Park Chung Hee Era
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The issue of corruption had been simmering for a long time. Under Rhee, the ruling Liberal Party raised political funds through illegal means to bribe opposition party politicians to gain their support. In the military, too, the generals fabricated inventory reports to dispose of military property and assets not only for their own personal gain, but also for the raising of political funds.15 Politicization of the military had also become a serious issue, because Rhee used its top leadership for the rigging of elections. Senior officers regularly ordered their subordinates to vote for Syngman Rhee and his Liberal Party through open ballots and mock ballots. During the Rhee regime, some fifty officers were arrested for “intervention in politics” when they disobeyed the order to get their regiments to vote for the ruling party. After Rhee’s overthrow, young colonels and lieutenant colonels began to demand that the military’s top leadership take responsibility for their role in the vote rigging of the 1956 and 1960 presidential elections. The reformist campaign gained momentum when Major General Park Chung Hee joined the young officers and demanded that the army chief of staff, Song Yo-ch’an, resign for having meddled in the 1960 presidential election. On a personal level, Park’s move was an act of betrayal, for Song had saved Park’s career on various occasions during the 1950s and had helped Park receive his promotion to the rank of major general in 1958. Politically, however, it was a brilliant move, pushing Park
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onto the center stage of military reform politics and transforming him overnight into a leader of national stature. Park could side unambiguously with the forces of reform because as a second-tier general, excluded from powerful posts and political crony networks during the 1950s, he was clean on the corruption issue. The issue of his earlier leftist record remained, but he could also fight back with his impeccable record of anticommunism in the Korean War. Untainted by corruption, Park was favorably positioned to transform the societywide anticorruption reform movements into his vehicle to challenge others of his rank and to build up his own military faction. In the process Park found his supporters, allies, and confidants among the people with whom he had cultivated trust during the 1950s. In Seoul, members of the eighth graduating class of the KMA—lieutenant colonels Kim Hyông-uk, Kil Chae-ho, Ok Ch’ang-ho, Sin Yun-ch’ang, Sôk Ch’ang-h¤i, Ch’oe Chun-myông, O Sang-gyun, and Kim Chong-p’il—with whom Park had cultivated close ties ever since his three years at the army headquarters’ Intelligence Bureau, secretly gathered to support Park’s appeal for the resignation of the army chief of staff.
Their activity was leaked to the military security forces, ending in the arrest of the men on charges of conspiracy. Nevertheless, the damage had been done and Song Yo-ch’an stepped down from his office on May 19, 1960, as the anticorruption campaign began to gain support inside as well as outside the military.
Song’s removal proved to be only the beginning of intense political conflict within the military. The new army chief of staff was Ch’oe Yông-h¤i, an old-timer as vulnerable to the charge of corruption and politicization as his predecessor. On August 19, the lieutenant colonels visited newly inaugurated prime minister Chang Myôn to set the criteria for the appointment of the next army chief of staff and defense minister. Their bold move verged on insubordination. On September 10, Kim Chong-p’il and Kim Hyông-uk, aided by their KMA classmates, tried to pay a visit to the defense minister, Hyôn Sôk-ho, to ask what policy measures he would take to root out corruption. Not only was their request for the meeting denied, but the two were arrested for insubordination. That night, the other leaders of the anticorruption movements met in downtown Seoul to discuss concrete measures to advance the cause of the anticorruption campaign on their own initiative, because they thought it futile to appeal to either the national political leadership or the military establishment. This was the beginning of preparations for a military coup.
In the eyes of the anticorruption camp, Prime Minister Chang Myôn’s Democratic Party was as hostile to the idea of reform as Syngman Rhee’s now-dismantled Liberal Party. The lieutenant colonels began to think that
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the only way to reform the military establishment was not by working through the hierarchy of the armed forces, but by pressuring for change from outside by challenging the national political leadership and initiating political reform. The problem of corruption within the military was perceived as structural in nature, inextricably linked to the larger structure of political, economic, and social domination of the nation. The leaders of the military clean-up campaign began to shift their goal from initiating an internal military reform to launching a military coup to carry out a full-fledged national reform. Sometime in May 1960, the colonels and lieutenant colonels of the eighth graduating class of the KMA had gotten the green light from Park to prepare for a military coup.16 Park then was the commander of the Logistics Headquarters in Pusan, geographically too far away from Seoul to occupy and control the capital. Moreover, he had only a lightly armed battalion or two under his personal command. To seize power, he needed to assemble a coalition of forces, which he thought could be done by getting the eighth KMA graduating class to link up different regiments through horizontal networks. Having reached the ranks of lieutenant colonel and colonel, graduates of the eighth KMA class commanded combat battalions and regiments. The question was how to bring these functionally strategic but geographically dispersed mid-ranking officers into one cohesive coalition to carry out a coup. It was necessary to break into the military hierarchy and divert the loyalty of the mid-ranking officers away from their immediate boss. Park calculated that the informal group loyalty based on school ties would outweigh the formal discipline of military hierarchy.
Park used his own school ties with generals of the Manchurian faction to put together the coup’s leadership. He approached Major General Kim Tong-ha of the marine corps, one year his senior at the Manchurian Xinjing Officers School, about launching a coup. Park also got Yi Chu-il, another Xinjing Officers School graduate, to persuade Brigadier General Yun T’ae-il of the Thirty-Sixth Division to join the group. Park secured support from the editor in chief of the Pusan Daily News for the purposes of propaganda. Park also tested the intentions of the Second Army commander, Chang To-yông, by arguing the need for a military intervention.17
Given the political instability of the time, the lieutenant colonels, colonels, and generals of the coalition were able to appeal directly to higher authorities for a military coup and to express their discontent with the state of political and military affairs openly without getting punished for insubordination. The open plotting was possible not only because the Military Security Command responsible for monitoring officers’ activities and maintaining military discipline was seriously demoralized due to its impli-
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cation in illegal activities during the Rhee regime but also because South Korea was in the midst of a veritable civil revolution after the April 19 student uprising. All sectors of society took turns in expressing their frustration and grievances through demonstrations and riots. The Chang Myôn government was losing control of South Korean politics, and that fractured political force was evident in the demoralization of the security command.
The officers began to plan for a coup and organize in earnest in October 1960, with the core members assigned to strategic roles. Kim Chong-p’il became their general secretary while Kim Hyông-uk and Chông Mun-sun coordinated intelligence. The office of personnel went to O Ch’i-sông, that of economic affairs to Kim Tong-hwan, and that of legal matters to Kil Chae-ho. Ok Ch’ang-ho, Sin Yun-ch’ang, and U Hyông-ryong were put in charge of operations.
On November 9, the nine core members held a second meeting at Major General Park Chung Hee’s house in Seoul. As luck would have it, he had been transferred from Pusan to Seoul to become the director general of operations at army headquarters, enabling him to attend the preparatory meetings regular
ly. To be sure, the new post did not bestow Park with any operational command over combat troops, still making him dependent on the lieutenant colonels and colonels of the eighth KMA graduating class in building horizontal networks among would-be coup makers. At the critical meeting in November, the core members decided to use the anticorruption movement as the pretext for the coup. The strategy was chosen because two of their comrades, Kil Chae-ho and Ok Ch’ang-ho, had been arrested for involvement in the movement. As part of their effort to widen the coalition, O Ch’i-sông succeeded in winning the support of an artillery unit in the Sixth Corps and of the Army War College. While the colonels and lieutenant colonels concentrated their efforts on recruiting young officers and establishing revolutionary cells within and outside Seoul, Park continued cultivating the trust of generals.
Game Plan
The core group formulated four guiding principles for the coup:
• The goal is to liberate people from political corruption and economic poverty through a “maximum-effect dose of medicine”—revolution, recognizing the reality that the country had lost the momentum to reform peacefully the military establishment.
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• The revolutionaries shall risk their lives to achieve “great righteous-ness.”
• The task of organizing the revolutionary organ shall proceed in top secrecy.
• The decision to undertake the coup is based on an objective analysis of the nation’s reality and the people’s hopes.18
With the articulation of these rather fuzzy four principles, the core group started to organize its central and local organs to stage the coup.
From November 1960 until May 1961, Park focused on persuading more generals in command of combat and noncombat troops on the front lines with North Korea as well as in the rear area to join the coup coalition. In November, Brigadier General Chang Kyông-sun, of army headquarters, and Han Ung-jin, of the Intelligence School in Yôngch’ôn (who set aside his own plan for a coup), came on board. With the goal of preventing a crackdown on the organization of the coup, which by then had become an open secret, Park tried to persuade officers at the Counter-Intelligence Command to sign on. To equip his coup coalition with guns and tanks, Park also tried to win over the army’s Ninth Division, the major armored division located in the vicinity of Seoul. Both efforts failed, however. But to the relief of the coup makers, neither the Counter-Intelligence Command nor the Ninth Division reported the conspiracy to higher authorities.
Toward the end of 1960, Park began other talks parallel to the ongoing meetings with the core group, in order to broaden his support base among younger officers. He purposely put himself in the position of coordinating activities of the different segments of the coalition. The participants communicated and coordinated only through Park, making him the de facto leader. The loose network gave Park freedom to maneuver and flexibility to adjust swiftly to changes in the political environment. Once the coup succeeded in May 1961, the same structure—with a built-in system of checks and balances among the mid-ranking core members and between the colonels and the generals and with the hub occupied by Park—would be of great assistance to Park in consolidating power around him. One member of a parallel group whom Park brought in to the heterogeneous coalition was Major General Yi Chu-il. Park met Yi in Taegu at the end of 1960 to draw up three separate guiding principles of the coup:
• Once the coup was launched, the two would ask Lieutenant General Chang To-yông, army chief of staff, to become the chairman of the Revolutionary Council in order to get the entire military establishment behind the coup. The implementation of coup plans would fall
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under the purview of Park Chung Hee, who would take up the position of commander of the Revolutionary Army.
• Park would take charge of organizing the central organ of the Revolutionary Army by recruiting field army generals, while Yi would be responsible for assembling support groups in the rear area.
• Colonel Pak Ki-sôk would assist Yi in the organization of the Revolutionary Army in Taegu.
On April 10, 1961, Park boldly revealed the coup plan to Chang To-yông. The reaction of Chang was perplexing. The army chief of staff turned down Park’s request to head the coalition, but he did not report the conspiracy to Prime Minister Chang Myôn. Nor did he move to preempt the coup by ordering the Counter-Intelligence Command and the Security Command to arrest the conspirators. Moreover, although Chang turned down the leadership position, Park came out of the meeting with the impression that Chang had given tacit support for the coup, through elusive gestures and equivocal expressions. Perhaps the two miscommunicated, but it is more likely that the army chief of staff could see that the coup planners had already developed too much momentum for him to stop them. Besides, he could later side with Park if the coup looked promising.
Whatever Chang To-yông’s motive was, his indecisiveness allowed Park to persuade others to join the coalition by portraying Chang To-yông as the
“invisible hand” behind the military coup. The strategy was to use Chang to provide the stamp of legitimacy and the unity of the military behind the plan, something only the army chief of staff could give.
Park also frequently visited the army’s Fifth Division commander Ch’ae Myông-sin and obtained his full support by May 1960. In December 1960, he secured support from the generals at the Second Army Headquarters in Taegu. Later, in April 1961, Park visited Kwangju to recruit Colonel Yi Wôn-yôp, the commandant of the Army Aviation School, to spread the revolutionary communiqué on the day of the military coup. According to the plan, the coup headquarters was to be located at the Sixth District Command in Seoul. Lieutenant Colonel Pak Wôn-bin was put in charge of organizing coup units there.
In March 1961, the core group of lieutenant colonels and colonels refined their plot at the Ch’ungmu-jang Restaurant in Seoul. They agreed on five major points:
• The core group of the military coup would consist of the eighth and ninth graduating classes of the KMA.
• Only those “qualified” officers, without records of personal corruption or politicization, would be recruited into the coup coalition.
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• The list of the officers who have agreed to join the coup will not be made known among the coup makers until the end of March 1961.
• In April, they would convene a meeting for all members of the coup coalition.
• Colonel O Ch’i-sông would be in charge of communications among the eighth KMA graduating class and Lieutenant Colonel Kang Sang-uk in charge of communication among the ninth KMA graduating class.
In designing their plan, the coup makers, mindful of possible undesirable consequences for national security, decided not to mobilize units on the front lines. They chose the first anniversary of the April 19 Student Revolution as D-day for the coup, because they expected severe political unrest to break out near that day to protest against the incompetence of Chang Myôn, thus justifying the military move as an attempt not only to restore order but also to inherit and carry out the democratic spirit of the year before. As a back-up plan, they set mid-May as another D-day in case the mid-April plan did not materialize. Park was in charge of mobilizing regular and reserve forces stationed in the rear area. At the Sixth District Command, where lieutenant colonels Pak Wôn-bin and Ok Ch’ang-ho were to take charge of military operations on the day of the coup, were the forces of the Thirtieth and Thirty-Third Army Divisions as well as the special military forces charged with the defense of Seoul. Getting these forces to capture strategically important posts in the capital was crucial for the plan’s success, and by the end of March their support had been secured.
Park also obtained financial support in the amount of 7.5 million hwan
—76.5 percent of the total budget for the coup—from civilian businesspeople, including Kim Chong-rak (Kim Chong-p’il’s elder brother).19 Yi Hak-su, with a small
print company, was in charge of printing the propaganda leaflets in cooperation with Chang T’ae-hwa, who gathered intelligence. Park used his own connections to small-sized entrepreneurs to raise financial resources for the coup.
But contrary to the expectation of political unrest, the first anniversary of the April 19 Student Revolution passed without major protest, forcing the coup leaders to reschedule D-day to May 12. This, too, was abruptly aborted when the plan was accidentally leaked to the military security forces and reported to Prime Minister Chang Myôn and Defense Minister Hyôn Sôk-ho. The coup was postponed to 3:00 AM on May 16, 1961.
The Chang Myôn government failed to initiate an investigation to counter the coup makers, because army chief of staff Chang To-yông questioned the reliability of the security report when the prime minister asked
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him about it. Chang Myôn trusted Chang To-yông deeply as a fellow Roman Catholic, and Chang To-yông’s words stopped Chang Myôn from ordering an investigation. The fact that there had been rumors of a military coup by one or another faction of the South Korean armed forces since early 1961 also helped Park, since Chang Myôn thought the security report on the May 12 coup was another false alarm. Nonetheless, the incident provoked Lieutenant General Yi Han-lim (of the First Army) and other generals not recruited for the coup to keep a close eye on Park’s moves.
On May 16, Park went to the Sixth District Army Headquarters to coordinate the coup himself after finding out that the plan had once again been leaked. The military police were already in the process of rounding up the coup makers in the Sixth District Army at the order of army chief of staff Chang To-yông after receiving a Counter-Intelligence Command report that a mutiny was being plotted by officers of the Thirtieth Division under the command of the Sixth District Army. Park hurriedly tried to reverse the situation. Concealing his anxiety, Park gave a moving speech before the recalcitrant troops, saying, “We have been waiting for the civilian government to bring back order to the country. The Prime Minister and the Ministers, however, are mired in corruption, leading the country to the verge of collapse. We shall rise up against the government to save the country. We can accomplish our goals without bloodshed. Let us join in this Revolutionary Army to save the country.”20