Park Chung Hee And Modern Korea

For South Koreans, the early 1960s to late 1970s were the best and worst of times—a period of unprecedented economic growth and deepening political oppression. Carter J. Eckert finds the roots of this dramatic socioeconomic transformation in the country’s long history of militarization, personified in South Korea’s paramount leader, Park Chung Hee.

This first volume in a two-part study examines the origins of South Korean authoritarianism as personified by the militant political leader. For South Koreans, the twenty years from the early 1960s to late 1970s were the best and worst of times—a period of unprecedented economic growth and of political oppression that deepened as prosperity spread. In this masterly account, Carter J. Eckert finds the roots of South Korea’s dramatic socioeconomic transformation in the country’s long history of militarization—a history personified in South Korea’s paramount leader, Park Chung Hee. In Park Chung Hee and Modern Korea, Eckert reveals how the foundations of Park’s leadership were established during the period of Japanese occupation. As a cadet in the Manchurian Military Academy, Park and his fellow officers absorbed the Imperial Japanese Army’s ethos of victory at all costs and absolute obedience to authority. When Park seized power in 1961, he applied this ethos to the project of Korean modernization. Korean society under Park exuded a distinctively martial character, Eckert shows. Its hallmarks included the belief that the army should intervene in politics in times of crisis; that a central authority should manage the country’s economic system; and that the state should maintain a strong disciplinary presence in society, reserving the right to use violence to maintain order. “A milestone in the literature of modern East Asia.” ―Bruce Cumings, author of Korea’s Place in the Sun

In 1961 South Korea was mired in poverty. By 1979 it had a powerful industrial economy and a vibrant civil society in the making, which would lead to a democratic breakthrough eight years later. The transformation took place during the years of Park Chung Hee's presidency. Park seized power in a coup in 1961 and ruled as a virtual dictator until his assassination in October 1979. He is credited with modernizing South Korea, but at a huge political and social cost. South Korea's political landscape under Park defies easy categorization. The state was predatory yet technocratic, reform-minded yet quick to crack down on dissidents in the name of political order. The nation was balanced uneasily between opposition forces calling for democratic reforms and the Park government's obsession with economic growth. The chaebol (a powerful conglomerate of multinationals based in South Korea) received massive government support to pioneer new growth industries, even as a nationwide campaign of economic shock therapy-interest hikes, devaluation, and wage cuts-met strong public resistance and caused considerable hardship. This landmark volume examines South Korea's era of development as a study in the complex politics of modernization. Drawing on an extraordinary range of sources in both English and Korean, these essays recover and contextualize many of the ambiguities in South Korea's trajectory from poverty to a sustainable high rate of economic growth.

By examining the most controversial Park Chung-hee period (1961-1979), Developmental Dictatorship and the Park Chung-hee Era helps the reader rediscover the socioeconomic origins of modern Korea. The essays in this book written by twelve noted Korean social scientists discuss the relationship between South Koreas economic development and totalitarianism in the form of the Park dictatorship. ABOUT THE EDITOR lee Byeong-cheon holds a PhD in economics from Seoul National University. He is a professor in the Department of Economics and International Trade at Kangwon National University. Dr. Lee was a visiting professor at University of California, Berkeley. CONTRIBUTORS Lee Byeong-cheon, Kim Sam-soo, Seo Ick-jin, Yoo Chul-gyue, Lee Sang-cheol, Lee Joung-woo, Lee Chong-suk, Cho Young-chol, Chin Jung-kwon, Han Hong-koo, Hong Seong-tae, Hong Yun-gi.

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 provides a new narrative in the complex task of exploring the paradoxical nature and effects of Korea's rapid development which maintains that any judgement 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 the US presence *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 chemical industrialisation 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.

In 1975, a young high school teacher took the stage at a prayer meeting in a southwestern Korean city to recite a poem called "The Winter Republic." The poem became an anthem against the military dictatorship of Park Chung Hee and his successors; the poet, however, soon found himself in court and then in prison for saddling the authoritarian state with such a memorable moniker. This unique book weaves together literary works, biographical accounts, institutional histories, trial transcripts, and personal interviews to tell the powerful story of how literature became a fierce battleground against authoritarian rule during one of the darkest periods in South Korea's history. Park Chung Hee's military dictatorship was a time of unparalleled political oppression. It was also a time of rapid and unprecedented economic development. Against this backdrop, Youngju Ryu charts the growing activism of Korean writers who interpreted literature's traditional autonomy as a clarion call to action, an imperative to intervene politically in the name of art. Each of the book's four chapters is devoted to a single writer and organized around a trope central to his work. Kim Chi-ha's "bandits," satirizing Park's dictatorship; Yi Mun-gu's "neighbor," evoking old nostalgia and new anxieties; Cho Se-hŭi's dwarf, representing the plight of the urban poor; and Hwang Sok-yong's labor fiction, the supposed herald of the proletarian revolution. Ending nearly two decades of an implicit ban on socially engaged writing, literature of the period became politicized not merely in content and form, but also as an institution. Writers of the Winter Republic emerged as the conscience of their troubled yet formative times. A question of politics lies at the heart of this book, which seeks to understand how and why a time of political oppression and censorship simultaneously expanded the practice and everyday relevance of literature. By animating the lives and works of the men who shaped this period, the book offers readers an illuminating literary, cultural, and political history of the era.

"This book examines the political thought of Park Chung-hee (1917-1979), the most revered, albeit the most controversial, former president in the history of South Korea. It looks at the trends in the ideological terrain of contemporary South Korean politics, and the legacy of Park Chung-hee's authoritarian politics"--Provided by publisher.

"This comprehensive and balanced history of modern Korea explores the social, economic, and political issues it has faced since being catapulted into the wider world at the end of the nineteenth century"--