The park chung hee era the transformation of south korea

Tai Lieu Chat Luong The Park Chung Hee Era THE PARK CHUNG HEE ERA The Transformation of South Korea Edited by BYUNG-KOOK KIM EZRA F. VOGEL HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England 2011 Copyright © 2011 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Park Chung Hee era : the transformation of South Korea / edited by Byung-Kook Kim and Ezra F. Includes bibliographical references and index. Korea (South)—Politics and government—1960–1988.

Park, Chung Hee, 1917–1979. Comparative government—Case studies. Kim, Pyong-guk, 1959 Mar.9504′3092—dc22 2010038046 Contents Introduction: The Case for Political History 1 Byung-Kook Kim part one Born in a Crisis 1 The May Sixteenth Military Coup 35 Yong-Sup Han 2 Taming and Tamed by the United States 58 Taehyun Kim and Chang Jae Baik 3 State Building: The Military Junta’s Path to Modernity through Administrative Reforms 85 Hyung-A Kim part two Politics 4 Modernization Strategy: Ideas and Influences 115 Chung-in Moon and Byung-joon Jun 5 The Labyrinth of Solitude: Park and the Exercise of Presidential Power 140 Byung-Kook Kim 6 The Armed Forces 168 Joo-Hong Kim 7 The Leviathan: Economic Bureaucracy under Park 200 Byung-Kook Kim 8 The Origins of the Yushin Regime: Machiavelli Unveiled 233 Hyug Baeg Im Contents vi part three Economy and Society 9 The Chaebol 265 Eun Mee Kim and Gil-Sung Park 10 The Automobile Industry 295 Nae-Young Lee 11 Pohang Iron & Steel Company 322 Sang-young Rhyu and Seok-jin Lew 12 The Countryside 345 Young Jo Lee 13 The Chaeya 373 Myung-Lim Park part four International Relations 14 The Vietnam War: South Korea’s Search for National Security 403 Min Yong Lee 15 Normalization of Relations with Japan: Toward a New Partnership 430 Jung-Hoon Lee 16 The Security, Political, and Human Rights Conundrum, 1974–1979 457 Yong-Jick Kim 17 The Search for Deterrence: Park’s Nuclear Option 483 Sung Gul Hong part five Comparative Perspective 18 Nation Rebuilders: Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Lee Kuan Yew, Deng Xiaoping, and Park Chung Hee 513 Ezra F. Vogel 19 Reflections on a Reverse Image: South Korea under Park Chung Hee and the Philippines under Ferdinand Marcos 542 Paul D.

Hutchcroft Contents vii 20 The Perfect Dictatorship? South Korea versus Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico 573 Jorge I. Domínguez 21 Industrial Policy in Key Developmental Sectors: South Korea versus Japan and Taiwan 603 Gregory W. Noble Conclusion: The Post-Park Era 629 Byung-Kook Kim Notes 651 Acknowledgments 737 List of Contributors 739 Index of Persons 741 Introduction: The Case for Political History Byung-Kook Kim F ew periods have changed South Korean history more than the Park era that began in May 1961 with a military coup d’état. The na- ture of leadership, the political parties and political opposition, the bu- reaucracy, the armed forces, relations between workers and farmers and their government, the chaebol industrial conglomerates, foreign policy— all were transformed.

Meanwhile, economically South Korea grew out of poverty into an industrial powerhouse in one generation, albeit with mas- sive political, social, and economic costs. And after the Park era suddenly ended in 1979, the reactions to what had taken place transformed the country once more. The eighteen-year Park era has proved to be one of the most, if not the most, controversial topics for the Korean public, politicians, and scholars both at home and abroad. How much was the economic takeoff fueled by changes in the political and social fabric? To what degree was Park Chung Hee personally responsible for the transformation—both political and economic—across multiple sectors? Why did South Korea’s political regime drift toward “hard” authoritarianism while its economy modern- ized at a hyper pace? Were these changes causally related? Why was his era marked by both dazzling policy successes and spectacular failures? How much were South Korea’s successes and failures explained by its histori- cally antecedent conditions? As one of a handful of newly industrializing countries (NICs) that succeeded in economically catching up with early de- Introduction 2 velopers and militarily building up a system of deterrence, but at huge costs, South Korea is a crucial case in understanding the politics of mod- ernization.

This volume revisits South Korea’s developmental era, but it distin- guishes itself from other works on the nation’s rebirth after 1961 by plac- ing its analytic focus on political history. We have chosen political history for three reasons. First, although South Korea’s macroeconomic indica- tors show a country continually undergoing a spectacular industrial trans- formation, its trajectory of modernization was anything but stable. The macroeconomic indicators covered up a deep sense of insecurity and vul- nerability pervading South Korea.

The high-payoff, high-risk strategy of subsidizing growth through bureaucratically distributed policy loans bur- dened banks with huge nonperforming loans, thus entrapping the econ- omy in a cycle of boom and bust and presenting the South Korean leader- ship with hard policy choices in 1972 and 1979. The volatile swings in this U. ally’s global, regional, and peninsular strategy aggravated or amelio- rated South Korea’s security dilemmas in 1961, 1964, 1969, and 1976, which triggered its policymakers’ need to reassess competing budgetary priorities between military and economic programs. Most critical, Park Chung Hee was at first supposed to step down in 1971 and, after a consti- tutional revision to allow his third presidential term, in 1975.

Whether he would do so was to have profound impacts on South Korea’s regime char- acter and, hence, its strategy of modernization. The choice made at each of these critical junctures, determining South Korea’s subsequent path of eco- nomic growth, was heavily shaped by politics. Second, we focus on political history because at many of the critical junctures, for South Korea to succeed at the state building, military secu- rity improvements, and market formation upon which its prospect for hypergrowth depended, the resolution of problems and issues could only come from its top political authorities’ attempt at juggling the competing claims of geopolitics, geoeconomics, and domestic politics. To explain South Korea’s power realignments between state ministries away from its intrinsically conservative Ministry of Finance (MoF) in 1962, 1965, and 1973, or toward the MoF in 1969, 1972, and 1979, we must examine how political leaders controlled state bureaucrats.

State ministries, if left alone, only produce a deadlock of interests or a gradual adjustment of interests.1 To explain the chaebol conglomerates’ risk-taking behavior, one must look into what kind of incentives they had that made taking risks a rational strategy from their perspective and why those incentives were dangled in front of them in the first place. Such inquiries require an analysis of Park Chung Hee and his top aides’ political goals, calculations, and strategies. The primacy of politics is shown even more directly in the social and Introduction 3 political realms. To explain the farmers’ zigzagging behavior between “pro-Park” and “anti-Park” votes in 1963, 1967, 1971, and 1978, we must analyze Park’s similarly zigzagging strategy of modernization be- tween the Green Revolution and the agricultural squeeze, his transforma- tion of rural state institutions into a political machine, and his awakening of politically contagious regionalist sentiments in all corners of South Ko- rea.

Likewise, explaining why labor failed to challenge his strategy of trickle-down growth requires an analysis of the top-down reorganization of labor unions in 1961, as well as Park’s massive and persistent crack- down on dissident chaeya activists, which prevented leftists from establish- ing an enduring base of support in society. The decision to normalize rela- tions with Japan and dispatch combat troops to South Vietnam in 1965 with an eye to securing the seed money for strategic industrial projects also constituted a political act of risk taking. Third, we go back to political history because both economic theo- ries and developmental state literatures are less effective in explaining the motives behind, as opposed to the outcomes of, Park’s policy decisions. To begin with, many of his policy choices collided head on with prevail- ing economic ideas.

Responding to a slowdown in growth rates in 1969, 1972, 1974, and 1979, South Korea adopted unorthodox measures, re- lieving stagflationary pressures quickly by imposing shock therapy—in- terest hikes, debt rescheduling, “industrial rationalization,” devaluation, wage cuts, and, in 1972, even freezing payments of private sach’ae (curb- market) loans—on society, but then using this relief of market pressures only as grounds for another massive injection of government-subsidized bank loans to finance a new round of hypergrowth. This obsession with economic growth and the leadership’s ability to carry out its shock therapy despite political risks and economic dangers can only be understood by turning to an analysis of Park’s vision of puguk kangbyông (rich nation, strong army) and his strategy to leverage structural pressures to achieve that vision and, with it, satisfy his will to power. Obviously, using political history does not require us to reject efforts at theory building. On the contrary, theories help us identify analytic and his- torical puzzles and issues, as well as map out our line of inquiry.

However, it is also true that many of the complexities, ambiguities, and uncertainties in South Korea’s historical trajectory of modernization have been lost in efforts at theory building. The chapters in this volume restore those lost stories and, in the process, provide us with an opportunity to assess both the strengths and the weaknesses of prevailing views and discover ways to modify those ideas. Placing theories in the context of political history, our chapters agree on three crucial analytic points. First, South Korea’s political actors defy any easy typology and tran- Introduction 4 scend many dichotomous conceptualizations of prevailing theories.

The chapters will argue that, for us to understand the role of these actors in the politics of modernization, we frequently need to combine what theories originally conceptualized as mutually exclusive concepts. The state was predatory and yet technocratic. The chaebol did receive special favors as “cronies” of Park and his ruling coalition but also, with dedication and entrepreneurial skill, pioneered new growth industries at immense risks. The military was politicized, defending its political master during crisis, but was also a professionalized actor successfully deterring Pyông- yang’s invasion.

Both the ruling and the opposition political parties were internally pulled apart by factional struggle and externally constrained by police surveillance, and yet their struggles for presidential succession seri- ously constrained Park’s political options. The dissident chaeya was orga- nizationally weak, but contentious—and sometime even capable of re- shaping national agendas. The Park regime also boasted resilience, only to be shaken up by spontaneously organized political protests from below, to which it responded with increased repression. The “hegemonic” United States usually could not bring its weaker South Korean client-state to its knees when the two nations’ interests diverged.

Even in the realm of secu- rity, U. deterrence assumed dual political meanings, one against Pyông- yang’s threats of war and another against South Korea’s demand for retali- ation after North Korean guerrilla attacks or against Park’s nuclear ambitions. The chapters in this volume urge us to imagine actors that lie in between the opposite concepts of predatory and technocratic states, politi- cized and professionalized armed forces, weak and strong political parties, resilient and fragile regimes, and hegemonic and client powers. Second, many of the variables identified as major drivers of South Ko- rea’s modernization—from its “Weberian developmental state”2 to state- business “networks,”3 to “Asian values” and U.

aid policy, even to Park Chung Hee’s leadership—were continually evolving entities, with many of their elements newly created, nurtured, and/or readjusted as part of a se- ries of policy learning and institutional experiments during Park’s political rule. The institutions as described by theorists of developmental states and networks were more an idealized end product of the eighteen years of Park’s political rule than the actual state of political and economic rela- tions at any one point in his era.