Teaching East Asia: Korea Teaching East Asia: Korea | Page 99

Doc. E The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History, Don Oberdorfer, 1997. 33-35.
“Today, however, Park is remembered less for his conflicts with Washington and successive
waves of political repression than as the father of his country’s remarkable economic progress.
More than two-thirds of South Koreans polled by a Seoul daily in March 1995 said Park was the
country’s greatest president, more than five times the number that gave that honor to any other
chief executive. The overwhelming reasons cited were the economic progress and development
under his regime, and its relative stability.
Park refused to be guided by economists when he was determined to move ahead with one of his
visionary projects. When American and World Bank economists said that South Korea could not
successfully build, operate, or support an integrated steel mill and refused to approve financing,
Park remained determined to build it. Declaring that ‘steel is national power,’ he obtained
Japanese loans and personally pushed through construction of a massive mill at Pohang, on the
southeast coast, which became the world’s largest steel-production site and the foundation of
Korea’s heavy industry.”
Doc. F Ethnic Nationalism in Korea: Genealogy, Politics, and Legacy, Gi-Wook Shin, 2006.
103.
“Park Chung-Hee took power through a coup in May 1961 and established the draconian yusin
system in 1972. He was no doubt an autocratic leader, ruling the country with an iron fist. At the
same time, Park, like Rhee and like Kim in the North, was a politician who recognized the power
of nationalism in governing a country. Throughout his tenure as president, Park relied heavily on
nationalist rhetoric to justify his illegal power taking and extralegal exercise of authority. His
coup was portrayed as an effort to achieve ‘modernization of the fatherland,’ and his 1972 yusin
reform was depicted as a ‘save-the-nation movement” necessitated by changing domestic and
international conditions. From the time he seized power, he identified national ‘security’ and
‘development’ as the main tasks faced by the nation and justified his action as a patriotic
mission. Park skillfully fused nationalism into anti-Communism and developmentalism in
legitimizing his authoritarian politics.”
Doc. G A Concise History of Korea: From Antiquity to the Present, Michael Seth, 2016. 421,
424, 426, 428.
“South Koreans often attribute their nation’s economic growth to traditional values loosely
associated with Confucianism. By this they mean hard work, discipline, respect for learning,
frugality, and the importance of family.
South Korea’s economic transformation was also made possible by the social transformation that
was occurring in the country. Old social classes and social barriers were breaking down; the
society was opening up to talent, becoming both highly competitive and more literate. The
upheavals that resulted from the colonial period, the Second World War, the partition, and the
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