Park Chung Hee Era

by Byung-kook Kim

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  rean defense industry complex establish a solid base for research and development as well as for mass production of ammunition and light weapons such as M-16 rifles, mortars, and hand grenades through an intricate system of local content programs and technology licensing arrangements.

  In 1974, Park put in place the Yulgok Program, which ran until 1981, with the goal of rapidly moving into the next stage of improving defense capabilities. The mass production of basic light weapons and ammunitions was instituted during the first phase of Yulgok.27 In September 1978, the South Korean armed forces celebrated the successful launching of a test missile named Paekkom (White Bear), a remodeled Nike-Hercules with a range of 112 miles (180 kilometers), in the presence of Park Chung Hee.28 Not all defense industry programs contributed to South Korea’s national interests as well as Park’s political objectives in a positive way, however. The clandestine nuclear program brought more costs than benefits as it heightened U.S. fears of regional nuclear proliferation and damaged Park’s relationship with Jimmy Carter beyond repair.29 To preempt Park from going into the next stage of nuclear weapons development, the United States offered to deploy long-range missiles in South Korea.30

  In spite of South Korea’s successful catch-up militarily, North Korean threats continued into the 1970s. During the 1974–1978 period, the South Korean military discovered underground infiltration tunnels dug by the North to send its troops to the rear of the forward-deployed South Korean military troops. The first underground tunnel was found in Korangp’o on the western front bordering the DMZ in November 1974; the second in Ch’ôlwôn, lying on the central front in March 1975; and the third near P’anmunjôm in October 1978. The second and third tunnels were large enough to accommodate five-ton trucks and 155mm howitzers. The South Korean armed forces estimated that as many as four columns of infantry soldiers could march down each of the two tunnels to attack South Korean military troops from the rear.31 On August 18, 1976, two U.S. officers were brutally murdered by axe-wielding North Korean soldiers in the Joint Security Area at P’anmunjôm. These North Korean provocations only worsened the South Koreans’ sense of vulnerability. The North was putting military pressure on the South precisely when Carter’s presidential campaign was making the future U.S. military role on the Korean Peninsula uncertain. The tunnels and the axe-murders only strengthened Park’s resolve to counter the North with internal political unity and to build up South Korea’s military capabilities.

  At the tenth South Korean–American Security Consultative Meeting held in Seoul in July 1977, the representatives of the two allies’ armed forces agreed to integrate operational command of the South Korean mili-

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  tary troops with that of USFK troops and to establish a Combined Forces Command (CFC) by 1978, in order for the allies to fight effectively as a joint force and for South Korea to take a greater role in operational command and bear a larger share of the costs of deterrence. The two sides followed up with another Security Consultative Meeting in July 1978 to establish a joint Military Committee, the mission of which was to decide collectively on strategic issues.32 With the Military Committee issuance of its Strategic Directive no. 1, the construction of the CFC began in July 1978 and was completed in three-and-a-half months.

  In the newly organized CFC, the South Korean military took the posts of deputy commander and deputy chief of staff and filled the positions within personnel, intelligence, logistics, communications, and electronic engineering, whereas the United States held the posts of commander and chief of staff and was responsible for staffing operations and planning.33 In a sense, the internal organization of the CFC reflected the transitional nature of the U.S.–South Korean security alliance, giving the South Korean military a greater voice in operational control, but not going so far as to give it an upper hand in wartime command. The latter rested solely with the USFK commander, who also served as the CFC commander. Even during peacetime, the most critical part of operational control—strategic planning—was controlled by the U.S.-dominated CFC staff of operations and planning. The USFK commander’s role as head of the CFC as well as of the United Nations Command (UNC), responsible for overseeing the armistice agreement signed with North Korea in July 1953, ensured that the United States would continue to have a decisive influence on the South Korean military’s strategic doctrine and options.34

  Regime Security and Praetorian Guards

  Taming Kim Chong-p’il, 1961–1969

  In parallel with the efforts toward professionalization, Park worked relentlessly to monopolize the loyalty of the South Korean armed forces in order to preempt others from using the military against him and to defend his political rule. The central mechanism Park built up to turn the armed forces into his instrument of political control, repression, and preemption was a multilayered system of checks and balances he established among the military intelligence units. During the 1960s, the main target of political isolation was ironically Kim Chong-p’il, his right-hand man. Only a handful of Park’s political confidants and lieutenants dared to harbor am-

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  bitions to succeed him on the basis of their extensive organized support within the DRP and the military. Kim Chong-p’il was one such person; he survived as the front-runner in competition for succession until the late 1960s. The core members of Kim Chong-p’il’s mainstream faction held key posts in the DRP Secretariat, the KCIA, and the National Assembly until the constitutional revision of 1969 allowed Park’s third presidential term. Being the front-runner in the race for succession as early as the mid-1960s meant that Kim Chong-p’il could readily win over new supporters who jumped on the bandwagon, but he was also the target of checks and balances by other aspirants for power, if not by the presidency itself.

  Ironically, it was Park who was most interested in keeping Kim Chong-p’il in line. Until power struggles surrounding the constitutional revision of 1969 seriously damaged Kim Chong-p’il’s claim to the status of crown prince, Park’s strategy of divide and conquer focused on building an anti-mainstream faction that would break Kim Chong-p’il’s aspirations. As of the mid-1960s, Kim Chong-p’il commanded an impressive political arsenal. During the military junta period, he had been entrusted with the task of directing the KCIA (1961–1963), as well as clandestinely organizing the DRP Secretariat in preparation for the elections of 1963. Both tasks enabled him to build his own faction through political patronage. Once he seized control of the DRP Secretariat, Kim Chong-p’il also dominated the process of nominating DRP candidates for the 1963 National Assembly election.

  It was not hard for Park to roll back Kim Chong-p’il’s growing power, because the same sources of that power could be turned into political liabilities. Beginning in December 1962, Kim’s rivals damaged his integrity by digging up his illicit activities, including raising funds for the birth of the DRP by illegal means. Moreover, Park, with his power consolidated after his election as president in 1963, then had less need of Kim Chong-p’il.

  The first layer of balancers Park found among military officers on active duty and in the reserves to check Kim Chong-p’il were those of the eighth KMA class and the senior generation that had participated in the 1961

  coup and survived subsequent purges. Included in this first layer were Kim Hyông-uk, Pak Chong-gyu, and Yi Hu-rak, who became KCIA director (1963–1969), chief of the Presidential Security Service (1963–1974), and presidential chief of staff (1963–1968), respectively. These men were judged to be without any hope, ambition, or capacity to vie for presidential succession, given their lack of charisma, independent factional base, and public support. Their fate depended entirely upon Park, which made Park’s interest become their interest. The three praetorian guards cooper-

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  ated with the DRP’s anti-mainstream faction led by Kim Sông-gon, a civilian politician of the dismantled L
iberal Party, and his Gang of Four to isolate Kim Chong-p’il and eventually break his will to power.

  The first opportunity to keep Kim Chong-p’il in line came in February 1963, when the rapidly emerging anti-mainstream faction forced Kim Chong-p’il to “retire” from public service on the charge of illegal fundraising and political corruption during the junta period. As we have seen in earlier chapters, when the normalization of diplomatic relations with Japan caused a political uproar in 1965, the same anti–Kim Chong-p’il faction in the Blue House, KCIA, Presidential Security Service, and DRP allied themselves for the second time—but this time, also with generals such as Kim Chae-gyu (Sixth Infantry Division), Kim Chin-wi (Capital Garrison Command), Chông Pong-uk (Twentieth Infantry Division), and Yi Pyông-yôp (Thirty-Third Infantry Division), in command of the military troops to implement martial law in Seoul—in order to force Kim Chong-p’il’s second “retirement” from politics. Long frustrated by the rise of Kim Chong-p’il and his eighth Korea Military Academy (KMA) class, these commanders joined KCIA director Kim Hyông-uk (a self-appointed leader of the anti-mainstream faction) in suggesting to Park that he remove Kim Chong-p’il from his DRP chairmanship.35 The anti–Kim Chong-p’il faction in the DRP also saw the June 3 Incident as an opportunity to topple Kim Chong-p’il from his position as the de facto successor to Park. The drive to squeeze Kim out was led by the civilian politicians recruited by Park from the now dismantled Liberal Party.36 Criticized by demonstrators as a betrayer of Korean nationalism and attacked by his rivals in both the military and the DRP, Kim Chong-p’il resigned on June 4 and went into

  “exile” abroad. Having made Kim Chong-p’il the scapegoat, Park signed a treaty normalizing relations with Japan.

  At the same time, when Park, rather than Kim Chong-p’il, became the target of military discontent, Park lost no time in cracking down on protestors. Such was the case when more than twenty officers, including Wôn Ch’ung-yôn, a colonel in the reserves and Park’s spokesperson during the junta years, were arrested by the CIC on the charge of plotting a military coup in May 1965. It is not clear what the officers were plotting, if they were indeed plotting at all. But a report that they had clandestinely met to exchange critical views of Park’s way of political rule, including the dispatch of combat troops to South Vietnam, was enough for Park to act.37

  The intentions of Wôn Ch’ung-yôn and his group were less important to Park than the opportunity the incident afforded him to establish discipline over the armed forces before going further with the politically risky troop dispatch. The political situation was already tense, with society polarized

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  over the parliamentary ratification of the bill to normalize relations with Japan. Park used Wôn Ch’ung-yôn’s supposed attempt at counterrevolution as a pretext to tighten political control. On August 26, 1965, Park invoked a garrison decree and called on the Sixth Infantry Division to maintain order in Seoul for the second time in fourteen months. The troops were evacuated on September 2 and the garrison decree ended on September 25, as political protest over the normalization of relations with Japan subsided.

  The 1963 and 1965 episodes of forced exile certainly damaged, but did not destroy, Kim Chong-p’il’s political career. On the contrary, the crown prince returned to South Korea within a few months after the public uproar subsided. It was only when Park and the anti–Kim Chong-p’il coalition of praetorian guards, civilian DRP legislators, and next-generation military leaders successfully cajoled and threatened Kim Chong-p’il into accepting the constitutional amendment to clear the way for Park’s third presidential term in 1969 that Kim Chong-p’il began losing his political clout as a primary contender for succession. The possibility that Park would remain in power indefinitely damaged the power base of the crown prince. Kim Chong-p’il’s faction rapidly disintegrated; some members were disappointed by his inability to stand up to Park and others began to rethink what Kim’s capacity for political patronage might now be.

  To Kim Chong-p’il’s discomfort, moreover, there also emerged by the early 1970s a second layer of balancers against him among the eleventh KMA graduating class under Park’s patronage. The eleventh KMA class constituted the next generation of leaders in the South Korean armed forces. As such, they did not compete with Kim Chong-p’il for presidential power. Nor did they challenge the anti-mainstream faction of senior military leaders, civilian politicians, and presidential guards. They were Park’s loyalists at the mid-level of South Korea’s military leadership, then in control of major combat forces. As the first of KMA graduating classes to receive a full four-year program of military training and education, the members of the eleventh class prided themselves on being the first generation of South Korea’s “professional” military officers and “genuine” KMA graduates. Moreover, too young to receive Japanese, Chinese, or Soviet military training during the era of Japanese colonialism and the Korean struggle for national liberation (1910–1945), the eleventh graduating class not only personified the spirit of national independence but also stood above the factionalism formed on the basis of pre-liberation political and educational affiliations. Park, too, thought that the eleventh graduating class could and should provide leadership for a new professionalized South Korean armed forces.38

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  Chun Doo-hwan was one of the eleventh KMA graduates who played a key role in creating a bridge between the young officers and Park. Chun Doo-hwan first met Park in May 1961. They then held the ranks of captain and major general, respectively. The young Chun Doo-hwan demonstrated his political value by organizing a public parade of eight hundred or so KMA cadets in support of the military coup. The parade helped turn the tide of public opinion in favor of Park, who was then struggling to put down Yi Han-lim’s dissenting voice and win U.S. support. In July 1963, Chun Doo-hwan—by now a major—succeeded in deepening Park’s trust by plotting with his KMA classmates, including Roh Tae-woo, to come to the aid of the anti-mainstream faction’s campaign to oust Kim Chong-p’il and forty DRP politicians of the mainstream faction with the goal of consolidating Park’s power base before the upcoming presidential election of October 1963. It was in this context that seven leaders of the eleventh KMA graduating class formed Ch’ilsônghoe (Society of Seven Stars), later renamed the Hanahoe (Society of One), as a secret society with the approval of Park Chung Hee.39 Park was their invisible patron, entrusting the army chief of staff Sô Chong-ch’ôl, CGC commander Yun P’il-yong, and PSS chief Pak Chong-gyu with the task of putting the members of the Hanahoe on the fast track to promotion. The secret society soon expanded to include members of the twelfth to twentieth KMA graduating classes.

  The Hanahoe developed into a cohesive faction, recruiting only those military officers thoroughly screened and unanimously voted in by its members, and building strict internal rules and regulations on conduct.40

  To make its organization even more exclusive and cohesive, the Hanahoe recruited mostly KMA graduates from the Kyôngsang region, the home of both Park Chung Hee and Chun Doo-hwan. Ultimately, however, it was the Hanahoe members’ special relationship with Park and the privileges that relationship conferred on them that held them together. The army headquarters assigned Hanahoe members to the “political” units located inside or near Seoul–—the CGC, ASC, PSC, KCIA, and Airborne Command, which lay outside the U.S.-dominated CFC command structure and hence were available for Park’s mobilization without consultation with the United States.41 When Hanahoe members were up for field duties on the front lines, the army headquarters typically assigned them to the First or Ninth Infantry Division stationed at the western front access route to Seoul.

  In addition to the most coveted posts, Hanahoe members also enjoyed rapid promotion. The four key founding members—Chun Doo-hwan, Son Yông-gil, Kim Pok-tong, and Ch’oe Sông-t’aek—were promoted to brigadier general in 1973, the first among the eleventh graduating class to

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  achieve that rank. The four were all from the Kyôngsang region.42 To consolidate their privileges, Hanahoe members—with the backing of their patrons, including Yun P’il-yong and Pak Chong-gyu—quickly developed a tradition of handing over key military posts among themselves. In particular, the Presidential Security Guard Unit 30 of the CGC, responsible for guarding the Blue House and hence located nearest to Park, saw its command post transferred from Son Yông-gil to Chun Doo-hwan (1967) to Pak Kap-nyong (1969). All three were Hanahoe members of the eleventh KMA graduating class. The next four commanders of the 1970s were similarly Hanahoe soldiers of the fourteenth to seventeenth KMA graduating classes. They were to prevent Kim Chong-p’il from dominating the next-generation leadership of the South Korean armed forces.

  Regime Change, 1971–1972

  By the time Park was elected president for a third time in 1971, there was in place an intricate multilayered system of checks and balances within the South Korean armed forces that seemingly ensured stability and order.

  Military politics was, however, anything but stable and orderly in the early 1970s. Not only a spread of sociopolitical tensions and economic problems, but also Park’s transformation of those challenges into an opportunity to bring about his lifelong rule, dragged the praetorian part of the South Korean military deeper into political struggles and, in the process, unintentionally came to undermine the system of checks and balances.

  The year 1971 was particularly filled with sociopolitical tensions and economic challenges. On August 10 of that year, some fifty thousand residents in Kwangju, Kyônggi Province, broke out in violent protests, burn-ing down a police station and patrol cars and staging sit-ins at government buildings. They claimed that the government had not kept its promise to provide economic assistance for the resettlement of squatters forcefully removed from the slums in Seoul. To aid the police, the military had to be called in to suppress the riots.43 The turmoil exposed for the first time the tensions that had been building up since Park embarked on his hypergrowth strategy in the mid-1960s. Then, on August 23, twenty-four commandos in a South Korean air force camp who were training to infiltrate North Korea in retaliation for the January 21 Incident of 1968 killed twelve guards to escape isolated Silmi Island and hijacked a bus to enter Seoul to voice their grievances concerning maltreatment. In the ensuing gunfight with the military forces, all the commandos committed suicide, but the breakout was enough to intensify societal concerns.