A History of Korea (91 page)

Amid mounting tension and uncertainty, Park’s long and harsh rule abruptly ended on 26 October 1979, when his own
KCIA
chief, Kim Chae-gyu, shot and killed Park and his politically powerful chief bodyguard, Ch’a Chi-ch’
ŏ
l, in a restaurant gunfight within the presidential compound. Park’s assassination was sparked by a conflict within his inner circle over the measures required to cope with the popular unrest. Kim’s demand that Park moderate his repressive rule was ridiculed and rejected by Park and Ch’a. After some hours of confusion following the shooting, Kim was taken into custody and later executed. Park’s death ended the Yushin system and opened a new era of transition and uncertainty in South Korea.

Today Park Chung-hee is remembered less as the ruthless dictator who retarded South Korea’s political development than as the father of the country’s remarkable economic progress. Harsh in his methods and unforgiving of his opponents, he is regarded as the leader who successfully industrialized South Korea. Indeed, in his 18 years in power, Park enthusiastically sought South Korea’s industrialization and modernization, and achieved considerable results. Having been trained under the Japanese, he clearly patterned his development strategies after those of Japan, where a feudal society had been rapidly transformed into a modern nation between the 1860s and 1930s. Thanks to South Korea’s industrial and economic growth under Park’s presidency, his reputation, since the mid-1990s, has greatly risen among the South Korean populace. He has been cited as the country’s greatest president, commanding unparalleled popularity. In a 2008
Han’guk ilbo
(Korea Daily) opinion poll, he was considered the greatest president of the nation, winning 56.0 percent of the poll. He was followed by Kim Dae-jung (15.9%), Roh Moo-hyun (12.4%), Chun Doo-hwan (2.8%), Syngman Rhee (1.9%), and Kim Young-sam (0.8%).
²
Another 2008 opinion survey, conducted by
KBS I
Radio, also found Park to be the greatest president, taking 60.1 percent of the poll, followed by Kim Dae-jung (12.1%)
and Roh Moo-hyun (10.9%).
³
According to a 2008 poll taken in the major daily newspaper
Tonga ilbo
, Park was cited as the political leader with the greatest achievements (56.0%) and the spiritual leader who most influenced the destiny of Korea throughout Korean history (37.0%). Further, 78.2 percent of South Koreans rated the Park administration as contributing most to their nation’s economic development.
⁴
A 2011
Chos
ŏ
n ilbo
poll found 82.6 percent of those polled to rate Park’s leadership in South Korea’s overall national development affirmatively. Only 13.1 percent viewed his leadership negatively. In particular, a surprising 92.1 percent believed that he had influenced the nation’s economic development in a positive way, whereas just 5.3 percent viewed his influence negatively.
⁵
His high reputation and popularity have created “nostalgia for the Park Chung-hee era” in South Korea, making his daughter, Park Geun-hye, one of the most popular politicians in the 2000s.

His critics, on the other hand, have severely condemned the brutality of his dictatorship, deploring the widespread human rights abuses perpetrated during his rule. For many years thousands of his foes were arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and in many cases killed for criticizing and opposing him. Indeed, he justified his autocratic rule with the quip that dictatorship in affluence was better than democracy in poverty. In sum, although a majority of South Koreans view Park as a leader of unparalleled greatness and remember him as a man who, along with North Korea’s Kim Il-sung, left the greatest legacies in modern Korean history, obviously South Koreans exchanged “freedom” for “bread” under his rule.
⁶

With the death of Park Chung-hee, South Korea entered a difficult and uncertain transitional period. Hanging in the balance was progress toward democracy or reversion to the autocratic past. Without a designated successor to Park, a political vacuum was created. Immediately after Park’s death, Prime Minister Ch’oe Kyu-ha was made acting president, in accordance with the constitution, whereupon he repealed Park’s emergency measures and released prominent opposition leaders, including Kim Dae-jung, and dissident activists from house arrest or prison. In an easily controlled election, Ch’oe became president on 6 December 1979. But having been trained only as a bureaucrat, he had no political backing and was not a forceful leader. Thus he was no more than the head of a caretaker government. The ranks of the parliamentary opposition could offer no clear alternative, as the main opposition, the New Democratic Party,
had suffered a chronic, acrimonious leadership split. The release of Kim Dae-jung further complicated the problem of the disunited opposition leadership. The outpouring of ideas as to the nation’s future from various civilian sectors only increased the uncertainty, leaving the military leadership as the real power holders.

Although Park was dead, the Yushin Constitution and the government machinery he had created remained intact. Although a South Korean consensus favored an early revision of the constitution and a return to a full democratic order, the military leaders who had trained under Park preferred to return to military-backed authoritarianism. In the absence of a formal mechanism to choose Park’s successor, it seemed quite likely that his heir would emerge from among the military leaders.

In a sudden turn of events, Major General Chun Doo-hwan, head of the Military Security Command, was given the responsibility for investigating Park’s assassination, which afforded him the opportunity to seize power. He began by dismantling Park’s power base by purging the Park government elite. He then proceeded to build his own power base. On 12 December 1979 Chun forcibly deposed the existing military authorities by arresting General Ch
ŏ
ng S
ŭ
ng-hwa, the
ROK
Army chief of staff and martial law commander, and the commanders loyal to him. His justification for this mutinous action was that Ch
ŏ
ng was suspected of having been involved in Park’s assassination. On 14 December, two days after his midnight takeover of the military, Chun engineered sweeping changes in the
ROK
Army, moving his seniors aside and replacing them in sensitive posts with his classmates of the Korean Military Academy and his close friends. For instance, his close friend and successor as president, Roh Tae-woo, became the commanding general of the Capital Security Command. Now Chun could assert complete control over the South Korean armed forces.

During the early months of 1980, while Chun increasingly consolidated his power, aspirations for democracy rapidly gathered momentum among the population. A period that came to be known as the “Seoul Spring,” named after Czechoslovakia’s “Prague Spring” of 1968, came. The term expressed the public demand for political liberalization and the democratic mood of the day. In the spring of 1980 students took to the streets calling for an end to martial law, abolishment of the Yushin Constitution, and moving toward representative government.

Student demonstration reached a climax in mid-May 1980. On 14 May, with the center of Seoul crowded with demonstrators, the army deployed troops
and armored vehicles to guard key buildings. The next day more than 100,000 students swarmed the plaza in front of the Seoul Railway Station, demanding the withdrawal of martial law. On 17 May Chun extended martial law throughout the country, abruptly ending the short-lived democracy movement. At the same time Chun removed all major political leaders and dissident activists from political life. Kim Dae-jung was taken into custody again, Kim Young-sam was placed under house arrest, and Park Chung-hee’s former key lieutenants such as Kim Jong-pil and Yi Hu-rak, who had been denounced as corrupt fortune seekers, were also apprehended. The “Seoul Spring” quickly ended, casting the shadow of yet another authoritarian rule.

The following day, on 18 May, in street demonstrations that almost escalated into an armed revolt, students and citizens in Kwangju, the capital city of South Ch
ŏ
lla province, protested martial law and specifically the arrest of Kim Dae-jung, their favorite opposition leader. The Kwangju uprising, however, ended in severe repression and the slaughter of many people by the ruling military. At first, to quell the demonstrations in Kwangju, Chun’s “new military” sent elite troops of the Korean Special Warfare Command (
SWC
), known as the “Black Berets,” and elements of the 7th, 11th, and 3rd Brigades were held responsible for most of the bloodshed between 18 and 20 May. South Korean military officers claimed that the special warfare forces were used because they were mobile and free of the constraint of the U.S.-controlled Combined Forces Command (
CFC
). Despite their brutal tactics, however, the troops were defeated by the organized efforts of unarmed civilians. On 26 May Chun requested U.S. General John A. Wickham, commander of the U.S. Forces Korea (
USFK
) and of the
CFC
, to release the Korean Army’s 20th Infantry Division to put down the rebellion. The request was granted, and the next day regular army troops put an end to the resistance. Compared to the early brutal and bloody encounters, the military action was relatively swift and effective. By the time the city was retaken the government estimated that 170 people had been killed, but the official death toll was raised to 240 in 1995 after a reinvestigation. The Kwangju people have claimed, however, that the actual number of casualties was far higher than the earlier official number. Today’s estimates range from 500 to 2,000.

The Kwangju incident, officially termed the “Kwangju Democratization Movement” in 1988, fueled a long-lasting and intense opposition to Chun Doo-hwan among South Koreans as well as a deep resentment of the U.S. role in the incident. To opponents of military dictatorship, “Kwangju” became a powerful symbol of popular resistance to authoritarian government. Chun Doo-hwan’s
name would forever be associated with the tragic Kwangju incident, which many see as a pivotal event in South Korea’s struggle for democracy in the long period of dictatorship. As seen in the June Resistance of 1987, memories of “Kwangju” were a decisive restraint on the use of force against any popular movement for democracy. “Kwangju” also greatly damaged the image of the United States; although U.S. approval of Chun’s use of military units under the authority of the Combined Forces Command was legal, it linked the United States inseparably to the tragedy. “Kwangju” triggered fervent anti-Americanism among citizens of Ch
ŏ
lla province and many South Korean students, and became a decisive catalyst for South Korea’s ultimate democratization.

After the Kwangju incident, Chun Doo-hwan continued establishing his authoritarian regime. On 31 May, with methodical and speedy actions that clearly revealed a well-laid plan for power, he organized the Special Committee for National Integrity Measures, a military junta. On 7 August Chun promoted his rank to four-star general in preparation for retiring from the army. Then he and his military junta were able to pass their most difficult hurdle—U.S. support and approval. On 8 August General Wickham, in a press interview with American reporters, blessed Chun’s coming to power, declaring that the United States would support him if he emerged as president. About a week later, on 16 August, Ch’oe Kyu-ha resigned the presidency, publicly claiming that he was doing so to set a precedent for the peaceful transfer of power. On 27 August, after receiving the endorsement of the ranking commanders of South Korea’s armed forces, Chun was elected to the presidency without opposition by the rubber-stamp National Conference for Unification. On 22 October 1980 a national referendum overwhelmingly approved the new Fifth Republic Constitution that established another military-oriented authoritarian rule in South Korea. On 25 February 1981, in accordance with the new constitution, Chun began a new seven-year term as president.

Like his predecessor, Park Chung-hee, Chun placed South Korea under a “reign of terror and virtue.” On 4 August 1980, to win support from a population that had lost its freedom, he launched a “purification campaign” known as
Samch’
ŏ
ng kyoyuktae,
or Reeducation Corps to Purify the Three Vices. By January 1981 the Chun regime had apprehended 60,755 individuals on suspicion of violating public peace and order. Of these, 3,252 were tried in a military tribunal, 39,786 were sent to purification camps in remote areas and were subjected
to military-style physical training for several months, and 17,717 were admonished and then released by the police. A later revelation was that 52 people had died during their “reeducation” and 397 had died from the “aftereffects of reeducation.” All the detainees were subjected to harsh living conditions and suffered serious civil rights violations. Many, moreover, were innocent victims picked up by the police. At the same time Chun expelled many senior officials from the civil service as well as others from their positions, or confiscated their property on charges of corruption. By doing so he replaced the existing elite with loyal subordinates and established a new power base for himself.

Like Park Chung-hee, Chun also feared Kim Dae-jung and thus sought to remove him permanently from political life. His attack on Kim, however, raised a serious problem with the United States. Accused of plotting the insurrection in Kwangju, Kim was court-martialed, found guilty, and sentenced to death, but a major diplomatic effort by the United States resulted in a commutation of the sentence and, in December 1982, Kim was released from prison and permitted to take exile in the United States. In return for commuting Kim’s sentence, Chun would become the first foreign head of state to visit a U.S. president, the newly inaugurated President Ronald Reagan, in February 1981, which infuriated the South Korean opposition. Reagan’s warm reception was a major turning point for Chun, convincing most South Koreans that his takeover was a fait accompli.