Park Chung Hee Era

by Byung-kook Kim

  Likewise, the heterogeneous and complex composition of his coalition came to work to his advantage, once he recognized that the same heterogeneity and complexity weakened his rivals’ political base as much as his own and that their fears of a failed coup were likely to prevent them from openly challenging his role as a coordinator during the planning stage and his purge of rivals during the power consolidation stage. Consequently, Park thought he could get away with his strategy of divide and conquer in consolidating his bases of power, and he did. Moreover, Park also understood that the United States would pursue a strategy of wait-and-see rather than veto the coup if he accommodated the superpower’s vital interests, including an unambiguous anticommunism. In other words, the military coup succeeded because Park was a strategic thinker with a keen understanding of how to use and grow power.

  Park Chung Hee’s Odyssey

  Park Chung Hee was born in November 1917 into a poor farming family in North Kyôngsang Province. As a young man, he briefly worked as a

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  schoolteacher after graduating from Taegu Teachers College. He joined Japan’s Manchukuo army in 1940, enrolling in the Manchurian Xinjing Officers School, where he met other ambitious young Koreans, many of whom were to become co-conspirators in his 1961 plot. After graduating in March 1942, he entered the third grade of the Japanese Military Academy (JMA) in Tokyo and graduated in the 1944 class of foreign students.

  After graduation, Park was dispatched to the Eighth Manchurian Infantry Corps as a second lieutenant. When Korea was liberated from Japanese rule, he made his way to Beijing, where Korean soldiers from various units became part of the Korean resistance army (kwangbokkun) before returning to Korea. At that time he was the Second Company commander of its Chup’yôngjin Battalion of the Third Detached Force. In September 1946, Park entered the Chosôn Defense Guard School (Chosôn kyôngbi sagwan hakkyo), later renamed the Korea Military Academy (KMA), and became a member of its second graduating class.

  Park’s career in the newly created South Korean army was a turbulent one. After graduation from the KMA, he was assigned to the U.S.-Korean force that was to put down the Yôsu-Sunch’ôn rebellion of October 1948.

  The rebellion was staged by leftist elements within the army in defiance of the government’s order to suppress a communist uprising on Cheju Island.

  Before Park could report for duty, however, he was arrested when his name came up in connection with investigations into communist cells within the Korean army. Although there was no evidence that any of these cells was directly involved in the rebellion, Park himself was a card-carrying member of the South Korea Workers’ Party before 1948, making him a target of a crackdown by the military security police. He was initially sentenced to death for his connections to the workers’ party and for allegedly providing arms to the insurgents of the rebellion.1 The sentence was then reduced to twenty years of imprisonment. But Park was released soon thereafter, after providing information on the party’s clandestine activities.2 His direct superior at the time, Major General Paek Sôn-yôp, a graduate of the Manchurian Fengtian Officers School, the predecessor institution to the Xinjing Officers School, and Brigadier General Chang To-yông cleared him of the charges. After Park left prison, he was assigned to the post of director of operations and intelligence at army headquarters as a civilian.

  The outbreak of the Korean War (1950–1953) saved him. Fourteen months after his discharge and only three days after the outbreak of war, Park was reinstated in Suwôn as a major on the recommendation of General Chang To-yông to then–chief of staff Lieutenant General Chông Il-gwôn, who was himself an earlier graduate of the Japanese Military Acad-

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  emy. Given the intense left-right ideological strife plaguing the country, and the eventual eradication of leftist forces in South Korea, it is remarkable that Park not only went free but was able to resume his military career. His reinstatement perhaps attests to the high personal esteem that he enjoyed among his superiors, enough to make them risk their own careers to vouch for him in the ideologically charged times. Factionalism within the South Korean military helped as well, encouraging the graduates of the Manchurian Xinjing and Fengtian Officers School as well as of the Japanese Military Academy to look after Park in an effort to win followers in their struggle against other factions or even among themselves. Most important, Park had proved his ideological loyalty to South Korea and to the officer corps, first by betraying his leftist comrades during the Yôsu-Sunch’ôn rebellion and then by fleeing south with the army headquarters’

  Intelligence Bureau during the early days of the war, when North Korea’s military victory seemed certain.

  Once returned to the military, Park—like many others in his age group

  —was rapidly promoted up the ranks from major to colonel in the spring of 1951. Park was perceived as a competent officer because he had predicted a North Korean invasion as early as December 1949. During the war, Park was awarded the Order of Military Merit Ch’ungmu in December 1950 for his bravery in the Mid-East Battle of that year, the Order of Military Merit Hwarang in December 1951 as the commandant of the Army Intelligence School, and the Order of Military Merit Ch’ungmu in May 1953 as the artillery commander of the Second Corps.3 Park’s career was also helped by the shortage of qualified officers in the South Korean army, which went through a massive organizational expansion during the war. After he became brigadier general his promotions slowed, but at this critical juncture, General Paek Sôn-yôp, then the army chief of staff, once again helped Park by clearing his record of any leftist activities. But Park’s troubles did not abate. In 1956, when he was in command of the army’s Fifth Division, some of his subordinates defected to the North as a protest against the blatant rigging of the presidential election by President Syngman Rhee (1948–1960). That same year, fifty-nine soldiers of his division died in an avalanche. In 1957, when he commanded the army’s Seventh Division, a massive fire broke out in his logistics depot. Such problems would have ended most officers’ military careers, but as in 1948 and 1950, Park survived with the help of his superiors. In 1958 Paek Sôn-yôp once again intervened on Park’s behalf, helping him to get promoted to the rank of major general when his past communist record again became an issue for the army’s promotion board. It was from this rank that Park planned and launched his military coup.

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  Climbing up through Factional Strife

  In the 1950s the South Korean army was divided into three groups, based on regional background. The Northwest Group, natives of the P’yôngan Provinces, was led by Paek Sôn-yôp and later Chang To-yông; the Northeast Group, from the Hamgyông Provinces, by Chông Il-gwôn and later Yi Yong-mun; and the Mid-South Group, from the middle-south provinces, by Yi Hyông-g¤n. There were also cleavages based on school ties. The graduates of the Japanese Military Academy competed against those from the Fengtian and Xinjing Officers School. When Song Yo-ch’an became army chief of staff in 1960, the influence of the JMA graduates surpassed that of the Manchurian faction, which strongly opposed Song not only because of factional ties but also because of his support for President Rhee in the rigged election of 1960.4 After the April 19 Student Revolution that followed that election, members of the Mid-South Group, along with graduates of the fifth KMA class, weeded out Song Yo-ch’an’s faction, only to be purged themselves a year later by the coup that Park—a graduate of the Xinjing Officers School—carried off with the assistance of younger graduates of the KMA.5 The senior officers of the 1961 coup coalition came from the Northwest Group and had received their military education at the Fengtian and Xinjing Officers School. The two leaders of this Northwest-Manchurian faction, Paek Sôn-yôp and Chang To-yông, had been patrons of Park throughout the 1950s. As the leader of the coalition, Park, though from the southeast, recruited many senior officers from this faction as major shareholders in the coup. In addition t
o sharing common school ties, Park had bonds with many in the faction through the KMA.

  Generals Yun T’ae-il, Pak Im-hang, Kim Tong-ha, and Pang Wôn-ch’ôl were from the academy’s first graduating class; Yi Chu-il was from the second; and Ch’oe Chu-jong from the third. Marine corps brigadier general Kim Yun-g¤n graduated in the KMA’s sixth class. These officers joined Park to make up the core of the coalition’s leaders, destined to become members of the postcoup Supreme Council for Nation Reconstruction (SCNR).6 Kim Yun-g¤n mobilized his marine corps to cross the Han River on the morning of the coup. The support of other generals—Chông Il-gwôn, Sin Hyôn-jun, and Paek Sôn-yôp, all graduates of the Manchurian Fengtian Officers School—could be counted on once forces had crossed the river.

  Despite the participation of generals of similar rank, it was Park who controlled the initiative from the very beginning stage of planning for the coup, because he had the loyalty of the lieutenant colonels and colonels

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  in command of battalions and regiments lower down in the military hierarchy. To organize this mid-level officer-led nucleus, Park fully utilized the personal ties he had built up throughout his military career. As a company commander at the KMA, he won the trust and loyalty of the cadets with his taciturn yet forceful personality, self-discipline, generosity, and patriotism. In particular, Park built close ties with four promising cadets in the fifth KMA graduating class—Ch’ae Myông-sin, Kim Chae-ch’un, Pak Ch’i-ok, and Mun Chae-jun—who were to lead their troops as vanguards of the coup coalition at dawn on May 16. When Park worked in the intelligence division at army headquarters as a civilian, he had also forged ties with leading young officers of the eighth KMA class, including Kim Chong-p’il, his later close ally, and Sôk Chông-sôn, Yi Yông-g¤n, and Chôn Chae-gu, who were to become coup planners and, afterward, founders of the Korea Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) that worked to consolidate Park’s power. With his promotion to the rank of brigadier general, Park began to bring together many of these trustworthy followers into his military unit, while at the same time cultivating the trust of new faces as well, such as Yi Nak-sôn, Yi Wôn-yôp, Hong Chong-ch’ôl, Ku Cha-ch’un, Kim Kye-wôn, Pak T’ae-jun, Yun P’il-yong, and Han Pyông-gi. By acting as a bridge that linked the senior group of Northwest-Manchurian officers with the junior group of the fifth and eighth KMA graduating classes, Park put himself at the center of the coalition. Rather than being the first among equals, Park was indispensable to the planning, creating a cohesive organization out of different components.

  Park appears to have toyed with the idea of a military coup as early as 1956, when Rhee was re-elected through a rigged presidential election.7 As he later recollected, the plotting became more serious in January 1960

  with the approach of another presidential election.8 When student activists launched a revolution on April 19, 1960, in protest against the rigging of this election, the increasingly corrupt and dictatorial government of Syngman Rhee responded with force, killing 183 demonstrators on April 19 alone. The bloody crackdown bankrupted the Liberal Party, forcing Rhee to go into exile in Hawaii. The student revolution prevented Park from going further down the road to a military coup. As he later lamented, he lost the initiative to the students and had to wait for another civilian government to falter before he could have his chance.

  Park’s chance came in 1961, when it became increasingly evident to many that the leaders of the Second Republic (1960–1961), who had come to power two months after the fall of Syngman Rhee, were incompetent and corrupt. The internally fragmented civilian regime of Chang Myôn betrayed people’s hopes for a clean and effective government.9 Many thought

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  that the civilian government could not handle the political, social, and economic crises then gripping the country. Some feared that the national woes would invite leftist-communist subversion.10 South Korean society was waiting for effective leadership, and Park and his fellow officers exploited the power vacuum created by the April 19 Student Revolution with their superior intelligence, organizational capabilities, and political skill.

  Advent of the Military as a Leading Institution The once-fledgling armed forces of South Korea had then transformed into a 600,000-strong, thoroughly modern, and formidable fighting force, thanks to the Korean War.11 Training hundreds of thousands of men for combat, providing the soldiers with supplies, and planning and executing troop deployment required enormous logistical capabilities. In carrying out these tasks, the South Korean military gained modern administrative and managerial know-how, allowing the 1961 coup leaders to boast that their level of managerial skill was “ten years ahead of the private sector.”12

  The coup makers even claimed the military to be the most democratic institution in South Korea, with its leaders of humble origin extensively trained in the United States under myriad military transfer programs13 and its organization acting as the melting pot for men of diverse social and economic backgrounds. In the poverty-stricken country, devastated by colonial exploitation, the military constituted one of the very few avenues open to young men seeking opportunities to advance. The armed forces also functioned as a social safety net for many of the unemployed and underemployed.

  In particular, the training programs in the United States helped officers to define their role comprehensively to include not only military defense but also nation building. Certainly, the comprehensive definition of the military role was not new to many of the Fengtian and Xinjing graduates, including Park. The Japanese imperial army had defined the mission of the armed forces as nation building too. Now the South Korean armed forces, with their new U.S. military training and education, could combine the Japanese militarist ethos with the American spirit of technical efficiency to expand its mission from defending the country against communist aggression to that of helping it build itself into a modern nation. From this it was only a short step for the armed forces to entertain the idea of military intervention in the country’s political and economic affairs as a legitimate and necessary part of its mission. Moreover, the armed forces became increasingly contemptuous of both ruling and opposition political parties

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  that remained trapped in partisan gridlock. In particular, the junior officer corps became rebellious, critical of superior officers who had been corrupted by politicians. Removed from the political fray because of their lower rank, the junior officers could project an image of ideological purity and incorruptibility. For South Koreans, longtime witnesses to the corro-sive effects of faction-driven, inefficient, and corrupt civilian party politics, the junior officers gradually gained in esteem as an alternative group of elites to lead the nation.

  Adding to the junior officers’ discontent was the serious imbalance in the South Korean military promotion system. Because the armed forces had expanded to over 600,000 men in a mere five years after its establishment, there developed a huge gap in the time required for promotion between different graduating classes of the KMA. The higher the rank in 1948, the faster the subsequent promotion. For the early starters, the rapid organizational expansion of the armed forces during the Korean War meant a great opportunity to climb the ranks. Once they rose and filled in higher posts, they necessarily prevented their subordinates from climbing up the ladder as rapidly as they had. For example, whereas the fifth KMA class became colonels in eight years after their graduation,14 the eighth KMA graduating class had to spend eight years to be promoted from the rank of major to colonel. The promotional imbalance caused serious discontent among lieutenant colonels and colonels by the late 1950s. They were to become core members of the 1961 coup.

  The situation was thus ripe for military intervention in politics, with both “push” and “pull” factors driving military factions to challenge the civilian political leadership. For this professional but politicized military to seize power and lead society, however, there had to be
a leader who could forge myriad military factions into a coalition and imbue it with a sense of purpose and destiny with his vision, charisma, strategic mind, and organizational capabilities. That leader was Park Chung Hee.

  At the same time, it is important not to exaggerate Park’s basis of support within the armed forces at the time of military coup. The opposite seemed more likely, with the mainstream of the South Korean military withholding support for, if not opposing, the 1961 coup. Nor did Park appear as the natural leader of the entire South Korean military. As with any institution of its size, the South Korean armed forces had its share of internal strife between rival factions. At the time of the coup, Park was the deputy commander of the Second Army, not favorably positioned to mobilize troops in the event of a military clash. Rather, it was more the dynamics of power between different factions within the South Korean military than his own resources that enabled Park to engineer the coup and then to con-

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  solidate power within the junta. The key to his success was a strategy of divide-and-rule that neutralized the rivals despite their seemingly greater strength within the army.

  From Military Reform to National Revolution Ironically, it was the April 19 Student Revolution of 1960 that brought the armed forces onto the center stage of politics. The student revolution not only spread the spirit of reform to the South Korean military, but also entrusted it with the task of restoring order after Syngman Rhee stepped down from his office on April 26. The army, as the executor of martial law, had to confront the challenge of governance directly. Suddenly thrown into a volatile political arena, and directly engaging societal forces in reforms, military officers were eventually led to form their own ideas about what was happening in the country. The younger officers, in particular, gathered into groups to exchange information and views. These ad hoc meetings provided conditions favorable for a military coup by becoming the catalyst for the wide dissemination of radical ideas and reformist views regarding problems plaguing the military as well as the country.