A History of Korea (86 page)

Although he spent most of the 1960s as a civilian president, his approach to rule throughout the decade was militaristic, from the way he gained power through a coup to the regimentation of politics, society, and economy that his reign implemented. The Military Revolutionary Council and then the Supreme National Reconstruction Committee through which Park ruled the country from 1961 to 1963 set in motion the mobilization of society along militaristically disciplined lines. His “revolutionary” government in 1961 immediately set out to clean up the streets by eliminating blight and seedy social elements—rounding up and putting to work street kids, vagrants, and even gangsters, for example. To maintain
surveillance and control over such unsavory elements and, later, opposition political figures, the notorious Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA), the internal security apparatus of the military government, was also established in 1961. For most of the public, however, “reconstruction” became the all-encompassing word on people’s lips, a shorthand for the comprehensive changes that would require destruction as much as construction: destruction of the old ways of thinking that led to corruption and decay, of the legacy of Korea’s sad history that produced weakness and tragedy, and of the impoverishment that made the country an easy target for communism. As it did under Syngman Rhee’s regime, anti-communism became a mainstay of Park’s claims to legitimacy and method of rule. In the latter part of the 1960s, sensationalistic incursions by North Korean commandos and spies further stoked the government’s anti-communist campaign.

Such a heavily military bent to the polity and society, and even to the economy and culture, actually complicates any general assessment of politics in the 1960s. Although it is common simply to label the entirety of Park’s rule from 1961 to 1979 as an era of “military dictatorship,” in the 1960s, at least, the military facet of rule outstripped the dictatorship. On the occasion of the formal transition to civilian government in 1963, Park shed his officer’s uniform to run in the presidential election, which he narrowly won, but much of the cabinet and Park’s top advisors came from the military. His re-election in 1967 was a more comfortable affair (over the same opponent, coincidentally) but, throughout the 1960s, Park had to deal with constraints imposed by the formalities of republicanism, including opposition from national assembly members, activists, workers, and especially students.

ECONOMIC TAKEOFF

Park made it clear that his highest priority throughout his first decade of rule was to lift the country out of poverty and set it on the path to economic modernization through industrialization. For the most part, he accomplished both of these goals, although it took
the entirety of the decade, and the economy encountered problems with rice shortages. Borrowing an approach found in communist systems, Park deployed the model of the “Five-Year Plan” for national economic development, with clear-cut goals and blueprints for pursuing a growth strategy managed by skilled bureaucrats. Park’s government promulgated the First Five-Year Plan in 1962, the same year that it also designated the city of Ulsan on the southeastern coast a special industrial development zone. Ulsan would become the home region for the Hyundai Corporation’s manufacturing juggernaut. By the end of 1966, the final year of the plan, there were indeed signs of major infrastructural and urban growth, as well as of the drive for exports gaining full force. One of the most visible transformations had taken place in 1964, when some areas in the country were the first to experience twenty-four-hour electricity provision, engendering a dramatic lifestyle change by expanding the scope of night time activity. Indeed, materially and otherwise, especially in the urban areas, conditions continued to improve, and the people’s perspectives on the world, especially those of the youth, widened with greater exposure to foreign cultural and material products.

The Second Five-Year Plan, beginning in 1967, more explicitly targeted export-oriented growth as the primary goal, which would lay the foundation, in turn, for a shift toward heavy industry. That year the government finalized plans to establish a nationally-owned steel venture, the Pohang Iron and Steel Company, or POSCO. POSCO became incorporated the next year and went on to supply the major industries of shipbuilding, auto manufacturing, and construction through which South Korea became an industrial power. 1967 also witnessed the creation of a special export manufacturing zone in southwestern Seoul, the famed Kuro Industrial Park. With its concentration of toiling workers producing everything from shoes and clothes to machinery, the Kuro Industrial Park eventually turned into a symbol of the sacrifices and lives of the South Korean labor force. Korean workers, the economic miracle’s backbone that the state and big business exploited for the comparative advantage of cheap labor, suffered conditions not unlike their counterparts throughout the modern world. Many South Korean workers
fiercely resisted this heavy-handed state control and even won significant legal concessions through union actions, but prodded by calls for national sacrifice and the promises of material gain, they too mostly fell in line with the larger industrialization drive. This inclination, together with a dedication to education and training, made the work force the most indispensable element of the South Korean success story.

The biggest beneficiaries of the state-led, export-oriented industrialization drive, however, were the family-owned conglomerate companies, the so-called
chaebol
, a mostly pejorative term meaning “financial clique.” Some of the best-known of these conglomerates today, such as Samsung and LG, began as small enterprises in the colonial period, while others, such as Hyundai, began shortly after liberation. By the 1960s, the government selected well-performing companies for targeted export-oriented production, rewarding them with cheap and big loans, easy licenses, tax benefits, and government guidance. The result was the astonishing growth of many of these companies into the “octopus”-like entities that came to dominate the South Korean economy. The families that controlled the conglomerates came to be followed as national celebrities, though not always flatteringly, and the tycoons who began these enterprises won listings in the pantheon of national heroes. Hyundai presented a prime example. Begun by Chung Ju Yung, a man from the east coast of what is now North Korea, as a transport service supplying the American military, Hyundai became perhaps the most celebrated beneficiary of government largesse in the 1960s. Hyundai’s first major industry, construction, jump-started its rise through foreign building contracts in southeast Asia in the mid-1960s, while at home it won major infrastructural projects, including construction of the main national artery, the Seoul-Pusan Expressway, completed in 1970. Its second major industry, automobile manufacturing, began in 1967 with an agreement to build a Ford model in its plant in Ulsan. By the 1970s, Hyundai would produce and export its own car, the Pony, and by the 1980s it would penetrate the largest car market in the world, the US. Hyundai eventually expanded into shipbuilding, for which it became a global leader, as well as cement,
chemicals, and even electronics. Today, like the other well-known
chaebol
, Hyundai is commonly seen as a standard-bearer for Korean industrial prowess, and even for Korea itself.

A final major factor in the 1960s economic takeoff, though one not easily discerned, can be deemed “association with America.” The US affected the South Korean economy in several ways. Its dozens of military bases and tens of thousands of soldiers stationed around the country injected capital into the consumer economy. The American government’s direct aid in the form of grants and loans provided the South Korean regime great leverage, through its control of the lending practices of major banks, in getting industry and labor to fall in line behind state-directed planning. There was also the considerable impact of American “soft power”—the widespread influence of American popular music, fashion, movies, and entertainers, some of whom, like Louis Armstrong, actually performed in Korea. These examples of soft power helped set trends and increase demand for American items, both cultural and material.

A more pronounced impact came from South Korea’s troops sent to the Vietnam War, which, beginning with over 17,000 soldiers sent in 1965, came to comprise the second largest foreign contingent in Vietnam after the Americans. South Korea’s participation stemmed from its service as a dutiful American ally, but the economic benefits also were enormous: in addition to gaining favorable treatment from the US government, South Korea became a major supplier of American military provisions, which added further to the national coffers supporting export-oriented industrial growth. Korean entrepreneurs, many as soldiers, flooded Vietnam, some making a fortune, with others sending smaller amounts back home, and still others using their Vietnam entrepreneurial experience as the basis for businesses and careers after their return. The total economic impact of South Korea’s involvement in the Vietnam War in the 1960s, as with the Japanese investment of capital and technology, is difficult to measure, but proportionally it was far more significant than it was for the US. To the Korean youth, in fact, the image of Vietnam as a great opportunity for adventure and money making tended to overshadow any anxiety.

YOUTH AND ANGST

Although both the participation in Vietnam and the normalization of relations with Japan played significant roles in South Korea’s economic push in the 1960s, the youth culture displayed a starkly contrasting response to the two ventures. While many of the South Korean elite who had come of age in and benefited from the colonial period, like Park Chung Hee, might have viewed the prospect of reestablishing Japanese ties pragmatically, university students and other younger Koreans fiercely resisted this as a betrayal of the nation. Park himself made his first official visit to Japan in November of 1961, just half a year after seizing power, and his advisors engaged shortly thereafter in secret negotiations to reestablish formal diplomatic ties and attract an infusion of Japanese capital and know-how. When these quiet maneuvers were revealed and word spread in March of 1964 that the two governments were on the verge of an agreement, thousands of students spilled into the streets, engaging in clashes with riot police and even entering into mass protest fasts. By June, over ten thousand student demonstrators had risen up, inviting the promulgation of a state of emergency in Seoul. The spirit of rebellion was further fueled by a hit film released that year,
Barefooted Youth
—Korea’s answer to
Rebel Without a Cause
—which portrayed the anxious and directionless existence of a younger generation falling victim to the constraints of customs and authority. Whether so intended or not by the filmmaker, Kim Kid
k, this movie was taken as tacit support for the students protesting the prospective treaty with Japan. Alas, the delay in finalizing this treaty caused by the protests did not last long, and by June of 1965 the treaty was signed, followed by easy ratification in the government-controlled National Assembly later in the fall. The heavy-handed ratification process compelled the mass resignation of opposition politicians and the eruption of more student protests, which the government suppressed through a military occupation of college campuses.

These protests against the Normalization Treaty with Japan represented both the confluence and conflicts of economic, political, and cultural forces that drove the spirited decade of the 1960s.
While the strong state and big business moved the country in one focused direction, less powerful sectors of society, embodied especially in the students, pushed back, or at least demanded a reorientation of priorities, a reconsideration of consequences. This dynamic reappeared in 1969, as politicians and students rose up to block the prospective constitutional amendment that would allow Park Chung Hee to run for a third consecutive presidential term. Once again, universities were shut down and opposition political figures stifled as the constitutional amendment, like the Normalization Treaty, was railroaded through the National Assembly before being approved in a national referendum. With this, the turbulent 1960s came to a close, setting the stage for the somber 1970s.

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Culture and Politics in 1970s South Korea

CHRONOLOGY

1970 April	Proclamation of the New Village Movement by Park Chung Hee
1970 May	Publication of Kim Chiha’s narrative poem, “Five Bandits”; Kim’s arrest
1970 November	Protest through self-immolation by young labor organizer Ch n T’aeil
1971	Re-election of Park Chung Hee to third consecutive presidential term
1972	Summer Joint declaration of reconciliation by the two Koreas
1972 October	Suspension of constitution; proclamation of the “Yusin” constitutional dictatorship
1973	Global oil shocks; kidnapping of opposition politician Kim Dae Jung
1974 April	Roundup of dissident students and activists, sentencing of many to execution
1974 August	Assassination of Park’s wife
1977	Achievement of $10 billion in value of South Korean exports
1979 October	Assassination of Park Chung Hee; end of Yusin system