However, the 386ers’ spirit of resistance and their doubts about the South Korean national identity survived, getting the political parties to pressure for the withdrawal of the security apparatus from domestic political affairs. The 1988 National Assembly hearings on human rights violations, followed by the 1993 purge of Chun Doo-hwan’s Hanahoe faction from the military and the 1995 trial of Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo on the charges of military mutiny, national subversion, and corruption, made the security agencies lose their appetite for any role in political repression.
The days of terrorizing the political parties and the chaeya with threats of torture were over for good with the progress of democratization.
Conclusion
649
However, this did not mean that the heirs to Park’s security agencies completely withdrew from domestic politics. The politics of terror ended, but given the ideologically shallow and organizationally weak regionalist parties’ entrapment in a destructive cycle of party splits and mergers, the leaders of democratic South Korea were repeatedly tempted to use the security apparatus as their praetorian guard in covert political operations.
As late as the 1997 presidential election, the National Security Planning Agency—the successor to the KCIA—wiretapped chaebol executives, party politicians, and newspaper owners, among others, to trace the flow of election campaign funds, and also tried to get North Korea to stage a military incident in the hopes of triggering a war scare that could tilt the undecided toward the ruling political party. Reorganized into the National Intelligence Service during Kim Dae-jung’s presidency, the security agency spearheaded peace talk with P’yôngyang in 2000 and 2007, eventually clearing the way to a summit meeting with Kim Jung-il of the North. It was revealed in 2005 that illegal wiretapping continued under Kim Dae-jung; according to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, some 1,800 people were wiretapped by the National Intelligence Service to gather a diverse array of information concerning such issues as the presidential primaries and intra-party factional struggles, labor strikes and medical reforms, and inter-Korea economic programs. Apparently, the organizational capabilities of the security apparatus to plan, execute, and monitor made the leaders of democratic South Korea repeatedly turn to this system to engineer a political coup at the country’s critical moments of domestic political development.
Toward the end of the third decade after Park’s death, new perspectives and new issues were becoming more central to South Koreans. The fear of communism and North Korea that underpinned authoritarian rule in South Korea had dissipated. North Korea had fallen so far behind that it had become an object less of fear than of pity. The United States that had been so powerful and so essential to the security of South Korea had lost some of its power and lustre, allowing South Korea to become more independent in foreign policy and to strengthen its ties to China, other countries, and international organizations. The financial crisis of 1997–1998
forced South Korea to become more dependent on the international economic system, thus weakening its power to remain a developmental state.
The chaebol also transformed in tandem with South Korea’s thoroughly restructured banks and nonbank financial institutions, becoming slimmer in structure, conservative in finance, and cautious in risk management.
Conclusion
650
The presidents, more influenced by democratic standards, were continuing to weaken the country’s coercive institutions. The influence of Park Chung Hee and the institutions he established were not dead, even three decades after his death. However, the post-Park era, during which he and his institutions continued to dominate the South Korean economy, politics, and coercive institutions, was over.
Notes
Introduction
1. The kind of policy and institutional change occurring under Park Chung Hee’s rule was too discontinuous to make Morton H. Halperin’s bureaucratic politics analysis analytically relevant. Morton H. Halperin, Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1974).
2. Alice Amsden, Asia’s Next Giant: South Korea and Late Industrialization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); and Jung-en Woo, Race to the Swift: State and Finance in Korean Industrialization (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991).
3. Robert Wade, Governing the Market: Economic Theory and the Role of Government in East Asian Industrialism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990).
4. Juan J. Linz, “An Authoritarian Regime: The Case of Spain,” in Cleavages, Ideologies, and Party Systems, ed. Erik Allardt and Yrjö Littunen (Helsinki: Academic Bookstore, 1964), 297.
5. Denny Roy, “Singapore, China, and the ‘Soft Authoritarian’ Challenge,”
Asian Survey 34, no. 3 (March 1994): 231–242.
6. David Kang, Crony Capitalism: Corruption and Development in South Korea and the Philippines (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
7. Peter B. Evans, Embedded Autonomy: States and Industrial Transformation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995).
8. Peter H. Smith, Labyrinths of Power: Political Recruitment in Twentieth-Century Mexico (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979).
9. Byung-Kook Kim and Hyun-Chin Lim, “Labor against Itself: Structural Di-
Notes to Pages 9–31
652
lemmas of State Monism,” in Consolidating Democracy in South Korea, ed.
Larry Diamond and Byung-Kook Kim (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2000), 111–137.
10. Joel D. Aberbach, Robert D. Putnam, and Bert A. Rockman, Bureaucrats and Politicians in Western Democracies (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981).
11. Roderic Ai Camp, Political Recruitment across Two Centuries: Mexico, 1884–
1991 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1995), 243–258.
12. U.S. House of Representatives, Investigation of Korean-American Relations (Hearing before the Subcommittee on International Organization of the Committee on International Relations, House of Representatives), Part I (June 22, 1977), 11.
13. Consult Robert A. Packenham, The Dependency Movement: Scholarship and Politics in Development Studies (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998), for a critical review of dependency theories.
14. Peter B. Evans, The Dependent Development: The Alliance of Multinational, State, and Local Capital in Brazil (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979).
15. Consult Park Chung Hee, “Kwangbokchôl kyôngch’uksa, August 15, 1972”
[Speech in Commemoration of Liberation Day], in Park Chung Hee, Park Chung Hee taet’ongryông yônsôlmunjip chekujip [Speeches of Park Chung Hee], vol. 9 (Seoul: Secretary Office of the President, 1973), 265–268; and Park Chung Hee, “Kink¤p choch’i saho sônp’oe ch¤’¤mhan t’¤kpyôl tam-hwa” [Special Speech on the Occasion of the Declaration of Emergency Decree no. 4, April 3, 1974], in Park Chung Hee, Park Chung Hee taet’ongryông yônsôlmunjip chesip’iljip [Speeches of Park Chung Hee], vol. 11 (Seoul: Secretary Office of the President, 1975), 127–128.
16. Mark Hiley, “Industrial Restructuring in ASEAN and the Role of Japanese Foreign Direct Investment,” European Business Review 99, no. 2 (1999): 80–
90; and Chungsoo Kim, “Economic Cooperation in Northeast Asia,” Korean Journal of International Studies 22, no. 1 (1991): 55–74.
17. Han’guk kidokkyo kyohoe hyôp¤ihoe [Korean Council of Christian Churches], 1970nyôndae minjuhwa undong: kidokkyo undongÄl chungsimÄro I-V [Democratization Movements of the 1970s: A Focus on Christian Movements], vols. 1–5 (Seoul: Korean Council of Christian Churches, 1987).
18. Consult Park Chung Hee, Kukkawa hyôkmyônggwa na [The Nation, the Revolution, and I] (Seoul: Hyangmunsa, 1963).
19. Hyung-A Kim, Korea’s Development under Park Chung-Hee: Rapid Industrialization, 1961–1979 (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), 110–111.
20. Temporary Special Law on Mediation of Labor Unions and Labor Disputes in Foreign-Invested Companies (legislated in December 1969),
and Special Law on National Security (adopted in December 1971).
21. Cho Kap-che, Nae mudôm-e ch’im-¤l paet’ôra [Spit on my grave], vols. 1–5
(Seoul: Chosun Ilbosa, 1999), and vols. 6–8 (Seoul: Chosun Ilbosa, 2001), based on Cho Kap-che’s newspaper series of 564 articles published between October 29, 1997, and December 30, 1999.
Notes to Pages 37–40
653
1. The May Sixteenth Military Coup
1. Cho Kap-che, Nae mudôm-e ch’im-¤l paet’ôra 2: chônjaeng-gwa sarang [Spit on My Grave, vol. 2: War and Love] (Seoul: Chosun Ilbosa, 1998), 216–
238.
2. Don Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1997), 32.
3. Chông Chae-gyông, Park Chung Hee Silgi [Park Chung Hee’s Real History]
(Seoul: Chimmundang, 1994).
4. Cho Kap-che, Nae mudôm-e ch’im-¤l paet’ôra 3: hyôngmyông chônya [Spit on My Grave, vol. 3: On the Eve of Revolution] (Seoul: Chosun Ilbosa, 1998), 196–197.
5. The Korea Military Academy was founded in May 1946 as Chosôn Guard Military Academy (Chosôn kyôngbi sagwan hakkyo), changing its official name to the Korea Military Academy in September 1948. Beginning with a two-year program, it instituted a four-year curriculum from 1951 on, and produced its first class of cadets who had gone through the four-year program in 1955. The 1955 class included Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo, who were to stage another successful coup in December 1979. The relationship between Park and the KMA was a special one. Park had pinned much hope on the academy’s first graduating class, which was the first to contain “purely” Korean officers, not graduates of Japanese military schools like himself and others who dominated the military in the early years of the Republic. Indeed, Chun and Roh regarded Park as their mentor, and his vision of eventually handing over the control of the South Korean army to graduates of the KMA greatly influenced their decision to stage a coup in 1979, wresting power from the likes of Chông S¤ng-hwa, who had become the de facto leader of the South Korean military in the immediate aftermath of Park’s assassination in October 1979.
6. After the coup, the Manchurian group started to decline because of Park’s fear that members of the faction might challenge his power. Park did not appoint any members of the Manchurian faction to important government posts, even after consolidating his rule. Chông Il-gwôn rose to the second-highest post of prime minister in 1965, but this was mainly a ceremonial position without power. After the coup Park arrested Kim Tong-ha, Pak Im-hang, and Pak Ch’ang-am—members of the Manchurian faction who participated in the coup—for their resistance to Park’s political plan and their ambition for su-premacy. General Yi Han-lim, another prominent general of the Manchurian faction, was exiled to the United States after unsuccessfully trying to stop the coup in its first three days.
7. According to Cho Kap-che, Park may have thought of the coup when he was under General Yi Yong-mun as early as 1952. The dream ended abruptly with General Yi’s death in a traffic accident. See Cho Kap-che, Nae mudôm-e ch’im-¤l paet’ôra 3,32–51.
8. Ibid., 144–145. When Park Chung Hee was assigned to the post of commander of logistics in Pusan, he discussed the coup with his colleagues, includ-
Notes to Pages 40–53
654
ing a novelist, Yi Pyông-ju, after observing the government’s illegal election campaign on March 15, 1960.
9. President Yun Po-sôn and Prime Minister Chang Myôn were in the same Democratic Party at the time of the Second Republic’s birth (June 1960), but belonged to its Old and New Factions, respectively. This factionalism paralyzed the Chang Myôn government before splitting the Democratic Party into two in 1962.
10. Kim Hak-jun, Han’gukmunje-wa kukchejôngch’i [Korean Matters and International Politics], 4th ed. (Seoul: Pagyông-sa, 1999), 445.
11. The outbreak of the Korean War and the ensuing cold war made defense the top national priority, forcing South Korea to allocate 6–7 percent of its gross national product (GNP) and some 50 percent of its government budget to the defense sector every year throughout the 1950s. Kukpang kunsa yônguso [Research Institute for Defense and Military History], Kukpang Chôngch’aek Pyônch’ônsa 1945–1994 [History of Change in Defense Policy 1945–1994]
(Seoul: Kukpang kunsa yônguso, 1995), 72.
12. Cho Kap-che, Nae mudôm-e ch’im-¤l paet’ôra 3,138–139.
13. On the eve of the 1961 coup, a total of 7,049 officers had been trained and educated in the United States since the establishment of the Republic. In 1953
alone, 983 officers received training in the United States, as opposed to 613 civilians. Park Chung Hee was one of the beneficiaries, receiving training at Fort Sill in Oklahoma in 1953–1954. Cho Kap-che, Nae mudôm-e ch’im-¤l paet’ôra 3,70–73.
14. Kang Ch’ang-sông, Ilbon/Han’guk Kunbôljôngch’i [Military Factional Politics in Japan and Korea] (Seoul: Haedong munhwasa, 1991), 351.
15. Ibid., 173–194. The SCNR describes all sorts of corruption in the military, for example, generals took military property by truck, officers took military property by jeep, whereas sergeants took out military property on their backs for personal use.
16. Ibid., 197.
17. Cho Kap-che, Nae mudôm-e ch’im-¤l paet’ôra, 3: 128–235.
18. Kukkachaegôn ch’oegohoe¤i Han’guk kunsahyôngmyôngsa p’yônch’an wiwônhoe [Compilation Committee on Korean Military Revolution History, Supreme Council of National Reconstruction], Han’guk kunsahyông-myôngsa, sang [History of the Korean Military Revolution, vol. 1] (Seoul: Kukkachaegôn ch’oegohoe¤i Han’guk kunsahyôngmyôngsa p’yônch’an wiwônhoe, 1963), 199.
19. Cho Kap-che, Nae mudôm-e ch’im-¤l paet’ôra, 3: 328–331.
20. Cho Kap-che, Nae mudôm-e ch’im-¤l paet’ôra, 4: Kukka kaejo [Spit on My Grave, vol.4: National Reconstruction] (Seoul: Chosun Ilbosa, 1999), 26.
21. See “Text of Korean Rebels’ Communiqué,” New York Times, May 17, 1961.
22. Cho Kap-che, Nae mudôm-e ch’im-¤l paet’ôra 4: 29–30, 57–59.
23. Then an army captain, Chun Doo-hwan was a main actor responsible for organizing a parade in support of the military coup by KMA cadres. This
Notes to Pages 53–63
655
was the first and last of this kind of intervention by cadets in politics in the history of modern South Korea.
24. Kukkachaegôn ch’oegohoe¤i Han’guk kunsahyôngmyôngsa p’yônch’an wiwônhoe, Han’guk kunsahyôngmyôngsa, 1: 329.
25. Ibid., 278.
2. Taming and Tamed by the United States
1. The counterpart fund consisted of South Korean won-denominated funds generated by the sale of foreign exchange provided by grants-in-aid and aid goods to domestic users that were then to be jointly managed by the South Korean and U.S. governments.
2. The U.S. National Security Council (NSC) document 5514 of 1955 defined U.S. objectives to be “[assisting] the Republic of Korea (ROK) in order to enable it to make a substantial contribution to free world strength in the Pacific area, to prevent more of the Korean Peninsular from coming under Communist domination either by subversion or aggression, and to develop ROK
armed forces sufficient for internal security and capable of defending ROK
territory short of attack by a major power.” “Statement of Policy on U.S. Objectives and on Courses of Action in Korea,” Foreign Relations of the United States [hereafter FRUS], 1955–1957, 23:44.
3. “Evaluation of Alternative Military Programs for Korea,” January 14, 1957, NSC 5702, FRUS, 1955–1957, 23:374–384.
4. “Statement of U.S. Policy toward Korea,” FRUS, 1955–1957, 23:491–498. As will be seen below, the reduction of ROK forces met strong resistance from the ROK government.
5. As such, it shared the spirit of the report of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for International Affairs submitted to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Donald S. Macdonald, U.S.
-Korean Relations from Liberation to Self-Reliance: The Twenty-Year Record (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992), 26–27. It was presumed that Kennedy’s transition team participated in the deliberations. Jung-en Woo, Race to the Swift: State and Finance in Korean Industrialization (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 75.
6. FRUS, 1958–1960, 28:700.
7. Report by Hugh D. Farley, FRUS, 1961–1963, 22:424–425.
8. Telegram from Embassy in Seoul to Department of State, March 11, 1961, John F. Kennedy Library, Boston [hereafter JFKL].
9. “Short-range Outlook in the Republic of Korea,” Special National Intelligence Estimate [hereafter SNIE] 42–61, FRUS, 1961–1963, 22:430–435.
10. Memorandum from Robert W. Komer to Rostow, March 15, 1961, FRUS, 1961–1963, 22:426–427.
11. Memorandum from Rostow to Kennedy, March 15, 1961, FRUS, 1961–1963, 22:428.
12. Memorandum from Director of Central Intelligence Dulles to President Kennedy, May 16, 1961, FRUS, 1961–1963, 22:456–457.
Notes to Pages 63–71
656
13. Citing Kim Chong-p’il, Cho Kap-che writes that Kim Chong-p’il’s Korean Central Intelligent Agency (KCIA) discovered the operation, and secretly expelled two officers. Cho Kap-che, Nae mudôm-e ch’im-¤l paet’ôra 5: Kim Chong-p’il-¤i p’ungun [Spit on My Grave, vol. 5: The Adventures of Kim Chong-p’il] (Seoul: Chosun Ilbo-sa, 1999), 393.
14. Telegram from the Department of State to the Embassy in Korea, May 16, 1961, FRUS, 1961–1963, 22:455.
15. New York Times, May 18, 1961.
16. New York Times, May 19, 1961.
17. It was at Green’s discretion to withhold it, however. Memorandum for McGeorge Bundy on Proposed Message to Lieutenant General Chang To-yông by L. D. Battle, May 25, 1961, JFKL.
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