Park Chung Hee (Korean: 박정희, pronounced [pak̚ tɕ͈ʌ̹ŋʝi] ; November 14, 1917 – October 26, 1979) was a South Korean politician and army officer who seized power in the May 16 coup of 1961, and served as the third president of South Korea from 1962 until his assassination in 1979. His regime oversaw a period of intense economic growth and transformation, making Park one of the most consequential leaders in Korean history, although his legacy as a military dictator remains a bitter subject.
Before his presidency, Park was the second-highest-ranking officer in the South Korean army. His coup brought an end to the interim Second Republic of Korea. After serving for two years as chairman of the military junta, he was elected president in 1963, ushering in the Third Republic. A firm anti-communist, he continued to maintain close ties with the United States, which had maintained a large Army garrison in the country since the end of the Korean War. He supported American military involvement in Southeast Asia, and sent South Korean troops to fight in Vietnam soon after seizing power. Park began a series of economic reforms that eventually led to rapid and unprecedented economic growth and industrialization, a phenomenon that is now known as the Miracle on the Han River. This made South Korea one of the fastest growing economies of the 1960s and 1970s, albeit with costs to labor rights. This era also saw the formation of chaebols: family companies supported by the state similar to the Japanese zaibatsu. Examples of significant chaebols include Hyundai, LG, and Samsung.
Although popular during the 1960s, Park's popularity started to plateau by the 1970s, with closer than expected victories during the 1971 presidential election and the subsequent legislative elections. In 1972, Park declared martial law after carrying out a self-coup. He then introduced the highly authoritarian Yushin Constitution, ushering in the Fourth Republic. Now ruling as a dictator, he constantly repressed political opposition and dissent and completely controlled the military. He also had much control over the media and expressions of art. In 1979, Park was assassinated by his close friend Kim Jae-gyu, director of the KCIA, following the Busan–Masan Uprising. Whether the assassination was spontaneous or premeditated remains unclear to this day. Economic growth continued in spite of the 1979 coup d'état and considerable political turmoil in the wake of his assassination. He was soon afterwards succeeded by Choi Kyu-hah, who ruled for only a year before being deposed by career army officer Chun Doo-hwan. The country eventually democratized with the June Democratic Struggle in 1987.
Park remains a controversial figure in modern South Korean political discourse and among the South Korean populace in general, making a detached evaluation of his tenure difficult. While some credit him for sustaining economic growth that reshaped and modernized South Korea, others criticize his authoritarian governance (especially after 1971) as well as for prioritizing economic growth and social order at the expense of civil liberties and human rights. A Gallup Korea poll in October 2021 showed Park, Kim Dae-jung (an old opponent of Park whom he tried to have executed), and Roh Moo-hyun as the most highly rated presidents of South Korean history in terms of leaving a positive legacy, especially among South Korean conservatives and the elderly. Park's daughter Park Geun Hye later served as the 11th president of South Korea from 2013 until she was impeached and convicted of various corruption charges in 2017.
Park was born around 11 am on November 14, 1917, in Sangmo-dong, Gumi, Korea, Empire of Japan to father Pak Sŏngbin and mother Paek Namŭi. He was the youngest of five brothers and two sisters. He was of the Goryeong Park clan.
Park's family was extremely poor and consistently lacked food. According to Park, his father was upper-class (yangban) and set to inherit the family's moderate holdings, but the clan banished him after he participated in the 1894–1895 Tonghak Peasant Revolution. In 1916, the elder Park moved to his wife's village of Sangmo-dong, where he was given a small plot of land. According to later interviews, he did not work the land with his wife and instead drank alcohol and wandered around. Biographer of Park Chong-Sik Lee speculates that the elder Park did not wish to be seen working to avoid showing acceptance of his lost yangban status.
Park's mother was seen by her contemporaries as diligent and focused. She managed both the household and farming. She was around 43 at the time of Park's birth. Due to her advanced age and disastrous economic situation, she tried to abort the pregnancy on a number of occasions. When her son was eventually born, however, she was reportedly deeply affectionate toward him.
Park had a number of health concerns in his youth. For much of his early life, he did not eat well and was often described as sickly. When he was two years old, he crawled off a raised floor and landed in a smouldering fire pit. He was quickly rescued from the pit, but his forearms were significantly burned. For the rest of his life, he reportedly intentionally wore shirts with long sleeves to hide his scars.
A significant biographer of Park, Cho Gab-je, interviewed many people who knew him and got the impression that Park's childhood was otherwise fairly happy. According to Cho, Park had many close friends, his parents got along well, and his family was affectionate toward him.
Park was the second person in his family, after his older brother Park Sang Hee, to attend elementary school. He enrolled on April 1, 1927, at age 9 and eventually graduated on March 25, 1932. His school, Gumi Elementary School, was 6 kilometers (3.7 mi) away from his home. The long daily walk and his hunger took a toll on his body. Park wrote of this in his memoirs:
[Class started at 8 a.m...] If I suspected I was late, I'd run the [6 km] to school... During the winter, food in my school lunch box would freeze. If I ate it anyway, my stomach would become upset, and I'd sometimes vomit. During these times, I'd sometimes go [without eating for days]...
Park was consistently among the shortest students at each school he attended, and was often described as sickly in his school records. In sixth grade, he was 135.8 cm (4 ft 5+1⁄2 in) tall and weighed 30 kg (66 lb). In spite of his physical challenges, he was a diligent student who got good grades. Park was made class leader for several years; his classmates later recalled that he could be overbearing in enforcing discipline, even slapping a number of them.
On Sundays, Park attended a seodang (traditional school), where he received an education in the Confucian classics. Also around this time, he attended the Presbyterian Sangmo Church in Gumi. His family teased him for this, as they did not attend church, though he stopped at the end of elementary school. Decades later, he donated money to repair the church after it was damaged during the Korean War.
People who knew Park as a child described him as competitive and persistent. His classmates later recalled that even after he lost in competitions of strength, such as arm wrestling or ssireum (Korean wrestling), he would taunt his opponents and demand rematches until he won.
Park's friends remembered him as a voracious reader of history, who frequently talked excitedly about his historical heroes. When he was around 13, Park became an admirer of the French leader Napoleon. Around this time, he also came to idolize the famed Korean Admiral Yi Sun-sin (who fought the Japanese during the Imjin War and was both respected by his contemporary Japanese commanders and revered by Imperial Japanese officers). Park read a biography about the admiral written by Yi Gwangsu which moved him deeply. According to historian Chong-Sik Lee, a significant part of the biography is disparaging toward politicians and even Koreans in general, as the competent admiral was treated poorly by these groups during his lifetime. Lee speculated that this later influenced Park's authoritarian leadership style.