11 October 21 – The Park Chung Hee Syndrome and South Korea’s Polarized Memoryscape

Father and daughter presidents: Photos of Park Chung Hee before his resignation from the military and of Park Geun-hye before her election to the presidency in 2012.

• Guy PODOLER, “‘Who Was Park Chung-hee?’: The Memorial Landscape and National Identity Politics in South Korea,” 271-288
• Joe CHOI, “Mini Documentary Series – Park Chung Hee“
• Haeryun KANG, “Impeach the Impeachment: Older Conservatives ‘Defend Democracy‘”
• Korea JoongAng Daily, “Behind the fears that fuel Seoul’s pro-Park rallies“
• Korea JoongAng Daily, “Interns visit the pro-Park ‘Taegeukgi Rally“
• Asian Boss, “What South Koreans Think of President Park’s Impeachment“

The topic of Thursday’s class is the “Park Chung Hee Syndrome” and South Korea’s Polarized Memoryscape. The aims are two-fold:

• to gain a better sense of the South Korean political memoryscape by delving more into the perspective of conservatives and far rightists.
  • South Korean movies and TV dramas tend to be liberal (and sometimes) progressive in political outlook. However, conservative viewpoints (partially or fully) are represented in popular works. For this reason, it will be useful to understand the conservative memories of the national past as you progress in your project.
  • Even if you focus on a liberal/progressive film for your project, it will be useful to know the position of your work in relation to conservative public memory.
• to begin learning about nostalgia in South Korean cultural memory. We’ll continue with this topic next week, and may be a topic that is relevant to your group project.

The Park Syndrome, or nostalgia for the Park Chung Hee era, is a relevant topic for understanding conservative/extreme right public memories. The Podoler article provides a good overview of the country’s polarized memoryscape as it relates to the former leader (1961-1979). As Podoler mentions, in the 1980s and in the early 1990s, memories of Park Chung Hee’s rule were not that contentious. People generally believed that the time had come for South Korea to move past the authoritarian era.

However, in the mid- to late-1990s, the Park Syndrome gradually began to take shape. The liberal presidential administrations of Kim Dae Jung (1998-2003) and Roh Moo-hyun (2003-2008) led to the cementing of Park nostalgia among conservatives. Park became a central rallying symbol (or metonym, to recall the Jiyeon Kang article) for South Korean neoconservatives who sought to regain political power. Nostalgia for the non-nonsense approach of Park Chung Hee helped lift right-wing Lee Myung Bak (2008-2013) and Park Geun-hye (2013-2017), to the presidency. Beyond nostalgia, neoconservatives (i.e., post-authoritarian conservatives) were pushing back against: the liberals’ Sunshine Policy (Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo-hyun’s diplomatic engagement with North Korea); liberal efforts to implement social reforms that may have slowed down economic growth; and liberal efforts to broaden the “master commemorative narrative” to include recognition for the democracy movement as well as the victims of the Korean War. (With regards to the latter, films like Tae Guk Gi and Welcome To Dongmakgol are reflections of the liberals’ broadening of the master narrative).

Neoconservatives, for their part, sought a re-implement a more hardline stance vis-a-vis North Korea and to ramp up economic growth. This is the economy-first approach. The conservatives’ “economy-firstism” (gyeongje jeiljuui) grew out of the intense focus on rapid development in the 1960s-1980s. In the 21st century, economy-firstism dovetails with the (hyper)competitiveness of globalization and asserts that constant growth and innovation is the most important national goal. According to this view, people’s welfare is based on the nation’s economic prowess, which is supposed to trickle down to positively benefit the population. In reality, however, economy-firstism in the 21st century has led to greater wealth inequality, worsening outlooks for many in the middle class, and weightier pressures on the working class. While conservatives tout economy-firstism outspokenly, liberal politicians also have no choice but to pursue economy-first policies in order to stave off conservative criticisms about their economic policies. In terms of cultural memory, one good way to understand 21st-century economy-firstism is through conservative remembrances of the Park Chung Hee Era, which you can access in this brief documentary.

The remaining sources provide a sense of how the Park Syndrome extended to his daughter Park Geun-hye, who was an important conservative politician of the 2000s and 2010s, until her 2017 impeachment for bribery and corruption. Central to Park’s impeachment were the massive “Candlelight Rallies” that were held in the center of Seoul every Saturday, over the course of five months in late 2016-early 2017. Conservative, pro-Park rallies sprouted up alongside these demonstrations and provide a window into their views of the impeachment process and national history/memory. The final video combines a glimpse into both liberal and conservatives view on the event, immediately after Park was removed from office in March 2017.