Park Chung-hee

Biography

Park Chung Hee was born in 1917 in Gumi, in Korea under Japanese rule. After graduating from Taegu Normal School in 1937 he taught at a school in Mungyeong, then entered the Manchukuo Army Military Academy, graduating in 1942, and the Imperial Japanese Army Academy, graduating in 1944. He served as a lieutenant in the Manchukuo army at the end of the Second World War. Back in Korea he graduated from the Korea Military Academy in 1946, but was forced out of the army for a time over his membership of the communist Workers' Party of South Korea.

By 1961 Park was the second-highest-ranking officer in the army. He led the May 16 coup that ended the Second Republic, took control of the ruling Supreme Council for National Reconstruction, became acting president in 1962, and won the 1963 presidential election as candidate of the new Democratic Republican Party. His government pursued export-led industrialisation that transformed the economy, normalised relations with Japan in 1965 and sent troops to fight in Vietnam.

Re-elected in 1967 and, narrowly, in 1971, Park declared martial law in 1972 and imposed the authoritarian Yushin Constitution. He survived a North Korean commando raid on the Blue House in 1968 and a 1974 shooting that killed his wife, Yuk Young-soo. On 26 October 1979, after the Busan–Masan Uprising, he was shot dead by his friend Kim Jae-gyu, director of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency.