Park Chung-hee's Coup and South Korea's Developmental State
Park Chung-hee took power in South Korea in a coup in May 1961 and ruled for eighteen years. The country he took over was among the poorest in the world, with an income per head below that of much of Africa, no natural resources, a devastated infrastructure from the Korean War, and an economy dependent on American aid for about half its budget. The government of Syngman Rhee had been overthrown by student protests in 1960 after a rigged election, and the democratic administration that followed lasted nine months. Park was a major general, had served in the Japanese-run Manchukuo army under a Japanese name, and had been sentenced to death in 1948 for communist activity and reprieved. The coup put some 3,500 troops into Seoul before dawn. What followed is the most successful state-led industrialisation of the century. The five-year plans from 1962 directed cheap credit through nationalised banks to selected exporters, protected the domestic market, and set targets that firms met or lost their financing; the chaebol conglomerates were built this way. Normalisation with Japan in 1965 brought capital, and troops sent to Vietnam brought American contracts. Income per head rose roughly twentyfold in a generation. The politics were repressive throughout and became more so: the Yushin constitution of 1972 made him president indefinitely, dissidents were tortured, and workers who organised were treated as subversives. He was shot at dinner by his own intelligence chief in 1979. The verdict on him is still contested in Korea and the terms of the argument are clear. He built the economy that made democracy possible in 1987 and he jailed and tortured the people who were demanding it, and his daughter was elected president in 2012 and impeached in 2017.
- Year: 1961 CE
- Category: Political
