The countryside in Korean
Abstract
As a space of spiritual renewal, the countryside in Korean cinema is a place of interaction with a simpler time. Visitors can leave behind the pressures of modern life and adopt a more primitive and wholesome existence, often visiting distant relatives or enjoying the hospitality of friendly villagers. Nevertheless, alongside the traditional and often romantic representations of idyllic or idealized versions of rural life found in Korean cinema, there exists a parallel tradition of films in which the countryside serves as an immensely powerful chronotype for extreme violence stemming from archaic belief systems and close-knit communities too isolated to eschew ancient familial or tribal societal, organizational models. These locals, usually referred to in US horror films as hillbillies, rednecks, or mountain men, are portrayed in the western cinema of similar modes as a virtually classless society, with a lack of respect for centralized authority. However, the ‘hillbilly’ is somewhat paradoxically portrayed in the Korean horror cinema. These locals are highly organized, systematic, and participatory in a cult of personality style politics. Moss (2010) and The Piper (2015) critique the creation of a political illusion as reality amid isolation, and are evocative of times of instability during the Japanese colonial and post-war periods when Korean villagers informed on their neighbors as enemies of the state and consolidated local power and land. As films about fathers and sons, both films also deal heavily with the concept of inheritance and, more specifically, the idea that suffering is passed from one generation to the next. The physical, geographical, spatial implications of locating the conditions of authoritarian dictatorship in the rural squarely place it in the past. However, as no direct references are made in the films (as is common in Korean cinema’s dealings with political strife), the films in this chapter abstractly explore the symptoms of tyranny rather than the disease itself. This study will argue that the metaphorical moments of both Moss and The Piper are the failure of the post-war generation to realize the society which they fought to create, and instead recreated the conditions of colonialist which empowered defunct cultural and political practices initially instituted in the waning days of the Joseon dynasty by Japanese Imperial collaborators and repeated just 40 years later by the post-war generation. By locating the collapse of democratic ideals and the conditions of authoritarianism within rural topography, the resulting ‘Urbania’ (Clover) suggests a cinematic reframing of the conservative ideology that echoes of the Saemaul Geumgo (New Village Movement) instituted by Park Chung Hee, as well as a number of his cultural heritage policies.
Introduction
Background
As countries and states begin the journey to achieve transitional justice, scholarship on the theorization of trauma has increased. Theorization of trauma seeks to reveal and criticize the memories of traumatic events that have been termed as wounds by society. According to Lowenstein, speaking of historical traumas leads to the recognization of these traumas as emotional wounds. Theorization of trauma occurs not only in literary texts but also in film analysis, as is evident in this dissertation. Cathy’s theory of belatedness poised that traumatic events never really die; instead, these events keep returning to the victim even after the trauma is long gone. Following Cathy’s theory, this dissertation argues that by invoking rural nostalgia, hillbilly films are able to depict and question historical traumas. Through the use of rural nostalgia to investigate historical trauma, hillbilly horror films conform to Lowenstein’s notion that films’ sole role is to “show the unshowable, to speak the unspeakable.” By incorporating nostalgia, horror films teleport viewers to past traumatic events such as genocides and war. The traumatic events not only remind us of our painful history, but they also get the audience to feel the fear felt by the victims of the events portrayed.
Allegorical moments procure an opportunity for hillbilly horror films to represent historical traumas. Lowenstein defined allegorical moments as the incarnation process that sees film, history, and audiences come together as space and historical time are disrupted and intertwined to represent historical traumas. Through allegory, audiences are teleported to the past where they can experience and question traumas of that era. Allegory also shifts the films’ role of representation from compensational to confrontational representation. By representing historical traumas through allegorical moments, hillbilly horror films allow audiences to question social cultural and political paradigms that stir up the traumatic events. Berlant (2011: 10) justified the significance of the theoretical representation of trauma by poising that traumatic experiences are not only present in history but also in our daily lives. By questing paradigms, past mistakes that led to traumatic events can be avoided.
In their attempt to expose historical traumas, horror films heavily rely on the landscape to give meaning to their plot. The landscape provides an arena for the film’s action to unsnarl. By prioritizing trauma, commentators procure a window to comprehend the trauma and its implication on people’s lives. This dissertation argues that cinematic space should not be limited to the single interpretation of what is out there but should also symbolically represent the actual experiences witnessed in those spaces. Cinematic space, therefore, becomes an ideological tendency to investigate the culture, politics, and social life of a geopolitical region.
Given that cinematic space is not provided but built, the process of building space exposes the antecedent conditions of the unbuilt (Chee and Lim). Due to rapid urbanization, urban spaces have dominated cinematic spaces in Korean Cinemas. However, the cinematic process of building space takes us back to the reconstruction of unbuilt rural settings. Cinematic settings expose the oppressive regimes that fastened urbanization through violence and fear. Consequently, the rural milieu serves as an effective tool to allegorize traumatic experiences in South Korea that led to the transformation of rural areas into urban cities. The rural milieu in Korean hillbilly films invokes the painful memories of brutal violence inflected on Korean citizens by their governments. Sources of trauma in Korean Hillbilly films are well-organized cults who are drunk in power and are willing to violate human boundaries to maintain that power. This dissertation analyses the films Moss and The piper to identify allegorical moments that confront the authoritarian governments of the Chosun dynasty, Syngman Rhee and Park Chun.
Moss (2010), directed by Kang Woo-Suk, depicts the experiences of Ryu Hae-Kuk in a remote village in Muju county, South Korea, where returns to bury his father, Ryu Mok-Hyeong. Although the film fails to reveal the origin of the conflict between father and son, it discourses Ryu Mok’s vision of ensuring the village is a haven for people trying to keep clear of the world’s evilness in their lives. As the estranged Ryu Hae -Kuk resolves his father’s estate; he becomes suspicious of the villagers’ attempt to shorten his stay in the village. Acting on his curious suspicions, Ryu Hae- Kuk begins to unravel the deception, corruption, and abuse of power that has crippled the village. The film is an adaptation of the Internet series,
Directed by Kim Gwang, The Piper is a thrilling adaptation of the classic fairy tale The Pied Piper of Hamelin. The film reveals events that unfold as Kim Woo -Ryong, the piper attempts to rid the village off monstrous rats that have been attacking the villagers. Having lost his wife and leg during the Korean War, Kim Woo travels to the village in search of Western medicine for his son, Young Nam, who is battling with tuberculosis. As they wander through the Korean woods, they follow the aroma of food to a secluded village haunted by carnivorous rats.
Problem Statement
Authoritarian and militant regimes have a strong position in Asian Countries. Although some countries of these countries have managed to break the vicious cycle and adopt democracy, they lag behind in earning legitimacy. Scholars have often poised that a regime’s ability to honor public consent determines the legitimacy of the regime. The road to democracy in South Korea can be depicted as tedious and married with massacres, government oppression, and violation of human rights. This study seeks to reveal and question traumas experienced in Korea that are represented in Korean hillbilly films through allegories.
During the colonial regime, violence and suffering dominated most parts of Korea. However, the violence intensified after Korea attained independence from its colonizer, Japan. After independence, perspectives of communism and socialism began to take root, and the country ended up divided into two militant camps: pro-Americans and anti-communist camps (Lee 178-185). The rivalry between the two groups saw political enemies assassinated and 30,000 civilians brutally murdered. After liberation from the colonizers, the new Korean government inherited Japanese administration agencies such as the police and military. These agencies upheld their violent anti-human techniques of maintaining authority, which caused great friction between the agencies and civilians who were tired of being oppressed. In 1951, the tension and friction between civilians and the army intensified after the army killed 700 innocent civilians leading to the Korean War. Through the movies The piper and Moss, we are taken back to witness traumas pro-democratic Koreans encountered as they fought to achieve freedom from authoritarian governments.
The rationale for the study
As witnessed in several historical instances such as the French revolution of 1789, revolutions can, at times, be the only way to break chains of bondage. The journey to democracy for Koreans was not only traumatic but also silent. Decades after the revolutions and political uprisings, the authoritarian governments bowdlerize any memories of those traumas. Although the Korean War stands out as a major traumatic event in the Korean fight against the authoritarian government, history records very little of it. Commentators have often described it as the silent war or the forgotten war. Unlike other soldiers from world war 11 who were welcomed home as heroes, Korean soldiers in the Korean war had to remain silent about their participation in the war for fear of being persecuted as communists under the law of association. Due to the international ramifications associated with the US’s observant role during the Korean War, veterans from this war are hardly recognized.
Recently both the American and South Korean governments have created initiatives to procure transitional justice for civilians killed during the government transition. Recognition of past injustices and trauma brings some sense of relief to the victims. Consequently, this study seeks to investigate traumatic events in pre, and post-war Korea allegorized through the films, The Piper and Moss. By acknowledging people’s need to remember and heal from trauma, this research investigates these horrendous experiences to give a voice to the silenced Korean victims. The dissertation’s contributions to this field of study will add to the scarce literature that betels South Koreans troublesome past.
Research Aims
The sole purpose of this dissertation is to identify how rural milieu is adopted in Hillbilly horror to present allegorical moments that represent historical traumas in South Korea using the films The Piper and Moss.
Research Objectives
- To examine the conditions of authority in colonial Korea during the Chosun dynasty
- To explore how post-war authoritarian governments of Rhee and Park maintained power by capitalizing on tribalism and colonial trauma.
- To examine tactics used by post-war authorities to ensure generational traumas reoccurred in their era.
- To evaluate traumatic historical events in Korea that are allegorized through the films, The Piper and Moss.
CHAPTER TWO
2.0 LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Overview
This chapter consists of past scholarships that detail how hillbilly horror films allegorize historical trauma by employing the chronotype rural milieu. It also depicts the conditions in pre-war Korea that are allegorized using rural milieu in Korean hillbilly horror films.
2.2 Theoretical framework
Mccollum argued that the term hillbilly horror was coined from the subgenre’s propensity to invoke rural nostalgia to depict historical traumas. A significant feature of hillbilly horror rests upon its representation of the rural population, which in most horror films, is the origin of trauma. John de Crevecoeur’s Letters from an American Farmer describe the hillbillies by writing. “ far beyond the reach of government and closely aligned with the dark irrationality of his habitat, there was the backwoodsman; one who had turned from peaceful and exhausting agriculture to a life of hunting in the game-rich forests, a practice which led not only to ‘drunkenness and idleness … contention, inactivity and wretchedness”. Despite this common representation of rural areas Buryaidi, introduced the paradoxical use of rural milieu in hillbilly horror. He argued that at times rural areas are idealized, and people residing in these areas are deemed to be hardworking, patriotic, and self-sufficient. This perspective is then juxtaposition by the notion that rural areas are inhabited by grotesque, ignorant, and deviant people. (Brown and Schafft) implicated that American hillbilly horror follows the paradoxical pattern where urbanites visit rural areas to experience the rugged freedom and peace associated with rural terrain. Instead of experiencing the much-needed peace, the urbanities face the monstrous physic of rednecks that traumatize them with their ardent thirst for brutality, violence, and murder. Wes Caven’s adaptation of the last house is consistent with this pattern as it depicts the urbanite family of Emma and John Colinwoods, who has traveled to their lake house in the rural area for a vacation. Their daughter, Marie, and her friend then head to town to enjoy a rock performance, but car troubles see them take a detour to Justin motel. While in the motel, the girls learn that Justin and his friends are wanted fugitives on the run. To ensure their secret is safe, the young rednecks rape Marie and brutally stab her friend Paige to death.
While American hillbilly cinema portrays their hillbilly population as a tribal and primitive group, hillbilly in Korean horror are viewed as authoritative cults of personality obsessed with fitting in their prescribed roles. As seen in John de Crevecoeur’s Letters hillbillies, American hillbilly horror films are used to allegorize the disparity between laws abiding citizens and deviant rednecks. American rednecks are portrayed as maniacs’ obsessed killing, and maiming Blake describes American rednecks as who have broken away from social, psychological norms to give room for his outlier values. Given that most Korean horror films have a historical background, the hillbillies in these films are depicted as organized groups to represent the organized authoritarian regimes that rained terror on the Korean people.
Blake poised that by using rural areas as the background for horror, hillbilly films stir up nostalgic memories of past traumas. She argued that through hillbilly horror audiences acquire an opportunity to peel back on erstwhile political wounds. Expressing trauma through hillbilly horror is deemed as the process of lashing out, understanding a disoriented past, or the process of giving past wounds a voice. This perspective is evident in John de Crevecoeur’s representations of revolutionary war trauma through the Letters from an American Farmer 1782. Through his letters, he urged Americans to remain confident in their country as ideologies of American capitalism were challenged. The backwoodsman in his letters allegorized the disjunction between a civilized people and an aboriginal population that existed during that era.
Drawing from their name and propensity to employ rural milieu, this dissertation argues that hillbilly horror depends on rural landscapes not only as a device to unravel its narrative but also as a metaphor. In their research, Atkins and Zonn articulated that by using cinematic landscapes as allegories, viewers are forced to view a film’s landscapes beyond the images they present. By employing metaphors, cinematic landscapes are given a deeper meaning. (Duncan and Ley ) named this process as naturalization since it allows films to use landscape to inform audiences of cultural policies. Audiences watching these films are expected to move past the locations depicted and investigate their meanings in real life.
Jackson expounded on this theory by implying that landscapes can be used to represent minuscule or enormous allegories. While small allegories represent landscape stereotypes, significant metaphors construct research models. In light of this notion, (Mitchell 2000) cinematic landscapes are used to reveal, investigate, or contest what is assumed to be normal. Hillbilly horror movies use rural areas that reveal how horrific crimes are committed in rural locations by anarchist hillbillies. Using landscape as a metaphor, hillbilly horror represents rural areas as places dominated by violence and trauma. Hillbilly horror not only uses rural landscapes as metaphors to reveal paradigms associated with rural areas but also as metaphors that reveal historical traumas that occurred in rural areas. Dennis & Warin advocate for the geographic theorization of trauma since the geographic locations are part of the trauma’s origin. Geographic theorization also aides in comprehending historical traumas and their consequences on victims’ lives. Hillbilly horror films follow Drozdzewski and Dominey-Howes’ perspective that the process of understanding traumatic experiences commences by investigating the people and locations from where the traumatic events originate from and therefore base their narrations on rural areas. Through rural milieu, hillbilly horror presents allegorical moments where film, audience, and horror collide by interconnecting historical time and spatial landscapes.
Conditions of Authority in pre-war Korea
In addition to the rampant domestic political revolutions in Korea, its long term isolation from other Asian countries made it easy for Japan to colonize Korea by 1910. The 35 years under Japanese colonial rule marked the rudiment of Korea’s traumatic experiences. Hwang poised that Japan developed an interest in Korea due to the expansion window to mainland Asia that it had to offer. As a fascist government, the Japanese colonizers depended on violence and intimidation of citizens to transform Korea into its military base and food supply route to China.
Bruce Cumming revealed that a huge gap exists in scholarship concerning the Japanese colonial era. Most Koreans vaguely describe the colonial period as a tough and traumatic time with no specific narrations to back up their claims. Despite the literature gap, Cummings observed that Japanese colonialists adopted an assimilation tactic where they sought to transform Korea into Japan. The Japanese established schools throughout Korea, where they altered the Korean education system by using the Japanese language to school the students. Unlike other colonial powers, the Japanese invested heavily in industrializing Korea. They set up numerous steel and chemical industries in Northern Korea with the aim of establishing Korea as their industrial base. The rural populations of South Korea were used as a source of cheap labor for the Japanese industries.
Although the Japanese did not realize success in mobilizing support by acting alone, Korean authoritarian governments have to misheed the existence of Korean collaborators. In his study, Baker emancipated that in past fascist regimes, recognizing Japan’s role in modernizing Korea and the presence of Korean collaborators was a punishable crime. Shin argued that the notion that Japanese colonizers had no role in Korea’s economic prosperity had been preserved up to date, where scholars who refute this ideology are labeled as anti-Korean scholars. Despite Japan’s authority being brutal and traumatic, it resulted in the amelioration of public education and communication networks. Scholarship about Korea’s colonial period fails to address the positive ramifications brought by the Japanese colonial rule.
In his journals, Emilio Gentile (1990) observed that the Japanese colonizers also implemented religious fascisms to procure Korean support through the use of myths, symbols, and rituals. Exploring fascism as a political religion provided a new lens to comprehend how the Japanese managed to obtain the support of Korean intellectuals and artists in its military expansion into Korea. The Japanese invented religious rules that required all Koreans to transfer their religious activities to the Shinto shrines. To destroy Korean’s culture and religion, the Japanese demolished the Korean national shrine at Namsan that had existed since 1392. In addition to worshipping at the Shinto shrines, the Koreans subjects were also mandated to declare their loyalty to the Japanese emperor during public gatherings. Mosse (1996), however, argued that since the Japanese forcefully imposed their religion on Korean citizens, the religious perspective of fascism does not reveal much about the emotional and religious appeal of Japanese religion on Korean collaborators.
Scholars such as Kim have argued that the appeal towards Japanese colonizers stemmed from visual images and messages from initial Korean collaborators who exploited mass media for political returns. The collaborates overwhelmed national mass media with messages and ideas that reflected Japan’s plan to transform Korea economically. The collaborators altered Koreans ideologies regarding beauty and truth. By using Korean collaborators, the Japanese promoted the ideology that Koreans were capable of meeting the demands of the empire. In this new aesthetics, the images of shirtless men and men performing military drills were widely distributed through print media. This strategy was to reinforce the idea that Korean men had to strengthen their bodies and maintain the best physical forms for them to be enlisted as first-class impearl citizens by working in the emperors’ mines. Print images of Korean men in full military uniform reinforced the idea that by joining the Japanese army, the Korean men were part of a new Korean generation that focused on Nation building.
As elaborated by Kim, cinema was a prevent mobilization technique deployed by the Japanese. Cinema in Korea became of consequence only after the Japanese colonizers began to use it as a medium to mobilize support for their regime. At the time, the Japanese introduced Western films to propel Koreans away from their culture and identity for them to assimilate westernization and support Japan’s innovation ideas. Through cinema, they eroded Koreans cultural identity and forced them to adopt Western perspectives. By privileging Hollywood films over local Korean theatricals, the Japanese legitimized their colonial rule. The Hollywood films served to manipulate Koreans ideologically by imposing that the Japanese were only interested in modernizing and growing the Korean economy
Authority in post-war Korea
Although Japan’s colonial rule had resulted in a volatile political environment in Korea, the situation ironically got murkier after Japan left Korea in 1945. After world war 11, the United States Army Military Government in Korea (USAMGIK) took over Korea and ruled the Peninsula for the next three years. Hwang reported the US occupation in Korea to be a turbulent period. Since most US military officials were in a foreign land, they had to rely on Japanese collaborators to guide them and also act as their translators. This strategy restored Japanese bureaucracy, which Koreans had just liberated themselves from. The huge political rift between anti-communists and pro communists resulted in the division of Korea into North Korea and South Korea. With the assistance of the United States of America, South Korea declared the commencement of its journey to becoming a democratic nation. Unfortunately, government regimes that took over from the Japanese colonialists inherited their colonizers’ oppressive techniques and therefore derailed democratic progress.
After the division of the Peninsula into North and South Korea, Syngman Rhee took over as the new democratic President of South Korea. Just like his predecessor, Syngman Rhee continued to disregard human rights and suppress any political opposition directed towards his regime. In his study, Hwang employed the term Korean fascism to describe Syngman Rhee’s presidency due to the Japanese police elements that Rhe adopted. Scholars such as Hong Seuk-ryule refuted the description of Korean authoritarian governments as fascists on the grounds that Korea had no dictator figure and opposition parties also existed in the country. The fact that Korea held presidential elections also solidified his argument. At the start of his regime, Syngman sourced Japanese collaborators to work in his administration. Hwang implied that by hiring Japanese collaborators, President Rhee lost the mandate to punish the collaborators for t crimes they had committed during the colonial era. Given that the Korean policemen were sympathizers of the Japanese colonial rule, they upheld the Japanese heinous colonial techniques such as torture and unauthorized house searches. In the new democratic South Korea, the police assumed a sovereign position which they used to oppress the citizens instead of protecting them.
Syngman’s blatant abuse of power and the proposed creation of a separate state stirred up the Cheju uprising. To deal with the rebels, Rhee declared a local state of emergency in Cheju. The president’s decision to apply martial law to handle the uprising only intensified the violence. According to Hwang, Symgman used the police to suppress the revolutions in the villages. The policemen upheld the law of association, which presumed people to be guilty of a crime by associating with the crime perpetrators. Since, at the time, Korean police had absolute power, they executed men and women whom they deemed to be communists without fair trials. The application of martial law served to ensure that the police had total immunity from any ramifications of their inhumane actions. The law of guilt by association also guaranteed that memories of the uprising were lost by executing individuals who confessed to know or participate in the uprising. Following the law of guilt by association, the police constantly interrogated the rebel’s relatives to determine their political ideologies.
To strengthen his political position, Rhee embarked on the spread of communist fear and intimidation techniques. All communists during the regime were considered to be criminals and rebels who needed to atone for their crimes through incarceration. Rhee vindicated his position by spreading the notion that communists must be regarded as criminals since their beliefs favor riots and violence. His intimidation tactics, such as public executions of suspected communists, intended to use terror to encourage the villagers to beware rebels living among them. The police proposed that to suppress the rebels permanently, they had to reconstruct the island to ensure every aspect of social life was subject to police surveillance. This proposal resulted in the creation of new interconnecting roads throughout the island. The creation of the new roads gave the police the agility required to deal with the rebels who were often based in the mountain terrain of the island. The road project converted the island from a strong rebel hold to a miniature police state where villagers spied and accused each other of being communists. Rhee’s police also embarked on an educational program where young men were encouraged to discourse their patriotism by aiding the police to identify communists’ suspects in the village.
The brutal massacres of Cheju Island accelerated the start of the Korean War. Although ideological tension existed between the pro-American South and the pro-communist north, the tension only resulted in war after foreign countries reinforced the existence of the ideologies differences. In his research, Baker indicated that until the 1990s, a gap existed in scholarship that detailed the origin of the Korean War. In his book, The Origins of the Korean War, Bruce Cunnings attributed the war to North Korea’s surprise ambush attack of South Korea in 1950. The Korean War lasted for three years and led to the death of three million Koreans. During the war, Rhee declared a national state of emergency and assumed a dictatorship position where he had the ultimate power to search, detain, mobilize labor, and destroy both public and private property. Syngman also created an environment of mistrust among citizens to suppress the uprisings. Following these tactics, Koreans were arrested and persecuted on the grounds that they exhibited suspicious willingness to collaborate with communists. The Japanese colonizers had introduced the strategy during the colonial period, but it was abolished once Korean gained independence in 1945. Syngman revived the rule of ‘suspicious arrests’ under the special decree of arrest and imprisonment. In chapter 3, Hwang poised that although the special law was created in 1950, the police had implemented the policy to deal with the Cheju uprising of 1948 despite the island not being part of the war zones. The police justified the execution of 218 civilians by stating that their response was necessary to deal with the assumed socialists and communists.
Scholars such as Baker define of the Korean War as the silent war, and forgotten war originated from Rhee’s measures to ensure the no memories of the war were maintained By enforcing the law of association, Rhee ensured that victims of the war remained invisible and any memories of the war non-existent. In his scholarship, chapter 8 details how Rhee’s regime discriminated against the victims of the war by discriminating against them using the law of association. By treating communist’s s relatives as criminals, this law ensured that generational suffering repeated itself. Through this law, the suspects’ victims were denied access to jobs, education opportunities, passports and visas
Even after massive bloodshed during the Korean War, South Korea continued to suffer from authoritarian regimes. Han argued that the Korean authoritarian regime was a product of western capitalism and Confucian colonial rule. Capitalizing on the adverse effects of Japanese colonization and post-war American penetration, Park Chung Hee staged a military coup with the aim of eliminating anomie that had dominated South Korea. Park advocated for the adoption of Western masculinist capitalism to restore the countries lost identity. Park often derided past leaders for being lenient in their fight against foreign influence. Chung Hee appropriated that the hyper-masculinity associated with his regime was the only way to save South Korea. In his book, Chang divided Park’s twenty-year rule in Korea into three distinct groups. The first three years after he staged the military coup, Park ruled Korea through a militant regime. Between 1963 and 1967, Park resorted to a democratic rule where presidential elections were held in both years. However, democratic Korea did not last for long, given that Park initiated dramatic constitutional changes to maintain an authoritarian developmental state.
Although he implemented radical policies, South Korea only experienced economic progress under his regime. Scholars Heo and Roehrig, (2010: 24) derided Park Chung‘s economic prosperity since it was procured by exploiting the rights of workers and suppressing human rights and liberties. Recognizing the derailed economic progress of South Korea, Park aimed at transforming Korea into an industrialized nation that gained recognition as a world market. During his regime, Park saw Korea’s GDP increased from $82 in 1961 to $ 1662 in 1978. Hasegawa and Togo intimated that unlike his predecessor, Rhee, Park was compromising enough to collaborate with Japan to supersede North Korea in terms of economic development. Korean leaders who acknowledged the need to surpass North Korea’s economic development supported Park’s decision to work with Japan in hopes that they would learn from Japan’s fast-growing economy.
Before Park’s regime, previous governments had privileged development of urban areas and ignored most rural settings. Kim 1985 suggested that anterior regimes had ignored rural areas since most Korean revolutions were based in these rural landscapes. Agriculture at the time was far from being profitable, given that most of the roads were undeveloped, making it cumbersome for farmers to access markets. Having being raised by a farmer, Park vowed to transform Korea’s economy through rural reconstruction. Despite upholding draconian policies to maintain power, his economic policies are responsible for making Koreans consider his regime as the best among the many authoritarian governments they had. Whang poised that Park’s economic development policies were influenced by his political motivation to accrue public favor. While Park’s ruling party advocated for rural development, the opposition party favored urban development. Hans (2004) echoed similar sentiments by describing Park’s rural economic developments as paradoxical populism that privileged social welfare and developmental dictatorship.
In 1970, the Park administration launched the ‘Saemaul Undong’ (SMU) program to improve rural agriculture and bridge the development gap between rural and urban development. According to Doughlas (2013), the green revolution and village modernization program aspired to transform the poor undeveloped rural areas into affluent agricultural bases that would avail food crops for the enlarging urban population. Kim 1985 discoursed that the SMU program was based on cooperation self-reliance principle. This principle required the villagers to cooperate with each other and the SMU leaders in their development activities. Through the SMU leaders, the government injected financial and technical aid into the projects.
To support the green revolution, Park’s government had to establish credit cooperatives, construct storage facilities, and offer incentives for agricultural products. In his 2004 scholarship, Kim revealed that the green revolution was ultimately dependent on the government because it required substantial investments such as the development of infrastructure to give farmers easy access to markets. The creation of credit facilities ensured that Korean rural farmers volunteered to participate in the program. In its initial years, Park’s government was directly involved in the marketing of products from SMU. Kim observed that the government bought agricultural products from SMU farmers at low prices and proceeded to sell them below market value to the urban population. By the 1980s, SMU had transformed the economy in rural areas and bridged the development gap between the rural area and urban areas. Kim attributed SMU’s success to Park’s motivation to ensure the movement belaved apolitical.
Kim 2007 confirmed that Park’s SMU program was indeed a strategy to legitimize and maintain his authority. Through the program, Park was able to euthanize political opposition and foster economic development. Anti-communism first had been the prevalent ideology in Korea. Once in authority, Park adopted the anti-communism first theory and introduced the ideology, economic growth first. The economic growth first ideology aided the Park administration in mobilizing participation for the SMU program. The new ideology successfully procured participants for Park’s economic program and also confined labor disputes and anti-government rebellions. Koreans assimilated the growth first ideology fast since, at the time, poverty had crippled the economy. To the unsuspecting Koreans, the SMU was a chance to rebuild their country, but through the anti-communist first ideology, Park transformed the program into the spiritual foundation of his authoritarian government.
Despite his economic developments, Park’s government was akin to the past regimes that thrived on violence and massacres to maintain power. TRCK observed that Park’s disregard for human rights was initiated from the military coup he organized to secure the presidential seat. He addressed political opposition and representation by applying excessive force on rioters and long term incarceration of opposition leaders. The decision to collaborate with their colonizers did not sit well with most residents as the wounds and memory of the trauma they suffered under the colonial rule were still fresh. Korean Intellectuals and students rallied up to oppose the infiltration of Japan. Older generations refuted the partnership for fear of Japanese inflicted trauma reoccurring. Being an authoritarian, Park rubbished the people’s concern and applies maximum force to deal with the opposition rallies. The TRCK (2010b: 78–82) found him guilty of arbitrary arrest and inhumane treatment of 17 citizens during the coup.
To suppress any political movement, Park expressed the disposition to declare a state of emergencies, which allowed him to arrest the masses that resisted his leadership. In chapter 8, Whang poised that Park’s most outrageous response to the opposition was witnessed during the 1974 state of emergency. In addition to declaring the state of emergency, Park also declared the National Democratic Youth and Student Alliance as an anti-government communist rebel group. He then convicted over 1000 students without trial for their participation in the movement. The state of emergency also resulted in the arrest of former President Yun Posun for his role in underpropping the student movements. Park’s mass arrests and state of emergencies were heavily criticized locally and internationally, which led to the creation of the amnesty program to release political prisoners. However, Hwang reported that the prisoners had to sign statements of repentance and pledge not to refute the government again. To ensure the prisoners upheld their promise, Park designed a jocular tactic where he suspended their sentences, leaving a window to re-arrest them once they violated their release conditions.
After assuming leadership, Park had promised to transform Korea into the democratic state it ought to be. Park began to reveal his inclination to dictatorship when he began advocating for a presidential constitutional extension. In 1972, Park promulgated the Yushrin constitution to consolidate his authoritarian power under the disguise of fighting communism. The new constitution allowed Park to have an unlimited presidential term. Chang (2015) argued that to obtain the Yushrin constitution, Park had to engage in purges to eliminate subordinate leaders who had hoped to be his successors. The constitution, as elaborated by Choi (2004), changed the nature of presidential elections by promoting presidential dictatorship and strict surveillance of civilians. Under the new Yushrin constitution, both the president and members of the executive enjoyed absolute power since they were the sovereign authority. The Yushrin constitution also gave the president the freedom to appoint 1/3 of cabinet members and banned any opposition to the government. Through the new constitution, Koreans were denied the right to vote in their president. Direct presidential elections were replaced with an electoral college that would indirectly represent the Korean people during presidential elections.
State-sanctioned violence intensified during the Yushin regime due to the inter-agency competition. Once he assumed his third term, Park directed the Korean Central Intelligence Authority (KCIA) to assess government agencies and determine the loyalty of government officials. News of the loyalty review created inter-agency competition for supremacy, where the different agencies attacked each other on the grounds of being disloyal to the Park regime. The coerced inter-agency competition was aimed at identifying which agencies were loyal and, therefore, indispensable to the Park administration. To pledge their loyalty to Park, the security agencies also toughened their repression tactics in the Kwangju uprising. Being a former Intelligence officer, Park implanted the patrol strategy to control the loyalty of his subjects. Following this strategy, he tasked government security agencies to spy on other security agencies then report back to him. Park’s investigation strategies not only led to increased police brutality and deaths but also led to his assassination by KCIA’s director in 1979.