The Park Chung Hee Era

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.

The Republic of Korea achieved a double revolution in the second half of the twentieth century. In just over three decades, South Korea transformed itself from an underdeveloped, agrarian country into an affluent, industrialized one. At the same time, democracy replaced a long series of military authoritarian regimes. These historic changes began under President Park Chung Hee, who seized power through a military coup in 1961 and ruled South Korea until his assassination on October 26, 1979. While the state's dominant role in South Korea's rapid industrialization is widely accepted, the degree to which Park was personally responsible for changing the national character remains hotly debated. This book examines the rationale and ideals behind Park's philosophy of national development in order to evaluate the degree to which the national character and moral values were reconstructed.

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.

Overview : a historical and institutional perspective / Lee-Jay Cho -- Antecedent to economic growth : President Rhee and Prime Minister Chang / Robert T. Oliver -- Institutional reforms for national economic management / Ki Jun Rhee -- Role of business corporations and entrepreneurs in the initial stage of rapid economic development in the Republic of Korea / Bon Ho Koo and Eun Mee Kim -- Dynamics of industrial policy I : export-oriented industrialization, 1961-1971 / Kwang Suk Kim -- Dynamics of industrial policy II : six episodes of heavy and chemical industries development / Kwang Suk Kim -- Science and technology policy in state-guided modernization / Linsu Kim -- Population and development : the Park regime's legacy / Andrew Mason and Lee-Jay Cho -- A new perspective on the "name-changing policy" in Korea / Pal-Yong Moon -- Role of the United States in the economic development of Korea / Lee-Jay Cho -- The bear and the general : lessons from Park Chung Hee's development strategy for Russia in transition / Alexandre Y. Mansourov -- South Korea's struggle for economic development during the Park regime : a Japanese perspective / Toshio Watanabe

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.

Cultures of Yusin examines the turbulent and yet deeply formative years of Park Chung Hee’s rule in South Korea, focusing on the so-called Yusin era (1972–79). Beginning with the constitutional change that granted dictatorial powers to the president and ending with his assassination, Yusin was a period of extreme political repression coupled with widespread mobilization of the citizenry towards the statist gospel of modernization and development. While much has been written about the political and economic contours of this period, the rich complexity of its cultural production remains obscure. This edited volume brings together a wide range of scholars to explore literature, film, television, performance, music, and architecture, as well as practices of urban and financial planning, consumption, and homeownership. Examining the plural forms of culture’s relationship to state power, the authors illuminate the decade of the 1970s in South Korea and offer an essential framework for understanding contemporary Korean society.