History we must know now!
[Korean History] The Story of the Rise and Fall of the Yushin Regime, as Told by Han Hong-gu

Professor Han Hong-gu of Sungkonghoe University, author of the must-read book on modern Korean history, [History of the Republic of Korea], has published a new book that covers the Yushin era.
These days, with public opinion increasingly suggesting that the era of President Park Geun-hye is a return to the Yushin era of her father, President Park Geun-hye, Yushin is a historical event that must be revisited.

The Yushin era was a time when young people raised by the Japanese colonial government became adults and ran society.
This period was a time that showed the tragic consequences of not being able to liquidate pro-Japanese remnants, or rather, of the forces that attempted to liquidate pro-Japanese remnants being liquidated by pro-Japanese collaborators.
As we will see in more detail later, the garrison state under Park Chung-hee's command was remarkably similar to the national defense system of Manchukuo and the total mobilization system of Japan during his youth.
The true nature of Park Chung-hee, a pro-Japanese collaborator who was born and raised as an imperial subject, should be found not in his days as a young officer, but in his revival of the failed models of Manchukuo and the Showa Restoration.
The tyranny of the Yushin regime is clear evidence of Park Chung-hee's lack of leadership.
Park Chung-hee could no longer lead the complex social structure that had developed with 'modernization' and economic development by maintaining a minimal level of formal democracy.
The 'regression' from the 1960s to the 1970s meant that Park Chung-hee broke away from the American-style democracy that did not suit his constitution and brought out the Japanese model that he had been familiar with since his youth, packaging it as 'Korean democracy.'
--- p.23

The question of whether the cause of the Yushin regime can be found in the internal and external crisis situations was concluded so simply that it could not even be called a 'debate'.
The vast majority of researchers agree that the crisis Park Chung-hee proclaimed was exaggerated, and that even if a real crisis existed, it would not require unusual measures such as the suspension of constitutional government.
Even Cho Gap-je, a conservative commentator who wrote a 13-volume biography of Park Chung-hee, said, “It felt really out of the blue” to suddenly dissolve the National Assembly when there was “no riot or invasion by the North Korean army,” and admitted that nowhere in the special declaration was there “a convincing explanation as to why such a drastic measure had to be taken.”
It is clear that the fundamental cause of the emergence of the Yushin regime was Park Chung-hee's ambition to remain in power for life.
If Park Chung-hee had not had the ambition to remain in power for life, there would be no historical basis for a dictatorship like the Yushin regime to emerge.

--- p.30

The New Democratic Party's significant advance in the 8th National Assembly election in 1971 was a major factor in Park Chung-hee's coup d'état known as the Yushin Constitution.
For Park Chung-hee, who dreamed of permanent rule, the National Assembly, with its strong and challenging opposition party, was an inefficient space that only resulted in partisan strife and division of public opinion.
Park Chung-hee secretly prepared for the Yushin regime and sought ways to neutralize the National Assembly.
There were two problems that Park Chung-hee was concerned about.
One was to secure a stable number of seats in the National Assembly, and the other was to resolve the phenomenon of the opposition party being defeated in major cities such as Seoul.
Park Chung-hee effectively appointed one-third of the National Assembly members in the Yushin Constitution.
And by introducing a multi-member district system instead of a single-member district system, the ruling party was able to secure a stable majority of seats, close to two-thirds, by opening the way for the ruling party to be elected alongside the opposition party in cities.
--- p.59

The Yun Pil-yong incident triggered a chain reaction of major incidents, and as a result, the power structure surrounding Park Chung-hee changed significantly.
With the exception of Kim Jeong-ryeol, the chief of staff at the Blue House, all of the key aides were sucked into a huge whirlpool.
Yoon Pil-yong went to prison, and Kim Hyung-wook, who had resigned from his position as director of the Central Intelligence Agency, immediately fled to Taiwan under the pretext of receiving an honorary doctorate after Yoon Pil-yong was arrested, and then went into exile in the United States.
Lee Hu-rak was replaced after actively intervening in the kidnapping of Kim Dae-jung in order to recover his position, which had been shaken by the Yoon Pil-yong incident, and Kang Chang-seong was thrown into the trash can.
The kidnapping of Kim Dae-jung caused an explosion of anti-Park Chung-hee sentiment in the Korean community in Japan, which led to Moon Se-gwang's attempted assassination of Park Chung-hee (the death of Yuk Young-soo), and Park Jong-gyu, the head of the security service, resigned, taking responsibility for this.
His successor was Cha Ji-cheol, and the position of director of the Central Intelligence Agency went to Kim Jae-gyu through Shin Ji-soo.
The plot that led to Park Chung-hee's death was woven from the Yun Pil-yong incident, the full details of which only Park Chung-hee knew.

--- p.77

During Park Chung-hee's 18 years in power, more than half, or about 120 months, were under martial law, state of emergency, or emergency measures.
The Yushin era was a period of continued oppression and fear under emergency measures, except for a few months in 1973 and a few months after the death of First Lady Yuk Young-soo in 1974 until Emergency Measure No. 9 was enacted the following year.

--- p.97

The People's Revolutionary Party Reconstruction Committee case, the worst public security manipulation case during the Park Chung-hee regime, was retried in 2007 and found not guilty based on investigations by the Suspicious Deaths Committee and the National Intelligence Service Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
The bereaved families filed a claim for damages against the state, and were awarded 49 billion won in compensation in the first trial, with a significant amount being provisionally executed.
However, the Supreme Court significantly reduced the amount of compensation, stating that the interest was overcalculated, and based on this, the state filed a lawsuit against the bereaved family members who received compensation and 77 people involved in the case, demanding the return of 25.1 billion won in “unjust profits.”
The People's Revolutionary Party incident is not over.

--- p.116

In the latter half of the 20th century, Korea achieved remarkable results in two areas: industrialization and democratization.
Some in the conservative camp even package themselves as “industrialization forces” and make the absurd claim that democratization was possible because of industrialization.
Some also hold Park Chung-hee in high regard as the father of industrialization and the father of the modernization of the country.
Who really achieved democratization and industrialization in this land?
The people who played a truly crucial role in both democratization and industrialization, but were not treated as the main players, were workers, especially female workers who suffered discrimination and contempt under the name of "Gongsoon-i."
They are the ones who achieved industrialization from the bottom through long hours of hard labor, and they are the vanguard of democratization that brought down the entrenched Yushin dictatorship.

--- p.165

Not long after the rumor began to spread among people that they lived by reading the Dong-A Ilbo, several companies began to withdraw advertising plates from the Dong-A Ilbo starting on December 16, 1974.
At the time, the advertising effect of the Dong-A Ilbo was so great that it is said that you had to wait several days even if you paid cash to place an advertisement.
In the Dong-A Ilbo, advertisers canceled their advertisements and took back their plates, asking not to be named. At first, the Dong-A Ilbo held on by bringing forward reserved advertisements and placing book advertisements in sister publications such as Shin Dong-A and Women's Dong-A, but when 98 percent of the advertisements were canceled, the newspaper published a blank advertisement page on December 26.
The absurd thing happened when advertisements disappeared from a newspaper that boasted the highest influence and circulation.

The Central Intelligence Agency attempted to strangle free speech with an advertising crackdown that no one could have predicted, but something truly unexpected began to happen.
Beginning with the publication of an opinion advertisement titled “Freedom of the Press and Freedom of Business” by veteran journalist Hong Jong-in on December 28, readers began pouring in with encouraging advertisements.
It was truly embarrassing for the Central Intelligence Agency, and the members of the Dong-A Ilbo were left choked up by “the truly heartbreaking donations and encouraging advertisements that were too painful to accept.”

--- p.226

The dispatch of troops to Vietnam had a long-term impact on Korean political history.
From above, key figures of the new military government, such as Chun Doo-hwan, Roh Tae-woo, Jeong Ho-yong, Hwang Young-si, Yu Hak-seong, Jang Se-dong, and Ahn Hyun-tae, and from below, many of the officers and non-commissioned officers of the airborne unit that had been deployed to Gwangju were dispatched to Vietnam.
Even if only a very small number of these individuals were actually involved in the massacre of civilians in Vietnam, it is by no means a coincidence that those who had experience pointing guns at civilians as potential Viet Cong in the Vietnam War, when the distinction between guerrillas and civilians was virtually impossible, became the main perpetrators of the Gwangju Massacre.
Additionally, some officers who had gained wealth and experience in Vietnam, which was rich in materials, banded together in private organizations such as the Hanahoe, pushing and pulling each other.

--- p.272

On the morning of October 18, 1979, people who picked up the morning newspaper were shocked.
It is said that martial law was declared in Busan at midnight on the 18th.
Although Park Chung-hee frequently used special measures such as “state of emergency,” “emergency measures,” and “martial law,” the term “emergency martial law” carried special weight.
According to the Martial Law, “Martial law is declared in areas where social order is extremely disturbed due to an enemy siege in times of war or war-like incidents.”
Since the YH incident broke out last summer, an injunction was filed to suspend New Democratic Party President Kim Young-sam from his duties, and two weeks ago, on October 4, there was even an uproar over President Kim Young-sam being expelled from the National Assembly, so the political situation had been in turmoil. However, martial law came so suddenly.
The Yushin regime, which began with a sudden martial law on October 17th seven years ago, began to rush toward its end exactly seven years later with a sudden martial law.
No one could have predicted that the small protest that took place at Pusan ​​National University two days earlier on October 16th would escalate into a violent street demonstration with 50,000 participants.
Moreover, no one could have imagined that this demonstration, which brought about martial law, would be just a butterfly flapping its wings and bring about a tremendous typhoon that would lead to the director of the Central Intelligence Agency shooting the president to death.
The Buma Uprising of October 1979 was one such event that its historical significance has not been properly understood because its consequences were so enormous.

--- p.383~384

Kim Jae-gyu accompanied Park Chung-hee's internal rebellion, known as the May 16th Coup and the Yushin Coup, but ultimately ended it.
It was Chun Doo-hwan's rebellion that drove Kim Jae-gyu's actions to murder for the purpose of rebellion.
In his final statement, Kim Jae-gyu said goodbye to the people with the words, “Fellow citizens, enjoy liberal democracy.”
Kim Jae-gyu was executed on May 24, 1980, during the height of the Gwangju Uprising.
Chun Doo-hwan, who killed Kim Jae-gyu, trampled on the Gwangju citizens' uprising and reopened the Yushin regime, which seemed to have lost its life, by simply changing its name.
Chun Doo-hwan's civil war was thus completed, and 33 years later, we still have not enjoyed liberal democracy.

--- p.412

The Yushin era was an era of death.
It wasn't just Choi Jong-gil, Jang Jun-ha, and those associated with the People's Revolutionary Party who were sacrificed.
The Yushin era was a time when about 1,500 people died in the military every year.
(…) In the entire Yushin era, one division was annihilated without even fighting a battle.
No, it's not that they died without war, but rather that so many people were sacrificed in the war that Park Chung-hee waged against democracy.
(…) Second, the Yushin era was a time when everyone’s freedom was sacrificed for the freedom of one person, Park Chung-hee.
(…) Park Chung-hee did not want to go on campaign trips and have debates, so he abolished the direct presidential election system.
At that time, Park Chung-hee dreamed of an absolute position like that of an emperor.
Third, the Yushin era was a time when freedom of expression was terribly trampled upon.
The Yushin regime was one where people would be arrested without a warrant and sentenced to 15 years in prison by a military court even if they asked (petitioned) the president to “amend” the constitution, rather than saying, “Let’s overthrow the Yushin dictatorship” or “Abolish the Yushin Constitution.”
(…) Fourth, the Yushin era was a time when not only freedom of expression but also freedom of conscience within humans was violated.
Park Chung-hee, who had breathlessly transformed from a pro-Japanese collaborator to a member of the Korean Liberation Army, from the Korean Liberation Army to the top agent infiltrated by the left wing in the military, and from a leftist agent to the right wing again, could not tolerate the appearance of leftists who did not convert.
The Social Security Act, enacted in 1975, required prisoners to remain in prison even after serving their sentence if they did not submit a letter of conversion.
Even those who had served their sentences and were released were arrested again if they did not write a letter of conversion and were sentenced to indefinite imprisonment under the pretext of protective custody.

--- p.439~440