Gen. Park Chung-Hee and South Korea’s Han River Miracle

By Walter Jung

Gen. Park Chung-Hee was born to a poor family in rural Korea when Japan ruled the nation as a colony. After teaching at a rural elementary school for three years, he studied at three different military academies to become an army officer in the liberated Korea. Although he encountered a career-threatening crisis right before the outbreak of the Korean War, he returned to the service and served many key staff positions during the war and important command positions after the war with devoted professionalism. When the nation drifted rudderless in the 1960s, he led the military revolution as the last resort. Hence forth he headed the government that was steadfastly focused on rebuilding the nation. His administration laid the extensive, future-oriented foundation for the nation’s industrial development and advanced defense capability. Gen. Park lived his life aligned with, to the letter, his personal motto: ‘My Whole Life to Fatherland.’

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Feb 2, 2024
• ISBN: 9798891550971

Walter Jung

Walter Jung is a native of South Korea, and after a short military career he moved to America. He earned a Master’s and PhD degree from University of Oklahoma. He directed Western Pacific Institute and taught at University of Central Oklahoma. Upon retirement, he served a Peace Corps volunteer in Mongolia. He lives in Norman, Oklahoma, with his wife, Young.

Book preview

About the Author

Walter Jung is a native of South Korea, and after a short military career he moved to America. He earned a Master’s and PhD degree from University of Oklahoma. He directed Western Pacific Institute and taught at University of Central Oklahoma. Upon retirement, he served a Peace Corps volunteer in Mongolia. He lives in Norman, Oklahoma, with his wife, Young.

Dedication

For my precious grandchildren, Spence and Blake Wadley.

Copyright Information ©

Walter Jung 2024

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The story, experiences, and words are the author’s alone.

Ordering Information

Quantity sales: Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

Jung, Walter

Gen. Park Chung-Hee and South Korea’s Han River Miracle

ISBN 9798891550957 (Paperback)

ISBN 9798891550964 (Hardback)

ISBN 9798891550971 (ePub e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023921651

www.austinmacauley.com/us

First Published 2024

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

40 Wall Street, 33rd Floor, Suite 3302

New York, NY 10005

USA

[e-mail]

[phone]

20240409

Acknowledgment

I owe most to my wife, Young Jung, who supported and encouraged me throughout with her boundless dedication and companionship.

Introduction

Kingdom of Chosun, the last Korean monarchy, became the victim of Japan’s unlawful annexation in 1910. Thereafter, Korea was under colonial occupation for 36 years until the allies liberated it at the end of the Pacific War in 1945. Prior to the conclusion of the war, the allies’ leaders agreed to Koreans recovering their coveted independence once Japan was defeated. As a result, Koreans took back their 5,000-year-old sovereignty on August 15, 1945, ending their painful punishment for their gross failure in safeguarding the kingdom from the colonial expansionism, the Western practice Japan imitated in the Northeast Asia from the late 1890s.

At the closing phase of the Pacific War, the US and the USSR devised the plan to militarily occupy the Korean peninsula to deal with Japanese troops’ anticipated desperate, costly resistance. But by the time the Red Army and the US army entered the Korean peninsula from the north and the south respectively, they found Japan’s garrison forces largely degenerated. As a result, the two occupation armies saw little combat activities in the Korean peninsula and instead ended up performing the chores of disbanding Japan’s colonial infrastructure and incubating new political systems in their respective occupied regions.

In the chaotic post-liberation period, Koreans had a precious and auspicious opportunity to take constructive initiatives in planning their future with a unified voice. On the contrary, they wholly failed to rally round a single leader capable of unifying the entire nation by embracing the voices of leading political figures, which represented diverse former independence movements. Instead, the political leaders were preoccupied with partisan and ideological bickering over the nature of the new sovereign government they were tasked to create. As a result, liberated Korea failed to mobilize the national energy in forming a single central government. The only consolation was that no major political figures promoted the revival of the badly tarnished Chosun monarchy.

The military representatives of the post-war superpowers and the temporary guarantors of law and order in their respective occupied region, the US and the USSR occupation commands failed in providing positive supports in Koreans’ daunting task of creating a single central government. Foremost, the two commands were unable to resolve their incongruous visions for the new Korea, and at the end their half-hearted attempts to reach a compromise failed. Subsequently, both commands chose to pursue their own strategic interests by sponsoring separate governments in their respective parts of the nation, that mostly embodied their own political ideologies and interests. Ironically, the division of the liberated Korea into two parts became a fateful reality under the two allies’ patronage.

Korea’s post-liberation political turmoil was largely the results of frenzied leadership race, so many political aspirants engaged in the political disorder and confusion created by the liberation euphoria. In addition, there was the towering external factor to content, the international power politics represented by the occupation commands. As it happened, liberated Korea involuntarily became one of focal points of the incipient cold-war geopolitical race the US and the USSR initiated. Thus, it was over their own strategic agenda in the region not the Korean people’s interests the two occupation armies in Korea opposed each other.

Furthermore, the Korean political leaders of two occupied regions, the South and the North, had neither adequate understanding of nor any influence on the superpower rivalry even though it evolved in their own land. As a result, they became unintended collaborators to the occupation armies’ game of pursuing their respective political agenda. Only a few farsighted Korean leaders tried to the very end to form a unified government. But by then the ideological chasm developed between the two parts of Korea was too great to overcome.

It was tragic but circumstantial that Korea’s post-liberation political leaders were scarcely prepared to effectively deal with either the fateful political crosswinds of the post-war East-West rivalry in their own land or the herculean task of creating a unified government out of the liberation chaos. As a result, once again, Koreans had become hapless victims of the peculiar internal as well as external circumstance into which they were thrown.

In the three tumultuous years of the chaotic political process filled with squabbles and confusions, the political efforts to form a single unified government became more of posturing at the end. And the result was the nation’s official division; two new ideologically incompatible governments were installed in Seoul and in Pyongyang in 1948, with the 38th parallel as their ill-fated common border. The division was hardly a promising new beginning for the Korean nation that had survived Japan’s long, brutal political abuse and economic exploitations.

It also was an ominous premonition of the post-war political rivalry engaged by the two global superpowers in the pivotal Northeast Asia. The post-liberation national division was the most calamitous historical blunder committed by the Koreans, even though it was swayed by the peculiar international geopolitics.

The political development of two rival Korean governments followed drastically different trajectories. In North Korea, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Premier Kim Ilsung, the thirty-three-year-old Soviet army officer brought in by the Soviet occupation command as the pre-anointed leader of the new communist country, quickly consolidated his dictatorial rule by forcibly eliminating his political opponents, most of them had far more followers and superior name recognition in the nation.

Steadfastly backed by the omnipotent Soviet occupation command, he rushed forward the implementation of extensive socialist restructurings that included wholesale nationalization of properties and Sovietization of the entire nation. Through the measures universally harsh and overbearing, the Kim Ilsung regime achieved the semblance of law and order at a notable pace.

As soon as he secured his dominant power base, in great secrecy, Kim Ilsung began to channel the new nation’s financial and administrative resources into building the people’s army, which was to spearhead the invasion of the South, a reckless adventure to unite the divided nation under his rule. Unsurprisingly, the Kim regime did not have the national strength sufficient to launch a successful invasion of the South by itself. From the outset, thus, Kim sought utmost material and moral supports of his two socialist backers, Mao of People’s Republic of China, and Stalin of the Soviet Union.

By paying personal visits, Kim pleaded with two leading leaders of the world’s socialist bloc for support for his military adventure. In time, Stalin was persuaded to provide Kim with military advisors and offensive weapons including fighter planes, tanks, artillery pieces. The PRC’s Mao also came around to support Kim’s invasion scheme by transferring to North Korea his two battle-tested infantry divisions that were mainly manned by the Korean nationals. With massive material and moral supports, both Soviet Union and Red China provided, Kim’s secret preparation for his invasion adventure proceeded hurriedly. Tragically, the South failed to properly appreciate the threat posed by Kim’s armed forces that grew rapidly in both its size and its war-fighting capability. Furthermore, the US did not perceive the looming danger Kim Ilsung’s military posed.

In South Korea, the Republic of Korea, Dr. Rhee Syngman, then already an elderly leader of seventy-four-year-old educated and led the independence movement in the US, was elected to the founding president of the new nation by defeating his potent rivals who had fought for the national independence in China and elsewhere. In contrast to Kim Ilsung’s communist government in the North, President Rhee’s South Korea had the basic governing structure modeled after the Western liberal democracy.

With a much larger population base than that of Kim’s North, the immediate tasks the Rhee government encountered were more complex and wide-ranging. Foremost, it had to cope with the frequent military clashes along the 38th parallel, deliberate provocations caused by Kim Ilsung’s forces. It also confronted mounting internal tasks as the new nation’s post-liberation disorders remained untamed and even exacerbated in the lenient political environment.

In pursuit of the overthrow of the Rhee government, Kim Ilsung did his utmost to aggravate the social unrest in the South. In addition to launching frequent border incursions, he cut off, without notice, the North’s electric transmission to the South depriving its largely light, small industries of their power supply. More ominously, he doubled his efforts to strengthen the underground South Workers Party, the southern branch of his ruling Workers Party, of which communist cells were tasked to infiltrate the civilian society and the military branches.

With most limited financial resources at his disposal, President Rhee fought the omnidirectional, existential, simultaneous battles: safeguarding the 38th parallel front, taming rampant social unrests and communists’ sabotages, and stabilizing the nation’s struggling economy.

The most serious challenge Kim Ilsung and his southern collaborators unleashed to President Rhee’s government was the military rebellion staged by communists and their sympathizers in the southern cities of Yosu and Sunchon in October 1948. To President Rhee’s barely two-months-old government and its small national defense force under formation, it was the first grave test for its will to withstand the communist challenges. Kim Ilsung’s provocation in the South was not limited to the military revolt, however.

By then, the communists had infiltrated into the South’s armed forces, not only among officer corps but also the rank and file of the entire armed forces. With the iron resolve to eliminate the communists in the South, however, President Rhee directed his defense force to put down the revolt and the communists’ stealth subversion. With sweeping measures, its defense force undertook the intensive nationwide anti-communist campaign of identifying and expunging the communists and their collaborators from the active military service until only months before the outbreak of the war.

The two-track anti-communist campaign the Rhee government successfully undertook proved to be the single most consequential measure against Kim Ilsung’s ambition; the costly revolts were smashed, and most potential communist collaborators and saboteurs were removed from the nation’s armed forces and the civilian society before the outbreak of the Korean War.

Quite contrary to the world’s leading socialists that supported Kim Ilsung regime with their solid backings, the US took the measures rather counterproductive to South Korea’s security. The US government withdrew its occupation force from South Korea soon after President Rhee’s government was installed. The 40,000 men occupation force was reduced to 7,500 in 1948, and the rest was completely withdrawn by June 30, 1949, one year before the intra-Korea war broke out. For the infant defense force of Republic of Korea, the US occupation command left behind a small number of military advisors and its vintage small arms.

Ironically, the US declined to leave its tanks for the South Korean defense force with the pretext that the mountainous Korean terrain was not suitable for a tank warfare. Furthermore, in 1949, the US announced its new Far East defense perimeter that ominously excluded Republic of Korea.

The hasty troop withdrawal and the announcement of the new Far East defense perimeter undertaken by the US government might have been the results of its meager comprehension of the military-political nature of Kim Ilsung’s communist regime and the strategic ambitions harbored by both the Soviet Union and Red China. Regardless, the US’s strategic misstep had severe repercussions; it convinced Kim Ilsung that the US had no interest in defending South Korea. It was the final green light to his invasion plan.

On the early morning of June 25, 1950, Kim Ilsung’s North Korean people’s army launched its massive invasion on South Korea commencing the bloody civil war in less than two years after two opposing republics were proclaimed. It did not take long before it morphed into the first post-war East-West military confrontation in the emerging bi-polar world, even though it was a civil war by nature. Against, the vastly superior invasion force that hurled the surprise Sunday morning attack along the entire 38th parallel front, the South’s defense force was hardly in a state to defend the nation, as Kim Ilsung fully expected.

When the Korean War broke out, the future president of Korea Park Chung-Hee was a civilian employee assigned to the staff of the army combat intelligence department. Months earlier, the army’s anti-communist investigation uncovered his brief, passive association with the communists and forfeited his officer’s commission as a punishment. Because of his recognized professionalism, however, the army intelligence director created an unofficial civilian position for him. At the intelligent department, he and his army colleagues closely followed the military buildup in the North, and Park Chung-Hee the civilian was mostly responsible for his department’s issuing, repeatedly, the dire warnings to the army top brass that Kim Ilsung’s People’s Army was poised to launch a full-scale invasion.

The army leadership, however, tragically regarded Kim Ilsung’s forces not being capable of doing it and elected to overlook the urgent pleas of those uniquely competent staff officers.

To the premeditated invasion launched by Kim Ilsung’s well-equipped, methodically prepared peoples’ army, the South’s small national defense force was utterly helpless. Having no adequate weapons to counter the blitz spearheaded by the Soviet-supplied tanks, the South Korean defenders were hastily in retreat. Even the Smith detachment, the US force hurriedly collected in Japan and sent to the Korean front by Gen. MacArthur, was unable to derail the communist forces’ speedy advance. Notwithstanding their gallant fighting, South Korea’s small defense force was in full retreat and managed to avert the fatal collapse only by the massive military intervention of the US and sixteen other allied countries.

In the steamy summer months of 1950, within two months of the war, the allied forces and South Korean defense forces, both under the United Nations’ command, fought crucial battles against the communist invaders along the Nakdong perimeter, the last defensive line established by the allied forces. Kim Ilsung poured in every resource under his disposal to break the allies’ desperate, last defense line; the allies fought perilous battles every day not to lose the battle but the war itself, for their back was to the Korea Strait, which separates Japan from Korea.

The allies’ gallant defensive battles on the Nakdong perimeter withstanding, it took Gen. MacArthur’s improbable Inchon landing for the allied forces to finally turn the tide of the war around. Having repulsed the communist forces in the south, the allied forces and the South Korean defense forces quickly pushed the invaders to the north of the 38th parallel and beyond toward the Korea-China border. In the winter of 1950, as Kim Ilsung’s invasion force was in rushed retreat, Korea’s national unification loomed impending, not by Kim Ilsung’s army but the South Korean defense force and the US-led allied forces.

At the most critical juncture of the war, however, the Korean peninsula’s cursed geopolitical fate played its ultimate trick; the Chinese communists intervened, on November 26, with their massive force to save the Kim regime from its near certain collapse. Incredibly undiscovered to the allied forces until it was too late, the Chinese forces not only foiled Korea’s national unification but also salvaged Kim Ilsung’s tattered army. With its infamous human-wave attacks, it managed to push the allied forces back even beyond the 38th parallel, the pre-war border.

It was the Chinese communists that salvaged, at a great price of young Chinese lives, not only Kim Ilsung’s dictatorial regime from the certain downfall but also forced, at the ensued truce talks, the deal that allowed the communist regime to keep most of its pre-war territory. Although the ensued armistice signed was greatly unfair and unwarranted to South Koreans, they had no room to maneuver but to acquiesce to the political decision dictated by the hardening cold war reality in the region. By then, the West was eager to terminate its first post-war military contest against the socialists even at the cost of deserting South Korea’s just wishes, the unification of the nation.

The loss and sufferings the three-year warfare imposed on the Korean nation were stiff and cruel, for it was fought in nearly every province of the peninsula except for the corner regions in the southeast and the northeast most. The loss of both civilian and military lives was excessive, and the property loss and damage were shattering. The nation’s most major industrial facilities were either destroyed or heavily damaged.

In the South, the total damage of the war was estimated to be about 85 percent of the national gross domestic products of 1953. Along with excessive physical destruction, the nation’s economy stood utterly devastated, and its living standard underwent a precipitous decline. Furthermore, the war completely derailed the incipient economic development process the government of President Rhee had initiated. In 1955, two years after the armistice, the nation’s estimated per capita income hovered about fifty dollars, which made Republic of Korea one of most deprived countries in the world.

Despite the excessive physical destruction and loss, they suffered during the World War II, West Germany and Japan both accomplished their historic, speedy economic recovery, in part because pre-war Germany and Japan both possessed strong industrial economy and trained manpower to lean to in their pursuit of daunting reconstruction tasks. Not in South Korea. Having been the subject to the colonial exploitation for long, the pre-war South Korea had essentially a productivity-challenged agricultural economy. It had neither the strong industrial base nor a large pool of industrial manpower. Thus, to President Rhee’s administration the urgent post-war task of reconstruction of the war-ravaged country was especially arduous and challenging.

Furthermore, in the post-war South Korea under President Rhee’s government, the malcontent of the masses was dangerously high, as the nation’s acute poverty remained unchecked with persistent shortage of grain and essential living commodities. The gatecrasher of the South Korean springs, the deadly grain shortages euphemistically dubbed as the ‘barley hill’, still assailed the whole nation like the recurrent tsunami. The dreadful yearly plague did not spare even the nation’s relatively affluent agricultural regions; a rather unsightly sighting in the nation’s villages of the time was children with serious malnourishment. The nation’s food shortage was so serious that the US’s massive food aid given under its Public Law 480 was barely enough to maintain the anguished status quo.

Along with acute grain shortages, unemployment and underemployment were savage punishments South Korea suffered for years. The leading cause of the employment crisis was that the nation still overly depended on its farming sector for the large share of the national employment. The nation’s post-war economy was yet to generate non-farm jobs at any significant level to absorb the rural surplus work force. As an urgent remedy, President Rhee’s government adopted the ambitious, long-range economic rebuilding programs, but it failed to assemble the required funding to implement them.

The US’s economic aids, on which the South Korean government heavily depended on for its revenue, were mostly earmarked in stabilizing the society, which the US government put its foremost emphasis. Although the Rhee government was eager to rush for its economic rebuilding programs, the government was forced to allocate the precious resources available in lessening the daily sufferings of the masses. As a result, the nation’s systematic economic rebuilding program failed to gain meaningful traction under the Rhee administration.

President Rhee was forced to resign in 1960 by the stormy nationwide student-led anti-government protests over the alleged election frauds. Opposition leader Jang Myon succeeded Dr. Rhee as the new prime minister, and the new Chang administration gave the South Korean masses hasty hopes for restoring the dangerously shattered social order and rehabilitating its anemic economy. To the great dismay of the public, however, what the new administration demonstrated was its stark unpreparedness in running the government effectively dealing with the myriad of urgent socioeconomic-security issues. Contrary to the citizen’s earnest desires, the new administration was more obsessed with the unproductive factional political infightings.

The Chang administration’s endemic political infighting and glaring display of its inability to address the rampant social disorder prompted Gen. Park Chung-Hee and his followers to rise through their 5.16 coup, later renamed 5.16 Revolution. No one should lightly condone the military’s forceful removal of the constitutional Chang government, but at the same time, one should not overlook the cold reality that in 1961 South Korea was at the dire existential crossroad that called for but an extraordinary measure. And it was the nation’s military that answered the call. Those conscientious coup officers, led by Gen. Park Chung-Hee, believed their forceful intervention being only resort available in rescuing their fatherland from the existential crisis.

Some contended that Prime Minister Chang had scarcely enough time to produce tangible results. But it was also the nation’s pervasive perception of the time that his reign lasted long enough for the public to draw the frustrating conclusion that the new Democratic government was barely capable of addressing the nation’s untold illnesses and concerns effectively for it was paralyzed by persisting political infighting.

In 1961, South Korea faced daunting national maladies grave enough to endanger the nation’s survival itself. They included worsening political dysfunction, plagued economy, widespread social disorder, epidemic corruption in nearly every stratum of the society, and uncertain national defense. Indeed, the pervasive mood of the nation was the worsening fear that the nation was heading to the existential turning point; many dreaded Kim Ilsung’s second invasion. Like many discreet observers of the nation, Gen. Park and his young fellow officers shared the conviction that the compound society-wide problems the nation faced were extraordinarily serious.

Rightfully, they not only held the Chang government responsible for its failure to execute its sacred, constitutional duties but also were convinced that they had the inherent duty to safeguard the nation from its looming disaster, much like the students that pulled down the Liberty government with the 4.19 Revolution. They believed that as the citizens and the military officers of the Republic of Korea they had an inviolable right to rise to preserve their own motherland. And they exercised their right to protect and preserve their motherland from falling into a fatal abyss by taking measures appropriate to extreme circumstances.

Gen. Park Chung-Hee and his followers saved the nation from the dire national calamity of political dysfunction. But they also liberated the nation from the historical yoke of acute poverty and laid down the industrial foundation that helped to propel the nation to becoming one of developed economies of the world decades later. What President Park’s government had accomplished during the pivotal 60s and 70s proved, rather convincingly, that their military intervention was not only correct but also timely.

In his long tenure, President Park exercised the authoritative political power, and some of his undertakings became subject to deserved criticism. He was not faultless. But his being arbitrariness was more byproducts of his purposeful leadership of pursuing resolutely and tirelessly the national mission his revolution set, rebuilding the nation for future generations, than the abuse of political power for the sake of political gains. Often, he was forced to adopt stern measures invariably to safeguard both his government and the nation from swerving from the sacred mission of national rejuvenation.

Accusing Gen. Park Chung-Hee of having been a dictator obsessed only with raw political power and personal glorification is both prejudicial and malicious. Such a slanted view is typically shared by those who are still deliberately dismissing what he had done for one of poorest nations of the world of the time. By so doing, one also risks committing the most glaring mistake of ignoring the existential threats the nation faced in 1961. The nation that was in the abyss of rampant poverty, perilous national security, and debilitating social disorder could not be healed all by itself or saved by a fancy angel.

South Korea’s spectacular national rejuvenation took the visionary leadership and total devotion of President Park Chung-Hee, to which the Korean masses eagerly responded with unprecedented sacrifice of sweats and bloods. Despite the inevitable lapses and wrongs his eager administration might have committed, one shall not ignore the dire fact that his leadership and devotion salvaged the nation from the fatal disaster that was fast looming.

In 1961, South Korea’s most urgent national call was a new political leadership, which could redirect the dysfunctional nation. During the perilous post-war period, the administrations of President Rhee and Prime Minister Chang demonstrated neither effective leadership nor competence in governance. On the contrary, they tormented the nation with politicians’ empty rhetoric and persistent factional political fighting. For the sake of its preservation, the nation urgently needed a statesman who could transcend the petty politics and wasteful governance with great nation-saving vision and consummate leadership. Gen. Park and his followers took over the drifting government with a workable national rejuvenation plan and the resolute leadership that succeeded in mobilizing the entire nation on the road to national salvation and restoration.

Gen. Park Chung-Hee and his followers valued protecting the nation from Kim Ilsung’s another military adventure, providing basic needs for those suffering masses, and laying down the foundation for the nation’s industrial economy for the future generations more than pursuing the rhetoric democracy, which was to benefit mostly elite groups. Indeed, many political leaders of both Rhee and Chang administration behaved as if they were more interested in their political expediency and personal gains than the nation’s long-term welfare.

On the contrary, as the president of the Third Republic, President Park made every effort to distance himself from the old-fashioned partisan politics and instead focused on the mission of the national rejuvenation by setting priorities that reflected the nation’s dismal reality and the long-term well-being of the nation.

President Park on occasion resorted to taking the measures of restricting the nation’s political self-indulgence, which must have been the subject to justified criticism under the normal, free, secure political environment. But South Korea was far from being one of secure Western democracies surrounded by friendly neighbors. Ever since the 1953 armistice, South Korea had to protect itself from Kim Ilsung’s another military venture by maintaining one of the largest standing armed forces in the world.

Despite the incessant resistances of highly politicized oppositions and interest groups, the Park government had no alternative to pursuing the focused rush to the nation’s economic development and defense buildup. In a sense, the leadership of President Park was akin to a modern-day state capitalism, in which the government is to exercise more purposeful leadership to achieve the leap forward in its economic development.

Those who maliciously accuse Gen. Park of having destroyed democracy in the nation should first review the status of the nation’s security of the time, the unconditional policy priority to the nation. Having faced the perpetual military challenge of Kim Ilsung ever since he created his dictatorial kingdom, it would have been not only foolish but also criminal for the government of Republic of Korea to neglect the national security for anything else. Instead of embracing rhetorical democracy, President Park’s government concentrated its resources to its frontal attack on addressing the national exigencies: guarding the 155-mile front against the invasion-minded Kim clan in Pyongyang, exasperating economic sufferings, and deteriorating law and order.

There shall be no question about how crucial and desirable political freedom is to a contemporary society. But one should never overlook the truth that there are things even more imperative and fundamental in real life than rhetorical political freedom: the freedom to live in a secure environment and the freedom from life-threatening hunger and excessive depravity. When the nation’s security and basic human needs are under dire stress, a measured restrain on the ideals that the Western advanced democracy promotes—unrestricted opposition, free and critical press, and independent judiciary-should be a valid option, not a crime.

Gen. Park Chung-Hee was a product of the Imperial Japan’s colonial education system. That was the fate he shared with his contemporaries who were born and grew up in colonized Korea. He received his advanced military education at the Manchurian officer’s academy and the Japanese Military Academy, which he could not have gotten in his motherland, colonized Korea. Although he had completed the military programs of both Manchukuo and Japan, he served for Imperial Japan only indirectly and briefly; his active field service was limited to less than one year as a junior officer at a Manchukuo outfit, which was commanded by the Chinese commander. To the contrary to some malevolent accusations, the Manchurian army division to which Lieutenant Park was assigned did not chase the Korean independence fighters.

It was early 1930s, a decade before his field deployment, when most Korean independent fighters fought in the southern Manchuria, the Chinese-Korean border region, fled to the Soviet Union’s Far East under the intense military pressure of the Japanese forces. Therefore, he hardly had time to perform a pro-Japanese, anti-Korean combat officer. The accusation that Gen. Park served for the Japanese army is factually wrong and intentionally misleading.

Some factions of the Korean society are still preoccupied with the myopic notion that the nation ought to pursue the social-political purge of those they accuse to have betrayed the motherland by collaborating, directly or indirectly, with the Japan’s colonial administration or the Japanese military establishments. It is based on their careless dividing the Korean subjects of the colonial period by two categories: ones who actively involved in independence movements and others who collaborated with the Japanese. But such an overly simplistic dichotomy is unrealistic and inaccurate; the truth was that most Korean people of the colonial period were involved in resistance against the Japanese colonial authority often indirectly and passively.

Their circumspective being was unavoidable expediency to save their lives or to avoid harsh punishment from the colonial administration. Only a trifling minority of Koreans pursued their imprudent glory by devoting themselves to the colonial administration or the Japanese military. It is high time that the Korean nation embraced even those lost souls for the sake of national reconciliation and unity. The humiliation and suffering the colonial occupation brought to the people of Korea is unforgivable, but it is the past that must be kept in proper historical perspective.

It was the grossly inept Chosun court that lost the kingdom’s sovereignty, which resulted to long and painful colonial occupation. Contrary to the court’s leadership, the Korean masses never wholly surrendered to the Japan’s unlawful seizure, and their volunteer independence fighters in no time began their campaigns against Japan’s modern military. The humbly equipped and scarcely trained Korean independence fighters managed to wage relatively small-scale battles along the Chinese-Korean border region. Over the years, they scored precious meaningful victories, even though they still were more moral victories than a serious blow to Imperial Japan’s military.

Unsurprisingly, their military campaigns were less than consequential in bringing Imperial Japan to its knees. The small unit of guerillas the youthful Kim Ilsung led in the border region was but one of minor forces; there were units much bigger and better organized with more recorded battles fought. North Korea’s assertion that Kim