Park Chung-hee

Park Chung-hee 박정희
Born	1917 November 14 Gumi, North Gyeongsang, Korea
Died	1979 October 26 Seoul, South Korea
Cause of death	Gunshot wounds
Nationality	Korean

Park Chung-hee (1917 November 14 – 1979 October 26) was a dictator who ruled south Korea from 1961 to 1979. He came to power in 1961 through a military coup and declared martial law in 1972 when he dissolved the legislature. He ruled as a puppet of the USA and sent 320,000 troops to participate in their occupation of Vietnam. His daughter, Park Geun-hye, was the president of south Korea from 2013 until her impeachment in 2017.

Park based his power on the proclaimed need to build a strong government capable of countering a possible attack from DPRK, playing up fears of north Korea and cracking down on the reunification movement. Soon after the military coup, Park undertook several measures to give his government the necessary power to keep all opposition under control, ruling by numerous "emergency decrees" and making wide use of the National Security Law and the Anti-Communist Law. Under the two laws, even liberals completely unrelated to communism were punished for their criticism of the Park government.

Park's rule was rife with torture, surveillance, and intimidation of citizens, as found by a 1975 Amnesty International mission report which found that torture was "frequently" used by south Korean law enforcement to extract false confessions. Systematic harassment of citizens by law enforcement agencies was also found to be "commonplace", with individuals waking to find guards in their houses, their mail obviously tampered with, and individuals being followed in the street. Meanwhile, lawyers would be detained on house arrest and prevented from coming to trials to present defenses for their clients, and bodies of likely torture victims burned before they could be examined. Those who conducted the mission also found themselves harassed and obstructed by the authorities as they conducted their investigation.

Collaboration with Japan

During the Japanese occupation of Korea, Park took the Japanese name Takagi Masao, joined the Imperial Japanese Army, and fought against Korean guerrillas including Kim Il-sung. Emperor Hirohito awarded Park a gold watch for his service to the Empire of Japan, which included hunting down guerrillas fighting against Japanese rule.

Rule

The Revitalization (Yushin) Constitution was proclaimed in the fall of 1972. In Article 53, the President was given power to make emergency decrees. Several emergency decrees were issued to strengthen the power base of the Yushin system.

On 8 January 1974, President Park Chung-hee introduced Emergency Decree No. 1. This provided sentences of imprisonment of up to 15 years for any person who, inter alia, "opposed or defamed the constitution of the Republic of Korea". Emergency Decree No. 2 established the Emergency Court-Martial to try and adjudicate any crime against the emergency decrees.

On 3 April 1974, the President introduced Emergency Decree No. 4, which declared unlawful a student organization, said to be called the National Democratic Youth and Student Federation (NDYSF). Sentences of death or imprisonment could be levied on any person held to have "praised, encouraged or sympathized with" this organization.

Emergency Decree No. 9 was enacted on May 13, 1975, and gave the government power to require the expulsion of "culprits" from schools and companies, to ban the publication of information, and to close schools, companies and other organizations. This decree banned all campus demonstrations, prohibited published criticism and political meetings and enabled the authorities to remove offenders from their jobs.

In addition to the emergency decrees, the Criminal Code was revised to limit human rights, and an amendment was introduced that established a "crime of slander against the state."

An Amnesty International mission from 1975, conducted when Park Chung-hee was in power, found that torture was frequently used by south Korea's law enforcement agencies, "both in an attempt to extract false confessions, and as a means of intimidation." The report lists water torture, electrical torture, "the beating of individuals tied hand and foot and suspended from the ceiling", "being hung from the ceiling and spun around", crushing and twisting of fingers, "stripping naked in sub-zero weather and being doused in water", burning with flames or cigarettes, and prolonged sleep deprivation. The report also states that detention without charge of journalists, lawyers, churchmen and academics was frequent. In the case of lawyers, the harassment was such as to prevent the presentation of a full defense, such as by placing lawyers under house arrest to prevent them from showing up at trials. Systematic harassment of citizens by law enforcement agencies was found to be commonplace, with individuals waking to find guards in their houses, their mail showing obvious signs of having been opened prior to arrival, telephones being tapped, and people being openly followed in the street, with these actions being used as intimidation tactics. In some cases, bodies of likely torture victims under Park's regime were also burned to prevent them from being examined.

Assassination

Park survived mass protests and two assassination attempts before Kim Jae-kyu, the leader of his secret police, assassinated him in 1979 and Chun Doo-hwan established another military dictatorship in 1980.