The Park Chung Hee Era: The Transformation of South Korea ed. by Byung-Kook Kim and Ezra F. Vogel (review)

Park Chung Hee was one of the most important leaders of the second half of the twentieth century. The Republic of Korea (ROK) is one of the greatest economic success stories in history, thanks to Park’s obsessive pursuit of economic strength. In 2013 his daughter Park Geun-hye was inaugurated as South Korea’s first woman president, in a reminder of how important the elder Park remains. Yet probably no significant leader in the post-World War II period is less remarked-upon than Park.

When Park seized power in a 1961 coup he took over a country that was almost unimaginably poor—poorer indeed than most African countries and certainly poorer than North Korea when measured by per-capita income ($80) and natural resources. The fact that South Korea today ranks among the world’s fifteen largest economies and is one of the most successful of the newly industrialized economies reflects Park’s most important achievement. Park also made the Republic of Korea a significant part of the regional security architecture in northeast Asia, one whose importance is greater than its relatively small population (now about 50 million) might suggest.

The wide-ranging collection of essays in The Park Chung Hee Era: The Transformation of South Korea is an important and welcome addition to the literature on Park’s Korea. The essays are largely written by South Korean scholars, drawing on interviews and documents that are accessible in today’s far more open political environment. The work succeeds admirably in its aim to be the first comprehensive scholarly account of the Park years, an “objective integrated history of its accomplishments and limitations.”

Koreans were fortunate that the chaotic post-armistice years threw forth Park, the son of a peasant who had spent his formative years in the Japanese military. For his part, however, the major-general did not think much of his fellow Koreans. As described in The Park Chung Hee Era, despite some populist tendencies, the new leader was “elitist with a dirigiste vision of modernization, critical of his people’s alleged passivity, opportunism, indolence and defeatism” (p. 27). Park thus took upon himself the burden of dragging his country into the modern world.

Park was driven by a few simple concepts that he learned in the Japanese military: “rich nation, strong army” and “production promotion.” Park put these concepts into practice with ferocious single-mindedness. Whether eliminating thatched roofs from peasants’ houses or building one of the world’s most efficient steel plants, Park was at the center of a development whirlwind from the 1961 coup until his 1979 assassination.

Park began by arresting and fining chaebol heads, including Samsung’s Yi Pyong-chol. Coup officers mooted the idea of nationalization and even executions. Having demonstrated his willingness to use his power, Park worked with chaebol heads who showed that they could perform. He favored risk takers such as Hyundai’s Chong Chu-yong, whose success in building a globally competitive auto company is one of the more remarkable elements of South Korea’s rise. Frustrated by U.S. and World Bank rebuffs in his attempt to build a steel mill, Park used Japanese funds provided as part of the controversial 1965 normalization agreement to build steel-maker POSCO, finding in junior officer Pak T’ae-jun another capable leader.

Park pushed the chaebol—and the economy—harder and faster than orthodox economists said was possible. Yet the chaebol understood that Park would bail out competent companies when crises hit. One of the many strengths of this book is the detailed accounts of the measures Park took to save the chaebol when larger macroeconomic forces worked against them. Park willingly used technocrats, many of them trained in orthodox Western economics by the United States, but he completely disregarded them when necessary to meet his objective of higher economic growth.

This volume fills in...