s plan to develop an advanced nuclear weapons and missiles program as a counter-measure to avoid any unforeseen security problem. As far as the Koreans were concerned, their very survival was at stake. The Koreans believed that US inconsistency, especially in arms control and weapons production policy, had to be strategically exploited in order to protect Korea’s own national interest while a US withdrawal of its ground forces from Korea was looming. Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile capability development under Park may not have proceeded as swiftly in December 1974 as it did, had the USA coordinated its arms control policy and dealings with the Koreans between the Department of State and the Department of Defense to prevent Korea’s purchase of the Lockheed Propellant plant and related technology. Whereas the Deputy Secretary of Defense Clements had approved the Lockheed contract for sale, the State Department vehemently opposed it on the grounds that “President Park would regard our approval of the Lockheed projects as a major step in securing U.S. technological support for his ambitious plans for the ADD (Agency for Defense Development).”19 In this context, Park moved a step ahead of the US 196

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policy-makers. He not only purchased the entire facilities and technology of the Lockheed Propulsion Company, but also built a large propellant plant as an ADD project. In his memorandum of 4 February 1975, George S. Springsteen, Executive Secretary of the Department of State, summarized Park’s view on the ADD as “a fundamentally Korean-only enterprise, for special weapons projects that we will not provide or are likely to oppose.” Springsteen continued that, “In the ADD, South Korea will have an unconstrained facility which it can use for its own purposes without reference to our wishes or agreed requirements for Korean security.” Hence, Springsteen identified the contradictory nature of US arms control and disarmament policy by arguing, “The Defense position that we should approve the Lockheed case and then stand firm in refusing to provide further ‘significant’ technology is not consistent.”20 Park was able to take advantage of this inconsistency and advance his already well-known policy of “self-reliance” or Chaju, which intensified as the state implemented the nuclear missile program under a national security code of secrecy. An illuminating example of the operation of this program was the construction of a heavy water fuel rod plant disguised as the “Taejon Machinery Depot” (Taejon kikyech’ang). The security at this plant during its construction near Taejon under the code name “Sinsong Nongjang” (Sacred Farm) was so tight that even the chief of police in that Province, South Ch’ungch’ong, was refused entry to the site for a routine security check. The armed guards at the entrance told the chief that, “without a passport authorized by the minister of defense,” no one was allowed entry. When he later made inquiries at defense security, he is said to have been told, “We guarantee the security of that place and thus do not interfere” (O Wonch’ol HGKKS vol. 5 1996: 558). On 2 December 1976, the Korean Government officially unveiled this plant under the name, Korean Nuclear Fuels Development Corporation (KNFDC: Han’guk haek yollyo kaebal kongdan). This was just two months after the establishment of Korea Nuclear Engineering (Han’guk wonjaryok kisul chusikhoesa), which had taken over ownership from an American company, Burns & Roe. The KNFDC aimed to build Korea’s nuclear facilities with “Korean resources,” in terms of both technology and materials, and under extreme cautionary and security controls, to ensure that Korea would build its own nuclear power plants without US interference. Therefore, despite the low profitability of operating a heavy water fuel rod plant, Korea built the KNFDC for strategic purposes as “a defensive mechanism against the US for a future time” (O Won Chol 1994: 15). This clandestine operation, which was unquestionably dangerous, especially from a US viewpoint, ultimately sparked what, arguably, turned out to be the most serious confrontation of the post-war period between Korea and the US. It came right at the time that Carter was threatening Park with his withdrawal policy on the one hand, and condemning his 197

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abuse of human rights on the other. But beneath Carter’s fury over human rights, the real cause of Korea–US confrontation was clearly Park’s nuclear weapons and missile development program. (This is not to say that Carter’s well-known loathing of Park did not begin while Carter was campaigning for his presidential election.) Until the unveiling of its heavy water fuel rod plant, US officials did not know just how close Korea was to producing nuclear weapons. Given the US hard-line security policy and its fury over the Indian nuclear detonation of 1974, it is not difficult to understand US alarm about Korea’s nuclear facilities and especially about Park’s determination to develop nuclear weapons. Park was, from Washington’s point of view, plainly recalcitrant. US alarm reached a new level when Korea successfully launched a guided missile on 26 September 1978, and subsequently became the seventh country in the world to produce its own nationally developed missile. This new development evidently created panic in Washington, especially among the leading members of the State Department, the Pentagon and the National Security Council. On 8 November, seventeen highranking US officials from these institutions, led by the Secretary of Defense, Harold Brown, made an inspection tour of Korea. Ten days later, another thirteen Congressmen from the Military Committee, led by its chairman, Melvin Price, visited Korea for the same inspection tour. Panicstricken inspection tours to Korea by US officials continued until President Carter’s visit in late June 1979. These VIP inspections from the US to South Korea show a striking resemblance to UN inspection visits to Iraq through the 1990s and again in 2002–3. Relations between the two countries became so hostile that when Carter arrived in Korea, after attending the G-7 economic summit in Tokyo, he ignored diplomatic protocol and stayed at Camp Casey in Tongduch’on where the Second Infantry Division was based. Park’s response to Carter was no less blunt. Despite repeated strong warnings from the White House not to raise the withdrawal issue, Park apparently began his first meeting with Carter by reading out a long lecture lasting 45 minutes on the “dangers,” in the words of Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, “that the troop withdrawal policy created for his country and the region” (1983: 129), especially in light of North Korea’s rapidly growing military strength. The subsequent quarrel between the two allied presidents was such that US Ambassador Gleysteen recalled: “Never before in numerous summit meetings I had attended in the past had I seen leaders mangle the process of communication the way these two men did that morning” (1999: 47). The more Carter dug in with his withdrawal plan, while at the same time “push[ing] for higher South Korean defense spending to reduce if not eliminate the military disparity between North and South” (Gleysteen 1999: 47, emphasis added), the less patient Park became. He argued insistently that Korea needed more time to increase its defense efforts, in line with 198

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Carter’s demands, and that the US, in the meantime, must assure Korea of its commitment to no further withdrawals of US ground forces. Park repeated these arguments even in his grilling “private session” with Carter, accompanied by a single note-taker only from each side. In spite of their entrenched differences, however, the two presidents finally agreed to accede to each other’s demands, and on 5 July Park carried out his part of the deal by announcing that a total of 180 political prisoners would be released over the next six months. On 20 July, Carter also kept his word when the White House announced the suspension of US withdrawal plans until 1981.21 This announcement brought a dramatic respite to the rift in Korea–US relations, although it did not mean that US alarm concerning Park’s clandestine nuclear program had abated. On the contrary, US alarm turned into the Korean security crisis that followed Park’s assassination on 26 October 1979 and then the military coup of 12 December led by the head of the Defense Security Command, MajorGeneral Chun Doo Hwan. In this extremely confused and volatile situation, Park’s sacrosanct nuclear weapons and missile development program had ironically turned into a potential security risk, about which Washington took no chance. Washington in fact swiftly made quid pro quo negotiations with Chun, the new military Commander of National Security. By having controlling responsibility for Korea’s national security, including Park’s secret nuclear weapons and missiles program, Chun cunningly exploited his position to obtain US acquiescence in his seizure of power through his second military coup of 17 May 1980.

Aftermath of Park’s assassination It is hardly possible in today’s Korea to recapture a sense of the deep turmoil into which Korea was plunged during the 1970s, especially during the 1977–9 period, the events of which led to Park’s death and the subsequent military coup. Because of the complexities surrounding Park’s death – especially the fact that Chun Doo Hwan became the most powerful man in Korea in charge of Korean domestic security, including responsibility for investigating Park’s assassination – it is important to note the major developments that emerged in the aftermath. Korea was undoubtedly one of the most precarious places in Asia, exposed to rapidly growing North Korean aggression on the one hand, and threatened by President Carter’s iron-willed push to withdraw US ground forces from Korea in the wake of the fall of Vietnam on the other. To make matters worse, the Americans continued what Gleysteen described in his memoirs as “indiscriminate criticism of Korea” following the Koreagate bribery scandal (discussed in Chapter 7), focusing especially on Park’s human rights abuses. The combined impact of these 199

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threats and criticisms on Park and on Korea after his assassination, was devastating. Gleysteen painstakingly explains America’s role in Park’s demise and vehemently denies US involvement in any conspiracy to “unseat President Park” (1999: 61) But Gleysteen’s argument that Park’s assassination was “his own fate” which he had brought on himself may not necessarily be an objective assessment. To unravel the complexity of the events surrounding Park’s death at the hands of Kim Chaegyu, Director of the KCIA and one of Park’s most trusted associates – they had been friends since their youth – needs more evidence than is yet available. What is undeniable, however, is the extent of the US-led campaign against Park. Indeed, US involvement was so fierce and systematic that, in Gleysteen’s words, Americans “need to ask themselves whether the sum total of U.S. actions and words unwittingly contributed in a significant way to Park’s downfall” (1999: 61). The link between Korea’s late industrialization and the priority given to defense-led industrialization as a counter-measure to US policy, especially following the Nixon doctrine, drove Park to speed up military modernization as well as pursuing Korea’s independent clandestine nuclear weapons and missiles programs. In this context, Park and his top technocrat advisers believed that Korea’s very survival was at stake. For them, national security had to be maintained by all means with or without US commitment. It can be argued, nevertheless, that Park made a mistake in pursuing his nuclear weapons and missiles development plan without communicating with the US. The possession of a small number of nuclear weapons would not necessarily have made Korea more secure. But it might well have made Korea the target of surrounding nations like Japan, China and Russia, who would not have trusted Korean leaders to act in a reasonable and rational manner. Most critically, by pushing ahead with his secret nuclear plan, Park actually put what was already perceived as an uncertain US commitment to defending South Korea at even greater risk. Even so, Park’s dilemma over nuclear development and Korea’s defense should not be downplayed. After witnessing the US withdrawal from Indochina, Park genuinely feared that the US might also abandon its commitment to Korea in case of a North Korean invasion, even though this would have involved the breaking of the armistice agreement by the US. An equally significant issue is US involvement in Major-General Chun Doo Hwan’s seizure of power: US administrations not only accommodated Chun’s first military coup of 12 December 1979, but also supported him and his military cohorts in the massacres of May 1980 which allowed Chun to seize the presidency. Under martial law declared on 17 May 1980, Chun carried out the purging of 567 leading politicians, some 30 to 40 generals and 9,232 senior government officials, or 12 percent of the top echelon, among many other professionals.22 200

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Chun’s May 17 coup Although the US has repeatedly claimed that it played no significant role in the Kwangju massacres (Gleysteen 1999: Chapters 8 and 9), it seems clear that its role on the eve of Chun’s rise to power was as decisive as it was in President Syngman Rhee’s fall in the spring of 1960. According to Shorrock, senior officials in the Carter administration had “approved” the new generals’ May 17 coup ten days earlier (2001: 2). Shorrock’s finding supports O Wonch’ol’s own experience: a plain-clothes American had warned O a week before 17 May that he would be arrested by the new military generals. Why did the US accommodate Chun? One key reason, if not the sole reason, was the security imperative. Washington needed to negotiate with Chun who, by then, was Korea’s most powerful man and was in charge of Korean national security, including the clandestine nuclear weapons and missile capability development program conducted by the ADD. In other words, the US administrations of both Carter and Reagan supported Chun and his military cohorts in the interest of US security objectives not just in Korea, but more broadly in all of North-East Asia. Shorrock’s account reveals that just ten days after Park’s assassination the Carter administration established a “top secret policy-making group” which consisted of the President and four senior officials: Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific Richard C. Holbrooke, and Ambassador William H. Gleysteen. Through this group’s intense monitoring of the Korean situation, under the code name “Cherokee,” the Carter administration formulated a “new policy line on Korea” which was announced on 21 June 1980. Warren Christopher set out this policy and instructed Holbrooke, who was in Asia and about to visit Seoul, to hold a meeting with General Chun Doo Hwan and convey “our implicit recognition [. . . and] that his conduct will determine the nature of the relationship” (Cited in Shorrock 2001: 20). Christopher also instructed Holbrooke to warn Chun that the US Government intended to retain “some freedom of action of our own.”

The ADD staff purge Whatever this warning may have meant to Washington officials, Chun’s conduct during the critical nine months immediately after Park’s assassination certainly impressed US policy-makers. In August 1980, for example, Chun and his generals paralyzed Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile program by dismissing about thirty executive members of the ADD, including its director, Dr. Sim Munt’aek, as well as Dr. Ch’oe Hyonho, who led the development in 1977–8 of Korea’s first missile, the K-2. In the same month, the Carter administration finally concluded, in 201

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the words of Shorrock, that: “Mr Chun [sic] had enough public support to warrant support as South Korea’s next president” (2001: 20). Chun was sworn in as president on 30 August 1980. A further massive purge of over 800 scientists from the ADD was undertaken in December 1982. During this purge, the Chun regime also assured the US Government that Korea would not develop any missiles capable of a trajectory beyond 180 kilometers.23 In brief, Korea–US relations improved dramatically during the Chun and Reagan era. The US was so committed to Korea, especially in the aftermath of the 1979–80 financial crisis when Korea came under the scrutiny of the IMF, that, according to one researcher, it provided the necessary influence to moderate the external pressure on Korea to implement radical liberalization, “resulting in US-inspired Japanese financial aid to Korea when other debtors were left to struggle” (Kong 2000: 247).

Conclusion In this chapter we have seen the pattern of Korea’s military modernization under Park, especially through the rapid construction of defense industries together with the pursuit of advanced weapons, part of which involved nuclear weapons and missiles development. But one major question still remains: why did Park risk a possible break-up of relations with the US in order to carry out his secret nuclear weapons strategy? He did so in part because, through his long experience in dealing with the US, he had become convinced that the US would give concessions to Korean demands whenever the Koreans were able to demonstrate their capability to complete things on their own without US help. We should bear in mind, too, that Park may have been prepared to go right to the brink because he was a risk taker, but a risk taker with an acute and highly calculating mind whose ultimate goal was the survival of his regime. From the viewpoint of the US administration – whether Democrats or Republicans – however, Park’s attempt to create an independent nuclear military capacity in secret, raised issues much more serious than the potential loss to the US of profits that might be made from the sale of nuclear technology and other related materials to Korea. Preventing the spread of nuclear weapons had long been a standing aim of US foreign policy for strategic and security reasons. If South Korea had developed nuclear weapons, there is little doubt that North Korea and Japan would have been stimulated to respond with their own counter nuclear weapons programs. In fact, most US administrations believed that the development of nuclear weapons in Korea could “tip the balance on proliferation in Japan.”24 Of course, US policy had never been confined to Korea or South Korea: its perspective had always been global, and its concern in East Asia comprised the whole region, not just Korea. 202

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10 CONCLUSION The legacy of the Park era Of course, as I am only human, I did not rule the nation without trial and error. But I never worked to gain popularity in my lifetime – I always endeavored to keep in mind what we could do to make our country better, [as well as] to enjoy a better life with pride, without envying other countries. (Park Chung Hee 1999: 139) When historians strike the balance, I suspect that they will rate Park as the most important Korean leader of modern times. (Gleysteen 1999)

Introduction Almost everyone who holds a position of authority in Korea today is in some way a product of Park’s policies, and thus profoundly influenced by them. Many developments of political significance that have happened in Korea since 1979 are in some way either a continuation of, or a reaction against, what happened in the Park era. Park’s legacy, for better or for worse, means that much of the character of the Korean people today and of their society is inextricably bound up with the political and economic system that he put in place under his regime. This study has examined the reasons why Park’s version of industrialization, the “Korean model,” occurred, and why the ruling elites insisted on developing their own method, the Korean Way. I have shown the link between Park’s dictatorial politics and his determination to create a modern, industrialized state, and the role of Park and his MCI technocrats in the adoption of Korea’s export-oriented rapid industrialization policies. Under Park, living standards rose dramatically while the country as a whole also emerged as a new power in North-East Asia. Societal reform was continuous. The Park era is remembered for all these reasons. Park pushed high-speed growth and anti-Communist economic nationalism as the means to achieving Korea’s “independence,” or Chaju, in politics, the economy and national security. 205

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Park’s focus on the Korean Way meant the application of a “Koreafirst” approach, with an emphasis on the reduction of dependence on the United States. The effectiveness of the state’s export-oriented policies after 1964, especially through heavy and chemical industrialization during the Yusin era (1973–9), is the most concrete demonstration of the achievement of Park and his technocrats in Korea’s state-guided industrialization. It would be absurd, however, to suggest that Korea’s rapid growth came about irrespective of the benefits that the country drew from its position in the Cold War, as well as from tying its economy to the capitalist world market system. By linking its production to expanded market opportunities in East Asia and the USA, Park was able to lead Korea into the greatest period of prosperity in Korean history. He stopped at nothing to maximize Korean opportunities in North-East Asia. During the Vietnam War he exploited US objectives to the limit, just as he had exploited opportunities surrounding the Korea–Japan normalization in 1965. The Korean model of rapid industrialization can be distinguished from the development of other NICs in Asia in three main respects. First, Park and his key technocrat–advisers planned and pursued their own independent set of objectives and strategies. In doing so, they often provoked US opposition and intervention, as is shown most clearly by the strained Korea–US relations between 1974 and early 1980. Second, the Korean model was chaebol-oriented. One of the key reasons for chaebol taking the lead, instead of small business as in Taiwan, was that the planners of the Korean model believed that big chaebol with proven performance records would be strategically most effective, especially in achieving the aims of export-orientation and internationalization. Just as the state selected “target industries” for exports through the 1960s, big chaebol were the state’s “target” champions for HCI development in the 1970s. Another reason for making chaebol the engine of rapid development was that by mobilizing their already established industrial production capacities, Park and his technocrat–advisers sought to produce military hardware as quickly as possible. Following the founding of the Homeland Guard, comprising more than two million reserve forces in April 1968, Park’s priority was to arm the reservists with the necessary weapons. It was with this wartime approach and strategy, however risky and unconventional, that Park guided every big chaebol and their role in the HCI program. Park’s guiding principles were patriotism and economic nationalism. To make this war-like operation work without engaging in real war, Park relied heavily on the KCIA for security, so that no one, under any circumstance, could obstruct him, or his state. The structural problems of Korea’s chaebol-oriented economic system, especially after the 1997 financial crisis, have been widely recognized both in Korea and abroad. The 206

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corrupt practices of chaebol, their lack of financial transparency and their collusion with the political elite (chonggyong yuch’ak) ultimately brought about the 1997 financial crisis (Pempel 1999; Jackson 1999; Noble 2000; Ha-Joon Chang 2000). It is equally undeniable, however, that the chaebol played a key role in the economic miracle of the 1970s under Park. The reasons behind big chaebol falling from the lofty role of “industrial warriors” to become major players in corruption scandals in the 1980s and thereafter are complex and require systematic investigation beyond the scope of this study.1 Despite their structural flaws and faults, however, most chaebol appear to be resilient and innovative in making the necessary adjustments for economic recovery post-crisis. In 2001, according to Japanese analysts, for example, Korea Inc. emerged “tougher from [the] crucible” as demonstrated by industrial leaders such as Pohang Iron & Steel Co. (POSCO), Samsung Electronics Co. and Hyundai Heavy Industries Co. In the face of globalization coupled with the financial crash, POSCO has emerged as the No.1 steel producer in the world, surpassing Japan’s Nippon Steel Corporation, just as Samsung has surpassed its Japanese competitors in semiconductor manufacture and Hyundai in shipbuilding (Nagaoka 2001). It can therefore be argued that the strength of the chaebol lies not only in their “ruthless dedication to success at all costs” (Steers 1999: 201), as stated by one US economist, but also in their fundamental competitiveness in world markets due largely to their “engineering” orientation as established under the guidance of technocrats during the Park era. The third respect, and arguably most characteristic in terms of distinguishing the Korean model of industrialization from the development of other NICs in Asia, was Park’s authoritarian political reform. He introduced the Yusin system as a tool to complete his version of economic and military development in the shortest possible time, with minimal opposition and with maximum effect. With total supremacy, officially termed “Presidential Guidance,” Park relentlessly disciplined the cabinet, the bureaucracy, business and the workers, the entire country being shackled to the success of the HCI program. Under the Yusin system, as we have seen in this study, Park monitored every member of Korean society, watched their activities through intelligence agencies, and maintained a comprehensive system of checks and balances in the allocation of power among different groups and institutions. Not even members of his family were exempt from his official surveillance. This system of control was such that Korea had a lower degree of decentralized decision-making than Taiwan and Hong Kong. Although Johnson claimed that the MITI (Ministry of International Trade and Industry) had been the architect of rapid industrialization in Japan in the 1930s (Johnson 1982), the governmental structure of Japan never had the 207

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degree of concentration of power that Park was able to achieve through the Yusin reform. When we consider the transition in Japan between the Taishô era of the 1920s and the militaristic era of the 1930s in terms of the shift in the balance of forces, the main elements remained the same: government bureaucracy, zaibatsu, political parties and the military, of which the first three formed the dominant coalition in the 1920s. However, in the 1930s, power shifted to the military, while the government and business coalition, and the political parties lost influence. Korea under Park did not follow this pattern even though he heavily borrowed methods from both the Japan of the 1930s and its industrialization of the 1960s (see Chapters 6 and 8). Park was able to achieve this extraordinary system of control largely because he was supported by Korea’s developmental elites, who saw “strong leadership” as necessary to build national strength through rapid industrialization. Park’s ambitions were shared by his technocrat–advisers, most notably O Wonch’ol and Kim Chongnyom. Moreover, these technocrats persuaded Park to “guarantee” the inviolability of the HCI program by officially and publicly declaring it the top priority of the Yusin reform. Park succeeded in his alliance with the Korean developmental elites, whether in the bureaucracy, business or the military, primarily by offering them a guarantee of the inviolability of their role in the HCI program. Declaring the program the nationally managed business, Korea Inc., Park also succeeded in appealing to the Korean people’s deeply ingrained patriotism and their tenacious desire for a “better life with pride.” In this way, Park harnessed unprecedented enthusiasm, discipline and energy, even though many opposed his militant methods. Park’s political skill can also be seen in the way he managed economic nationalism. Through his highly militaristic methods, Park not only exploited popular nationalism at the beginning of his rise to power (see Chapters 2 and 3) but, more notably, systematically inculcated his own brand of economic nationalism. Government-led campaigns such as National Reconstruction, the National Charter of Education and the Second Economy Movement of the 1960s, and the Saemaul Movement and the Yusin reforms of the 1970s, were key elements in this process. Park’s primary aim was to instill a work culture, both institutionally and at the community level, while also reinventing and promoting Korea’s indigenous ways and values. These campaigns, as a whole, helped the state to strengthen and reinvigorate the bureaucracy. Virtually anyone who was determined to work hard in the 1970s advanced their living standards, just as any educated male with an ambition to pursue a career in government or in the private sector could have done so. (Women’s advancement had to wait.) One of the most striking elements of Park’s mass campaigns for economic nationalism was the rise of engineer technocrats, primarily those in the MCI [Ministry of Commerce and Industry], as drivers of reform. Their 208

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role in Korea’s rapid industrialization bore a striking resemblance to that of the Japanese technocrats of MITI in Japan’s industrialization. While it has been widely noted that the Korean technocracy was largely dominated by the US-educated economists of the EPB, later known as “neo-liberal technocrats” (Kong 2000: 244), this is true only of the post-Park era. Park’s two key economic and industrial managers in the 1970s, namely Kim Chongnyom and O Wonch’ol, had a Japanese colonial education, as did Park, and similarly the two Ministers of the EPB between 1964 and 1969, Chang Kiyong (1964–7) and Pak Ch’unghun (1967–9). Of the six ministers of the EPB from 1964 to 1979 until Park’s assassination, Kim Hang’yol (1969–72) and Nam Togu (1974–8), were economists with a postgraduate education in the US. In the case of Nam, the longest serving minister of the EPB and formerly a Professor at Sogang University, he worked as one of Kim Chongnyom’s “three-man team”: Kim, Nam, and Kim Yonghwan, Minister of Finance from 1974–8. In short, the Korean model of rapid industrialization during the Park era was the product of the policies formulated and implemented by developmental elites led by MCI technocrats. This is not to say that Park did not seek any political advantage in this process. He certainly appears to have planned to retain the presidency for the long-term, if not for life. But Park had higher ambitions than that. He also planned to achieve his ultimate goal: an industrialized modern Korea. And he was convinced that this goal in which his personal ambitions and the national good came together could be achieved only through the Yusin system, or the Korean Way.

Korea: an industrialized modern state In his Development as Freedom, Amartya Sen, winner of the 1998 Nobel prize for economic science, identifies five distinct types of freedom that are instrumental in advancing the general capabilities of an individual. He argues that public policy to foster human capabilities and substantive freedoms can be effective through the promotion of these “distinct but interrelated freedoms,” namely, (a) political freedoms, (b) economic facilities, (c) social opportunities, (d) transparency guarantees and (e) protective security (1999). He further argues that, there are good reasons for seeing poverty as a deprivation of basic capabilities, rather than merely as low income. Sen came to this view through his extensive analysis of economic development in the twentieth century. It is significant to note that from the outset of Park’s rule he explicitly set out to achieve four of these “freedoms,” although suspending the one ranked highest by Sen, that is, “political freedoms” (1999: 20). Park’s method, the Korean Way, which he promoted as the key to Korea’s modernization, was never conventional from the beginning, just as the speed of Korean development was never ordinary. Korea’s GNP, for 209

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example, grew 452 percent from $12.7 billion to $57.4 billion (in 1980 prices) within two decades (1962–80), while export earnings grew from $100 million in 1964 to $10 billion in 1978. Korea, during this period, recorded an average GNP growth rate of 8.5 percent per year and was the fastest growing economy in the world ( Johnson 1987: 136; Amsden 1989: 56). The improvement in social facilities, which the state constructed as infrastructure to facilitate industrialization, was equally remarkable. Electric power generation, for example, grew more than ten-fold between 1961 and 1971, while the number of telephones increased five-fold between 1965 and 1975, from 437,915 to 2,292,286, or six to every 100 persons (U Sungmu 1995: 462). Between 1967 and 1977, Korea constructed nine expressways throughout the country, while 44 percent of national roads were paved by 1975 (Keidel 1981). The state also took steps to improve public welfare through a vast expansion of the educational system and employment opportunities, which many observers have noted as a key characteristic of Korea’s industrialization. Middle school enrolments, for example, rose rapidly in the 1960s and 1970s to about 2.5 million by 1980. Similarly, the number of high school enrolments jumped from 590,000 to 2.7 million during the 1970s (Snodgrass 1998: 172). The establishment of a relatively comprehensive health care system, including a family planning program, as an integral part of the first Five-Year Plan (1962–6), contributed to a dramatic rise in Korean life expectancy, from 55.3 in 1960 to 65.9 in 1978–9 (Kim T’aehon 1995: 533).2 The economic and social transformation during the Park era also entailed a phenomenal increase in white-collar workers, more commonly categorized since the 1980s as the middle class (Cotton and Kim 1996: 183–203). The expansion of the middle class initially began with rapid growth in the size and capacity of Korea’s manufacturing workforce. Between 1960 and 1980, the manufacturing workforce – both white-collar and blue-collar workers – increased almost six-fold, from 479,975 to 2,797,030 (Amsden 1989: 171). The white-collar workforce in the manufacturing sector, other than managers and service personnel, grew even faster during this period. Engineers, for example, multiplied more than ten-fold, from 4,425 to 44,999; sales personnel more than thirteen-fold, from 5,025 to 68,716; and clerical workers more than twenty-fold, from 17,330 to 356,362 during the same period (Amsden 1989: 171). Overall, this phenomenal increase of the workforce acted to absorb much of the unemployment and under-employment endemic to Korea in the 1960s, when about two million Koreans, or one-fifth of Korea’s industrial and agricultural workforce, were recorded as unemployed. In the light of the seriousness of unemployment in Korea in the early 1960s, therefore, it is fair to suggest that until Park’s policy of rapid development in mid-1964 the Korean people had been deprived not only of life’s essen210

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tials, such as food, but also of opportunities for such things as employment, career enhancement and education, basic requirements for fostering human endeavor and well-being. The opportunities that arose through state-guided rapid development under Park, however, came at high price: freedom was strictly limited. The state demanded conformity, obedience and sacrifice, all in the name of patriotism and national growth. The more Korea’s economy grew and society modernized, however, the less the people, especially the working masses (minjung), were content with the structural inequality and political oppression that they had to endure. As a result, the minjung doggedly pursued political freedoms through their labor movement and ultimately through a multi-alliance democracy movement comprised of students and many other social groups, including dissident activists and Christian activists. The rise of the popular Minjung Culture and Democracy Movement of the 1970s and 1980s was, in a sense, a perverse effect of Park’s economic nationalism, and would become, ultimately, the nemesis of his Yusin state. The subsequent rise of the “Minjung Democracy Movement” of the 1980s, focused on the three-min principle of people (minjung), nation (minjok) and democracy (minju), was a defining example of the Korean people’s response to military dictatorship following the Park era. Although they would suffer a further eight years of repression under the military dictatorship of the Chun Doo Hwan regime (1980–8), when the Korean people finally gained their political freedom, their democracy, though still flawed, was firmly established. Korea had now reached the stage that it was too industrialized as well as politically liberated for any dictatorial regime to impose itself without immediately stirring a popular revolt. As we have seen, Park had become the victim of his own making: Korean society in the late 1970s had become too highly sophisticated and developed, its members equipped with the tools for personal actualization provided by modern education and technology, to put up with his autocratic measures. In this context, the downfall of Chun Doo Hwan, despite his draconian military dictatorship, demonstrated the fundamental transformation of Korea, especially in terms of the people’s struggle for democracy. This was perhaps why many citizen movements flourished under President Roh Tae Woo. The grass roots democracy movement took on a new dimension when, in October 1995, President Kim Young Sam (1993–8) declared a new reform known as the “campaign to rectify the past.” This campaign, according to the Kim administration, aimed to establish a “New Korea” or a “second founding of the nation” with an emphasis on the purification of Korea’s authoritarian past and a purging of authoritarian elements from the political process (Shin 1999: 201–20). The imprisonment of two former presidents, Chun Doo Hwan and Roh Tae Woo in February 1996, 211

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is the most vivid illustration of President Kim’s highly moralistic and minjung-centered democracy campaign. As part of this campaign, the Kim administration dismantled many authoritarian enclaves, including the military officers’ club, Hana-hoe (one group), initially founded by two former general-presidents, Chun and Roh. In contrast to his enormously popular beginning in 1992, however, Kim’s reform campaign lost credibility and public support from 1995 when his government was plagued with a string of corruption scandals, highlighted by the trial of his second son, Hyonch’ol, for bribery and influence-peddling involving Hanbo Steel, which went bankrupt in January 1997 (Visclosky 2000; Ha Chongdae 1998b: 218–29). The dramatic success of the veteran dissident politician Kim Dae Jung’s bid for the presidency in the midst of Korea’s financial crash in December of the same year reflected the intensity of the Korean people’s desire for an honest and capable political leader. Expressions of nostalgia by many ordinary Koreans for Park-style authoritarianism reflected this sentiment. In the last decade of the twentieth century the legacy of the Park era had become a contradictory one: an industrialized modern Korea with an emergent popular democracy on the one hand, and a lingering nostalgia in Korean society for authoritarian rule on the other.

Unresolved issues Almost a quarter of a century after Park’s death, many unresolved issues remain in relation to his rule. Was the Yusin system justified? Of course, in Park’s mind, it was. His mindset was essentially that of a military strategist, and he believed that the end justified the means, the end being Korea’s industrial and military modernization. Above all, Park also believed that the Yusin system was necessary for constructing an independent capability for building weapons industries in order to protect Korea’s national security against North Korean aggression. He saw himself as the key player in that process, in a political climate in which internal and external forces conspired to undermine his capacity to achieve national goals, that is, to build Korea’s economic and defense capability, while at the same time building political independence from the US, on a basis that was both workable and secure. Park’s concept of “independence,” however, was not intended to exclude or repudiate any alliance with the US. Park meant, rather, to reduce dependence on the US by constructing a rapid-growth economy as well as defense capability, and to establish a bilateral relationship, instead of kowtowing to the US, especially over Korean affairs. This is not to say, though, that Park had any illusions about the US role in Korean security. In this regard, Park’s attitude toward the US was somewhat akin to that of Kim Il Sung toward China and the Soviet Union. Just as Kim was happy to receive support from his two super power allies while pursuing chuch’e, his 212

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self-reliance ideology, Park was eager to see the US security commitment in Korea maintained but without compromising his stance on principles regarding Korea’s political and economic independence. Many observers claim that under Park’s directives the Yusin constitution was in the process of revision after July 1978 as he was planning to adopt a more relaxed system permitting the people’s participation in the political process (Kim Songjin 1994: 73–4). This may have been the case, but I have found no material evidence to support this claim. Park’s diary of 17 October 1979, twelve days before his assassination and the seventh anniversary of the introduction of the Yusin system, reveals that he seems to have been fairly content with what it had achieved. He comments: the last seven years have been an important period that will stand out in our history. Some anti-government figures obstinately rebel against the present [Yusin] system, but I only hope that everything will be assessed fairly by historians of future generations. (Chong Chaegyong 1994: 636) With or without the revision of the Yusin system, it seems that Park had a definite long-term plan for comprehensive national development entitled “2000 nyondae rul wihan Han’guk kaejo kusang” (A Plan for Remodeling Korea for the 2000s). This Plan was reportedly found in Park’s private study shortly after his assassination. In February 1992, when the monthly journal Wolgan Choson published an interview with O Wonch’ol (who had not been in the public eye since Park’s assassination), the editor noted that O agreed to talk about the Plan only because the journal had already obtained a copy of O’s briefing material for Park (O Wonch’ol 1992: 506–41). Since O’s interview with Wolgan Choson, the Plan has been reported by other leading newspapers, including Chungang Ilbo (Kim Chin 1992: 389–97). Despite its abrupt curtailment after Park’s death, it nevertheless repeatedly confirmed to this author the existence of this Plan and Park’s commitment to it. Some claim that Park had decided to retire in 1983 and had already picked his future successor. When interviewed by the author in 2000, Park’s daughter and National Assemblywoman, Pak Kunhye, recalled that she had been told by her father that Ch’oe Kyuha, Prime Minister and Acting President immediately after Park’s death, had been the “chosen one” to take over after his planned retirement in the early 1980s (interview with Pak Kunhye, January 2000). On the other hand, Kim Chongnyom, who had been Park’s chief of staff from 1969 to 1978, publicly repeated that Park had planned to nominate Kim Chongp’il as his successor and planned to retire in 1983, a year before the end of his official term as the ninth President (Kim Songjin 1994: 75–6). Kim Songjin, Park’s spokesman as well as Minister for Information and Culture, told the author in May 1994 that he had been a “witness” to this plan. It appears, then, that Kim 213

CONCLUSION

Chongp’il and not Ch’oe Kyuha was the “chosen one.” The problem with this scenario, however, was that Kim certainly gave no indication. In response to my question in January 2000 on what, in his view, was Park’s greatest failure, Kim Chongp’il, who was then Prime Minister, replied: “Political greed. Yes, that ‘Elder [Statesman]’ had too much greed for power (ku orun chongch’i yoksim-i nomu manusyotssoyo)” (interview with Prime Minister Kim, January 2000). Kim’s comment, in a sense, reflects the dilemma of how to reconcile Park’s dictatorial rule and his achievement in engineering Korea’s rapid development. The built-in contradiction in Park’s militant approach to modernization, whereby he frequently violated the fundamental principles of the democratic process in his drive to bring about rapid industrialization, has left the Korean people with a challenge that is yet to be resolved, despite progressive change in their culturally chauvinistic and authoritarian mode of democracy. Having experienced large-scale financial corruption under four presidents, from Chun Doo Hwan to Kim Dae Jung who, like his predecessor Kim Young Sam, became exposed to public scrutiny in 2002 because of corruption charges against his sons, many Koreans, especially older generation conservatives, openly indulge in popular sentiments toward Parkstyle authoritarian leadership. As Robert Scalapino noted recently, Korea’s democracy today in fact reveals much of the past, characterized as it is by intensely personalized politics, a zero-sum form of regionalism and, above all, “traditional culture” through which political leaders, “even those who have long struggled for democracy and freedom[,] often act in an authoritarian fashion toward those who work with him” (2002: 134). By and large, nostalgia for Park can be seen as reflecting the popular desire for strong leadership, especially in terms of economic stability and productivity. This does not mean that the Korean people as a whole have forgotten or forgiven Park’s failures altogether. It is far from so. Just as many recognize his achievements in Korea’s development, equally many maintain the view that Park-style rapid development was not an end in itself and should not have been pursued at any price, especially when that price was the working masses’ rights and their democratic freedoms. Despite this fundamental flaw in Park’s mode of political leadership, he was an exceptional leader, and an enigmatic man with many layers of complexity. His role in Korea’s modern history is unique as a modernizer and as Korea’s most influential nation-builder. But, as an individual, Park was a surprisingly timid man. He suffered from the burden of his lowly and impoverished background, his colonial experience and personal traumas linked to his Communist past. The identity he forged at middle age as a general-president with dictatorial power grew out of that past: out of his experience of hunger as a child and the humiliation of colonization as a young soldier.

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Korea–US relations In terms of external influences, no nation has played a more prominent role than the US in shaping the political, economic and defense development of South Korea, especially since the Korean War (1950–3). As the official military “Command” on behalf of the United Nations, the US literally shaped the path of South Korea in terms of who would rule, how they would rule, and how the country would pay its way. In this regard the US was a key element in the set of propitious international circumstances which aided Korea’s state-guided industrialization program. US aid dollars funded Korea’s import substitution of the 1950s centered around textiles, sugar refineries and flour milling. Korean contracts with the US military were also very profitable, while military training and aid provided by the US transformed the Korean military into one of the largest in Asia. From 1953 to 1976, for example, the US spent a total of $12 billion in both military assistance (of $6.8 billion) and economic assistance (of $5.8 billion) (Mason 1980:182). The Vietnam War, as we have seen, also made a significant contribution in this regard. But it was the indirect influence of the US that was perhaps most significant. US containment policy, for example, in the context of the legacy of Japanese colonization, was effectively exploited by the Korean drive to achieve self-strengthening. Similarly, the US attempt to shift some of the economic responsibility for Korea’s development to Japan led to the normalization of Korea’s relations with Japan, which set in place a positive and collaborative basis for a new level of industrialization. Despite its importance and impact, however, Korea’s relationship with the US was full of ambiguities and ambivalence which stemmed from the basic contradiction between the US ideal of US liberal democracy under capitalism and the mechanisms employed by the US for the global protection of that democratic ideal. Thus in the Korean case, the US never intervened to preserve democratic institutions when military dictators seized power, and once the military did seize power, the US accommodated itself to the new regime. Maintaining the anti-Communist front against North Korea, the Soviet Union and Communist China was more important in US Government thinking than risking domestic security in Korea by fostering anti-government action. In brief, the US simply did not want to get dragged into another Korean War because of feuding between North and South Korea, or because of Park deciding on his own to foment a war with North Korea, and so disrupting the whole structure of US security policy in East Asia. Not surprisingly, therefore, there has been an obvious tension between the US tendency to support undemocratic anti-Communist regimes in Korea, as well as in other countries, including Indonesia, and its 215

CONCLUSION

commitment to liberal democracy. US acquiescence in coups, however, sometimes took extreme forms, such as the collaboration in the 1965–6 purge in Indonesia which allowed Suharto to seize the presidency. In its efforts to support Suharto’s military coup, it seems that the US had especially transferred the US Chargé d’Affaires Marshall Green from Seoul to Jakarta. Green was known in the State Department as “the coupmaster [sic]” who, according to the author of a recent account, had then “masterminded the overthrow of the Korean leader Syngman Rhee, who had fallen out with the Americans” (Pilger 2002: 31). A statement about the American attitude to Indonesia by Heru Atmojo, an air force officer at the time of the coup, who had been jailed for fifteen years for his support of Sukarno, describes a scenario with a striking similarity to Park’s Korea: the pressure on Indonesia to do what the Americans wanted was intense. Sukarno wanted good relations with them, but he didn’t want their economic system. With America, that is never possible. So he became an enemy. All of us who wanted an independent country, free to make our own mistakes, were made the enemy. They didn’t call it globalization then; but it was the same thing. If you accepted it, you were America’s friend. If you chose another way, you were given warnings and if you didn’t comply, hell was visited on you. (Pilger 2002: 31) “Hell” was certainly visited on Park and his key policy advisers in the 1970s for their economic nationalism. In fact it can be argued that domestic and international forces, especially the US, pushed Korea’s rapid development in a highly nationalistic direction. Despite the many outstanding contributions it made to Korea’s development after the Korean War, the US failed to support Korea in building its defense system, including even basic necessities in defense against the Communist North. Recently released US archival documents reveal that as late as August 1975 Park and his government were still begging the US to provide what the Koreans termed, “appropriate aid,” meaning “fire power, including [a third of a line whited out] air, and logistics support.”3 Until Park began his light weapons development program in December 1971 (see Chapter 8), the Korean military could not even supply its own soldiers with clothing, let alone military hardware and logistics support. Although the US promised to strengthen the Korean defense capability as outlined in the “Brown Memorandum” of March 1966 (see Chapter 5), and to provide several other assistance packages, including $1.5 billion promised in mid-January 1971 as compensation for the US withdrawal of troops from Korea, the US deliberately slowed the release of aid to Korea because Washington officials did not trust Park, and because they were 216

THE LEGACY OF THE PARK ERA

worried about being seen as supporting his repressive policies. The most obvious example was the US State Department-led tactic of delaying military assistance, often drastically reduced, while the Congress was investigating the Koreagate bribery scandal during the years from 1974 to 1976. US archival documents show that Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, in December 1975, for example, instructed James T. Lynn, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, that the FY (Five-Year) 1977 Military Assistance Program (MAP) be “reduced from $47.3 million to $8.3 million” and that the Korean USG (US Government) guaranteed FMS [foreign military sales] credit level be “raised from $150 million to $275 million.” The purpose of the “modification” was for the Secretary “to inform Congress that grant materiel assistance to Korea is terminated – the $8.3 million we propose for FY 1977 would be for supply operations and UN costs only.”4 Changes in US policy to military assistance to Korea became so unilateral and unreliable that Park and his key policy advisers came to lose their trust in the US. To make matters worse, President Jimmy Carter’s widely publicized distrust of Park appears to have exacerbated the inconsistency of US policy over Korea. In his meeting with Park in July 1979, Carter, recalls US ambassador Gleysteen, “chided” Park for “allowing North Korea . . . to have gained such a large military lead over the far larger and far more prosperous South.” Gleysteen adds that Carter “criticized Park’s insistence on a complete freeze of troop withdrawals [. . . while [Carter] was also continuing] to push for higher South Korean defense spending to reduce if not eliminate the military disparity between North and South” (1999: 46–7). In any case, US trust of Park was never very great. As we saw in Chapter 3, the US acquiesced in Park’s rule because of their joint interest in the war against Communism and because of the strong anti-Communist posture by consecutive US administrations. But Park’s alliance with the US was far from harmonious. Ironically, US pressure on him to modify his economic development programs, not to mention his military dictatorship, was so extreme that it gave Park the political rationale to promote economic nationalism as well as his governing policy, Yusin. US pressure on Korea took various forms. The pressure on Park to return to civilian government in 1963 and to normalize relations with Japan in 1965, for example, was effective, but pressure on him to curb the activities of the Korean CIA within Korea, as well as in the US, especially following the Koreagate bribery scandal, had much more complex ramifications. As many top officials in the State Department acknowledged among themselves, Park’s “lessened confidence in [the] U.S. security commitment, and [the] consequent desire on Park’s part to reduce his military dependence on [the] U.S.”5 led him to plan and develop a defense-related HCI program and military modernization, including a clandestine nuclear weapons program. The US distrust of Park, at the 217

CONCLUSION

same time as Washington was pressuring him to formulate his security policy under US “guidance,” caused him to react: it pushed him into developing a range of projects without communicating with the US at all. In order to protect these secret projects, Park relied heavily on the KCIA and his other intelligence agencies. The secret nuclear weapons program (see Chapter 9) was the clearest example. The US was not only guilty of paying “little attention,” Gleysteen noted, “to how Nixon[‘s] Guam Doctrine and the sudden change in China policy would aggravate Park’s sense of insecurity” (1999: 61) but also of creating policy confusion in Korea, especially after the fall of Indochina. In September 1974, Deputy Secretary of Defense William Clements sent a memorandum to President Gerald Ford requesting a “Reduction in Manpower Authorization” which, Clements noted, was “in accordance with a White House memorandum” dated 6 January 1973.6 Two months later, however, Ford publicly affirmed, in his joint communiqué with Park during his visit to Seoul (22–24 November 1974), that the US would not reduce its troops in Korea. In December 1976 at the National Security Council meeting, Ford made yet another comment expressing his concern about the possible withdrawal of troops from Korea, a cause then being promoted by Jimmy Carter, the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate. Ford commented: We are going to stay in Korea . . . If Carter cuts Korea, he is cutting off from what I would do. We are going for a responsible worldwide capability that we have endorsed7 Underlying the political rhetoric, there was a strong push among US policy advisers to reduce troops in Korea, a policy which Carter clearly supported and subsequently tried to implement. The primary concern of the US Government was maintaining a “responsible worldwide capability.” Despite the American ideal of liberal democracy, this meant that Washington would accommodate Korea’s authoritarian politics and economic nationalism in exchange for Korean obedience in international affairs. Here lay the irony of the US Cold War alliance with Korea. Neither Park’s dictatorship nor the HCI program was popular among the Americans in the 1970s, yet neither could have been sustained without US acquiescence. The US approach to Korea was inconsistent and largely self-serving. Referring to his recent visit to Seoul and to Park’s oppressive domestic tactics, Ford noted that, “it doesn’t hurt to have a strong leader in that part of the country, with all the problems there”8 Despite the US acquiescence to Park’s dictatorship, tensions between Korea and the US could not always be simply hidden under the cover of shared strategic interests. Where the tensions between the two became too great, and undermined their common interests, the US acted. 218

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Thus when Park started to show an interest in nuclear waste reprocessing and in nuclear missile capability development in the late 1970s, he crossed the line of what was acceptable to Washington. Park’s hold on power, as well as his pursuit of Korea’s rapid industrialization, had been inextricably entwined with US Cold War security policy in Korea and East Asia. Korea–US relations, in this context, had very little to do with whether any US president or administration approved or disapproved of Park’s ethical position, but had everything to do with whether Park, or any other Korean political leader, was fully committed to Cold War security policy. It was this logic that motivated a “full-scale rebellion” (Oberdorfer 1997: 89) against President Carter by many officials in Washington and, in July 1979, the White House suspended plans for further troop withdrawals from Korea at least until 1981. This episode provided an invaluable lesson in Oberdorfer’s words, “even a determined president proved unable to decouple the United States from the high-stakes military standoff on the Korean peninsula” (1997: 108). This lesson, of course, also applied to the president’s Korean counterpart. By pursuing his clandestine nuclear and missile program, Park had undermined his own position just as Carter had undermined his by “refusing to heed or even hear the objections until he finally was backed into a corner” (Oberdorfer 1997: 108). Overall, Korea–US relations under Park and Carter reached their darkest moments before each president’s demise. This painful experience of mutual distrust showed that commitment to regional security in NorthEast Asia remained the bedrock of the alliance. No security system or alliance pact between two countries, including Korea and America, could be expected to be totally satisfactory, but there is little doubt, that the Korea–US alliance has been one of the successes of modern diplomatic history. By 1976, Korea’s success during the Park era had liberated the US from its former economic aid burden. Indeed, by the mid-1990s, Korea had become the fifth largest US export market. Politically, the Cold War has outlasted Park by more than two decades and in the ensuing years the confrontation between the two Koreas has remained just as challenging, if not more so. In fact, today’s political standoff between North Korea and the Bush administration over nuclear issues is a stark reminder of Korea–US crises in the 1970s when Park stubbornly pursued his clandestine nuclear weapons capability program. Like leaders of many small countries in the region today, including Kim Jong Il in the North, Park saw the possession of an independent nuclear capability as the key to self-defense and autonomy. In his case this meant the capability to defend South Korea from any threat of war from the North, while also achieving greater autonomy in his negotiations with the US. This strategy, however, was a mistake. The path towards nuclearizing South Korea, however understandable the 219

CONCLUSION

motivation that would have sat behind it, was plainly self-destructive because it not only challenged the US security commitment on the peninsula, but also threatened the security balance in the region. As a result of Park’s mistake, therefore, the South Korean abandonment of his nuclear capability program came at a high price, that is, US acquiescence in yet another military dictator, Chun Doo Whan. Ironically, more than two decades after Park’s demise at the height of the development of his nuclear weapons capability program, Korea is in security crisis again, this time because of the North Korean refusal to surrender its nuclear weapons program. Even more ironic is the fact that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, who was responsible for dealing with Park’s go-it-alone approach toward his nuclear capability program in the late 1970s, is now reported to be drawing up plans for a pre-emptive strike against North Korea.9 Rumsfeld and his fellow hard-line policy-makers in Washington, including Vice President Dick Cheney, appear to have perfected their unilateral approach to US security policy to the extent that the US today places itself above the law, reserving to itself the right to employ violence, virtually without restriction, in pursuit of its global interests. American policy recklessness under President George Bush now appears to be destabilizing the world order, not only by engaging in war on countries in which the US would like to see regime change, but also by withdrawing from or refusing to ratify several key international treaties, including the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Biological Weapons Convention, the International Criminal Court and the Kyoto Convention on Global Warming. In the meantime, Bush repeatedly announces that he loathes North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and thus refuses to negotiate directly with Pyongyang. This attitude bears a stark resemblance to President Carter’s loathing of his South Korean counterpart, President Park. In this circumstance, the risk of the US dragging South Korea into an “unwanted war” appears far more real, especially to the South Koreans, than any threat from North Korea. This intolerable prospect, connected to Bush’s hard-line policy on North Korea, has driven a large segment of the Korean population away from the Cold War political system, resulting in the election of Roh Moo-hyun (No Muhyon), a lawyer with a wellknown record in defending human rights activists and union leaders during the military dictatorship of the 1980s. It would be a tragedy if Korea, especially political leaders on both sides, failed to take heed of the lessons from Park’s mistakes, and did not move boldly forward by deepening their inter-Korean relations toward national reconciliation through peaceful means. It would also be a tragedy if the US again failed to exert determined efforts to create a genuinely peaceful and nuclear-free peninsula by adopting serious quid pro quo negotiations with North Korea on all issues of concern to both Koreas. 220

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Such a path-breaking step toward North–South reconciliation and ultimately reunification, with the precondition of a nuclear-free Korean peninsula may, finally, provide a guarantee not only to the Koreans on both sides, but also to the Americans regarding their security interests in the region, especially concerning the security balance of the three most powerful countries in Asia: China, Russia and Japan. Profound international developments are underway, and how these proceed in regard to the Korean peninsula depends on how Korea and the US assess and understand Korea’s recent history, and how they both utilize the lessons of the past to gain a deeper appreciation of all the issues facing the region today. If they can do so, peace in the region based on mutual trust and respect, a goal that Park would surely have endorsed, might at last be achieved.

221

Export

(New community movement)

Industrialization

Technology

222

1966

1967

1969

1970

2nd five-year plan 1968

1971

1. Development of import replacing technologies

3. State of industrialization

2. Export-first policy

1972

1974

1975

3rd five-year plan 1973

1976

1977

1979

1980

4th five-year plan 1978

1981

3. Domestic production of raw materials

2. Technological development

1. Improvement of export industrial structure

4. Export of machinery

3. Domestic production of raw materials for heavy and chemical industries

2. Development of machine industries

1. Improvement of plant designing and production capacity

Declaration of scientific way of life

Heavy Industrialization rate: 50%

Completion of industrial structure

3. Plant export

2. Development of system industry

1. Development of brain industry

Scientific way of life of the people

Development of brain industry

Decentralization of industries under new community movement

Supply of materials

Technical innovation Technological inducement and development

Supply of machinery

Machinery Industries

Declaration of heavy industry development policy

Export of light industry products Achievement Improvement of processing of export goods of annual Strengthening of competitiveness on world market export of $10 billion Export of heavy and chemical industry products Plant and technology export

1965

Expansion of existing light industries Cement Oil refineries Fertilizer plants Synthetic fiber, synthetic resin and rubber industries Industrialization Petrochemical policy Supply of Steel industries raw materials

1964

1st five-year plan

Export-first policy

1963

Source: O Won-chol, “Economic development and industrialization in Korea,” in International Conference on Korean Futures: Report, November 14–17, 1973, Seoul, Korea, Asiatic Research Center, Korea University, p. 287

Summary

1962

Appendix 1

LONG-TERM INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT POLICY

Appendix 2 THREE STAGES OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT IN KOREA For selected industries

Government protection stage

1. Government support 2. Government execution

Government leading stage

1. Government planning 2. The protection of domestic sales 3. Beginning of export 1970

Self-sustaining stage

1. Private sectorleading economy 2. International scale

Cement Fertilizer Petro-chemical Steel-mill Non-ferrous metal Machinery

Take-off Textiles

Source: O Won-chol, “Economic development and industrialization in Korea,” in International Conference on Korean Futures: Report, November 14–17, 1973, Seoul, Korea, Asiatic Research Center, Korea University, p. 278

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Appendix 3 LONG-TERM NATIONAL INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN

224

CHRONOLOGIES OF THE HCI TRIUMVIRATE President Park Chung Hee, Chief of Staff Kim Chongnyom, Senior Economic Secretary O Wonch’ol President Park Chung Hee (1961–79) Year 1917

Born on 14 November 1917 in Sangmo-ri, Kumi-myon, Sonsan county, North Kyongsang. 1935 Summer Park married Kim Honman at the demand of his father. 1937 March Graduated from Taegu Teacher’s College and was appointed teacher at Simsang Primary School, Mungyong, Kyongsang pukdo (North Kyongsang province), South Korea. 1940 March Park is believed to have resigned from his teaching position. He entered the Manchukuo Military Academy, Xinjing (formerly Ch’angch’un), Manchuria. 1942 April Graduated from the Manchukuo Military Academy and, in October, enrolled at the Japanese Imperial Military Academy (JIMA), Tokyo, Japan. 1944 April Graduated from JIMA and was assigned as Second Lieutenant to the 8th Corps, the Japanese Kwantung Army, Manchuria. 1945 July Promoted to First Lieutenant. 1946 May Returned to Kumi, his home village. September Enrolled in the Second Class of the Korean Constabulary Officers’ Training School (Choson kyongbi sagwan hakkyo) (KCOTS) – which later became the Korean Military Academy. 14 December Graduated from KCOTS and was assigned as Second Lieutenant and as a platoon officer to the 8th Regiment in Kangwon province. 1947 August Promoted to Captain and assigned, on 27 September, as Cadet Commander of the Korean Military Academy. 1948 1 August Promoted to Major. November Arrested in Seoul for his role in the Communist YosuSunch’on Military Rebellion and shortly after sentenced to life imprisonment. 1949 10 May Discharged from the army – National Special Order (Kugt’uk) no. 34. (However, continued to work, albeit unofficially and unpaid, in the Operations and Intelligence Unit at Army Headquarters.

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1950 30 June 15 September 25 October 1 November 12 December 1951 15 April 25 May 10 December 1953 16 February 31 March 9 May 1954 Jan–June 21 June 18 October November 1955 23 June– July 1956 1956 16 July– March 1957 1957 30 March 1958 2 March 17 June 1 July 5 October 1959 21 January 30 July 11 September 25 December 1961 20 February 16 May 20 May 10 August 1 November

Reinstated to the Intelligence Bureau (Chongboguk che-il gwa) at Army Headquarters – National Special Order no. 1. Promoted to Lieutenant Colonel – National Special Order no. 34. Appointed Chief of Staff of the 9th Division of the 3rd Army Corps in Taejon. Park divorced his wife by agreement. Married Yuk Yongsu. Promoted to Colonel. Appointed Superintendent of the Army Intelligence School in Taegu. Appointed Deputy Chief of Operations and the Education Bureau at Army Headquarters in Taegu. Appointed Commandant of the Artillery Division of the 2nd Army Corps. Promoted (temporary) to Brigadier-General. Appointed Commandant of the Artillery Division of the 3rd Army Corps. Trained at the United States Artillery School in Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Appointed Commandant of the Artillery Division of the 2nd Corps. Appointed Commandant of the ROK Artillery School, Kwangju, South Cholla Province. Promoted/gazetted to Brigadier-General. Appointed Commanding General of the Fifth Infantry Division, Yangu, Kangwon Province. Entered the 11th Class of the Staff College of the ROK Army, Chinhae, South Kyongsang Province. Appointed Deputy Commanding General of the 6th Corps and, in July, was appointed Commanding General of the 7th Infantry Division, Injae, Kangwon Province. Promoted to “temporary” Major-General. Appointed Chief of Staff, First Field Army. Appointed Commanding General of the 6th Military District Command. Visited Taiwan. Appointed Commanding General of the ROK Army Logistics Base Command, Pusan, South Kyongsang Province. Appointed Commanding General of the First Military District Command, Kwangju, South Cholla Province. Appointed Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations, Army Headquarters. Appointed Deputy Commanding General in the 2nd Army, Taegu, North Kyongsang Province. Promoted to Major-General. Led military coup. Emerged as Deputy Chairman of the Military Revolutionary Committee which shortly after changed its title to Supreme Council for National Reconstruction (SCNR). Promoted to Lieutenant-General. Promoted to General.

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1962

1963

1964

1965

1966

13–25 November Visited the United States. 7 December Park’s daughter, Chaeok, from his first marriage, married Han Pyonggi, Park’s former aide-de-camp. February Park reaffirmed the military junta’s pledge to return power to civilians. 3 March Approval for the establishment of the Construction Bureau of Development Committee for the Ulsan Industrial Center. 22 March President Yun Poson resigned. 24 March Elected as Acting President by the SCNR. 16 June Concurrently held both the Presidency and the Prime Ministership (until 10 July). December His first book, Uri minjok ui nagalgil in Korean and Our Nation’s Path: Ideology of Social Reconstruction in English, was published. 27 December Announced the procedure for transferring power to civilian rule. He also expressed his plan to run for the presidency. 1 January The ban on political activities was lifted. 24 January Kim Chongp’il resigned from his position as Director of the KCIA. 26 February Democratic and Republican Party (minju konghwadang) was formally founded. 16 March Placed a ban on political activities and proposed another national referendum for four more years of military rule. 3 August Resigned from the army. 31 August Park accepted the presidential nomination of the Democratic Republican Party. September Park’s second book, Kukka wa hyongmyong gwa na in Korean and The Country, the Revolution, and I in English, was published. 15 October Park was elected President with 46.6 percent of the vote. Yun Poson, the opposition candidate, received 45.1 percent. 17 December Park was formally sworn in as President of the Third Republic. 24 March University students launched demonstrations protesting the government’s “low postured diplomacy” in the Korea-Japan negotiations. Demonstrations spread nation-wide. 3 June Park declared martial law (which lasted until 29 July). 6–15 December Park visited West Germany to borrow foreign investment capital. 9 February Park addressed South Korean troops bound for South Vietnam. 16–27 May Park visited US President Lyndon B. Johnson. 22 June The Korea-Japan normalization treaty was signed in Tokyo. 14 August The Korea-Japan normalization treaty was ratified by the National Assembly in the total absence of opposition party members. 18 December The relations between Korea and Japan were normalized when the ratification instruments of the treaty and incidental agreements were exchanged in Seoul. 7–8 February Park toured Southeast Asian countries, including Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

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24 October

1967

1968

1969

1970

1971

Park visited the Philippines to attend the summit meeting of countries sending troops to Vietnam. 2 November US President Lyndon B. Johnson visited Korea. 2 February Park was nominated as the presidential candidate of the Democratic Republican Party. 3 May Park won his second presidential term. 17 December Park attended the funeral of Prime Minister Holt of Australia. 21 January A 31-member North Korean commando unit infiltrated Seoul in an attempt to assassinate President Park at the Blue House. 22 January US spy ship, Pueblo, was captured by North Korean navy ships off Wonsan. 1 April Park delivered a speech at the founding ceremony of the Homeland Guard (Hyangt’o yebigun). 3 April Park attended a special ceremony to start the construction of the expressway between Seoul and Pusan, which subsequently opened on 7 July 1970. 15–23 September Park made a state visit to Australia and New Zealand. 5 December Park declared the National Charter of Education. 20–25 August Park visited the United States and met with President Nixon in San Francisco. 14 September The constitutional amendment was passed in the National Assembly in the absence of opposition members. 17 October The constitutional amendment allowing a three-term presidency was approved in the national referendum. 22 October Park appointed Kim Chongnyom, Minister of Commerce and Industry (1967–9), as his Chief of Staff. Kim subsequently became Park’s official “Economic Manager” of Korea’s centrally managed national development for over nine years until December 1978. 15 August In his speech at the 25th anniversary of national liberation, Park announced a policy of “peaceful coexistence” with North Korea and proposed to the North a “well-intended competition” between two states. 9 March Park was re-nominated as presidential candidate of the ruling Democratic Republican Party. 27 April Park was re-elected for a third four-year term. 1 July Park was sworn in as the 7th President. 12 August Ch’oe Tuson, President of the South Korean National Red Cross, proposed to convene Red Cross talks to explore the possibility of reuniting families dispersed in the North and South. 15 August In his speech at the 26th anniversary of national liberation, Park reaffirmed South Korea’s peaceful unification policy and supported North–South Red Cross negotiations. 10 November Park appointed O Wonch’ol, then Assistant Vice Minister in the Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MCI), as his senior economic secretary responsible for defense industry development as well as heavy and chemical industry development. 6 December Park declared a state of national emergency.

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1972 May

17 October

21 November 6 December 13 December 15 December 23 December 27 December 1973 5 January 12 January

31 January 8 August 1974 8 January 15 August 22 November 1975 12 February 8 April 13 May 22 September 4 December 10 December 1976 25 May

Secret exchange visits were undertaken by Yi Hurak, Director of the KCIA, to Pyongyang, and by Pak Songch’ol, Deputy Premier of North Korea, representing Kim Il Sung’s younger brother, Kim Yongju, to Seoul. Park declared martial law, suspending the provisions of the constitution, dissolving the National Assembly, and banning all political activities. Under an “emergency act,” Park created the “Extraordinary State Council.” The draft amendment to the constitution was approved in a national referendum and thereby Park introduced the “Restoration Constitution” (yusin honbop) under martial law. The National Conference for Unification Law was passed. Park lifted the extraordinary martial law. 2,359 deputies of the National Conference for Unification (NCU) were elected. Park was elected to a six-year term as President by NCU. Park was formally sworn in as the 8th President in accordance with the Yusin constitution. Park instructed his cabinet to develop the Saemaul Movement as a national campaign to put the Yusin reform into practice. Park declared the government’s Heavy and Chemical Industrialization Policy. He also declared that Korea aimed to achieve $10 billion in export earnings and per capita GNP of $1,000 by the early 1980s. Park assembled a cabinet meeting at the Blue House basement shelter, through which he obtained “unanimous” support for the HCI program. Kim Dae Jung, leader of the opposition party, was kidnapped from the Grand Hotel in Tokyo and on 13 August reappeared at his home in Seoul. Park issued Emergency Measures Nos. 1 and 2, which banned criticism of the new Yusin constitution. Park’s wife, Yuk Yongsu, was killed in an assassination attempt on Park at the 29th anniversary of national independence ceremony held at the National Theatre. US President Gerald Ford arrived in Seoul for a two-day visit en route to the Soviet port of Vladivostok. A national referendum, asking the people whether they “agreed” or “disagreed” with the Yusin system, received a 73.1 percent “agreed” vote. Park declared Emergency Measure No. 7. Park declared Emergency Measure No. 9 (which banned either criticising the Yusin constitution or discussing its abolition). Park also dissolved the EM No. 7. The Civil Defence Corps (Min-bangwidae) was founded. Park appointed Kim Chaegyu as Director of the KCIA. At a national Saemaul leaders’ rally in Taejon, Park urged that the Urban Saemaul Movement and Schools’ Saemaul Movement be intensified. Park met with Philip C. Habib, Under Secretary for Political Affairs of the US State Department. Park indicated that the

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Korean position concerning US plans to withdraw its ground forces from Korea was “supplement first, withdraw later” (sonbowan, huch’olgun). Accordingly, he stressed the importance of US consideration of support for Korea’s development. 1977 22 December Park attended the “Export Day” ceremony, celebrating especially Korea’s achievement of $10 billion in export earnings within seven years since 1970 when Korea first achieved $1 billion in export earnings. 1978 4 July Park was re-elected to another six-year term by the National Conference for Unification. 26 September Park attended a test-fire of the “Korean-model” guided missile and rocket at the military base at Anhung, Sosan county of South Ch’ungch’ong province. Korea became the 7th country in the world to develop its own missile. 12 December The tenth general election for the National Assembly was held. The ruling Democratic Republican Party received 31.7 percent of the popular vote, 1.1 percent less than the opposition New Democratic Party’s 32.8 percent. Although this election result did not affect Park’s control over the National Assembly, it nevertheless led Park to appoint a new economic team led by Shin Hyonhwak, newly appointed Deputy Prime Minister and the Head of the EPB the same month. 1979 19 January Park called for the “unconditional” resumption of the NorthSouth talks. 29 June US President Jimmy Carter visited Seoul. 26 October Park was assassinated by Kim Chaegyu, Director of the KCIA.

Kim Chongnyom, Chief of Staff (1969–78) 1924 1943 October 1944 October 1945 August November 1952 1953 1958 January April 1960 September 1961 March October

Born on 3 January in Seoul as the third of four sons of a banker. Commenced employment with the Bank of Choson as a clerk after graduating from Oita College of Commerce in Kyushu, Japan a month earlier. Conscripted to the Japanese Army. Wounded in the Hiroshima atom bomb attack and hospitalized. Returned to the Bank of Choson. Section Chief, Planning and Research Department. Assigned to draw up a draft plan for Korea’s first currency reform (actioned in February 1953). Deputy Chief of the Research Department. Enrolled in Clark University Graduate School in Worcester, Massachusetts, USA and obtained an MA in economics in January 1959. Appointed Director-General of Finance in the Ministry of Finance. Returned to the Bank of Korea (formerly the Bank of Choson). Appointed Chief of the New York Branch of the Bank of Korea. Summoned to return to Seoul and shortly after was again summoned to work in the Policy Research Office of the KCIA.

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1962 March June 1964 March 1966 1967 1969 1978

June January October October December

Assigned the task of drawing a plan for Korea’s second currency reform. Appointed Korean Minister at the Embassy in Washington. Appointed Vice Minister of Finance. Assigned to Japan as a government representative for Korea– Japan normalization negotiations. Vice Minister of Commerce and Industry. Minister of Finance. Minister of Commerce and Industry. Chief of Staff, the Presidential Secretariat in the Blue House. Ambassador to Japan.

O Wonch’ol, Senior Economic Secretary (1971–79) 1923 1950 December

1951 June September 1956 August 1960 April 1961 May July 1964 June 1968 April 1970 January 1971 November

1974 February 1979 November 1980 17 May

Born on 3 October as the eldest son of a landlord in the coastal village of P’ungch’on, Hwanghae province, North Korea. Enlisted as Engineering Cadet, Korean Air Force and enrolled in the final year of the Kyongsong Technical College – which later became the College of Engineering, Seoul National University. Appointed as Technical Officer, Second Lieutenant. Graduated in Chemical Engineering, College of Engineering, Seoul National University. Transferred to the Air Force Reserve List as Major. Appointed factory manager of Sibal Auto Company. Factory manager, Kuksan Motor Company. Summoned by the military junta and appointed Director of the Research Office of the military junta’s Supreme Council of National Reconstruction (SCNR). Appointed Director, Chemical Industry Bureau, Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MCI). Director-General, First Industry Bureau, MCI. Chief, Planning and Management Office, MCI. Assistant Vice Minister in charge of mining, manufacturing and energy, MCI. Appointed Senior Economic Secretary to President Park, responsible for the development of defense industry, as well as heavy and chemical industries. O was in charge of the Second Economic Secretariat [kyongje 2 pisosil]. Head, Planning and Implementation Group for Heavy and Chemical Industries (under the Prime Minister’s jurisdiction) Dismissed without receiving an official notification. Arrested by the Military Security Command led by MajorGeneral Chun Doo Whan.

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INTRODUCTION 1 In January 2002, Bush denounced Iraq, Iran and North Korea as forming an “Axis of Evil.” 2 The term “Yusin” is commonly translated as “revitalized.” The term has its origin in Chinese as “wei-hsin” which refers to a late dynastic attempt to restore a declining dynasty to its earlier luster. In Japan, however, the term “ishin” was used in the Meiji period and has been translated into English as the “Meiji Restoration,” probably in the sense that it ended in the restoration of the emperor to his proper exalted state after the neglect he had suffered in the Tokugawa era and before. I translate the term as “restoration” based on Park’s definition of his governing ideology, “Minjok Chunghung” (National Restoration), which, he said, represented the restoration of the prestige and strength of the Korean nation. See Chapter 5. 3 In January 1996, a short summary of this document was published for the first time by the monthly journal Wolgan choson (Yi Kunmi 1996: 265–70). In December 2002, I searched for the document at the Korean Archives but failed to locate it as Yi Kunmi had claimed to do in this article. 4 For an analysis of minjung theory, especially of class conflict and alienation approaches, see Kim Hyung-A 1995: 39–59. In regard to Korean minjung theorists’ views on Park, see Son Hoch’ol 1991: 161–77. 5 One of the most widely read books among Korean students of the minjung democracy movement was the Korean translation of Korea North and South: The Deepening Crisis by McCormack and Selden (1978). 6 President Kim Dae Jung, for example, repeatedly noted Park as the person who had crystallized a “can-do” spirit among the Koreans (Newsreview 22 May 1999: 8). 1 PARK: A COLONIZED SOLDIER 1 According to his primary school report, Park was awarded a special prize for academic excellence in the first, second, fifth and sixth grades. 2 Initially, three boys were reported to have attended the pot’ong hakkyo [primary school] from his village, but two boys were removed from the school by their parents because, having seen the gym facilities, they thought their boys might sustain an injury. 3 The two other Teachers’ Colleges were Kyongsong sabom in Seoul and P’yongyang sabom in P’yongyang.

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4 The total number of candidates – both Korean and Japanese – for the TTC was 1,070, and Park was ranked fifty-first of the 100 successful candidates. 5 For the background of the naisen ittai policy, see Eckert 1991: 235–9. 6 For the first explanation, see Chong Chaegyong 1992: 63–6; for the second, Keon 1977: 44; for the third, Yi Sangu 1984: 355; and for the final explanation, Cho Kapche 1992: 83. 7 Kim died in 1990, aged 71. 8 Prior to this trip, Park had visited Manchuria once with a school excursion in May 1935 during his fourth year at college. 9 To change his name into Japanese, Park was sent home, like the other 23 Korean students of the Academy, for a week’s holiday. Park later used another Japanized name, Okamoto Minoru, while serving in Manchuria (April 1944 to August 1945). 10 The other three Korean graduates were Yi Sopchun, Yi Hallim and Kim Chaep’ung. 11 Park’s academic ranking at the Academy was reportedly third in the class. He graduated on 20 April 1944, from the fifty-seventh class of the Academy. 12 The other three officers were Sin Hyonjun, Pang Wonch’ol and Yi Chuil. 13 The KNFL, also known as Konmaeng, was formally founded on 10 August 1944 by Yo Unhyong (1885–1947), a prominent nationalist political leader who is reported to have led the KNFL as part of his “invasion plan” for Korean independence. For details of Park’s connection to the KNFL, particularly through its Manchurian Subcommittee League (also known as Manchu punmaeng), see Cho Kapche 27 and 28 February Chosun Ilbo 1998. 14 Park was promoted to captain directly from second lieutenant skipping one level, that of first-lieutenant. 15 The three officers were Captain Kang Ch’angson, Commander of the 2nd Company; Captain Kim Hanglim, second platoon officer under Captain Kang, and First-Lieutenant Hwang T’aeng’lim, first platoon officer under Captain Park Chung Hee. 16 Captain Kim Ch’angyoung became the chief of the Intelligence Bureau and served as the “most trusted and powerful servant” of President Rhee. He was assassinated in January 1956. 17 The competition between these two generals was deliberately exacerbated by President Rhee, especially after Lieutenant-General Yi Chongch’an’s refusal to action a presidential decree in 1952. The two gnerals dominated the army hierarchy through competition between each man’s faction, namely the Tongbukp’a [Chong’s faction] and Sobukp’a’ [Paek’s faction]. Kang Ch’angsong provides an excellent study in regard to the Korean Military (1991: 331–56). 18 Unlike the relationship with his father, Park appears to have built a very close relationship with his mother from his childhood. Park openly expressed his admiration toward his mother both verbally and in writing. His mother was 79 years old, and he 32, when she died. 19 In October 1949, Park is reported to have rebuked Sergeant-Major Kim Ijin for his request that he support Kim Ijin’s formal complaint against Kim Ch’angyong who had unlawfully tortured him over the disappearance of a secret intelligence plan. Park is said to have advised Kim Ijin: “You are weak. So don’t complain.” 20 Park’s classmates from the Manchurian Military Academy constituted one of the three key groups involved in Park’s military coup of 1961. 21 According to Ch’a Hosong, Director of the fifth branch of the Intelligence Bureau, Park submitted a petition for his reappointment only a few days before the War broke out (Chong Chaegyong 1992: 116–17).

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22 Cited in Cho Kapche 1992: 186. General Chang collaborated with Park in the May 16 coup but was purged in July 1961 and subsequently exiled to the USA in 1962. In March 2001, Chang published his memoirs entitled, Manghyang (Nostalgia). 23 Park left Taegu four days after his wedding but, on 10 May 1951, he returned there on sick leave, an excuse to get away from his Divisional Commander, Brigadier-General Ch’oe Sok who had replaced Brigadier-General Kim Chonggap in April 1951. 24 Park’s eldest daughter from his second marriage, Kunhye, was born on 2 February 1952. 25 Park first met Yi on July 1949 when, as a colonel, Yi replaced Colonel Paek Sonyop and became Park’s superior as chief of army intelligence. Yi, a graduate of the Japanese Military Academy 50th class, is known to have been the only man whom Park admired throughout his life. Yi died on 23 June 1953 in a plane crash while flying from Namwon in North Cholla Province to Taegu in North Kyongsang Province. 26 President Rhee submitted a new constitutional amendment to the Assembly on 14 May. 27 The message carried the address: “Yukkun changbyong ege koham” (To all soldiers in the Army). For details of the message, see Chong Chaegyong 1992: 130. 28 On 16 December 1977, the story about this document was first published in many leading daily newspapers in Korea, including Choson Ilbo and Chungang Ilbo, as an overseas report from United Press, Stanford, California. The story goes that a professor named Bat’un Bonstain at Stanford University had discovered an “extremely secret document” (kukpi munso) which had “recently been declassified” by the US Government. The US Government’s code for this secret assassination plan, according to this story, was “ebo ledi” (presumably “Ever Ready”). In 1994, Kim Songjin, who was a former Minister of Culture and Information as well as President Park’s spokesperson in 1977, revealed that the real source of this document was the Park Government. To the best of my knowledge, archival US sources that are so far available do not mention anything about the so-called “Ever Ready” plan. For the Korean source, see Choson Ilbo and Chungang Ilbo 16 December 1977: 3; and Kim Songjin, 1994: 125. For a comprehensive summary of the archives of the US State Department, see Macdonald 1992, especially Chapter 2. 29 Yi Chongch’an was dismissed but was immediately sent to the US in de facto exile. Two other brigadier-generals, Yi Yongmun and Kim Chongp’yong, were relocated as commander of the Capital Corps and as deputy chief of the Army Training School on Cheju Island respectively. 30 Park had been promoted to probationary brigadier-general on 31 March 1953. Exactly a month after his regular promotion in November, Park was sent to the US for an advanced course at the US Army Artillery School, Fort Sill, Oklahoma. He returned on 27 June 1954. 31 Song resigned on 20 May; Lieutenant-General Kim Ch’anggyu, Air Force Chief of Staff was dismissed on 16 July; Lieutenant-General Yi Wunyong, the Navy Chief of Staff, and Major-General Kim Ch’angnam, Deputy Chief of Staff, were replaced in June and July respectively. Lieutenant-General Kim T’aesik, the Commandant of the Korean Marine Corps, was discharged in June.

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2 THE EVE OF THE MILITARY COUP: INTELLECTUAL DEBATE ON NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION 1 Sasanggye was founded in March 1953 by Chang Chunha, a leading intellectual, a staunch nationalist and a pro-democracy dissident especially against Park Chung Hee. In the late 1960s, Sasanggye is believed to have had more than 100,000 subscribers, but it was closed down by the Park Government in September 1970. Chang died under mysterious circumstances while mountain climbing on 17 August 1975. His death raised much suspicion, especially in the leading media, including Tonga Ilbo. Chang’s mysterious death was raised again in March 1993 by the Korean television station, SBS, which was then challenged by the investigation team of the monthly journal, Wolgan choson. Wolgan choson argued that Chang’s death was an “accident” (Yi Chonghun 1993: 162–97). 2 Kim had been missing since the March 15 demonstration, which had resulted in heavy casualties: eight were killed and seventy-two were injured (Hangminsa 1985: 24). 3 Rhee (1875–1965) was the sixth generation only son of a ruined yangban family. For details of Rhee’s background, see Allen 1960; Yi Hanu 1995. 4 This phrase largely referred to three privileged groups in the post-liberation period: men who were initially landlords who became conservative politicians, new rich businessmen or high-ranking bureaucrats. 5 The KDP was established with substantial American sponsorship on 16 September 1945. One of the characteristics of the KDP was its close connection with Tonga Ilbo, owned by Kim Songsu, one of the eight executives of the KDP and later its chairman. 6 For the background to Cho’s execution and the shutdown of the Progressive Party shortly before Cho’s execution in July 1956, see Kwon Taebok (1985). Chinbodang [The Progressive Party], Seoul: Chiyangsa. 7 President Rhee was 85 in 1960, and when he took his third oath of Presidency at the age of 81 in 1956, he was the oldest head of state in the world. 8 This report appears to have been of such great concern to the Chang Government that, soon after its publication in Sasanggye, Professor Scalapino received a personal letter from Prime Minister Chang asking for a copy which he requested to be sent to him, but under a US soldier’s name, in the Eighth Army in Seoul. Author interview with Professor Scalapino in Canberra, 13 December 1995. 9 The term “simin hyongmyong” certainly suggests the particular meaning of bourgeois revolution as it does in Japanese and in certain Chinese contexts. However, I have translated this term literally because no source suggests that Korean intellectuals at that time used Marxist terms such as “bourgeois revolution.” 10 This rally was organized by the Central Council of the National Self-Reliance Unification (Minjok chaju t’ongil chungang hyop’wuihoe) which consisted of many socialist and progressive reformist groups and pro-active youth clubs for unification, including the Student Federation of the April Revolution (Sawol hyongmyong haksaeng yonhaphoe). 11 Cho Yongsu, owner-president of the National Daily, and many other leading members of his company were among the victims of this purge. Cho was executed, others received heavy sentences and some died in prison. A prominent historian, Song Konho, noted that this purge led to the virtual disappearance of unification campaigns in Korea (Song Konho 1983: 150–1). 12 It is noteworthy that Hong’s mention of a feudal dynasty refers to the common perception of Korean history to the end of the Choson dynasty as feudal.

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13 14

15

16

17

18 19 20 21 22

23

24 25 26

However, this concept has been rejected in reference to Korean traditional society by most Western historians. This statement is very similar to An Ch’angho’s theory of self-strengthening expounded in July 1921 (An Tosan chonso 1990: 411–17). The term chuch’e was first used by Kim Il Sung in a speech delivered in December 1955. For Kim’s idea of chuch’e, see Hyongmyong kwa konsol e kwanhan Kim Il Sung tongji ui widaehan saenghwallyok, 1969; for analysis of the idea of chuch’e, see Dae-Sook Suh 1988: 301–13. I am indebted to Professor James B. Palais who has provided me with the authoritative encyclopedia explanation of the origin of the term chuch’e. According to Dai Kanwa Kiten (1:234), the locus classicus in the history of the Han dynasty, the term chuch’e had two meanings: (1) the body or essence of the emperor-king, or the ruler and (2) a thing which becomes something for which it is intended, or the essence of a thing (mono no hontai). The Japanese Kenkyusha dictionary translates hontai as substance, noumenon, entity, the thing itself, and the Japanese use shutai and shutaiteki in contra-distinction to taritsu to draw a contrast between the subject acting on its own and the subject acting because of the direction of someone else or something outside itself. This summary by Eastman is based on many intellectuals’ observations and remarks on the Chinese national character. The despair of Korean intellectuals about the Korean national character can also be compared with that of Malaysia’s Dr. Mahathir Mohamad (later to be Prime Minister) about Malay national character in his The Malay Dilemma (1970). Kim and his colonels initiated this petition after Kim had made a trip to Pusan to consult with Park Chung Hee on 6 May, a day after General Song had summoned all staff of Army Headquarters and publicly condemned Park’s letter to him (see previous chapter) as an act of insubordination that ought to be punished. The Korean military grew from a non-existent force in 1945 to 700,000 by 1955. Only seven of the Eighth Class had attained the rank of colonel by 1960. Ch’ungmujang kyoru literally means the resolution at the Ch’ungmu Restaurant. Hyon served in this position for only twenty days (from 23 August to 12 September 1960). He was appointed for a second time, however, as the Defense Minister on 30 January 1961. Lieutenant-General Yi Chongch’an was a highly respected “old-soldier” who, as Chief of Staff in the army (during 1952), maintained military neutrality under the Rhee regime. His defiance of President Rhee in Pusan in 1952 is particularly important for the understanding of his personal authority and reputation in the army, especially in respect of General Park Chung Hee who, under Yi’s direction, had attempted a military coup in 1952 (see previous chapter). Some argued that Park accepted his new appointment on the specific condition that he would be “allowed to exercise his own discretionary power, to some extent, to carry out the clean-up exercise in the Army” (Kim Hyonguk and Pak Sawol 1985: 36). For details of military factionalism instigated by President Rhee, see Kang Ch’angsong 1991: 331–56. For example, the army’s Chief of Staff, General Chang Toyong deceived his own mentor, Prime Minister Chang Myon, who had appointed him. For the former, see Chang Chunha 1961b: 34–5; for the latter, see Ham Sokhon1961c: 36–47.

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3 THE MILITARY JUNTA: A QUEST FOR LEGITIMACY AND CONTROL 1 Henry Kissinger would undoubtedly be the most publicly known practitioner of this approach. 2 General Chang Toyong was initially the titular chairman of the SCNR until his demise in early July. He was charged with involvement in an “anti-revolutionary plot” on 3 July 1961 and was sentenced to death on 10 January 1962. Chang was sent into exile in the US. 3 Memo, Robert Johnson to Rostow, 28 June 1961, NSF, Country, Box 127 and Seoul Embassy Telegram 88, 15 July 1961, NSF, Country, Box 128, JFK Library; also Seoul Embassy Telegram 23, 4 July 1961 and Department Telegram 32, 6 July 1961, NSF, Country, Box 128, JFK Library. 4 The Decree #6 dissolved 15 political parties and about 238 social organizations. 5 For more details, see Se-jin Kim 1971: 155–6. 6 Of these 76 percent, or 2,958 politicians, were allowed to appeal their case and, by February 1963, everyone except 269 had their ban on political activities lifted. 7 Its title changed in the 1980s to the Ministry of Trade and Industry. However, we will use the older term, MCI, in this study. 8 The equivalent level to “kwajang” in the technological category was “kijong” which was followed by “kijwa” (equivalent to “kyejang” in the administrative category). 9 Ham held an American Ph.D. in mechanical engineering and Song was a qualified electrical engineer. The four directors-general were: Yi T’aehyon, a chemical engineer; Ch’oe Hyongsop, with an American Ph.D. in metal engineering; Pak Yongch’ol, an electrical engineer; and Yi T’aeho, who formerly worked in the Bank of Korea. These four were in charge of the Bureaus of Industry, Mining, Electricity, and Commerce and Trade respectively. 10 For a detailed discussion on the influence of the US Air Force approach to these senior officers in the MCI, see O Wonch’ol HGKKS vol. 7: 53–4; also Ch’oe Hyongsop 1995: 21–6. 11 For Park’s thoughts on social and political training see Park Chung Hee 1962b: 201–2. 12 According to Han, the “new yangban” (sinhung yangban) includes a third elite group in addition to the two groups mentioned here. The third elite group is the so-called new rich known as “sinhung chaebol.” For details of Han’s characterization of the new yangban, see Han Wansang 1989: 205–8. 13 In my interviews with former high-ranking officials and technocrats of the Park era, the most frequently asked question was whether I was a graduate of Seoul National University. One official unwittingly said, “It’s hard to believe that you are not one of us!” For an analysis of Korean bureaucrats’ behavioral and value patterns in terms of familism and regionalism, see Wanki Paik 1978: 200–23. 14 Text in italics is my translation because this particular text was incorrectly translated in the English language version. The source version is: “Therefore, the key problems facing a free economic policy are the coordination and supervisory guidance by the state of mammoth economic strength” (Park Chung Hee 1962b: 217–18). 15 The Nathan Report was a post-war reconstruction program in Korea authored by the Washington-based consulting firm Robert Nathan Associates in 1953, and sponsored by the United Nations Korea Reconstruction Agency (UNKRA). For background on the Nathan Report, see Mason et al. 1980: 193 and 253.

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16 For a comprehensive analysis of the Chang Government’s development plan, see Satterwhite 1994. 17 A summary of this plan was published on 11 January. 18 There were two key reasons for the revision: US pressure to downsize and a critical shortage of government holdings of foreign currency. 19 For details of the “illicit wealth accumulation,” see Leroy P. Jones and Sakong Il 1980: 69–70 and 281–2. 20 Although interrogated and jailed briefly on his arrival from Tokyo, where he had stayed claiming poor health, Yi avoided the almost six weeks of detention that the rest of the illicit profiteers had received. 21 For details of the government’s protection of big-business proprietors, see Amsden 1989: 64–76. 22 The military junta’s seizure of Pusan Ilbo (Daily) and the MBC Broadcasting Company from Kim Chit’ae, a well-known chaebol owner in Pusan, is one example. Kim was forced to “donate” his two key companies to the May 16 Educational Foundation established immediately after the coup by Park and his revolutionary clique. 23 Here my term “US opposition” means the opposition from the Unites States Operation Mission (USOM), later known as USAID (United States Agency for International Development). For details of the court case and USOM’s opposition, see O Wonch’ol HGKKS vol. 1: 93–106. 24 For background on Park’s action leading to the construction of P’ohang Steel, see Kim Chongnyom 1990: 135–40. 25 For details of the secret agreement between Kim and Ôhira, see Yi Tosong 1995: 138. 26 The four scandals all connected to the KCIA included: the duty-free importation of 1,642 Datsun automobiles and their resale at twice the import price; the importation of 880 pinball machines also duty-free from Japan; the manipulation of the Korean stock market; and the construction of the Walker Hill Resort. 27 Administrative History, Department of State, January 1969: Chapter 7, Section F, Part 1, LBJ Library. 28 Memoranda: Komer to Rostow, 9 and 15 March 1961; Johnson to Rostow, 15 March 1961: all in NSF, Country, Box 127, JFK Library. 29 Seoul Embassy Telegram 1349, 11 April 1961, NSF, Country, Box 128, JFK Library. 30 Presidential Task Force on Korea, Report to the NSC, June 5, 1961, NSF, Country, Box 127, JFK Library. 31 Seoul Embassy Telegram 652, 31 October 1961, NSW, Country, Box 128, JFK Library. 32 Seoul Embassy Telegram 838, 29 April 1963, NSF, Country, Box 129, JFK Library. 33 Hilsman formed this view on the basis of Ambassador Berger’s briefing to President Kennedy on 31 May. See Memo. McGeorge Bundy to Press. 31 May 1963. NSF, Country, Box 127, JFK Library. 34 Seoul Embassy Telegram 90, 22 July 1963, NSF, Country, Box 129, JFK Library. 35 Department telegram 479 (Seoul)/1489 (Tokyo), 12 February 1963, NSF, Country, Box 129, JFK Library. 36 Department telegram 480 (Seoul), 12 February 1963, NSF, Country, Box 129, JFK Library 37 Administrative History, Department of State, January 1969: Chapter 7, Section F, Part 2b, LBJ Library.

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38 For details of Park’s interview on his Communist involvement and his relationship with Hwang T’aesong, see Kim Kyongnae 1963: 102–10. 39 Hwang was executed on 14 December 1963, just three days before Park’s inauguration to the presidency. 4 THE LEAP FORWARD: ALLIANCE WITH THE USA 1 Yi Tosong 1995: 32. 2 Memorandum, James C. Thomson to Rostow, Subject: Elements of Progress in Asia, 24 June 1966, Thomson Papers, Box 13, JFK Library. 3 For a detailed discussion on the Nixon Doctrine, see Kissinger 1979: 220–5. 4 For details of Kim’s response to the changing conditions of superpower détente politics, see Dae-sook Suh 1988: 253–76. 5 By utilizing his attendance in the first and the third US–Japan economic summits held in Tokyo in November 1961 and January 1964 respectively, Rusk practically set a timetable (albeit revised several times) for normalization between Japan and Korea. See Macdonald 1992: 133. 6 Memorandum of Conversation, Park–Rusk, 5 November 1961, NSF, Country, Box 127, JFK Library. 7 In addition to arranging Kim’s meeting with Sato and Shiina, Kishi also established, on 24 January 1964, a pro-South Korean lobby group entitled “Nik-Kan Mondai Kondankai” (Japan–Korea Cooperation Committee) from among his close supporters from the 1930s in Manchuria. 8 For Kim seeking help from Kishi, see source no. 56; for Kim’s meeting with Shiina and Sato, see sources no. 57 and 58 respectively. These sources are in Yi Tosong 1995: 235–48. 9 Memo. McGeorge Bundy to LBJ, 26 December 64, NSF, McGeorge Bundy Memos to the President, Box 2, LBJ Library. 10 See Korean translation in Yi Tosong, 1995: 292. 11 Seoul Embassy Telegram 784, 22 February 1965, NSF, Country, Box 256, LBJ Library. 12 Memorandum James C. Thomson to LBJ, Subject: Your meeting at 5 p.m. today with President Park, 17 May 1965, Thomson Papers, Box 12, JFK Library. 13 Memorandum of Conversation, Park and LBJ, 17 May 1965, NSF, Country, Korea, Box 254, LBJ Library. 14 Some examples are: Baldwin and Jones, year of publication not stated; James Otis, 1972: 18–20, 56–7. 15 For details of the Han’gyore weekly’s investigation into atrocities by Korean forces in Vietnam, see Han’gyore 21 and 27 April: 34–7; also Han’gyore Sinmun 19 April 2000. 16 Memorandum of conversation, Kennedy and ROK Ambassador Kim, 17 June 1963, NSF, Country, Box 127, JFK Library; see also MacDonald 1992: 102. 17 Memorandum of Conversation, Park–Kennedy, 14 and 15 November 1961, NSF, Country, Box 128, JFK Library. 18 This Memorandum, consisting of 14 points, was announced by US Ambassador Brown on 7 March 1966, and became one of the main sources for American commentators, including US officials, to characterize the Korean troops in the Vietnam War as “mercenary.” For details of the 1966 Brown Memorandum, see Baldwin and Jones, year of publication not stated: 7–14. 19 Baldwin and Jones: 37–8. 20 Seoul Embassy Telegram 2402, 2 November 1966, NSF, Country, Box 255, LBJ Library; also Chong Chaegyong 1994: 210.

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21 Seoul Embassy Telegram 1238, 9 September 1967, NSF, Box 91, LBJ Library. 22 They were in Canberra to attend the funeral of the Australian Prime Minister, Harold Holt, who had died in a swimming accident. Australia was also a member of Asian Pacific Council (ASPAC). 23 Memo, Rostow to LBJ, 7 December 1967, NSF, Country, Box 91, LBJ Library. 24 State Department Telegram 3104 (Seoul), 23 December 1967, NSF, Country, Box 91, LBJ Library. 25 For a detailed account see, among others, Tonga Ilbo 22 January to 28 February. 26 Administrative History, Department of State, January 1969: Chapter 7, Section F, Part 6, LBJ Library. 27 “Excerpts from Unofficial account of President Nixon’s Meeting with Reporters,” New York Times 26 July 1969. 28 “Koreagate,” for which Pak Tongson and Sun Myung Moon were responsible, was the most publicized example. For details of “Koreagate,” see Robert Boettcher with Gordon L. Freedman 1980. 29 Park reportedly made this appeal to Japanese officials who were visiting Seoul for the Korea–Japan ministerial meeting on 21 July 1970, ten days after the formal announcement of US withdrawal of its troops from Korea). 30 For details of the “10-point list” and the text of US concessions see Larsen and Collins 1975: 126 for the former and 128–9 for the latter. 31 According to Kim Chongnyom who also attended, Park had postponed the entire two weeks of his scheduled commitments prior to the meeting and prepared himself for the negotiations with Agnew.

5 GLOBAL CHANGE: THE NATION IN TRANSITION, 1968–72 1 These threats included the possible use of nuclear weapons as a result of SinoSoviet border confrontations in 1967–71. 2 In his campaign in the city of Chinju, North Kyongsang Province, on 7 October 1963. 3 Chang and Pak were appointed on 10 and 11 May respectively. 4 The five ministers were: Major General Chong Naehyok, 20 May 1961 to 10 July 1962; Yu Ch’angsun, 10 July 1962 to 8 February 1963; Pak Ch’unghun, 8 February to 10 August 1963; Kim Hun, 10 August 1963 to 17 December 1963; Yi Pyongho, 17 December 1963 to 11 May 1964. 5 Of the seven changes of minister, Kim Yut’aek was appointed three times (July 1961 to March 1962, July 1962 to February 1963 and December 1963 to May 1964); Song Yoch’an’s appointment was from March 1962 to June 1962; Kim Hyonch’ol’s from June 1962 to July 1962; Yu Ch’angsun’s from February 1963 to April 1963; and Won Yongsok’s from April 1963 to December 1963. 6 For details of Park’s monthly export performance meeting, see Jones and Sakong Il 1980. 7 Pak and Kim were appointed to their respective positions on 3 October 1967. Pak resigned his position in June 1969, just four months before Kim became chief of staff in the Blue House. 8 Chang, a well-known financial expert and Assistant Vice Minister in the Ministry of Finance, was specially hand-picked by Park as his Senior Economic Secretary in charge of foreign loan management. Park created Chang’s position primarily to clean up insolvent firms and associated corruption. For details of Chang’s account, see Chang Tokchin 1969: 99–108. Chang was also related to Park by marriage.

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9 Kim (1923–72) served in this position for more than three years from June 1963 to September 1966 when he was promoted to Minister of Finance for just three months from September to December 1966 before his appointment as President Park’s senior economic secretary and tenth minister of the EPB from June 1969 to January 1972 when he died of cancer. According to leading daily newspaper Chungang Ilbo, Kim was one of the three most important economic/industry policy-makers under Park, and he was also Park’s personal economic tutor as well as friend. The two others were Kim Chongnyom and O Wonch’ol. Kim studied law in Japan and economics at the State University in Missouri and Acron Graduate School of Economics at Ohio State University. 10 The five ministers involved in this period were: (a) Pak Tonggyu from December 1963 to June 1964; (b) Hong Sunghui from June 1964 to November 1965; (c) Song Ponggyun from November 1965 to January 1966 and from December 1966 to October 1969; (d) Kim Chongnyom from January 1966 to September 1966; (e) Kim Hang’yol from September 1966 to December 1966. 11 Min Pokki, Minister of Justice, was the other minister. Both ministers had no direct link to the scandal. 12 Kim resumed this position in December 1965, two months after the DRP began its planning for the 1967 elections. 13 Kim left politics altogether by resigning from all official positions, including the chairmanship of the DRP, as well as from his membership of the party, which automatically disqualified him from his seat in the National Assembly. 14 In January 1969, the DRP formally announced its intention to seek a constitutional amendment. 15 For details and implications of the incident, see Ye Ch’unho 1985b: 198–210. 16 The DRP passed the Constitutional Amendment Bill using “blitz” tactics at 2 am in the annex hall while the opposition members occupied the main hall and attempted to prevent the passage of the bill. This blitz method was again used by the DRP to pass a number of Special Measures including the “Law of Special Measures for the Security of the Nation” on 27 December 1971. 17 For an analysis of the 1971 presidential election, see Eugene Kim 1972: 224. 18 On 16 November 1970, three days after Chon T’aeil’s death, Seoul National University students formed the Student League for the Protection of the People’s Rights. 19 For a discussion of the August 3 Decree and its socio-economic impact, see Jung-un Woo 1991: 111–13; Kim Chongnyom 1990: 255–78; Clifford 1994: 102–4. 20 The second attempt was foiled on 22 June 1969. A team of three North Korean commandos attempted to set off a bomb in the National Cemetery, but failed to achieve their mission to assassinate government officials, including President Park, when it exploded prematurely. Park and the officials had been scheduled to attend a memorial service for the Korean War on 25 June. On 9 October 1983, North Korean commandos killed 17 Korean Government officials and four Burmese in Rangoon’s Martyrs’ Mausoleum. This was the fourth and most violent assassination attempt. 21 This was Yi’s last position. It ended on 3 December 1973. 22 Hwang Yongju, a close friend of President Park, and President of the Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation, was arrested for his article published in the November 1964 edition of Sedae (Generation). In it, Hwang argued for the signing of a non-aggression treaty between North and South Korea, the reduction of armaments, the withdrawal of US troops in Korea and interchange between the two Koreas. Hwang was arrested under the charge of violating

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anti-Communist Law. Assemblyman So was also arrested for his public statement that he would meet the North Korean authorities if his party came into power. 23 The communiqué consists of seven articles and the three principles described above are in the first. For the text of the communiqué, see Nambuk taehwa paekso (White Paper on the South–North dialogue) 1975. 6 SAEMAUL MOVEMENT: FROM TOP-DOWN RURAL DEVELOPMENT TO YUSIN REFORM 1 The surplus cement problem was brought to Park’s attention by none other than Kim Songgon, an executive member of Park’s ruling party and the owner of the Ssangyong Cement Company. 2 The government also denounced the social diseases of inertia and indolence while condemning old village habits such as gambling, drinking and waste. In this regard, the Saemaul Women’s Club was particularly active in its campaign for the abolition of these habits. For details on this subject, see Jin Hwan Park 1981: 142–3. 3 This four-year government plan closely resembled the Plan for the Economic Resuscitation of Agrarian and Fishing Villages which the Saito Government in Japan had implemented in the 1930s. The similarity of the two programs is particularly notable in two respects: first, both aimed to stimulate a spirit of self-assistance in resuscitation (jiriki kosei in Japanese and charyok kaengsaeng in Korean) among the peasantry and, second, both aimed to inject elements of a well-planned and organized local economy into the village (see Berger 1977: 69). For an outline of the Park Government’s planning strategy, see PPCHS vol. 6 1969: 318–20. 4 It should be noted that although Park specified these qualities as epitomizing the New Village Spirit, he also frequently referred to other qualities under this terminology. 5 The Ministry of Agriculture and Fishery, Handbook of Agricultural and Fishery Statistics 1979, as cited by Sigurdson and Young Chul Kim 1981: 211. 6 The other three groups were the New Democratic Party (Simindang) with fiftythree seats, the Democratic Unification Party (Minju T’ongil tang) with two seats and independents with nineteen seats (Chungang son’go kwalli wiwonhoe 1992). 7 For studies of the North and South Korean regimes’ political education, see Pae Ch’anbok 1988. 8 “Pan” is equivalent to terms such as “tong” and “li.” They were first used in 1917 by the Japanese colonial government to describe their effective control of the Korean people’s socio-political activities. 9 Here the term “Headquarters in the Blue House” refers to the Presidential Secretariat responsible for State Affairs. 10 For details on these Saemaul sub-organizations, see Sung Joe K.S. Hahn 1981: 113–14. 11 For a detailed analysis of the Factory Saemaul Movement, see Im Kyongt’aek 1991: 130–71. 12 This slogan, according to Pak Chinhwan, is an adaptation of Park’s initial phrase for the Factory Saemaul Movement: “Kongjangul naejip-gach’i, chongopwonul kajok-gach’i” (Factories like my home, employees like family). Author interview with Pak Chinhwan, Park’s former Economic Special Assistant in charge of the Saemaul Movement, May 1994.

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13 I emphasize both oral and documentary evidence mainly because each represents a quite different period in terms of sources: regarding the former, I have used personal interviews conducted during my trips to Seoul in the spring of 1994 and 1995; regarding the latter, see Jin Hwan Park 1981: 156–7. 14 I set 1968 as the starting point of his mass movement mainly because it was in that year that Park’s campaign for the increase of rural income began to stir the masses’ energy and attention. 15 “Ch’ollima” literally means “horse of a thousand ri.” According to North Korean publications, this was a legendary horse capable of running one thousand ri per day. The Movement was launched in December 1956, but did not get into full swing until March 1959 when it was intensified through the “Ch’ollima work team movement.” 16 The anti-Yusin campaign led by thirty leading civic leaders under the caption, “Campaign for the collection of one million signatures in support of the petition for the revision of the Constitution” in December 1973 reflected the deepening of anti-Yusin forces. 7 THE YUSIN STATE 1 This revolutionary expression from the Japanese Meiji era, I was told, was frequently quoted by Park during the Yusin reform, particularly in reference to heavy and chemical industrialization. Author interview with O Wonch’ol, May 1995. 2 At the same time, Chief Secretary, Kim Chongnyom, ordered the President’s Senior Secretaries to examine the overall impact if Korea ended its relations with Japan. 3 Park’s grief is vividly depicted in his personal diary, especially in over twenty poems that Park wrote for his wife within a year of her death (Yugyong chaedan 1990: 82–91). 4 This Conference later changed its name to Christian Conference of Asia. 5 Two other Senior Secretaries, Kim Hang’yol, responsible for No.1 Economy, and Yu Sungwon, responsible for Civil Affair Appeals, ranked equal to viceminister. 6 For more discussion on the SES role in defense industry development, see Chapter 8. 7 The PSA responsible for private affairs was not created until July 1971. 8 By 1976, Park himself openly promoted the Confucian idea of “ch’unghyo sasang” (loyalty to the state and filial piety) for the people’s spiritual and ideological “armament.” For a detailed discussion on Park’s promotion of “ch’unghyo sasang,” see Hak-kyu Sohn 1988: 170. 9 I use “Park-style” to refer to Park’s personal as well as presidential leadership style since the early 1960s and “Blue House-style” to refer to the wider executive style that developed in the 1970s. In practice, however, these two terms are often used interchangeably. 10 For a comprehensive analysis of the chaebol and their background and performance in Korea’s rapid development, see Myung Hun Kang 1996. 11 During the 1960s, political funds were mainly managed by four key players: Kim Songgon, Chairman of the Finance Committee of the DRP, Kim Hyonguk, head of the KCIA, Yi Hurak, presidential chief of staff, and Chang Kiyong, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the EPB. 12 See events in 1963 for Park’s fear that the US might leave him defenseless before his domestic enemies in the same way that President Ngo Dinh Diem of

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13 14

15 16 17

18 19

the Republic of Vietnam had been left defenseless. For details of American involvement in Vietnam, see Charlton & Moncrieff 1978. Ho served as head of state in the transitional period after the fall of the Syngman Rhee Government. See Chapter 2. Confidential files of political affairs produced by the Presidential Secretariat in 1976, for example, are crammed with investigation reports such as “Korea–US Relations,” “Pak Tongson Incident,” “Myongdong Cathedral Incident” and the Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s “Unification Church Issues,” a scandal closely related to Koreagate. See Presidential Secretariat, “Oegyo kwan’gye pogoso” (Diplomatic Report), “Hanmi kwan’gye” [Korea–US relations], “Pak Tongson sagon” (Pak Tongson incident), “Myongdong songdang sagon” (Myongdong Cathedral incident) and “T’ongilgyo munje” (Unification Church problems), file nos. 82–593, 82–594, 82–595 and 82–596 respectively. These reports are also on microfilm no. 0949, CBKPS (Government Archives), Seoul, 1977. This challenge ultimately led to Carter’s dismissal of Singlaub from his Korean post. Chungyo chongmu pogo (Confidential Political Affairs report) no. 125, Ambassador Kim Yongsik (in USA) to Presidential Secretariat, 21 September 1977. Chongmu (Political Affairs), file no. 82–603, CBKPS. The economic system under these three was known as the “Three-Men System” (samin ch’eje). Both Nam and Kim Yonghwan served for four years and three months, from September 1974 to December 1978, and became the longest serving Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister. For details of labor disputes during the Yusin era, see Han’guk minju nodongja yonhap 1994. In fact, the last words Chon T’aeil shouted just before the flames consumed him were: “Don’t mistreat young girls!” The number of females employed in the light industry sector, including textiles, clothing and leather, increased more than fivefold from 128,470 to 689,672, between 1963 and 1978. See Sim Young-hee 1994: 46. 8 PRESIDENTIAL GUIDANCE AND HEAVY AND CHEMICAL INDUSTRIALIZATION

1 The “Four-Member Committee” was established to carry out the construction of the defense industry as Park had directed. The three other members were: Hwang Pyongt’ae, Assistant Minister in charge of Management, EPB; Sin Wonsik, Assistant Minister in charge of War Supply Loans, Ministry of Defense; and Sim Munt’aek, Deputy Chief of the KIST. 2 In contrast to O’s account, Kim stated that O called Kim and requested a meeting which took place as noted above. See Kim Chongnyom 1990: 322. 3 This meeting, although totally unscheduled, continued for more than four hours. 4 This is a summary of my lengthy and numerous interviews with O in May 1994 and January 2000. For full details of the points, see O Wonch’ol, HGKKS vol. 5 1996: 24–5 and vol. 7 1999: 388–9. 5 The SES, as a part of the Presidential Secretariat, had been abolished in November 1969 soon after Kim Chongnyom was appointed chief of staff. O’s office, the Second Economic Secretariat, was managed by a small elite team of six members including himself. Of these, three officers, Kim Kwangmo, Yi Sokp’yo and Kwon Kwangwon, were from the MCI. 6 Kim’s dismissal represented a fundamental shift in Park’s economic policy.

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7 8 9

10 11 12

13 14 15

16

17 18 19

20 21

Politically, however, it was rooted in Park’s need to balance his patronage of his home region, Kyongsang Province. As discussed in the Introduction, the government’s top-secret blueprint for Korea’s HCI program had this same title. To avoid confusion, therefore, I will refer to O’s private paper as “O Wonch’ol Collection.” Chunghwahak kongop e ttarun kongop kujo kaep’yonnon, hereafter CKTKKK: 9. Three extra members were added to the HCIPC on 14 May 1973. They were Chong Tomun, President of the No. 2 Integrated Steelworks; An Kyongmo, President of the Korea Water Resources Development Corporation; and Kim Manche, head of the Korea Development Institute. The Investigation and Research Committee consisted of eight sub-committees, including the six sub-committees mentioned above. Similar criticisms against O by EPB senior bureaucrats are well known in the media. See Chungang Ilbo 25 October 1991. Kim was one of the seventeen Korean officials killed by a bomb detonated by North Korean Army major Zin Mo on 9 October 1983 at the Martyrs’ Mausoleum at the National Cemetery in Rangoon, Burma. President Chun was the intended target, but he escaped unhurt because North Koreans mistakenly detonated the bomb at the arrival of the Korean ambassador. For detailed accounts of this bombing incident, see Oberdorfer 1997: 140–4; Clifford 1994: 204–5. In 1985, Korea experienced a budget surplus for the first time in its modern history. In October 1969, when he replaced Minister Kim Chongnyom, Yi brought a team of his own staff who subsequently took over several key posts in the MCI. The three other hand-picked technocrats were: Kim Son’gil as director-general of the Trade and Commerce Promotion Department (t’ongsang chinhungguk); Yi Manyong as director-general of the Industry Planning Department (kongop kihoekkuk); and Kum Chinho as director-general of the Small and Medium Industry Department (chungso kiopkuk). Of these, Kim and Yi were from the Ministry of Science and Technology and Kum Chinho from the Ministry of Government Administration. As late as 22 February 1971, the EPB announced the official position concerning government intervention in the country’s economic management, namely the “principle of non-governmental economic operation” as opposed to “government-led economic operation.” See the government announcement in Tonga Ilbo 22 February 1971; also Seoul kyongje sinmun 21 January, 23 February and 21 December 1970. This number is based on the joint press communiqué of Yi Nakson, Minister of the MCI, and Frederic B. Dent, US Secretary of Commerce, made in Seoul on 19 July 1973. See Appendix. O’s paper entitled “Economic development and industrialization in Korea” was delivered by Professor Paek Yonghun at Chungang University. Kim Chongnyom relates that because these companies participated in the defense industry development as an act of “patriotism,” he was “filled with deep sadness” in the 1980s when some of these companies were “handed over to someone else” as a result of the government’s loss of interest in defense industry development (1997: 135). For details of the North Korean tunnels and the Axe Murders, see Oberdorfer 1997: 56–9 and 74–83. O Wonch’ol HGKKS vol. 7 1999: 415–18.

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22 This was undoubtedly the most frequently quoted saying this author heard over the years from Park’s policy-makers and close supporters. Emphasis added. 9 THE MILITARY MODERNIZATION, 1974–9 1 This was Park’s favorite expression during 1978 and 1979 when his confidence rose, as Korea’s defense industries and heavy and chemical industries moved closer to completion. 2 The Five-Member Committee subsequently twice changed its membership. First, in July 1975 the FMC became the “Six-Member Committee” when it included the deputy minister of the EPB. Second, on 19 January 1978, it became the “Ten-Member Committee” (TMC) when four extra members were added. The extra members were the head of the office of administrative coordination in the Prime Minister’s Office (Kung’mu ch’ongni haengjong chojong siljang) and three assistant deputy ministers of the MOND in charge of planning and management (Kwalli ch’agwanpo), manpower (Illyok ch’agwanpo) and the defense industry (Pangwi sanop ch’agwanpo) respectively. On 23 November 1978, the TMC was renamed “Promotional Committee for Reinforcing War Capability” (Chollyok chunggang saop ch’ujin wiwonhoe). 3 Major-General Kim Taenyon, Secretary of the MOND, was also a member of the FMC. 4 Ch’oe was the first civilian to be promoted to deputy minister of the MOND. He was also one of three high-ranking technocrats in their thirties promoted by Park after the Yusin system was promulgated in 1972. 5 The “Measures for Weapons Supply with Foreign Loans” also included eight separate terms and conditions for security purposes. For details, see O Wonch’ol, HGKKS vol. 7, 1999: 242; also Kim Chongnyom 1997: 296–7. 6 Two Ministers, So Chongch’ol and No Chaehyon, represented the MOND from December 1973 to December 1977 and from December 1977 to December 1979. 7 Both Chun and Roh were released by President Kim Dae Jung in January 1998. “Supreme Court Upholds Rulings on Chun, Roh.” Online. Available HTTP: http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/kh0418/m0418101.html (accessed 10 November 1999). 8 I am indebted to Dr. George Aditjondro for suggesting these terms to characterize Park-style dictatorship. 9 The other seven “corrupt officials” included Yi Hurak, former KCIA head and the president’s chief of staff, and Pak Chonggyu, former head of the presidential bodyguard. For details of the corruption charges, see Far Eastern Economic Review 14 July 1980. 10 In February 1985, however, a new major opposition party, New Korea Democratic Party (NKDP: Sin Han’guk Minjudang), was formed and both Kims, who had then been cleared of their respective charges, were signed on as honorary executive advisers to the NKDP. For the background to the political purge carried out through the 5.17 Measure and subsequent political change, see Ilpyong J. Kim and Young Whan Kihl 1988, especially chapters 1, 2 and 5. 11 The sum of $4.5 million, including the bribe, was officially announced by the Martial Law Enforcement Headquarters on 19 June 1980. For details of the corruption charges, see Chosun Ilbo 19 June 1980. There are some researchers who, as recently as 2002, still quote this announcement without any explanation of the political upheaval behind the arrest of these so-called “corrupt offi-

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12 13

14 15

16 17 18 19

20 21 22 23

24

cials.” This arrest was a central part of the second military coup led by Chun Doo Hwan and his military clique. See David C. Kang 2002: 105–6. Park originally made this statement in his interview with US columnist Robert Novak in early June 1975. Memorandum of Conversation, President Park and Secretary of Defense, James Schlesinger. 26 August 1975. NSF. Country. Box 9. GF Library. At this meeting, Park was accompanied by his Senior Protocol Secretary, Choi Gwangsoo (Ch’oe Kwangsu), and Schlesinger by Ambassador Richard L. Sneider. For the Korean source, see No Chaehyon 1992: 14 and for the US source, see Oberdorfer 1997: 72. Reports and Recommendations of Jan M. Lodal and Dave Elliott, NSC, to Secretary [Henry] Kissinger. 11 July 1975 [Declassified on 27 May 1997]. Country. Box 2, file no. 9; also Seoul Embassy Telegram to Secretary of State, Washington D.C., American Embassy, Ottawa July 1975. NSF. Country. Box 9. GF Library [Declassified 29 January 1998]. Reports and Recommendations of Jan M. Lodal and Dave Elliott, NSC, to Secretary [Henry] Kissinger. 11 July 1975. Country Box 2, file no. 9. No Chaehyon 1992: 82–3. No’s book was originally featured in Chungang Ilbo under the same title during 1992. See Korea-State Department Telegrams To SECSTATE-NODIS, no. 14, April 1976. NSF. Box 9. GF Library [Declassified on 8 June 2001]. George S. Springsteen, Executive Secretary of the Department of State, to Lieutenant General Brent Scowcroft, 4 February 1975. Country File: Korea (3), National Security Adviser: Presidential Country Files for East Asia and the Pacific, GF Library. George S. Springsteen to Lieutenant General Brent Scowcroft. For details of both Park’s and Carter’s terms and agreements concerning the US troop withdrawal program, see Oberdorfer 1997. Gregory Henderson has characterized this massive purge accompanied by Chun’s military coups of December 12 and May 17 as “outranking the distant Korean war.” See Gregory Henderson 1988: 35. “Kim Chongnyom chongch’i hoegorok. 19, 5-gong chonggwon kwao” (Kim Chongnyom political memoirs, no. 19, the failure of the fifth Republic). Online. Available HTTP: http://news.joongang.co.kr/cgi-bin/new (accessed 12 November 1999). “Approach to South Korea on Reprocessing,” Jan M. Lodal and Dave Elliott, NSC, to Secretary Kissinger, 24 July 1975, Box 2, file no. 9, GF Library. 10 CONCLUSION: THE LEGACY OF THE PARK ERA

1 John McKay offers an insightful analysis on this issue. See “The restructuring of the Korean economy since 1986 and the onset of the financial crisis: the industrial–financial nexus.” Online. Available HTTP: http://www.monash. edu.au/mai (accessed 11 November 2002). 2 The average Korean life expectancy, according to data released by the National Statistical Office in December 2001, is 72.1 years for males and 79.5 years for females (Korea Now 2001). 3 See National Security Decision Memorandum (NSDM) 282 and 309, National Security Study Memoranda and Decision Memoranda, 1974–1977, Box 1 (declassified April 1997); NSDM 211, 226, National Security Study Memoranda and Decision Memoranda, 1974–1977, Box 2 (declassified in February 1995), GF Library.

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4 Correspondence. Carlyle E. Maw, Under Secretary of State for Security Assistance to James T. Lynn, December 30, 1975, File 13, Box 9, GF Library. 5 Memorandum. George A. Springsteen, Executive Secretary, Department of State to [Lieutenant-General] Scowcroft, February 4, 1975, Box 9, GF Library. 6 Deputy Secretary of Defense Clements: Memorandum for Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, September 19 1974, Box 9 (declassified 25 May 1999), GF Library. 7 NSC Meeting File, December 15, 1976, Box 2 (declassified 25 May 1999), GF Library. *Principal participants: The President, The Vice President, Secretary of State Kissinger, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, James T. Lynn (Director, Office of Management and Budget), John Lehman (Acting Director, Arms Control and Disarmament Agency), General George S. Brown (Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff), Deputy Director of Central Intelligence Enno Knoche, Assissant to the President for National Security Affairs Brent Scowcroft. 8 NSC Meeting File, December 15, 1976, Box 2 (declassified 25 May 1999), GF Library. My emphasis. 9 Alexandre Y. Mansourov, “Security dilemma, war trap, and the South protectorate over the North,” North-East Asia Peace and Security Network, Special Report, 10 February 2003. Online. Available HTTP: http://nautilus.org/fora/security/02138A_Mansourov.html (accessed 15 February 2003).

248

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abbreviations CBKPS CKTKKK

HGKKS HKHPW

MHHCPW

ONP PPCHS

SCFNR

TCTRAI

Chongbu kirok pojonso (Government Archives), Seoul, Korea Chunghwahak kongop e ttarun kongop kujo kaep’yonnon (On the Restructuring of Industry in Accordance with the Declaration on Heavy and Chemical Industry Policy) O Wonch’ol’s memoirs, Han’gukhyong kyongje konsol (Korean Model Economic Construction), 7 vols Han’guk kunsa hyongmyongsa p’yonch’an wiwonhoe, Han’guk kunsa hyongmyongsa che 1-chip (The History of the Korean Military Revolution, vol.1), 1963 Minju Han’guk hyongmyong ch’ongsa (A History of the Democratic Korean Revolution), Seoul: Minju Han’guk hyongmyong ch’ongsa p’yonch’an wiwonhoe, 1962 Park Chung Hee. Our Nation’s Path: Ideology of Social Reconstruction, (1962b) 2nd edition, Seoul: Hollym Cooperation, 1970 Taet’ongnyong pisosil (Presidential Secretariat). Park Chung Hee Taet’ongnyong yonsol munjip (President Park Chung Hee’s Speeches), 16 vols. From che 1 chip (vol. 1) published in 1965 to che 16 chip published in 1979. Noted as PPCHS, Che 1 Chip, 2 Chip and so on Supreme Council for National Reconstruction, Military Revolution in Korea, Seoul: Supreme Council for National Reconstruction, 1961 Park Chung Hee. The Country, The Revolution And I, translated by Leon Sinder; no mention of the publisher or printing date. This book in Korean was published in September 1963b

Unpublished public records: Korea Ch’ongwadae (Blue House) (1973) “Chung kongop ch’ujin wiwonhoe che 1 ch’a hoeui kyolkwa pogo” (A report on the outcomes of the second meeting of the Heavy and Chemical Industry Furtherance Committee), 5 February. Ch’ongwadae (Blue House) (1973) “kongop kujo kaep’yon e taehan hoeui kyolkwa

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pogo” (A report on the outcomes of the meeting on the reorganization of industry structure), 3 February. Chunghwahak kongop ch’ujin wiwonhoe kihoektan (Heavy and Chemical Industry Promotion Committee Planning Corps) (1973) Chunghwahak kongop yuksong kyehoek (The Development Plan for the Heavy and Chemical Industries). Seoul: June. Chunghwahak kongop ch’ujin wiwonhoe kihoektan (Heavy and Chemical Industry Promotion Committee Planning Corps) (1979) Han’guk kongophwa palchon e kwanhan chosa yon’gu: chongch’aek kyolchong kwajong ui imyonsa (An Examination of Korea’s Industrialization Development: An Inner History of the PolicyMaking Process). Chungyo chongmu pogo (Confidential Political Affairs report) no. 125, Ambassador Kim Yongsik (in USA) to Presidential Secretariat, 21 September 1977, Chongmu (Political Affairs) file no. 82–603, CBKPS. Kyongje 2 (Second Economic Secretariat) (January 1973), Pogoso (1) – Chunghwahak (Heavy and chemical industries). Kyongje che 1 (First Economic Secretariat) (August 1973), “Chunghwahak kongop ch’ujinul wihan kiop kyongyong sich’aek” (Industry management policy for furthering heavy and chemical industries). Taet’ongnyong pisosil (Presidential Secretariat) (June 1973), “Chunghwahak kongop t’uja yuch’i ch’ulchang pogo” (A report on the business trip to promote investment in heavy and chemical industry development). Taet’ongnyong pisosil (Presidential Secretariat) (1973) Chunghwahak kongop kaebal kusang – chagum chodal ul chungsim uirohan – (Planning of heavy and chemical industry development – emphasis on raising capital). Taet’ongnyong pisosil (Presidential Secretariat) (1975) Oegyo kwan’gye pogoso (Diplomatic Report), files. 82–593, 82–594, 82–595 and 82–596, CBKPS. Taet’ongnyong pisosil (Presidential Secretariat) (1977) “Oegyo kwan’gye pogoso” (Diplomatic Report), “Hanmi kwan’gye” (Korea–US relations), “Pak Tongson sagon” (Pak Tongson incident), “Myongdong songdang sagon” (Myongdong Cathedral incident) and “T’ongilgyo munje” (Unification Church problems), file no. 82–593, 82–594, 82–595 and 82–596 respectively. *These reports are also on microfilm no. 0949, CBKPS.

Unpublished public records: USA John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Boston, Massachusetts. National Security Files (NSF): Box 13, 127, 128 and 129. Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library, Austin, Texas. National Security Files (NSF): Box 2, 91, 254, 255, 256. Administrative History, Department of State: Chapter 7 (East Asia) Gerald Ford Library, Ann Arbor, Michigan. National Security Files (NSF): Box 1, 2, 9 and 12.

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Interviews Cho Kapche. Editor-in-Chief, Wolgan Choson (Monthly Choson). May 1994, December 1997, November 2002. Choe Hyongsop. Minister of Science and Technology (1971–8). May 1994. Kim Chongnyom. Chief of Staff, Blue House, 1969–78. May 1994 and January 2000. Kim Chongp’il. Former Prime Minister and currently president of the United Liberal Democrats (Chaminryon). January 2000. Kim Chaehong. Senior reporter of political affairs, Tonga Ilbo. May 1994. Kim Songjin. President’s spokesman and Minister of Culture and Information (1973–9). May 1994. Naeilsaeng choguk kwa minjok ul wihayo (My Life for My Fatherland and the People): Photograph Collection of Park Chung Hee (1999), Seoul: Hyongson. O Wonchol. Senior Economic Secretary in the Blue House (1971–9). May and October 1994 and 1995, October 1996, November 1997, November 1998, January 2000 and November 2002. Pak Chiman. President Park’s son and the Chairman of EG Corporation. November 1997. Pak Chinhwan. The Blue House Special Advisor (1973–9). May 1994. Pak Kunhye. President Park’s daughter and former deputy president of the Grand National Party (Hannara-dang). January 2000. Pak Hwanyong. President Park’s personal driver for 20 years from 1959 until Park’s assassination on 29 October 1979. Pak Sanggil. President Park’s spokesperson (1963–5). January 2000 (telephone interview). EPB Senior Economic Advisor (anonymous). October 1996. Robert A. Scalapino, Robson Research Professor of Government Emeritus, December 1995. Yi Kwanghyong. President’s Personal Aide (1974–9). May June 1994, October 1996, November 1997, November 1998 and January 2000. Yu Hansik, Senior Vice President, KIA Heavy Industries, Ch’angwon, Kyongsangpuk-do. January 2000. Yu Hyogin, Senior Political Secretary (1973–80). May 1994.

Writings, speeches and photographs of Park Chung Hee “Pak Chong Hui chon taet’ongnyong i chikchopssun ch’ongwadae ilgi” (Blue House Diary Written by Former President Park Chung Hee) (1989) Minju Ilbo (Daily), 21 November 1989 to 30 December. Park Chung Hee (1962a) Uri minjok ui nagalkil (Our Nation’s Path), Seoul: Tonga ch’ulp’ansa. —— (1962b) Our Nation’s Path: Ideology of Social Reconstruction, (1962) 2nd edition, Seoul: Hollym (Noted as ONP). —— (1963a) Kukka wa hyongmyong kwa na (The Nation, Revolution, And I), Seoul: Hyangmunsa. —— (1963b) The Country, The Revolution And I, translated by Leon Sinder, no mention of the publisher or printing date. It appears to be the 1st edition,

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because the Australian National University Library marked its receiving date as October (Noted as TCTRAI). —— (1971) Minjok ui choryok (The Nation’s Intrinsic Energy), Seoul: Kwangmyong ch’ulp’ansa, —— (1978) Minjok chunghung ui kil (The Path to National Restoration), Kwangmyong ch’ulp’ansa. —— (1979a) Korea Reborn: A Model for Development, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice/Hall International, Inc. —— (1979b) Saemaul: Korea’s New Community Movement, Seoul: Korea Textbook Co. Ltd. —— (1993) “Chal sara pojanun undong” (A movement aimed at a better living), in Choson Ilbo (ed.) Pirok: han’guk ui taet’ongnyong (Secret Records: Korea’s Presidents), Seoul: Choson Ilbosa, pp. 520–1. —— (1997) “Naui sonyon sijol” (When I was boy), in Kim Chongsin, Pak Chong Hui taet’ongnyong kwa chubyon saramdul (President Park Chung Hee and His Inner Circle), Seoul: Han’guk nondan, pp. 245–68. Taet’ongnyong pisosil (Presidential Secretariat), Park Chung Hee Taet’ongnyong yonsol munjip (President Park Chung Hee’s Speeches), che 1 chip – cha 1963 nyon 12 wol – chi 1964 nyon 12 wol (vol. 1 from December 1963 to December 1964), Seoul: Tonga ch’ulp’ansa, 1965. —— (1966) Park Chung Hee Taet’ongnyong yonsol munjip, che 2 chip (vol. 2), Tonga ch’ulp’ansa. —— (1967) Park Chung Hee Taet’ongnyong yonsol munjip, che 3 chip (vol. 3), Tonga ch’ulp’ansa. —— (1968) Park Chung Hee Taet’ongnyong yonsol munjip, che 4 chip (vol.4), Tonga ch’ulp’ansa. —— (1969) Park Chung Hee Taet’ongnyong yonsol munjip, che 5 chip (vol. 5), Tonga ch’ulp’ansa. Each of the above publications is a January to December edition. —— Park Chung Hee Taet’ongnyong yonsol munjip, che 6 chip (vol. 6), no date, Tonga ch’ulp’ansa. —— (1970) Park Chung Hee Taet’ongnyong yonsol munjip, che 7 chip (vol. 7). —— (1971) Park Chung Hee Taet’ongnyong yonsol munjip, che 8 chip (vol. 8). —— (1972) Park Chung Hee Taet’ongnyong yonsol munjip, che 9 chip (vol.9). —— (1973) Park Chung Hee Taet’ongnyong yonsol munjip, che 10 chip (vol. 10). —— (1974) Park Chung Hee Taet’ongnyong yonsol munjip, che 11 chip (vol. 11). —— (1975) Park Chung Hee Taet’ongnyong yonsol munjip, che 12 chip (vol. 12). —— (1976) Park Chung Hee Taet’ongnyong yonsol munjip, che 13 chip (vol. 13). —— (1977) Park Chung Hee Taet’ongnyong yonsol munjip, che 14 chip (vol. 14). —— (1979) Park Chung Hee Taet’ongnyong yonsol munjip, che 15 chip (vol. 15), Koryo sojok. —— (1979) Park Chung Hee Taet’ongnyong yonsol munjip, che 16 chip (vol. 16): Ch’udop’an (Tribute edition), Koryo sojok. —— Nobyongdul ui chungon: Yuksa p’alkisa, Song (a testimony of old soldiers: a history of the Military Academy’s eight class), part one (1992). Yukkun Sagwan hakkyo che p’alkisaenghoe (the eight class association of the Military Academy). Shin, Bum Shik (ed.) (1970) Major Speeches By Korea’s Park Chung Hee, Seoul: Hollym. Sim Yungt’aek (ed.) (1972) Charip eui uji: Pak Chung Hee taet’ongnyong orok (The

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Will for Self-Reliance: A Collection of President Park Chung Hee’s Speeches), Seoul: Hallim ch’ulp’ansa. Sin Pomsik (ed.) (1968) Park Chung Hee taet’ongnyong yonsoljip: chungdan hanunja nun sungni haji mot’handa (President Park Chung Hee’s Speeches: Those Who Give Up Will Not Succeed), Seoul: Hallim ch’ulp’ansa.

Newspapers Choson Ilbo Kyonghyang sinmun Seoul sinmun Seoul kyongje sinmun Tonga Ilbo Han’guk Ilbo Minju Ilbo Han’guk kyongje sinmun Han’gyore sinmun

Periodicals Tonga yon’gam (Tonga Yearbook) Ch’angjak kwa pip’yong Korea Annual (1971–9) Yoksa pip’yong Far Eastern Economic Review Newsreview Newsweek Korea Now Sasanggye Sindonga Wolgan choson Wolgan chungang Weekly Han’gyoreh

Documents, books and articles in Korean An Ch’angho (1990) An Tosan chonso [A Complete Collection of Tosan An Ch’angho], Seoul: Pomyangsa. Ch’a Kibyok. (1967) “Sugu seryok kwa pansugu seryok’non” (A Theory of “the Conservative Force” and “the Anti-Conservative Force”), Sasanggye June: 20–6. Ch’angwon kigye kongop kongdan (Ch’angwon Machine Industry Complex). (1979) Ch’angwon kiji 5 nyonsa (A Five-Year History of the Ch’angwon Industrial Complex), no mention of the publisher. Ch’oe Ch’anggyu (1976) Che 3 konghwaguk: Haebang samsimnyonsa, che 4 kwon (The Third Republic: A history of the thirty years after liberation, vol. 4). Seoul: Songmungak: 208–324.

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Ch’oe Changwon, Yi Chonghun, Kim Yonkwang, U. Pyonghyon. (1993) “SBS ui wihom ch’onmanhan obo” (An extremely dangerous and incorrect report by the SBS)), Wolgan choson May: 162–97. Ch’oe Hyongsop (1995) Ch’oe Hyongsop hoegorok: Puri kkojiji annun yon’guso (Ch’oe Hyongsop Memoirs: The Institute Where the Lights are Never Turned Off), Seoul: Choson Ilbosa. Chang-ch’agwangup saemaul kyoyuk, che 1-gi (Saemaul Training for Minister and Deputy Minister Level, First Class) (1974), 21–26 July. Chang Chunha (1960) “Kwonduon: Tto tasi uri ui hyangbang ul ch’onmyong hamyonso” (Preface: we here again elucidate our position), Sasanggye June: 36–7. —— (1961a) “Kullo mani salgilida” (Only hard work can save Korea), Sasanggye February: 24–5. —— (1961b) “Kin’gup ul yohanun hyongmyong kwaop ui wansu wa minju chongch’i eroui pokkwi.” (An urgent need for completing the task of the revolution and to returning democratic politics), Sasanggye July: 34–5. —— (1964) “Urinun tto tasi uri ui haril ul palk’inda” (We reaffirm our tasks), Sasanggye April: 14–15. Chang Tokchin (1969) “Pusil kiop chongni ui simal” (Facts on the liquidation of insolvent companies), Sindonga October: 99–108. Cho Kagyong (1961) “Hyongmyong chuch’e ui chongsinjok honmi: chuch’esong hwangnip ui mokp’yo nun chokkukchok chayu wa kyongje pugang” (Psychological confusion of the leading actors of the April Revolution: the goal of establishing chuch’esong is the establishment of positive freedom and economic wealth), Sasanggye April: 70–7. Cho Kapche (1992) Park Chung Hee 1: Pulman kwa purun ui sewol, 1917–1960 (Park Chung Hee vol. 1: The Era of Frustration and Bad Luck, 1917–1960), Seoul: Kkach’i. —— (1998) “Neamudom e ch’imul paet’ora” (Spit on my grave!), Chosun Ilbo. This series continued for a total of 564 episodes from 20 October 1997 to 30 December 1999. Thereafter this series was published in the Monthly Chosun. Cho Sunsung (1960) “Han’guk ui yangdan kwa miguk ui ch’aegim” (Korea’s division and America’s responsibility), Sasanggye July: 56–65. Cho Tongp’il and Pu Wanhyok (1961) “Taedam: charipinya? Yesog inya? Hanmi kyongje hyopjong ul pip’an handa” (Discussion: national autonomy or dependency?: a critique of the Korea–America economic agreement), Sasanggye March: 200–10. Chon’guk kyongjein yonhaphoe (1982) Chongyongnyon 20-nyonsa (A Twenty-Year History of the Federation of Korean Industries), Seoul: no mention of the publisher. Chongyongnyon samsimnyonsa (A Thirty-Year History of the Federation of Korean Industry) (1992) Seoul: Federation of Korean Industry. Chong Chaegyong (1991) Park Chung Hee sasang sosol: hwiho rul chungsim uiro (Introduction of Park Chung Hee’s Ideology: Centering Around Park’s Handwriting), Seoul: Chipmundang. —— (1992) Wiin Park Chung Hee (The Great Man Park Chung Hee, Seoul: Chimmundang.

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—— (ed.) (1994) Pak Chonghui silki (A True Record of Park Chung Hee), Seoul: Chimmundang. Chong Kwangmo (1967) Ch’ongwadae (The Blue House), Seoul: Omun’gak. Chong Sangho (1988) “Yusandoen minjuhwa, kyongjaeng ui pujae wa t’onghap ui pin’gon” (Aborted democratization, absence of competition and poor integration), in Han’guk chongch’i yon’guhoe (ed.) Pak Chonghui lul nomoso (Transcending Park Chung Hee), Seoul: P’urunsup, 109–32. Chong Yangun (1961) “Han’gukin ui yoltung uising’non” (A theory of the Korean people’s inferiority complex), Sasanggye April: 111–17. Choson Ilbosa (ed.) (1995) Han’gugin ui songjokp’yo (Korean People’s Performance Record). —— (1996), Wolgan choson palgul: Han’guk hyondaesa, pi – charyo 125 Kon (The Monthly Choson’s Discoveries: Korea’s Modern History, 125 Secret Materials), Choson Ilbosa. Chungang Ilbo (1998) Silrok Park Chung Hee (A True Record of Park Chung Hee), Seoul: Chungang M&B. Chungang son’go kwalli wiwonhoe (ed.) (1992) Seoul: Taehanmin’guk chongdangsa. Ha Chongdae (1998a) “Changsonggup kyejwa 30–40 ok mungch’itton ssodajo nawatta” (A lump sum of 3–4 billion (won) poured out from the accounts of those with the rank of general), Sindonga January: 368–91. —— (1998b) “Komch’al, 4.11 ch’ongson ttae Hyonch’olton padun uiwon 10yomyong hwagin” (The prosecution, confirming about ten national assemblymen who received (Kim) Hyonch’ol’s money in the general election of April 11), Sindonga June: 218–29. Ham Sokhon (1961a) “Kung’min kamjong kwa hyongmyong wansu” (The people’s emotion and completion of revolution), Sasanggye January: 30–43. —— (1961b) “Saenara rul ottokke seulkka?” sang (How do we establish a new nation? Part one), Sasanggye April: 94–103; chung (part two) May: 42–53 and wan (final part) June: 36–53. —— (1961c) “O-illuyk ul otto’kke polka”? (What do we make of the 5.16?) Sasanggye July: 36–47. Han Sangbok (1987) “Nongch’on Saemaul undong ui sahoe munhwajok songgwa wa chonmang” (The socio-cultural effects and prospects of the rural Saemaul Movement), Institute of Saemaul Undong Studies, Seoul National University, Journal of SNU Saemaul Studies, vol. 12, 1: 41–52. Han Wansang, Yi Wujae, Sim Uit’aek et al. (1983) 4.19 hyongmyongnon (A Theory of the April Revolution), Seoul: Ilwolsogak. Han Wansang (1989) Minjung sahoehak (Sociology of the People), Seoul: Chongno sojok. Han T’aesu (1961) Han’guk Chongdangsa (A History of Korea’s Political Parties), Seoul: Sint’aeyangsa. Han Yongwon (1984) Ch’anggun (Founding of the Korean Army). Seoul: Pagyongsa. Han’guk Kidokkyo Kyohoe Hyobuihoe (National Council of Churches in Korea) (1984) Nodong Hyonjang kwa chungon (Witness to the Labor Situation), Seoul: P’ulpit. Hang’uk kyongje chongch’aek 40 nyonsa (A Forty-Year History of Korea’s Economic Policies) (1986), Seoul: Chonggyongnyon, no mention of the publisher. Han’guk kunsa hyongmyongsa p’yonch’an wiwonhoe (1963) Han’guk kunsa

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Kim Chongsin (1997) Pak Chong Hui taet’ong nyong kwa Chubyon saramdul [President Park Chung Hee and his inner circle], Seoul: Han’guk nonda. Kim Chongyol (1993), “5.16, Pak Chonghui maegurodu hoedan naemak’ (The inside facts of the meeting between General Park Chung Hee and General Magurdu), Suidonga September: 431–55. Kim Chunha (1993) “Chang Myon naegak kuharyogo kyeomnyong ch’uin” (Ratification of the May 16 coup in order to save Prime Minister Chang and his cabinet). In Pirok: Han’guk ui taet’ongryong (A Hidden Story: Korea’s Presidents), Seoul: Choson Ilbosa, pp. 232–3. Kim Hyongwuk and Pak Sawol (1985) Kim Hyongwuk hoegorok, che 1–3 pu (Memoirs of Kim Hyongwuk, vol. 1–3), Seoul: Ach’im. Kim Ilyong (1995) “Park Chung Hee ch’eje 18 nyon, ottokke pol kkosin’ga” (The 18 years of the Park Chung Hee System: How should we consider it?), Sasang winter: 208–56. Kim Kyongnae (1963) “Chonhyangjanya? aninya? In’gan Pak Chong hui ui chonhyang chubyon” (Is he a convert from communism or not? The circumstance of the idological conversion of Park Chung Hee the man), Sasanggye November: 102–10. Kim Samgyu (1960) “T’ongil tongnip konghwaguk eui kil” (The means to establishing the Unified Independent Republic of Korea), Sasanggye September: 99–105. Kim Sanghyop, Pu Wanhyok, Sin Sangch’o and Han T’aeyon (1960) “Chwadamhoe: Minju chongch’i ch’oeh’u ui kyodubo” (Discussion: the last bridgehead of democratic parties), Sasanggye May: 26–39. Kim Sanghyop, Sin Sangch’o, Hwang Sandok and Han T’aeyon (1960) “Naegk ch’aegimje ui paryuk sangt’ae.” (Developmental condition of the cabinet system). Sasanggye December: 47–58. Kim Songhwan (ed.) (1984) 1960 nyondae (The 1960s) Seoul: Korum. Kim Songjin (ed.) (1994) Pak Chong Hui sidae: kugosun uri ege muosionnunga (The Park Chung Hee Era: What Did It Mean To Us?) Seoul: Choson Ilbosa. Kim T’aehon (1995) “Sonjin’guk sujunui p’yongyun sumyongedo yong-a samang nopta” (The high death rate of infant mortality in spite of the average life expectancy of a developed country), in Choson Ilbo (ed.) Han’gugin ui songjokp’yo (Korean People’s Performance Record): Seoul: Choson Ilbosa, pp. 532–5. Kim Yongsu (1964) “Minju konghwadang sajon chojik” (The prearranged organization of the Democratic Republican Party), Sindonga November: 168–73. Kim Yongt’ae (1990) Kim Yongt’ae chasojon (Kim Yongta’e Memoirs) 2 vols, Chimmundang. Kukpangbu (Ministry of National Defense) (1994) Yulgok saopui ojewa onul kurigo naeil (The Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow of the Yulgok Operation). Kungmu ch’ongni kihoek chojongsil (The Office of Planning and Management in the Prime Minister’s office) (1973) Chunghwahak kongop ui onul kwa naeil, 1973 (The Today and Tomorrow of the Heavy and Chemical Industry, 1973), December. Kukhoesa: che 4, 5, 6-dae Kukhoe (History of the National Assembly: The 4th, 5th and 6th National Assembly) (1971), Taehanmin’guk kukhoe (Republic of Korea National Assembly).

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270

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Page references followed by “n” indicate endnotes. Abegglen, James C. 184 academics, involvement in Park’s new government 76 ADD (Agency for Defense Development) 171, 196–7, 201–2 “administrative democracy”, military junta after 1961 coup 72–6 Agnew, Spiro 108 agriculture: rural development through New Village Movement 133–47; rural underemployment and poverty 45–6 aid: Japan 9, 97; Korean dependence on US aid 85–9; undermining of chuch’esong 50–1; see also USA American Military Government (AMG) 22, 41–2 Amsden, Alice H. 5, 162 An Ch’angho 236n An Pyonguk 54 An Yongch’ol 178 anti-Communism, Park after 1961 coup 70–2 Anti-Communist Youth Corps 41 anti-Yusin movement 149, 243n April Student Revolution (sa-il-gu) (1960) 39, 40, 41, 43–4, 59 Arikawa Hiroshi 16, 19 Asian and Pacific Council (ASPAC) 103 assassination (Park’s) 1, 4, 199–200; attempted 104, 105 assimilation policy (naisen ittai/kokoku shimminka) 16 Atmojo, Heru 216 August 3 Decree 126 authoritarianism, and HCI policy 175–6, 207–8

autonomy see chuch’esong Bank of Choson 118 banks, nationalization of major banks 81, 82 Berger, Samuel D. 71, 85, 86, 86–8, 92, 141 “Big Push” program 176 Blue House Secretariat (BHS) 151–9 Brandt, Willy 133 Brown, Harold 100, 198 Brown Memorandum 216 Bundy, McGeorge 99 bureaucracy: Emergency Decree No. 9 150–1; technocracy of new Park government 76–8; see also government Bush, George W., President 1, 220 CANDU 194 Carter, Jimmy, President 159–60, 163–4, 197–9, 217, 218 Central Council of the National SelfReliant Unification 235n Ch’a Hosong 233n Ch’a Kibyok 43 Ch’ae Pyongdok 23, 25 chaebol 2; 1997 financial crisis 7; authority of Park 8; corruption 207; first Five-Year Plan 81, 82–4; industrialization 206–7; strategy of Blue House Secretariat 155–6 chaeya 125 chajusong 2 chalsalgi 136 Chang Chunha 43, 55, 235n

271

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Chang Hung 58 Chang Kiyong 13, 114, 115, 118, 119, 120–1, 209 Chang Myon (John M. Chang) 28; government of 45–6, 52, 63, 80, 86; Park’s criticism of Chang government 72 Chang Tokchin 117, 240n Chang Toyong, General 26, 30, 60, 63, 84, 234n, 237n Chang Yejun 145, 182 Ch’angwon complex 185 Cheney, Dick 220 Cho Kagyong 49 Cho Kapche 14, 19 Cho Pongam 42–3, 46 Cho Pyongok 22, 42 Cho Sun 184 Cho Sunsung 51–2 Cho Tongp’il 50 Cho Yongsu 235n Ch’oe Hyongsop 237n Ch’oe Hyonho 201 Ch’oe Kwangsu 190, 247n Ch’oe Kyongnok, Lieutenant-General 61, 62 Ch’oe Kyuha (Ch’oi Kyuha) 105, 108, 196, 213 Ch’oe Tuson 128 Ch’oe Yonghui, Lieutenant-General 61, 62 Ch’ollima 146, 243n Chon Chinhan 47 Ch’on Pyongdu 180 Chon T’aeil 124, 162, 244n Chong Chaegyong 151, 157 Chong Chaeho 84 Chong Chuyong (Chung Ju Yung) 155 Chong Ilgwon, Colonel 24, 25, 81, 99, 193 Chong Inyong 183 Chong Naehyok, Major-General 27–8, 77 Chong Soyong 79 Chong Such’ang 145 Chong Yangun 56–7 Ch’ongwadae pisosil (Blue House Secretariat) (BHS) 151–9 Choson Silk Mill 82 Christopher, Warren 201 Chu Yongbok 191 chuch’e ideology (North Korea) 236n;

and Saemaul Movement compared 146–7 chuch’esong (independence/ autonomy), pre-1961 debate 49–52 Chun Doo Hwan, Major-General 8, 9, 152, 199, 211–12; corruption 191, 192–3; seizure of power 200–1, 220 Chunghwahak kongophwa chongch’aek sonon e ttaron kongop kujo kaep’yonnon 3 Civil Rule Party 90 class, minjung advocates and development of Korea 6 “Clean-up the Military” campaign 29–30, 58–9 Clements, William 196, 218 Clifford, Mark L. 181 Cold War 92–3; and Korea–US relations 215, 218–19; and US reaction to 1961 coup 70–2; see also Vietnam War Communist activities, Park’s prosecution for 23–5 Comprehensive Stabilization Plan 162 Confucian values, role in development of Korea 6 Confucianism 2 Constitutional Amendment Bill 123, 233n corruption: chaebol 207; foreign loans 121; Yulgok Operation 190–2; see also scandals coup: grievances behind 1961 coup 60–2; May-8-Plan (1960) 27–30, 59; preparations for 1961 coup 62–4; problem of legitimacy for new administration 69–72 cultural revolution, Saemaul Movement 141–2 culture, call for national reconstruction 55–8 Cummings, Bruce 5, 146 currency controls 81 Daewoo 156 democracy: Daisho Democracy compared to “Koreanized democracy” 146; democracy movement 211; see also authoritarianism Democratic Party 42, 47 Democratic Republican Party (DRP)

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112–22, 202; “export-oriented industry construction” (EOIC) 114–17; table of 116; USA and export-led industrialization 113–14; and weapons development 172

84–5, 91, 92, 95, 101; 1971 elections 125; 1978 elections 161; impact of budget reduction 158; restructuring 122–4 demonstrations: June 3 Struggle 98–9; see also students; workers dependency approach, minjung theorists 6 Development as Freedom (Sen) 209 developmental studies, differing approaches 4–7 Eastman, Lloyd E. 58, 236n Economic Planning Board (EPB) 4, 78, 79–80, 114, 115, 118, 119–20, 209; Comprehensive Stabilization Plan 162; development of weapons 166; and HCI Plan 179, 180–1, 182; table of ministers 122; see also New Village Movement; Yusin (Restoration) system economy: 1997 financial crisis 7; benefits of involvement in Vietnam War 102–3; Comprehensive Stabilization Plan 162; cost of Yulgok Operation 189; currency controls 81; export growth and GNP 138; exportled industrialization 4, 112–22, 202; Five-Year Plan (first) 78–82; foreign direct investment (FDI), capital for HCI 183–4; global economy, Korea’s place in 5–6; GNP 209–20; growth after 1972 95; inflation 162; nationalization, major banks 81; pre1961 debate 48–9; rural development through New Village Movement 133–47; see also chaebol; HCI; industrialization education 210 egalitarianism 78–9 elections (1978) 161 Emergency Decree No. 9 150 Emergency State Council 139, 140 “engineering approach” 2; HCI policy 175, 208 Exocet missiles 186 “Exorcism to Invoke Native Land Consciousness” 99 “export-oriented industry construction” (EOIC) 114–17 exports: export growth and GNP 138; export-led industrialization 4,

Factory Saemaul Movement (Factory New Community Movement) 142–3 familism 77 February 26 Uprising 20 Federation of Korean Industry (FKI) 84 Five-Year Economic Development Plan (1972–6) 138 Five-Year Plan (first) 78–82; chaebol 82–4; dependence on US aid 89 flunkeyism, Park’s rhetoric against 89–92 Ford, Gerald, President 149, 218 foreign direct investment (FDI), capital for HCI 183–4 France, nuclear reprocessing plant 194 Fraser, Donald 149, 161 Fukuda Takeo, Prime Minister 160–1 garrison decree (1971) 126 Giscard d’Estaing Valéry 194 Gleysteen, William 160, 164, 198, 199–200, 201, 205, 217 global economy, Korea’s place in 5–6 GNP 209–20; growth in and New Village Movement 138 government: administrative democracy 72–6; see also bureaucracy Green, Marshall 71, 216 Guam doctrine/Nixon doctrine 106–7, 109, 166 “Guidance System” (chido ch’eje) 95, 124 guided capitalism, first Five-Year Plan 78–82 Ha-Joon Chang 5 Habib, Philip 194–5 Haguksang Incident 28 haguksang sagon (Revolt Against Seniors) 30, 62 hagyon 22 Hak-kyu Sohn (Son Hakgyu) 125 Ham Inyong 77, 237n Ham Sokhon 39, 44, 46, 57, 73; call for people’s revolution 52–4 Han Chaeyol 181 Han Sangbok 135, 136, 138

273

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Han Sangjun 183 Han T’aeyon 56 Hana-hoe 212 Hanbo Steel 212 Han’guk Cable Company 83 Han’guk Glass 82 Han’gukchok chuch’esong 54 Han’guksik (Korean Way) 8 Harriman, Averill W. 88, 102 Hausman, James, Captain 25 HCI (heavy and chemical industrialization) program 2, 3–4, 143, 151, 155, 165–87, 173–81; authoritarianism 208; cost of 176, 183; denounced 9; downgrading of after death of Park 8–9; HCI Planning Corps 177–81; Japan’s experience 172, 175; Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MCI) 178, 179–80, 181–3; and North Korea 175; raising capital for 183–7; and weapons development 168–9, 172–3, 176 health 210 Helms, R. M. 106 Hilsman, Roger 87 Ho Chong 41, 42, 44–5, 91, 158 Holbrooke, Richard C. 201 Homeland Guard 111–12, 125 Hong Isop 49, 235n Hu Shih 58 Hudson Institute 184 human rights movement 159–60 Hwang T’aesong 88, 91, 239n Hwang Yongju 241n Hwasin 82 Hyon Sokho 60, 61, 62, 236n Hyundai 155, 156, 207 ideology, Pak Chonghong on 54 Ikeda Hayato 97, 98, 99 IMF, 1997 financial crisis 7 independence see chuch’esong Indonesia 216 Industrial Parks Development Promotion Law 185 industrialization 209–12; Japan and Korea compared 207–8; Korean Way 206; state-guided industrialization 2–3; table of long-term industrial development policy 222; table of stages of industrial development 223;

see also economy; HCI program; Yusin (Restoration) system inflation, Chang Myon Government 45 Japan: aid to DRP 97; aid to Korea 98; Daisho Democracy compared to “Koreanized democracy” 146; HCI policy 172, 175; Korea’s relationship with 94; normalization of relations with 96–101; Park’s negotiations with 64–5; relationship with Korea 86, 87, 88; US regional policy 1–2 Johnson, Chalmers 5, 165, 177, 207 Johnson, Lyndon B., President 99, 100, 103–4, 105, 109 Johnson, Robert 86 “Juch’e” 139, 146 June 3 Struggle 98–9 Kaep’yonnon 173; see also HCI Kahn, Herman 184 Kang Kyongsik 181 Kennedy, John, President 70, 72, 92, 102 Keon, Michael 20 Kil Chaeho 60, 123 Killen, James 113 Kim Anil, Major 24 Kim Chaech’un 26, 85 Kim Chaegwan 181 Kim Chaegyu 200 Kim Chaeik 152, 181 Kim Ch’angyong, Captain 24 Kim Chiha 126 Kim Chit’ae 238n Kim Chongmyon, Brigadier-General 27 Kim Chongnyom 76, 78, 114, 115, 116–17, 119, 121–2, 144, 208, 209, 213, 240n, 243n; Blue House Secretariat 151–4; dismissal 162; HCI Planning Corps 179; HCI policy 168–9, 175; on Park’s political greed 214; weapons development 166–8, 171–3, 245n; Yolgok Operation 191–2 Kim Chongp’il, Lieutenant-Colonel 9, 26, 71, 92, 122–3, 124, 128; allegedly chosen by Park as his successor 213; “Clean-up the Military” campaign 60; corruption 192; haguksang sagon 62–3; HCI policy 176; as head of KCIA 73; leadership challenge to Park 84–5; minimal authority as

274

INDEX

Prime Minister 157; normalization of relations with Japan 98; resignation 99 Kim Chongp’yong 28 Kim Chongyol, Colonel 24 Kim Chuyol 41, 235n Kim Dae Jung 9, 124–5, 147, 149, 160, 192, 212; kidnapping of 184 Kim Hang’yol 154, 166, 209, 241n, 243n Kim Honam 18 Kim Hyonguk 60, 91, 122, 124, 243n Kim Ijin 233n Kim Il Sung 55, 77, 96, 111, 124, 128, 129–30, 139, 144, 157, 212, 236n; chuch’e ideology and Saemaul Movement compared 146–7 Kim Jong Il 219, 220 Kim Manche 184 Kim Sanghyop 55–6 Kim Sangjin 149 Kim Sangman 184 Kim Sinjo 104 Kim Songbom 79 Kim Songgon 122, 123, 124, 243n Kim Son’gil 245n Kim Songjin 213 Kim Songsu 42 Kim T’aesik, Lieutenant-General 59 Kim Tongha, General 59, 85 Kim Tongjo 99, 148, 160 Kim Ujung (Woo Jung) 156 Kim Yonghwan 3, 162, 184 Kim Yongju 128 Kim Yongsik 160 Kim Yongt’ae 123, 241n Kim Yongwan 145 Kim Youghwan 154, 179 Kim Young Sam 149, 158, 191, 192, 211–12 Kim Yut’aek 120 Kishi Nobusuke 97, 99 Kissinger, Henry 106, 217 Ko Chonghun 25 Komer, Robert 86 Korea Military Advisory Group (KMAG) 25 Korea Socialist Party 47 Korea-America Economic Council 183 Koreagate scandal 159–60, 217 Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) 3, 73, 84, 119; Park’s reliance on 156, 206, 218; scandals 238n;

supporting Park 122; torture of DRP members 123; see also security Korean Constabulary Officers’ Training School (KCOTS) 21–3 Korean Democratic Party (KDP) (Han’guk Minjudang) 42, 235n Korean Fertilizer Company 121 Korean Liberation Army 21 Korean National Foundation League (KNFL) 21, 233n Korean Nuclear Fuels Development Corporation (KNFDC) 197 Korean Socialist Party (Han’guk sahoedang) 47 Korean War (1950), Park’s role in 26–7 “Koreanized democracy” 89, 154 Ku Inhoe 83 Kukdong Marine 82 Kukka wa hyongyong kwa na (Park) 90 Kum Chinho 245n Kumsong Textile 82 Kwangju Uprising 9, 180 Kwon Chungdon 61 Kwon Obyong 123 Laird, M. R. 106 League of Korean Residents in Japan 148 League of National Unification (Minjok t’ongil yonmaeng) 47 Lee Hahn Been 77 legitimacy, problem of for new Park administration 69–72 liberal democracy: limitations of US commitment to 215–16; strong leader and national reconstruction 55–6; see also government Liberal Party 42 Lockheed 196–7 Lucky-Goldstar 83, 155 Lynn, James T. 217 McConaughy, Walter P. 86 Macdonald, Donald Stone 52 Magruder, Carter B., General 28 Mao Tse-tung 95 “March North and unify Korea” (pukchin t’ongil ) 42 market-oriented approach, developmental studies 4 Maxwell, James A. 119

275

INDEX

May 1961 plan 80 May-8-Plan 59 MBC Broadcasting 238n Meiji Reform 74 Memmi, Albert 13, 20, 31 meritocracy, bureaucracy 77 middle classes 210 military: acquisition of Exocet missiles 186; acquisition of Harpoon missiles 186–7; “Clean-up the Military” campaign 29–30, 58–9; coup plot (1952) 27–30; development of nuclear weapons 2, 164; development of weapons after abduction of patrol boat 166; grievances 60–2; Jimmy Carter’s policy of troop withdrawal 159; lack of US support in developing defense system 216; launch of guided missile 198; modernization of 188–202; nuclear weapons and missile capability program 193–9; proposed reduction in Korean army 86; purge after 1961 coup 71; strained relations with US over support 104–9; suspension of US troop withdrawal 199; US aid 102, 215; US forces in Korea 107–9; US withdrawal of troops 108–9, 110, 196, 218; weapons development 160, 166–8, 171–3, 176; withdrawal of US troops 108–9, 110, 196; Yulgok Operation 189–93 Mimura Yohei 184 Minichiello, Sharon 8, 146 Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MCI) 4, 15, 76–7, 78, 115–16; and HCI Planning Corps 178, 179–80, 181–3, 187; table of ministers 122 Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) (Japan) 207, 209 Ministry of National Defence (MOND), Yulgok Operation 189 minjok chuch’esong 54 Minjok Chunghung 139, 146 Minjok Ilbo 47 Minjung Culture Movement (Minjung Munhwa Undong) 99, 211 Minjung Democracy Movement 211 Morley, James W. 1 Mun Ikhwan, Rev. 160 Mun Segwang 148

Nam Keyong 145 Nam Kungyon 84 Nam Togu 154, 162, 176, 184, 209 Nasser, Gamal Abdel 74 Nathan Report 80, 237n National Assembly: dissolution (1972) 139; limited authority of 157 National Charter of Education 105 National Civil Service Law 77 National Congress for the Restoration of Democracy (NCRD) 149 National Council for the Protection of Democracy (NCPD) 125 National Defense Tax (pangwise) 189 National Industry Standard Model (NISM) 173–4 National Land Construction Movement 52–3 national reconstruction: agenda for 55–8; “Nationalistic Democracy” 90 nationalism: exploitation of 208; Park’s at college 16–17 “Nationalistic Democracy” 89–90 nationalization, major banks 81, 82 New Democratic Party (NDP) 124–5, 158, 162; 1978 elections 161; adopts labor issues 162–3 New Korea Democratic Party (NKDP) 238n New Village Movement (NVM) (Saemaul Movement) 133–47 Nixon Doctrine/Guam doctrine 106, 109, 166 Nixon, Richard, President 96, 106, 110, 128, 159 No Chaehyon 246n North Korea: attempted assassination of Park 105, 127, 241n; fear of after end of Vietnam War 157–8; guerrilla warfare against South 185–6; Homeland Guard as defense against 111–12; North–South dialogue 127–9; reaction to Korea’s industrialization 185; relations with USA and Korea 220; seizure of Pueblo 104–5; shooting down of US spy plane 106; South’s vulnerability after US withdrawal 108–9 North–South dialogue 127–9 nuclear weapons, development of 2, 164, 193–9, 219–20

276

INDEX

O Ch’isong 123 O Wonch’ol 3–4, 76, 144, 145, 153, 208, 209; appointment to director-general of the First Industry Bureau 115; arrested for corruption 192–3; biographical sketch 169–71; Chun’s coup 201; corruption 121; downgrading of HCI program 8–9; on first Five-Year Plan and “illicit profiteers” 81; HCI Planning Corps 177–9, 180; HCI policy 165, 168–9, 175–6; nuclear weapons development 195; Paeng’nyong Island incident 186; Park’s Plan to revise Yusin system 213; raising capital for HCI Plan 183, 184–5; watched by US intelligence 196; weapons development 160, 166–8, 171–3, 176; Yulgok Operation 190, 191–2 Oberdorfer, Don 164, 195, 219 Ogle, George 127 Ohira Masayoshi 84, 98 Paek Namui 13 Paek Sonyop, General 24, 25, 29 Paek Yongch’an 79 Paeng’nyong Island incident 185–6, 189 Pak Ch’iok 26 Pak Chonggyu 246n Pak Chonghong, Professor 44, 54, 55 Pak Ch’unghun 77, 114, 115, 116, 118, 121, 145, 170, 209, 240n Pak Hungsik 83 Pak Kunhye 7, 213 Pak Pyonggwon 85 Pak Songbin 13–14 Pak Songch’ol 128 Pak Tongson 159, 160 Pak Yongch’ol 237n Palais, James B., Professor 39, 46, 236n Palmer, Williston B., General 62 P’anbon 156 Pang Wonch’ol 21 Pangnim Textile Company 162 pansanghoe 141 Park Chung Hee (Pak Chonghui), biography 13–31 Peace Market 162 People’s Party 91 People’s Reconstruction Movement (PRM) 76

people’s revolution, call for 52–5 People’s Revolutionary Party (PRP) 150 Peoples Welfare Study Association (Kungmin pokchihoe) 123 Pilger, John 216 planned economy, pre-1961 debate 48–9 political funding, Park’s control of 156 popular discontent 125–6 Porter, William J. 104, 107 POSCO (Pohang Iron & Steel Co.) 83, 207 poverty, Chang Myon Government 45–6 PPCHS 110, 111, 112 “Presidential Guidance”: HCI Plan 168–9, 171, 178, 182, see also Yusin (Restoration) system Price, Melvin 198 Progressive Party (Chinbodang) 42–3 Promotional Mission 183–4 protest, against normalization of relations with Japan 98 Provisional Committee for Economic Reconstruction (PCER) 82 Pu Wanhyok 50 Pueblo, North Korean seizure of 104–5 Pusan Ilbo 238n regionalism 77 Reischauer, Ambassador 88 repression 9 restoration see Yusin (Restoration) system Rhee, Syngman, President 25, 100, 233n, 234n, 235n; April Revolution 41; coup plot against 27–30; government of 41–4; May-8-Plan 59; relationship with Japan 97 Rice, Edward 81 Roberts, W. L., General 25 Rogers, W. P. 106 Roh Moo-hyun (No Muhyon) 220 Roh Tae Woo 9, 191, 211–12 Rostow, Walt A. 86, 113 Rumsfeld, Donald 220 rural development, Saemaul Movement 133–47 Rusk, Dean 72, 96, 97, 100 sadae haekkongchang 129

277

INDEX

Saemaul Movement 133–47; and chuch’e ideology in North Korea compared 146–7; Saemaul Leaders’ Training (SLT) 143–6 Sahashi Shigeru 169 Samho 82, 156 Samsung 82, 155, 207 Samyang 156 Sasanggye (World of Thought) 40, 48, 49, 52, 55, 56, 65, 74, 235n Sato Eisaku 98, 99 Scalapino, Robert, Professor 43, 107, 214 scandals: KCIA 238n; Koreagate 159–60, 217; see also corruption Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr 56 Schlesinger, James 194 Second Economy Movement 136 security: national security and North Korea 95; Park’s reliance on security agencies 156; see also Korean Central Intelligence Agency; military “self-help” 137 “self-reliance” (Chaju) 197 Sen, Amartya 209 Shiina Etsusaburo 99, 100 Shimomura Osamu 184 Shorrock, Tim 201–2 Sim Munt’aek 201 simin hyongmyong 43, 235n Sin Hyonhwak 162, 169 Sin Sangch’o 44, 56 Sindonga ( journal) 7 Singlaub, John, Major-General 161 Sino-Soviet dispute 96 Sinp’unghoe (New Breeze Club) 63 Sneider, S. 195 So Chongch’ol 164, 246n So Minho 127 So Sokchun 179, 180 social discontent, Third Republic 95 Socialist Mass Party (Sahoe taejungdang) 47 Socialist People’s Party (Sahoe inmindang) 47 Socialist Reform Party (Sahoe hyoksindang) 47 Society for the Study of National Unification (Minjok t’ongil yon’guhoe) 47 Song Ch’anyong 77, 237n Song Insang 119

Song Konho 227 Song Yoch’an, General 29–30, 41, 59, 102 South Korean Workers’ Party (Nam Choson nodongdang/Namnodang) 22 Special Committee for National Security Measures 9 Springsteen, George S. 197 state: state-guided industrialization 2–3; see also bureaucracy; government; Yusin (Restoration) system statist approach, developmental studies 4–5 Steers, Richard M. 155, 156 Stock Exchange Act (1962) 82 Student League for the Protection of the People’s Rights 241n students: anti-Yusin movement 149–50; June 3 Struggle 98–9; opposition to Park (1971) 126 Sukarno, Ahmed 74 Sun Yat-sen 74 Supreme Council for National Reconstruction (SCNR) 70–1, 70–3, 76, 79, 118; arrest of prominent businessmen 81; and first Five-Year Plan 80, 83; leadership challenge to Park 84 T’ae Wanson 154, 183, 184 Taegu Teachers’ College (TTC), Park at 15–18 Taehan Cement 82 Taehan Industry 82 Taehan Milling 82 Takaki Masao, Park’s Japanized name 20 T’ang Jirong 20 technocracy, bureaucracy of new Park government 76–8 Third Republic, relationship with US 94–5 Thomson, James C. 94, 100 Time magazine 7 Tonga Ilbo 64 Tonghak Peasants’ Revolt, impact on Pak’s life 14 Tongil Textile Company 162, 163 Tongyang Cement 82 Truman, Harry, President 51–2 Turner, Stansfield 161

278

INDEX

unemployment 45 unification: pre-1961 debate 46–8; USA blamed for division 51–2 United Minjung (People’s) Movement for Democracy and Unification 160 United States Operations Mission (USOM) 90 Urban Industrial Mission (UIM) 163 Urban Saemaul Movement (Urban New Community Movement) 142 USA: aid after financial crisis 202; antiAmericanism as part of HCI policy 175; attitude to Park 217–18; and call for chuch’esong 49–50; Carter on human rights 159–60, 163–4; Carter’s policy of troop withdrawal 159, 160–1; CIA, involvement in Hwang T’aesong affair 91; disengagement from Asian conflicts under Nixon 96; economic assistance 215; escalation of involvement in Vietnam 101; and export-led industrialization 113–14; Guam doctrine 106–7, 109, 166; Korea–US relations, Park’s legacy 215–21; Koreagate scandal 159–60, 217; Korean dependence on aid 85–8, 89, 90, 92; and Korean nuclear weapons development 193–9; limitations of commitment to liberal democracy 215–16; military assistance 102, 215; military forces in Korea 102, 107–9; normalization of relations between Korea and Japan 96–101; nuclear umbrella 193, 196; nuclear weapons 193–4; and Park’s assassination 199–200; Park’s concept of Korea’s relationship with 212; Park’s criticism of 89–90; policy to reduce size of army 86–7; reaction to 1961 coup 70–2; reaction to 1962 currency controls 81; reaction to North Korea’s shooting down of spy plane 106; reduction in aid 97, 217; reduction of commitment to Korea 104–9; regional policy 1; role in development of Korea 5–6; sale of Harpoon missiles 186–7; spying on Korea 196; suspension of troop withdrawal 199; US advisers, Park’s relationship with 28–9; Vietnam War 100–4, 107–8; withdrawal of troops

from Korea 108–9, 110, 196, 218; see also Cold War; Vietnam War USSR, Sino-Soviet dispute 95 Vance, Cyrus 5, 198, 201 Vessey, John, General 161 Vietnam War: ending of 157, 159; Korean involvement 94, 100–4; US withdrawal 107–8 Vogel, Ezra 6 Wade, Robert 2, 5, 177 weapons development see military Won Songik 74 Won Yongdok, Colonel 24 workers: mushrooming protests since self-immolation of Chon 162–3; opposition to Park 124, 126; YH incident 162–3 World Bank, developmental study 4–5 YH Trading Company, and YH incident 162–3 Yi Changhci 121 Yi Ch’angyol 48 Yi Ch’olsung 63, 158 Yi Chongch’an, Lieutenant-General 27, 28, 60, 61, 233n, 234n, 236n Yi Chongrim 84 Yi Chuil, Major-General 63 Yi Hallim 23 Yi Hanbin 184 Yi Hungwu 10 Yi Hurak 9, 122, 124, 127, 128, 151, 171, 246n Yi Hyonnan 18, 26 Yi Kwanghyong 8 Yi Man’gap 57 Yi Manyong 245n Yi Nakson 144, 181, 182 Yi Pyongch’ol 81, 82, 84, 238n Yi Pyongju 23 Yi Sokhwan, independence 49–50 Yi Sopchun 20 Yi Sunsin 15 Yi T’aeho 237n Yi T’aehyon 237n Yi T’agwan 29 Yi Tongwon 100 Yi Yongmun, Brigadier General 27, 28, 234n Yom Chonggwon 16

279

INDEX

Yu Hansik 180 Yu Sungwon 243n Yu Wonsik, Colonel 83 Yubi muhwan 149 Yuk Yongsu 18, 148 Yulgok Operation 189–93 Yun Poson 42, 45, 90–1, 149, 160 Yusin (Restoration) system 2, 3, 83, 110, 117, 133, 151, 154; definition 232n;

280

HCI policy 169; and HCI policy 175–6; limited authority of National Assembly 157; and minjung advocates 6; and New Village Movement 139–43; Park under pressure to abolish 147; Yusin state 148–64; see also economy; “Presidential Guidance”