Dictator, Not Democracy, Initiated Korean Miracle

The most interesting aspect of yesterday’s discussion at the Korea Society in New York concerned Park Chung Hee, the transformative autocrat who ruled from Seoul for most of the 1960s and 1970s. He was an army general who seized power in 1961 and maneuvered, sometimes brutally, to maintain it until he was assassinated in 1979. But as the authors of new introductory volume to the history of the Korean peninsula, Victor Cha and Ramon Pacheco Pardo, note, Park was instrumental in creating the modern South Korean economy, which has subsequently flowered as the North sank into widespread misery. A key turning point came in 1965 when Park opened the Republic of Korea to relations and commerce with Japan, its historic tormentor. As Cha here suggests, this was a deeply unpopular move among Koreans and one that no democratic government, fragile or otherwise, would have countenanced. This is a development truth that must be kept in mind when promoting human rights in emerging economies–and is far from the only such episode in growth stories of Asia or elsewhere. The democratic ascent of the U.S.–itself one of limited popular franchise in our first two centuries–is a global exception.