Park-Chung-hee

Park Chung-hee married Kim-Ho-nam but separated from her later on. He married Yuk Young-Soo, the daughter of a landlord. Yuk Young-Soo died in 1974, in an assassination attempt on Park Chung-hee. Park had one daughter from his first wife, and one son and two daughters from his second wife.

Park continues to be one of the most controversial presidents of South Korea, commended for his groundbreaking economic policies on one hand, and lambasted for his domestic policies and dictatorship on the other.

Park Chung-hee was born on 14 November 1917, to Bek Nam-eui and Park Sung-bin, in the industrial city of Gumi in Korea, which was then ruled by the Japanese. He had two sisters and five brothers, all of whom were elder to him.

Chung Hee was a student of average intelligence, and after completing his graduation, landed the job of a schoolteacher in a primary school in Mungyeong-eup. Colonel Arikawa of the Japanese Imperial Army, a drill coach in the same school where Park taught helped him join the Manchukuo Imperial Army’s Changchun Military Academy.

The 2nd Sino-Japanese War had broken out when Park joined the Changchun Military Academy. He completed his military training effectively, finishing at the top in his class and impressing the Japanese instructors who sent him to Japan in 1942 for advanced training in the Imperial Japanese Army Academy.

Park joined the Manchukuo Imperial Army as a lieutenant after graduating from the Imperial Japanese Army Academy, finishing third. He served as aide-de-camp to a regimental commander during WWII, working as an espionage agent and gathering information about Korean militia operating in the Manchurian region.

Following the end of World War II, Park Chung-hee returned to Korea and joined the Korean Military Academy. After graduating in 1946, he was appointed as an officer in the law enforcement division of the US Military Government in South Korea.

The South Korean government led by Syngman Rhee, arrested Park, accusing him of leading a communist movement, a charge which was never corroborated. A death sentence awarded to him was later on reduced to simple imprisonment at the behest of some senior military officials. However, he was expelled from the army.

Following the onset of the Korean War, Chung Hee was reinstated as major in South Korean Army. Within a couple of years, he was promoted to the rank of colonel, serving in the Army Headquarters Intelligence Bureau as its deputy director. The ‘Korean Armistice Agreement’ in 1953 signaled the end of the war.

After the war between North and South Korea came to an end in 1953, Park left for the US to complete a military training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Upon his return to South Korea, he was made the chief of the Artillery School. In 1958, he was promoted to the position of major general following which he became the Chief of Staff of the First Republic’s army. Gradually, he went to assume charge as deputy commander of the army under the Second Republic.

The first president of independent South Korea, Syngman Rhee, was ousted from office and sent into exile on 25 April 1960, owing to his repressive rule. However, a hurriedly constituted democratic government that assumed office three months later completely failed to restore even a semblance of normalcy in South Korea.

A rag-tag and tenuous coalition government led by the Democratic Party was unable to maintain law and order and eventually lost the confidence of the electorate. Park Chung-hee who was the major general, created the ‘Military Revolutionary Committee’ in order to orchestrate a coup in 1961.

The military coup of 1961 led by major general Park culminated in the deposing of President Yun’s democratic government thus bringing the curtains down on the Second Republic. A reformist council ‘Supreme Council for National Reconstruction’ constituting of military officers who had backed the coup d'état, elected Park as its chairman.