A History of Korea (90 page)

On 15 April 1969 North Korea clashed again with the United States, when two North Korean MiG interceptors shot down a U.S. Navy EC-121 electronic reconnaissance aircraft with 31 men aboard over the East Sea. When downed, the EC-121, operating from a base in Japan, was engaging in electronic surveillance in international air space, some 90 miles off the North Korean coast. All aboard the aircraft were lost. As in the
Pueblo
incident, no U.S. retaliatory action was taken. The emboldened North Koreans became more adventurous and created an increasing number of border clashes along the
DMZ
. In this “second Korean conflict,” North Korea was able to claim several diplomatic victories over the United States.

When the 1960s drew to a close, North Korea and the United States still maintained mutually hostile relations. With the cumulative weight of North Korea’s provocations, their relations would have a gloomy outlook in the years to come.

After the Korean War, both Koreas engaged in postwar reconstruction in very different ways. Each of the two belonged to one of the mutually opposing blocs that keenly conflicted with each other: North Korea to “continental civilizations” and South Korea to “maritime civilizations.” Thereafter the two Koreas took diametrically opposed paths that would decisively influence their future fortunes. In their cutthroat competition and rivalry, by the end of the 1960s North Korea held the upper hand both economically and militarily over its southern neighbor.

Prior to the early 1970s North Korea’s economic and political institutions were more stable than those of its southern counterpart. Then, perhaps beginning in 1971, a dramatic reversal began in their relative economic and political strengths, and by the early 1990s South Korea was the much stronger of the two. In the new environment accompanying the end of the Cold War, South Korea had a prosperous economy with fully democratic institutions, whereas North Korea was left behind economically and politically.

On 17 October 1972 President Park Chung-hee staged a “palace coup d’état,” establishing a new and more autocratic regime, the Fourth Republic, under the so-called Yushin Constitution. That day Park declared a state of emergency, and imposed martial law on South Korea. He dissolved the National Assembly, closed universities throughout the country, and strictly censored the media. Soon Park set about revising the constitution, after first studying the “generalissimo constitution” of Taiwan. In a national referendum, held on 21 November 1972, the South Korean electorate, under a frightened atmosphere, overwhelmingly approved the new constitution. The Yushin Constitution granted the president emergency powers, empowered him to appoint one-third of the members
of the National Assembly, and guaranteed the president indefinite tenure in office. The all-powerful president was to be elected by a rubber-stamp electoral college, the National Conference for Unification, which had some 2,300 locally elected delegates. On 23 December 1972 Park was elected president, with a six-year tenure, without one dissenting vote. Six years later, on 6 July 1978, he won another term in the same manner. Now the period of the Fourth Republic, more commonly referred to as the Yushin era, was fully under way.

Park justified his unconstitutional move on the grounds of the necessity of the times. He argued that he established the new “Yushin system” to eliminate waste in national security programs and to cope with the rapidly changing international situation. Under a more efficient system, he would build national strength continuously, promote economic growth, strengthen national defense, and achieve reunification of the fatherland. He also claimed to be seeking a “Korean-style democracy,” one that was right for Korea’s situation and would solve its inherent problems. In fact, he did not “Koreanize” democracy; he only created an even more autocratic rule than was seen in the Third Republic.

In accordance with the new constitution, the National Assembly elections were held on 27 February 1973. The ruling Democratic Republican Party gained 73 of 146 locally elected seats. The main opposition New Democratic Party (
NDP
) won 52 seats. Each of 73 local constituencies elected two assemblymen, and this election system continued into the Fifth Republic (1981–1988). One-third of the total 219 seats were appointed by President Park, giving him a two-thirds majority in the legislature. The National Assembly, along with its political party representation, could be dissolved by Park at any time.

With all powers vested in the presidency and the president literally able to rule by decree, the Yushin regime was hardly challenged by other institutions. Park frequently used his power to completely control all political activity and the entire population, severely punishing any criticism, even of the Yushin Constitution itself. One of Park’s most important power bases was the Korean Central Intelligence Agency, which had the entire population under surveillance and routinely engaged in harassing the regime’s opponents. These power abuses caused a serious political crisis in relations with Japan on 8 August 1973, when
KCIA
operatives abducted the self-exiled opposition leader Kim Dae-jung from a hotel in Tokyo five days before he was to establish an anti-Park organization of overseas Koreans. The
KCIA
agents attempted to assassinate Kim by dumping him at sea, but last-minute U.S. diplomatic intervention forced Kim’s release, allowing him to return home. On 13 August 1973 Kim was put under
strict house arrest in Seoul, and the Park government, as one would expect, made no effort to identify or penalize his abductors.
¹

Although the Park regime claimed that the Yushin system was “Korean-style democracy,” many Koreans did not believe it was, and the Yushin system soon provoked intense opposition from many quarters, including the opposition parties, university students, and dissident intellectuals. The parliamentary opposition was neither strong nor effective, however, as the main opposition, the New Democratic Party, remained divided between the major factions of Kim Dae-jung, Kim Young-sam, and Yi Ch’
ŏ
l-s
ŭ
ng, and susceptible to government manipulation and intimidation. As a result of government maneuvers, on 25 May 1976 the Kim Young-sam faction and Yi Ch’
ŏ
l-s
ŭ
ng faction held separate national conventions and each used violence against the other.

After Kim Dae-jung’s was repatriated and placed under house arrest, he was banned from political activity and under strict surveillance. Aided by his faction, Kim Young-sam was elected leader of the New Democratic Party in August 1974. Under his leadership, the main opposition party sharply challenged the Park government on fundamental issues of democracy and human rights. In September 1976, however, he lost his leadership and was replaced by Yi Ch’
ŏ
l-s
ŭ
ng, who did not seriously confront the Park government and thus became increasingly unpopular. As a result, in May 1979, Kim Young-sam was restored to leadership and adopted a hard line against Park’s Yushin system. Although Kim had always been outspoken against Park, he had been shielded from the red-baiting commonly used against Park’s enemies because, in 1960, his mother had been murdered by North Korean agents. Now, however, Kim Dae-jung was subjected to a sustained red hunt under the Park and Chun Doo-hwan governments.

Meanwhile, universities stubbornly opposed the Yushin system. From early 1974 university students staged anti-Yushin protests, and campus demonstrations became the order of the day during the Yushin years. The Park government responded with brutal suppression and the closing of campuses.

During the Yushin era, many important figures developed a dissident movement, hoping to abolish the Yushin system through a constitutional amendment that would bring back presidential elections by direct popular vote. Leaders of the dissident movement were antigovernment university faculties and Protestant clergymen, along with prominent politicians such as former president Yun Po-s
ŏ
n and Kim Dae-jung. All were subjected to sustained surveillance, brutal harassment, and occasional arrest, torture, and imprisonment
by the
KCIA
. In the fabricated “People’s Revolutionary Party Reconstruction Committee Incident,” on 8 April 1975, eight dissident activists were executed only 18 hours after they were sentenced to death. The order to execute them appears to have come directly from Park.

At the time the population at large accepted the Yushin system as an accomplished fact, first of all because under Park’s “reign of terror” South Koreans were constantly in fear of punishment. Continuing economic growth also helped secure popular support for Park’s rule. In any case, most South Koreans were touched only indirectly by political repression and actually benefited from what many at the time termed “hothouse” economic development. A difficult international situation also helped Park maintain a strong, repressive leadership. The fall of South Vietnam in late April 1975 caused apprehension among South Koreans about the
ROK
–U.S. alliance. The Jimmy Carter administration in the United States further aroused South Korean uncertainties about national security, when Carter announced his plan to withdraw the U.S. Army’s 2nd Infantry Division from South Korea in 1977. Most South Koreans expressed their fear that this action would prompt North Korea to invade, and they hoped Americans would not support the withdrawal. Indeed, the planned withdrawal caused a major political crisis, even public panic, in South Korea, and eventually Carter reluctantly dropped the idea. Park had found another convenient excuse for his repressive rule in South Koreans’ increasing sense of insecurity.

Making efficient use of the
KCIA
, the Military Security Command, and his growing contingent of bodyguards, Park continued his previous pattern of silencing anyone who interfered or disagreed with his policies through temporary detention, arrest, imprisonment, and brutal torture. His security apparatus continued to stifle the press; all newspapers and broadcast systems were strictly censored. Government-controlled broadcast stations, in particular, became Park’s personal propaganda media. His picture and daily activities dominated everyday news.

Beginning in December 1973 dissident activists, mainly university students and intellectuals, launched a national campaign to revise the Yushin Constitution. As their movement gathered momentum, Park issued an emergency decree in January 1974 outlawing all such campaigns. Violators faced trial by secret military courts. As a result, Park’s regime was thrown into a vicious cycle of repression followed by dissidence which only further incited repression and harsher protests, and this continued until his death in October 1979. As time went on, Park became more and more uncompromising, especially after an attempted
assassination by a Korean resident of Japan on 15 August 1974, the 29th anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japan. The Independence Day shooting missed Park but killed his wife, who was seated behind him.

From January 1974 to May 1975, Park issued nine emergency measures to tighten his grip on power. The most severe and sweeping of all was Emergency Measure Number Nine, issued on 13 May 1975, shortly after the fall of South Vietnam, which made it a crime not only to criticize the Yushin Constitution but also to provide press coverage of such activity, subject to a penalty of more than one year in prison. In early March 1976, however, prominent dissident leaders, including Yun Po-s
ŏ
n and Kim Dae-jung, issued the Democratic Declaration demanding the restoration of democracy. Park arrested them on charges of government subversion and sentenced them to prison for five to eight years.

Much of Park’s mandate for harsh rule under the Yushin Constitution depended on sustained economic growth. When the South Korean economy underwent a sharp downturn in early 1979, the Park regime faced mounting pressure from the opposition. After a long period of rapid growth, South Korea’s economy was slowed by worldwide inflation and recession caused by spiking oil prices after the Iranian revolution in early 1979. An unprecedented wave of bankruptcies and strikes swept the country. The altered sociopolitical situation emboldened Park’s critics, especially the opposition New Democratic Party leader Kim Young-sam, who bitterly denounced the Park government.

The South Korean political situation had already undergone profound chang- es. Although the New Democratic Party obtained 61 of 146 locally elected seats against the ruling Democratic Republican Party’s 68 seats in the National Assembly elections held on 12 December 1978, the former won 32.8 percent of the popular vote against the government party’s 31.7 percent. The opposition was greatly encouraged to find its voice.

On 9 August 1979 some 190 female employees of the Y. H. Industrial Company, which had gone bankrupt, staged a sit-in at the New Democratic Party headquarters to enlist public sympathy. Two days later the Park government sent 1,000 riot police to drag them out and, in the process, killed a female laborer. The “Y. H. Incident” triggered fierce antigovernment movements as labor unions, university students, and dissident intellectuals united with the New Democratic Party. In retrospect, the event contributed partly to the fall of the Park regime late that year.

A month later, as part of a continuing political struggle, Kim Young-sam publicly appealed to the United States in a
New York Times
interview to end its
support for Park’s dictatorial regime. In retaliation, Park expelled Kim from the National Assembly on 4 October, plunging South Korea into a political crisis. On 16 October student demonstrations calling for the end of Park’s autocratic rule and the Yushin system erupted in Kim’s home district of Pusan that spread to the nearby industrial cities of Masan and Ch’angw
ŏ
n. Local citizens sympathized with the student demonstrators and joined the struggle against the Yushin system. With the people growing increasingly restless, Park declared martial law on 18 October. Mounting popular unrest triggered a sense of urgency in the Park regime and appeared to crack the armor of the ruling elite.