Growth and Democracy

After the armistice, South Korea went from a war-wrecked state through a student revolution, a coup, a military-led economic boom, a massacre at Gwangju, a democratic transition in 1987, a financial crisis in 1997, and two presidential impeachments. This chapter follows those turning points from the sources I could read. It leaves out most of the governments between them, and I say which.

The April Revolution, 1960

The April Revolution article says Lee Ki-poong won the 15 March 1960 vice-presidential vote with 8,225,000 votes against Chang Myon's 1,850,000, which made fraud "clear to the public", with hundreds of pre-marked ballots reported stuffed into boxes. Protests in Masan met police gunfire on 15 March; the student Kim Ju-yeol (spelled Kim Ju-yul in the article) disappeared, and his body was found in Masan harbour on 11 April, with protesters saying his skull "had actually been split by a 20 centimeter-long tear-gas grenade" though authorities said he drowned. On 19 April ("Bloody Tuesday") over 100,000 students marched to the Blue House; police fired, killing "approximately 180", and martial law was proclaimed. Rhee resigned on 26 April and went into exile, reaching Hawaii on 29 May; he died there on 19 July 1965. The Second Republic is dated from 15 June 1960 in the infobox, with real power in Prime Minister Chang Myon and Yun Bo-seon elected president on 13 August 1960.

Park Chung-hee, 1961 to 1979

The Park article says Park formed the Military Revolutionary Committee and led a coup on 16 May 1961, "largely welcomed" by an exhausted public though "condemned in certain quarters"; the Korean Central Intelligence Agency was created on 19 June 1961 with powers of arrest and detention. He won the 1963 election by "just over 156,000 votes", a 1.5-point margin over Yun Po-sun, and was re-elected in 1967. The infobox gives his presidency from 24 March 1962 while the body says 17 December 1963; the first appears to count the acting presidency, but the article does not say.

• Japan, 1965. The normalisation treaty was signed on 22 June 1965; the article says documents released in 2005 show Seoul took the whole $300,000,000 grant, though it had negotiated $360,000,000 for 1.03 million conscripted Koreans.
• Vietnam. About 320,000 Korean troops were sent, which the article calls a commitment "second only to that of the United States"; it reports accusations of massacres and brutality and large American payments to Seoul. Its sentence about not defeating the Viet Cong "even though South Korea was quite successful" is self-contradictory as written.
• Repression and security. The article covers the 1968 Blue House raid (stopped "just 800 metres" away), the 1968 Unit 684 plot, the 1974 shooting in which the First Lady, Yuk Young-soo, was killed, and the 1972 self-coup. I read only the lead's summary of the Yushin system.
• Death. The lead says Park was killed by "his close friend Kim Jae-gyu", then KCIA director, after the Busan–Masan Uprising, and that "Whether the assassination was spontaneous or premeditated remains unclear to this day."
• Assessments, with owners. The lead says his legacy "remains a bitter subject". Supporters credit him with growth; critics object to authoritarianism and the priority given to growth over "civil liberties" and "human rights". A Gallup Korea poll of October 2021 rated him among the most highly rated presidents for legacy, especially among conservatives and the elderly. Carter Eckert calls the approach a "developmental dictatorship" shaped by Japanese militarism, "the enormous elephant in the room" in scholarship.

The five-year plans and the Saemaul Movement were not in the text I read.

The Economy

The economic history article says land reform redistributed most agricultural land by 1951, and that the Korean War destroyed most production facilities; it gives no 1953 GDP figure. Under Park, the strategy relied on "labor-intensive manufactured exports", attributed to a weak resource base, low savings and a small home market; textiles reached 41% of exports by 1965, and the 1965 Japan treaty brought loans and compensation. From 1973 the government used the National Investment Fund and the Korea Development Bank to invest in six strategic industries: steel, non-ferrous metals, shipbuilding, industrial machinery, electronics and petrochemicals. The article dates the heavy and chemical drive to the "late 1960s" in one place, "beginning in 1973" in another and the "mid-1970s" in a third. It says some future chaebol founders had corruptly appropriated US aid, which Park later used to win the cooperation of wealthy businesses, and that South Korea joined the WTO in 1995 and the OECD in 1996, with liberalisation leading firms and banks to issue large short-term dollar debt for long-term projects.

Chun Doo-hwan and Gwangju, 1979 to 1980

The Gwangju article says Chun took military control in the coup of 12 December 1979, after Park's assassination in October, and on 17 May 1980 forced the Cabinet to extend martial law to the whole country, closing universities, banning political activity, curtailing the press and arresting opposition figures including Kim Dae-jung. On 18 May students at Chonnam National University protested the closure; paratroopers confronted them and the clashes spread. The article names Kim Gyeong-cheol, a deaf bystander, as the first known fatality. Troops fired on crowds on 20 and 21 May; protesters raided armouries and police stations; troops withdrew to the outskirts and sealed the city on 22 to 25 May; at 4:00 a.m. on 27 May "Operation Sangmu-Chungjeong" moved in and defeated the militias within 90 minutes. The treatment of these events in fiction is in Korean Literature 8.

• Deaths, with owners. "There is no universally accepted death toll." The lead says the government claimed 165 killed and scholarship estimates 600 to 2,300; the Casualties section gives 1,000 to 2,000, and about 2,300 deaths above historical averages, with 1,800 to 3,500 wounded. The early Martial Law Command figures were 144 civilians, 22 soldiers and 4 police killed, and disputing them was grounds for arrest for "spreading false rumors". The May 18 Family Association says at least 165 died plus 76 missing presumed dead. The article attributes the 165 figure to the government in the lead but to the Family Association in the section, a conflict it does not resolve.
• The army. The article describes indiscriminate clubbing and bayonet attacks, says helicopters were used to fire on civilians (revealed in 2018), and that a 2018 defence ministry apology acknowledged sexual violence by soldiers.
• The US role. Ambassador Gleysteen's letter says the US authorised the 20th Division's deployment; the US denied this; and July 2021 declassified documents show he was told of the crackdown a day in advance. The article presents these without resolving them.
• Afterwards. In 1988 a National Assembly hearing renamed the events the "Gwangju Uprising"; in 1996 and 1997 Chun was sentenced to death, commuted to life, and all convicted were pardoned on 22 December 1997; 18 May became a memorial day in 1997; documents were listed on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register on 25 May 2011. Revisions to the May 18 Special Act in December 2020 penalised false claims about the uprising, and the lead says denial of the massacre is commonly espoused by conservative and far-right groups.

The article's infobox and text disagree on the forces (about 3,000 paratroopers and 23,000 blockade troops against "roughly 3,000 paratroopers and 18,000 police officers"). I read nothing on Chun's presidency itself.

The June Democratic Struggle, 1987

• Triggers. Park Jong-chul was detained on 13 January 1987 and died on 14 January during interrogation, with a cover-up later exposed. On 13 April Chun suspended the parliamentary committee on constitutional revision until after the Seoul Olympics, which the article calls a major source of unrest. Lee Han-yeol was hit in the skull by a tear-gas grenade on 9 June and died on 5 July; about 1.6 million attended his funeral on 9 July.
• June. On 10 June, Roh Tae-woo's nomination as successor was scheduled, and police arrested 3,831 people; students held a sit-in at Myeongdong Cathedral until 15 June. A rally on 18 June against tear gas drew about 1.5 million; on 19 June Chun ordered troops mobilised but rescinded the order within hours, "fearing a repeat of Gwangju" (the article's explanation); on 26 June the Great National March of Peace drew over 1 million, with more than 3,469 arrests.
• 29 June. Roh promised to amend the constitution and release political prisoners including Kim Dae-jung, and the article says Chun approved it two days later. The bill passed on 12 October and was approved by 94.4% in a referendum on 28 October, taking effect on 25 February 1988, with direct presidential elections, stronger civil rights and more power for the National Assembly.
• Election. On 16 December 1987 Roh won 36.6% (the lead says 36%) on 89.2% turnout; Kim Young-sam got 28% and Kim Dae-jung 27%, because the opposition failed to unite.
• Gaps in the article. The single five-year term does not appear in the text; the tool's note that it is correct comes from general knowledge, and I leave it out. The "protection of the constitution" label for the 13 April announcement is also not in the article. The article's Flight 858 route and death count are internally inconsistent, and I use neither.

Impeachments, 2016 to 2017 and 2024 to 2025

The Park Geun-hye article says her aide Choi Soon-sil, who held no official post, used her access to solicit money from conglomerates for two foundations; Park apologised on 25 October 2016, and Choi was arrested on 31 October. Protests began on 26 October (the article gives no crowd figures) and Park's approval fell to 4%. The National Assembly passed the impeachment motion 234 to 56 on 9 December 2016, Prime Minister Hwang Kyo-ahn became acting president, and on 10 March 2017 the Constitutional Court ruled 8 to 0 to uphold it. Moon Jae-in won the election, moved up to 9 May 2017. Park was sentenced to 24 years on 6 April 2018 and pardoned by Moon in December 2021, returning home in March 2022. The article's vote tally is inconsistent (the infobox has 2 abstentions and 1 not voting, the body three abstentions), its election-deadline account does not reconcile, and its 25-year sentence is cited to sources that do not plausibly support an April 2018 sentence.

The martial-law article says that at 22:27 KST on 3 December 2024 President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law in a televised address, which the article calls a self-coup attempt, accusing the opposition Democratic Party of "anti-state activities" and a "legislative dictatorship" (Yoon's claims, as the article reports them). The decree suspended political activities including National Assembly sessions and put the media under martial-law command. At 01:02 on 4 December, 190 legislators present passed a motion to lift martial law unanimously, despite attempts by the Special Warfare Command to prevent the vote; Yoon announced the lifting at 04:26 and the cabinet approved it at 04:30. The Assembly impeached Yoon on 14 December 2024, Prime Minister Han Duck-soo became acting president and was himself impeached on 27 December (the Constitutional Court overturned that impeachment on 24 March 2025), and the Constitutional Court unanimously upheld Yoon's impeachment on 4 April (the sentence gives no year; the infobox range, 4 December 2024 to 4 April 2025, suggests 2025). A snap election on 3 June 2025 elected Lee Jae Myung.

What to Take from This

My own reading, unverified: the turning points in this chapter have something in common, a moment when the army, the police or the president was told to act against crowds or the assembly, and a different answer followed in each (fire on 19 April 1960 and 18 May 1980; the troops recalled on 19 June 1987; the vote to lift martial law on 4 December 2024). The sources report each; they do not draw the comparison.

What the Sources Left Open

• April 1960 deaths (about 100, about 180 or 186), and who proclaimed martial law.
• Whether Park's assassination was spontaneous or planned.
• The heavy industry drive's start date (late 1960s, 1973 or mid-1970s), the five-year plans and the chaebol.
• The Gwangju toll (no universally accepted figure) and the US role.
• The causes of the 1997 crisis beyond short-term debt, and the roles of Chun's, Roh's, Kim Young-sam's and Kim Dae-jung's governments: not read.
• Most of the 2024 to 2026 story: the article's later sections were cut off.

Exercises

Next: Korean History 11 is the capstone: the recurring themes across the whole course and how to check any account of Korean history.