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121 Chapter Six POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT IN SOUTH KOREA SOUTH KOREA HAD BARELY BEGUN the process of nation-building in the summer of 1950, when war threw the fledgling republic into chaos: first came the hasty evacuation of the government to Pusan, followed by the brief, but brutal North Korean occupation of 90 percent of its territory, the fight north, the second withdrawal after entry of Chinese troops, and finally stalemate along the original line of division. During the war the government necessarily ruled by emergency decrees, and there was scant room for the development of democratic institutions . After the war, the First Republic under the leadership of Syngman Rhee established patterns that formed the basis of South Korean political culture for the next thirty-five years. Established with an American-inspired constitution that stipulated three government branches, the nascent Republic now had to interpret the relationships between its administrative branch headed by the president, its National Assembly, and its judiciary. Under its strong-willed first chief executive, the presidency monopolized power by extending wartime emergency measures into the postwar era. To do this required creation of a large, intrusive police and internal security apparatus and manipulation of US military and economic aid. Until the late 1980s constitutional governance remained a façade behind which Rhee and later chief executives wielded authoritarian power in what was a barely masked dictatorship. Leaders in power altered the constitution at various moments of crisis in order to protect or augment their authority, thereby giving birth to six separate republics .1 Following the student revolution of 1960 the constitution was amended to reduce the power of the executive, but this experiment was short-lived. After the Military Coup of 1961, constitutional amendments were used to thwart formal political opposition, with each change blocking or substantially weakening the power of the opposition within the legal framework. Changes of the election law, a formal shift in structure from a premier to presidential system, and the latitude given the president to declare emergency powers all served at various times to preempt political opposition. A legal framework was constructed that foreclosed the possibility of a peaceful transfer of power to an electoral victor. With little hope of challenging the system, the public turned to mass protest and the politics of the streets. Thus changes at the top were accomplished not through an orderly process of constitutional transition but by unpredictable, often violent protest from 122 Political and Economic Development in South Korea below. The cycle of constitutional manipulation, building public tension, and mass protest made for considerable political instability, which dramatic economic and social change compounded. Caught between the memory of the catastrophic Korean War and a desire for better material conditions, the people in South Korea resigned themselves to authoritarian rule as the price of relative domestic peace and economic improvement well into the 1980s. Syngman Rhee and the Politics of the First Republic After 1953 Syngman Rhee consolidated his control by ruthlessly extending wartime emergency measures into the postwar era. At the base of his authority lay the powerful National Police and its internal security apparatus, whose power to arrest and otherwise intimidate Rhee’s political opponents was legitimated by a vague and flexibly interpreted National Security Law.2 This law, aimed principally at uprooting the remnants of Communist subversion or insurgency that had arisen during the war, provided numerous provisions for the arrest, interrogation, and imprisonment of elements in society opposed to the state. Indeed, during the war over 60,000 people had been arrested for collaborating with the North Koreans or under suspicion of being Communists. Its provisions were so notoriously vague that Rhee could arrest almost anyone by calling them Communists or persons or organizations whose activities were “deleterious of public order.” The president could also declare a state of emergency, which allowed the executive to rule by fiat, providing even more latitude for the quasi-legal use of the security police. In many cases Rhee turned this power against the formal political opposition, once ordering the police to round up opposition lawmakers who had gone into hiding in order to ensure a quorum for legislation. The National Security Law also allowed Rhee to muzzle the Korean press with censorship or the outright arrest of reporters . During the 1950s the public grew to loath the abuses of the National Police, but few dared oppose this powerful force. Syngman Rhee also built a new political party, the Liberal Party. Through a combination of...

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