Park Chung Hee Era
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Second, given the primacy of politics, the history of state building and policy reform during the military junta was rocky, taking sharp twists and turns in economically dysfunctional directions as struggles for power heated up in the volatile junta. The birth of the developmental state was anything but technocratic. Despite their effectiveness, the administrative reforms carried out by Park and his junta derived from no blueprint or master plan prepared at the outset of the coup with clear objectives and well-defined steps to harness the state apparatus for political stability and economic growth. There was hardly a “grand design.” On the contrary, the junta’s programs were preoccupied with the issue of political control rather than with the question of how to use a strengthened control mechanism for other goals, including economic growth. The obsession with political control led Park not only to establish the KCIA but also to entrust many policymaking responsibilities to the intelligence agency. The centrality of the KCIA in the policymaking process meant that South Korean politics were characterized by repressive and punitive measures and South Korean economics by dysfunctional shock therapies. Under martial law, the dissolution of the National Assembly and local government councils and the disbanding of political parties and social organizations were the norm rather than the exception, while economic policy was based on the as-
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sumption that the junta could force savings on society and redirect the economy by administrative fiat.
Third, in parallel with the misguided efforts using various shock therapies, there also emerged powerful currents of political learning. The failures of the junta’s experiments taught Park that he had much to learn about the intrinsic limitations of his initial control-oriented strategy and that he needed to find a balance between state power and market forces to generate economic growth. Fortunately for Park, the military junta, and the country, he was not afraid to acknowledge his mistakes, learn from them, switch policy directions, and redefine policy goals when performance lagged behind target objectives. He gradually shifted the locus of power in economic policymaking from the KCIA to technocrats in the state bureaucracy in order to implement the newly redefined policy goals.
For someone trying to undertake a revolution, Park was surprisingly free of ideological hang-ups.
Park could only learn of the need to shift power to the state bureaucracy and technocratize economic policy, however, when he had successfully steered the internally fragmented junta through the treacherous waters of post-coup power politics to consolidate his basis of power. Politics had to be put in order first before Park put his policy learning to use. Here he was also a quick study. Despite his seeming vulnerability as ostensibly second in charge of the coup, and with only a narrow power base, Park held undisputed leadership in the post-coup period while power dynamics shifted constantly. The most critical part of this story was his complex relationship with Kim Chong-p’il, his right-hand man.4 Indeed, it is difficult to imagine how Park could have so quickly taken control of the government and carried out fundamental administrative reforms had he not secured the support of Kim Chong-p’il. Kim was widely regarded as a “co-owner”
of the military coup of 1961. Founder and first director of the KCIA, he became the crown prince, wielding power rivaling that of Park.
Once Park consolidated power with the help of Kim Chong-p’il in the politics of purges by early 1963, however, Kim had to be brought down from the position of crown prince, not only in the interest of Park’s further consolidation of power, but also for the sake of the transition to a more technocratic growth strategy. Park reduced Kim’s dominance when his role became the single most explosive threat to the stability of the SCNR and to Park’s power. Park used the rivals of Kim Chong-p’il to force Kim to step down from the chairmanship of the Democratic Republican Party and then “retire.” This maneuver in turn proved to be an opportunity to crack down on those rivals. The manner in which Park handled these relation-
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ships is an example of his ability to tap the talents of others to consolidate his power and to play politics of the most dispassionate and efficient kind to tame the ambitions of his allies, advisors, and supporters.
The Supreme Council for National Reconstruction The question of power was paramount, not only determining the prospects for Park’s survival as a political leader but also shaping his preferences for the direction of state building and economic policy. The issue he faced in the immediate aftermath of the military coup was how to project the image of the armed forces’ unified institutional support for him while he weeded out potential rivals to his leadership from the military and constructed a system of checks and balances within the junta. The question of how to recruit scarce civilian talent for rebuilding the South Korean state into a capable instrument of the military junta also occupied Park throughout the two and a half years of military rule. In the process of resolving these questions and issues of power, he ended up establishing an internally fractured, multilayered structure of governance.
Formally, it was the junta, renamed from the Military Revolutionary Committee to the Supreme Council for National Reconstruction (Kukka chaegôn ch’oego hoe¤i) three days after the coup, that was the seat of power. As the supreme political authority replacing the three branches of government, the SCNR was composed of the thirty highest-ranking military personnel, including the chiefs of all the branches of the armed forces.
The inclusion of the highest-ranking military personnel was a way to keep firm control over the military and a close eye on any possible countercoup within the armed forces, as well as to project the armed forces’ unity behind the coup. The SCNR initially consisted of fourteen subcommittees, which were reduced to seven by July 1961. Although the membership changed five times between May 1961 and February 1963 because of a series of purges and retirements, the SCNR remained the highest political authority, with the power to enact laws, examine the budget, and oversee national administration. In addition, it had special powers to direct and control the cabinet over matters relating to national administration, planning, and policy.5 The cabinet could advise the SCNR, but the power to appoint the cabinet was vested in the SCNR. The SCNR also had the power to appoint the Planning Council for National Reconstruction (PCNR). It had five committees made up of civilians but was headed by a military officer. On May 20, 1961, the SCNR established a fourteen-member cabinet of active military officers and placed it under Lieutenant
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General Chang To-yông, who wore four hats as the prime minister, defense minister, SCNR chairman, and army chief of staff. The launching of the cabinet triggered intense power struggles, which were to end in the downfall of Chang. Having won U.S. acceptance of the coup and having defeated General Yi Han-lim’s countercoup efforts, Park took away two of the positions that had given Chang authority over the military—army chief of staff and minister of defense—within two weeks of his appointment as prime minister by getting the SCNR to enact the Law Regarding Extraordinary Measures for National Reconstruction on June 6, which barred the SCNR chairman (Chang To-yông) from holding any office other than that of prime minister. Next, on June 12, the vice chairman of the SCNR, Major General Park Chung Hee, was appointed chairman of the SCNR Standing Committee in accordance with the Supreme Council for National Reconstruction Law (SCNRL) promulgated on June 10. The law stipulated that “the Vice Chairman of the SCNR shall also be Chairman of the SCNR Standing Committee,” thus further subverting Chang’s power base.6 The clause had been drafted by Lieutenant Colonel Yi Sôkche, chairman of SCNR’s Subcommittee on Legislation and Justice and one of Park’s protégés. Yi had also played a central role in drafting and enacting the Law Regarding Extraordinary Measures for National Reconstruction under instructions to “eliminate” Chang To-yông.7
On July 3, Chang was arrested on the charge of conspiring to carry out a countercoup, along with a mixed group of fo
rty-four generals, colonels, and other officers.8 The purge of Chang, generally seen as a power struggle between the Southern factions, which included primarily the provinces of Kyôngsang and Ch’ungch’ông, and the Northern faction, mostly from P’yôngan province, also led to the fall of the fifth graduating KMA class as a next-generation contender for the position of crown prince within the military junta against Kim Chong-p’il and his young colonels of the eighth KMA class.
On the same day, the SCNR engaged in another round of legal change—
this time in the opposite direction, allowing Park to assume the chairmanship of both the SCNR and its powerful standing committee. The SCNR
also appointed the new minister of defense, Song Yo-ch’an, as prime minister. At the same time, the SCNR overhauled the cabinet on July 22, establishing an overarching ministry, the Economic Planning Board, as a lead agency to steer South Korean economic development with an impressive arsenal of budgetary, foreign capital, and planning powers. Once Park made himself the undisputed leader of the junta, he moved to transform the SCNR into a cohesive organization capable of mobilizing power for reform more effectively. Park made the chairman of each of the now seven
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subcommittees a member of the SCNR standing committee, with himself as chair after July 2. The seven subcommittees were Legislation and Justice, Home Affairs, Foreign Affairs and National Defense, Finance and Economy, Education and Society, Transportation and Communications, and Management and Planning.
The structure of power Park had built was “upside-down.”9 On the one hand, senior high-ranking officers in the reserves and on active duty were drafted by Park to serve as cabinet ministers in order to project an image of the South Korean armed forces’ unified institutional support behind the coup and to legitimize Park’s leadership. Their role was conceived as primarily one of professional-administrative management by the core group of the military junta, including Park. On the other hand, the core group of mid-ranking officers loyal to Park and Kim Chong-p’il placed its members in the SCNR because of their lower ranking in the military hierarchy, but thought of itself as the real owner of the coup because it had been the lieutenant colonels and colonels who had actually mobilized troops and occupied Seoul on May 16, 1961. Moreover, with this self-image, the core group had made the SCNR the supreme body with the power to appoint the cabinet. The ministers were without political decision-making power, required to work with, through, and sometimes around the SCNR members, who were their military subordinates but also their political superiors. In this dual power structure, the young SCNR officers on active duty had the power to overrule the cabinet ministers in areas that included personnel administration, budget, and policy formulation.
In its efforts to amass power, the SCNR drafted whoever it believed was needed to implement its state-led reform programs, resulting in the participation of a diverse array of civilian professionals and experts in various SCNR programs, ranging from economic planning and rural development to constitutional revision to party organization. These civilians participated as advisors rather than as decision makers, even when they had decision-making government posts.
The two-tier structure of governance with its locus of power placed in the mid-ranking officers who staffed the SCNR appeared to work—at least in the second half of 1961. The assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern affairs, Walter P. McConaughy, in his “Revised Progress Report on Follow-Up Actions Responsive to Recommendations of Korea Task Force Report” of September 8, 1961, reported that the military junta had made real advances since the coup in May, including the maintenance of a unified exchange rate at 1,300 hwan per dollar, the reorganization of South Korea’s fragmented and inefficient electric power industry into a single public corporation, the establishment of improved credit facilities, the
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elimination of dirigiste banking regulations and price controls, the release of South Korea’s leading businessmen placed under house arrest on charges of illicit wealth accumulation during the Rhee regime, and actions to engender business confidence and to stimulate the economy.10
Korea Central Intelligence Agency
At the center of policy reform and bureaucratic restructuring was the KCIA. The primary task of its director, Kim Chong-p’il,11 was the consolidation of Park’s grip on power in and outside the SCNR and cabinet.
Modeled after, but also going beyond, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and the Japanese Investigation Bureau, the KCIA was designed not only to collect intelligence on external threats to national security but also to eliminate all obstacles in the execution of the “revolutionary tasks” of Park’s junta. Only thirty-five years old in 1961, tall and handsome, Kim Chong-p’il had a charismatic personality and great revolutionary zeal. He was known among U.S. officials for being “extraordinarily intelligent” and full of energy. At the same time, the United States deplored his “identification of revolution with himself.”12 As Berger reported to his superiors, Kim was not just an intelligence chief. He was at the “core of [the] revolution as planner, leader and administrator.”13
Once Park and Kim Chong-p’il seized power in May 1961, their central instrument of power consolidation became the KCIA, founded on June 10.14 According to Law no. 619, the KCIA had the power “to control and supervise both international and domestic intelligence activities, and the criminal investigation undertaken by all government intelligence agencies, including that of the military.”15 The powers of the KCIA had also been strengthened by the Law Regarding the Extraordinary Measures for National Reconstruction. Promulgated on June 6, this was the first law the coup leaders enacted. Designed to “regularize, legalize, and explain” the new system of military rule,16 it stipulated that if any articles of the South Korean Constitution were contrary to the articles of the emergency measures law, the latter would prevail.17
These extraordinary legal measures were drafted by three members of the eighth KMA graduating class: Sôk Chông-sôn, Yi Yông-g¤n, and Kim Pyông-hak. Sin Chik-su, a civilian lawyer, revised the initial draft of Law no. 619 and subsequently became an advisor to Park, while also acting as an advisor to the KCIA. Kim Chong-p’il filled in all the key positions of the KCIA with members of his clique, hand-picking the director, deputy director, and chiefs of each of the agency’s six bureaus and six divisions.18
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On May 20, 1961, Kim Chong-p’il had briefed the members of the Military Revolutionary Committee (MRC) on the organization and functions of the KCIA. Kim also explained to the coup leaders that the KCIA and the headquarters of the National Reconstruction Movement were to be managed directly by the MRC. The briefing showed that Kim Chong-p’il was recognized de facto as the planner and implementer of the junta’s reform drive. In fact, Kim publicly announced that he was the master planner of the SCNR laws and the architect of the SCNR’s governing structure.19
Moreover, even before the adoption of the KCIA law, much of its organization had already been established and placed under the direction of Kim Chong-p’il.
According to Ch’oe Yông-t’aek, the National Police were the first institution to report to the KCIA.20 On May 22, the KCIA took over the Chang Myôn government’s intelligence agency, officially known as the Research Committee on Central Intelligence, headed by Yi Hu-rak, who later became Park’s chief of staff. Yi boasted of close ties to the American CIA.
It was the overwhelming powers of the KCIA that allowed Kim Chong-p’il to remove Lieutenant General Chang To-yông from the SCNR chairmanship to make way for Park’s rise to the top. The carefully orchestrated purge of Chang and his followers less than fifty days after the coup showed Kim Chong-p’il at the height of his power, in control of both the SCNR
and the cabinet, as well as other public and private institutions. The initiative to control civilian institutions also began with purges. The Ministry of Home Affairs, which sat on top of myr
iad administrative organs of political control, including the police, saw a massive purge of civil servants at the provincial and local levels as Kim attempted to get control of the state bureaucracy and to exert his influence over the military junta’s economic and social programs through that control. There was also a Joint Investigation Team, led by the SCNR’s Inspection Committee on Irregularities in the Public Service, which tried to establish discipline across state ministries. Some 20,000 civil servants were dismissed by June 17, 1961, as a result of the team’s activities.
Then, in accordance with the SCNR’s newly announced thirteen-point guidelines for the reduction of civil servants, those “aged over fifty” were included in this massive purge. By July 20, the military junta planned to reduce the number of civil servants to 200,000 by forcing the retirement of 40,989 “excess” bureaucrats.21 The campaign was not based on any objective assessment of bureaucratic manpower. On the contrary, the objective was to establish discipline in the civil service with a show of arbitrary power, as well as to satisfy public demand for a cut in state expenditures.