Park Regime Research Articles

The Post–World War II Rise of AmorePacific: Women’s Labor, South Korea’s Cosmetic-Product Industry, and the Park Chung Hee Regime of 1961–1979

Abstract AmorePacific, the creator of renowned product lines such as the Color Control Cushion Compact, Laneige, and Sulwhasoo, stands prominently among the top ten global cosmetic companies, epitomizing the pinnacle of “K-beauty.” This article delves into how K-beauty, beyond its contemporary global allure, is deeply rooted in the historical and politico-economic landscape of the Park Chung Hee regime (1961–79). Through an examination of AmorePacific’s extensive archives, the article traces the company’s development, highlighting its pivotal role in shaping South Korea’s cosmetics industry since 1945. The evolving history of AmorePacific provides a lens to explore the often-overlooked roles of women in an industry previously characterized by underground trafficking, post exchange (PX) stores, and counterfeit production. As AmorePacific navigated new economic policy and rigorous rhetoric under the Park regime, Korean women began to assume new economic and sociopolitical roles, including in factory work, as door-to-door salespeople, and as models and moral consumers in state-led campaigns. Thus the work of women was vitally involved with AmorePacific, the nation’s growing cosmetic-product industry as a whole, and the Park regime’s stringent regulation of South Korea’s extensive black market, which was critical to its economic formalization.

Marshaling a Triumph: The Park Chung Hee Era, Developmental State Theory, and the Meaning of Success in South Korea

South Korea has long been looked to as a model of developmental success. Undoubtedly, South Korean society has experienced a remarkable expansion of wealth, social well-being, and technological capacity over the last half-century. The central turning point in this momentous transformation coincided with the authoritarian rule of Park Chung Hee (1961-1979). As such, scholars of political economy and development have paid close attention to the various facets of his regime to glean the primary causes underpinning South Korea's developmental feats. The most significant of these efforts have emerged from works emphasizing the role of the South Korean developmental state. This paper critically explores the theoretical foundations of developmental state theory to consider intellectual architecture of the success narrative widely appended to the era. The analysis builds from a premise that, given its widespread use of political violence and surveillance, framing the Park regime as a success carries significant ethical undertones. As such, the paper centers the interplay of ethics and empirics in the theoretical engagement with this crucial site in both Korean and development history. As such, it demonstrates that developmental state theory's reluctance to engage with these significant ethical questions systematically corresponds to distorted analytical and empirical representations of the case.

Cultivating Freedom in South Korea: Media Discourse on Chayu during the Early Park Chung-hee Period

This article analyzes the notion of freedom under Park Chung-hee's regime by examining media representations of freedom in South Korean newspapers during the early period of Park's regime from 1964 to 1970. The analysis of the media discourse of freedom brings to light the complex mechanisms of Park's dictatorship and South Koreans' participation in mobilization projects under Park's regime. I argue that the notion of freedom played an essential role in the way in which Park's regime produced and mobilized dutiful, productive citizens. By appropriating conflicting media representations of freedom, Park's regime defined South Korea's own ideal of freedom within the contexts of Cold War South Korea in the 1960s. Whilst Park's regime assured South Korea's enjoyment of freedom in contrast to communist countries, Park's regime convinced South Koreans that freedom in South Korea cannot be same as in other western countries. Specifically, in the name of South Korea's urgent missions of economic development and national security against communism, Park's regime claimed South Koreans should practice freedom in a responsible, restricted manner. Hence, this article highlights that Park's regime utilized the notion of freedom in a way to turn South Koreans into citizens who believed themselves to be free, yet who acted responsibly to serve national interests against communism. By illuminating the notion of freedom under Park's regime, this article discusses both the conditional, limited nature of mass participation under Park's regime and how the regime used the complex, specific conditions of Cold War South Korea to create mass participation.

A bio-economic analysis of conflicts between illegal hunting and wildlife management in Cameroon: The case of Campo-Ma’an National Park

Using bio-economic modelling, this paper analyses conflicts between legal and illegal activities in the Campo-Ma’an National Park, Cameroon. We consider two different agents, a local community living near the Park - who hunt illegally to fulfil their welfare -, and a park manager who has received from the Cameroonian government the mandate to manage the wildlife found in the park. The park manager is assumed to practice an imperfect anti-poaching policy due to the persistence of poaching activities in the study area. Both agents are assumed to proceed in strategic and asymmetric interdependency where the park manager determines the anti-poaching effort and then the local people have to adjust their behaviour within a full park scheme. In a bid to reduce illegal hunting, the social planner - the Cameroonian government - then tries to implement another scheme in which the local people are allowed to hunt in the surrounding area of the park, through the establishment of community hunting zones. This park-plus-hunting scheme is an example of Integrated and Conservation Development Project. The empirical analysis is based on data drawn from different sources. Results show that the anti-poaching efforts, the wildlife stock and the harvesting rate are lesser when some hunting rights are allowed to local people as compared to what they are under full park regime. However, by recognizing some hunting rights to the local people, the share of income lost by the park is almost recovered and all poachers leave the underground to exercise in legality as hunters.

The era of Seoul's rapid growth (1960s–1970s): The role of ex-military elite mayors

This study aims to analyze the role of ex-military mayors in the development of Seoul after the Korean war (1950–1953). The six mayors of Seoul who took office under President Park (1961–1979) and the rapid development of South Korea, demonstrated excessive loyalty and drive to achieve policies established by Park's administration. It boded well for South Korea that three mayors, under the Park regime, had a military background. As a developing nation, it required rapid urbanization and industrialization to establish itself in the global space. This was significantly facilitated by the ex-military mayors. They re-developed the existing old downtown area and provided a number of infrastructures, and at the same time, they developed new towns in the southern part of the Han river that were relatively safe from North Korea's security threat. Furthermore, not satisfied with constructing new towns, they dispersed the city's core function in the newly urbanized areas, thereby developing the second and third CBDs of metropolitan Seoul, in order to be recognized by the dictator by showing their loyalty. As a result, their achievements contributed greatly in forming the basic urban structure of present metropolitan Seoul.

Sister Forces: Park Rangers and Regime Security in African States

ABSTRACT In many African states, park rangers perform a variety of roles as armed state actors. Facing the overlapping challenges of wildlife management and regime security, many have become increasingly militarized, with significant degree of variation. Using case studies from Uganda, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo, and South Sudan, this article provides an expanded conceptualization of militarization that configures two characteristics of Africa’s park rangers: 1) their integration into or insulation from the state security apparatus, and 2) their coercive roles of either law enforcement or combat. The article builds an argument that takes into account colonial institutions and civil-military relations.

Reluctant Reconciliation: South Korea's tentative détente with North Korea in the Nixon era, 1969–72

AbstractThis article discusses the impact and implications of Sino-American reconciliation on South Korea's policy towards its conflict with North Korea as well as its effect on South Korean politics in the early 1970s. Specifically, this article will examine how the Park regime altered its policy toward the North in response to the demands of the Nixon administration, before discussing the limitations of the policy in terms of the hostile approach of the Park regime toward Pyongyang during its talks with North Korea in 1972.Based on recent findings in the South Korean and American archives, and an interview with former KCIA official Gang Indeok, this article contends that this particular focus provides an interesting case study to explain the impact of global changes on the domestic politics of specific nation(s) during the Cold War era. Along with many other American client states, the Republic of Korea misunderstood the objective of the United States before Nixon announced his Doctrine in 1969 and intention to reduce American support for Park. To be sure, it was not Washington's intention to build a democratic country in the Korean Peninsula. Rather, as Westad has indicated, the superpower sought greater control over the world and the expansion and extension of its power. This short article will thus demonstrate the process by which the client states of the United States—in particular, South Korea—came to understand the real aims of Washington and learned how to utilize these American intentions for their own national interest.

1960년대 박정희 정부의 지역통치체계 재편과 ‘유지집단’의 활동 : 충청북도 괴산군 증평읍 사례를 중심으로

Examined in this article is how the Park Jeong-hi regime ruled the local communities in the 1960s, after the abolishment of the local self-governing system. The role of the local influential groups is highlighted here, in an effort to expand our attention from administrative areas to social sectors including private realms.BR After the local self-governing system was dismantled, ‘local influential groups’ organized ‘local prosperity associations’ and continued their activities. The Park Jeong-hi regime intended to recruit such efforts for their own political and administrative needs. As a result, a cooperative relationship between local influential groups, the Republican party, and administrative bodies in local regions were formed inside local communities, and the Park regime utilized it in its local ruling.BR ‘Local influential groups’ collected local opinions for the local administrative bodies, and obtained some leeway in their own activities. Meanwhile, cooperation with the Republican party allowed them to enforce their own influence throughout local communities and get their hands on more lucrative businesses. The Park regime used these influential groups to compensate for their own insufficient administrative control over local regions, and also consolidate their own political power and authority in the area. In order to do so, the regime recognized the local influential groups’ activities of negotiation, which in turn enabled those groups to bring at least some of the local issues and agendas to the central government, which ultimately strengthened the central government’s control of local regions. The situation actually helped the regime extend its time in power and propagate the need of ‘development’ throughout local communities (which stabilized the system in general in the process). But this kind of local control method began to change, when the Park government weakened the Communist party and reinforced local administration in the second part of the 1960s.

Demystifying the Park Chung-Hee Myth: Land Reform in the Evolution of Korea’s Developmental State

ABSTRACTThe developmental state literature emphasises the importance of state autonomy and capacity, with a particular focus on a Weberian type of meritocratic bureaucracy. Existing studies of South Korea’s economic development generally credit Park Chung-hee for establishing such a state. This article questions this assessment with careful process tracing of the development of a meritocratic bureaucracy in the country. The findings suggest that the contrast between the predatory Rhee regime (1948–1960) and the developmental Park regime (1961–1979) has been exaggerated. Meritocracy in South Korea’s bureaucratic recruitment and promotion systems developed gradually over several decades, including during Rhee’s regime as well as the short democratic episode (1960–1961). What then explains the evolution of a developmental state in Korea? This article suggests that land reform contributed to not only creating social structural conditions favourable to state autonomy but also promoting the development of a meritocratic bureaucracy by propelling rapid expansion of education and by mitigating the extent of political clientelism.

87년 헌법의 개헌 과정과 시대적 함의

This paper examines the characteristics and meaning of the 1987 revised Constitution. In particular, it highlights the political position among the three contemporary political leaders, Roh Tae Woo(1932~ ), Kim Young Sam(1927~2015), and Kim Dae Jung(1924~2009). As the principal of the ‘direct presidential election system’ had already been set, the three leaders could easily agree with the revision of the Constitution. Therefore, there was little dispute that remaining articles of the 1962-Constitution should remain in the new version. The 1962-Constitution was a creation of the 1961 military coup led by General Park Chung Hee(1917~1979). Although the political processes were not completely democfratic, electoral competition was periodically made and some elections were fairly competitive during the Park regime, called the Third Republic. In this sense, the constitution revised in 1987 focused mainly on establishing procedural democracy. After three decades of successful democratic consolidation, another constitutional reform for entrenching Korea’s democracy is needed.

Beyond Patron and Client: Historicizing the Dialectics of US-ROK Relations amid Park Chung Hee’s Independent Defense Industry Development in South Korea, 1968–1979

In 1968, in response to lackluster US support for Republic of Korea (ROK) military modernization amid rising North Korean threats, the Park Chung Hee regime (1961–1979) instituted the policy of “self-reliant national defense,” or chaju kukpang, which was centered on building a national defense industry in the 1970s. The wide-ranging impact of this policy is examined, including the way that it reshaped the US-ROK alliance. Previous studies of ROK military modernization have focused largely on the dominating influences of US arms transfers and military aid, but these studies have not acknowledged the full extent to which South Korea’s proactive measures challenged US restrictions throughout the 1970s. The present study taps recently declassified sources from both the US and Korea and argues that distinct strategies of ROK arms production—including Park’s chaju kukpang initiatives, heavy and chemical industrialization (HCI), and mobilization of chaebŏl—along with US factors, elicited significant concessions in US policy on Korea. By examining particular forces of the ROK defense industry that impacted US-ROK relations, it is then further argued that past studies on the US-ROK relationship based on a patron-client model have failed to elucidate dialectics in the relationship that remained in constant flux throughout the 1970s, as the Park regime actively resisted dependency on US patronage for arms. Most significantly, by initiating independent military programs the ROK swayed US policy to favor Korea’s defense development and program for building a self-reliant national defense.

Travails of Judges: Courts and Constitutional Authoritarianism in South Korea

The judicial process in South Korea under President Park Chung Hee sets forth critical constitutional and legal-philosophical questions. Park led the promulgation of an authoritarian constitution in 1972 and ruled with broad emergency powers until his death in 1979. Under this Yusin Constitution, judges faced a positivist crisis as their capacity to protect individual rights and restrain the government was seriously impaired. Following the country's democratization in 1987, the courts came under criticism for their excessive restraint and alleged acquiescence to the Park regime. The shift toward judicial activism in recent years appears to be in line with the global trend to assert judicial power to defend fundamental rights, but it has in turn prompted fresh debate on legality and the role of judges in political transitions. The South Korean experience captures the dilemma of judges caught between the dual duties of implementing law and pursuing justice, the resolution of which, if ever possible, would require a reasoned reflection of the judicial role beyond the theme of judicial complicity with political power.

The Origins of the Developmental State in South Korea: A Reexamination of the Park Chung-Hee Myth

The developmental state literature emphasises the importance of state autonomy and capacity, with a particular focus on the Weberian type of meritocratic bureaucracy. Existing studies of South Korea’s economic development generally credit Park Chung-hee for establishing such a state. I question this common wisdom with careful process tracing of the development of a meritocratic bureaucracy in the country. My findings suggest that the contrast between the predatory Rhee regime (1948–60) and the developmental Park regime (1961–79) has been exaggerated. Meritocracy in South Korea’s bureaucratic recruitment and promotion systems developed gradually over several decades, including during Rhee’s regime as well as the short democratic episode (1960–61). What then explains the evolution of a developmental state in Korea? Land reform contributed to not only creating social structural conditions favorable to state autonomy but also promoting the development of a meritocratic bureaucracy by propelling the rapid expansion of education and by mitigating the extent of political clientelism.

Declaration of Professors and Researchers to Demand Stepping Down of Park Regime

Declaration of Professors and Researchers to Demand Stepping Down of Park Regime

Paradoxes of gendering strategy in prostitution policies: South Korea's “toleration-regulation regime,” 1961–1979

Synopsis This paper investigates prostitution policies in South Korea during the Park Chung-Hee (Pak Chŏnghŭi) regime which ruled from 1961 to 1979. I introduce the concept of the “toleration-regulation regime” to characterize those policies which combined prohibition and regulation. I show how the Park regime's prostitution policies functioned as a gendering strategy that produced sexual/gendered subject-positions, relegating the subject-position of prostitutes to a “substratum” that produced and supported the gender hierarchy within the Korean national community. In conclusion, the prostitution policies of the Park regime functioned as a matrix that established the boundaries of the “virtuous community” by building sexual and civil hierarchies between men and women as well as between “chaste” and “fallen” women.

The Park Regime and Labor Control Strategy: Formation and Evolution

The Park Regime and Labor Control Strategy: Formation and Evolution

The Ruling Discourse and Mass Politics of the Park Chung Hee Regime

The Park Chung Hee period was when a fully fledged modern nation state was formed. As nation state is intimately joined with the process of capitalistic expansion and reproduction, the Park regime’s modernization project can be summed up as an expansion of capitalism and construction of national subjectivity. Farmers, workers, and university students, while occupying different sociopolitical locations in society, were unitary subjects insofar as they were actively mobilized for the modernization project. This paper argues that in the process of mobilization, the state exercised both coercion and politics of consent; the state’s developmentalism was conjoined with the people’s egalitarian desire for a better life. The people did not just passively follow the state, but also actively and enthusiastically participated in the state’s mobilization drive. The Park regime was also an active practitioner of mass politics. The dominant state discourse of developmentalism and nationalism reappropriated as its own the egalitarian pressure coming from below, making its politics not just of repression but also of desire. Unlike the politics of discrimination of the pre-modern period, the Park regime pursued the nationalization of society and people by interpellating the disparate people into a unified national subjectivity.

WHAT SUSTAINS AUTHORITARIANISM? FROM STATE‐BASED HEGEMONY TO CLASS‐BASED HEGEMONY DURING THE PARK CHUNG HEE REGIME IN SOUTH KOREA

The long‐standing stability of the Park Chung Hee regime (1961–1979) in South Korea rests on the construction of political consent through appeasing the middle classes at the expense of the working class. In the 1960s, both working class and middle class were the beneficiaries of a rapid economic developmental project and hegemony was formed corresponding to the rapid expansion of the entire economy. In the 1970s when income disparity deepened and political repression grew severe, however, we witnessed divergent reactions to the state between middle and working class. While the working class began to challenge state policy, the urban middle class tacitly supported the Park regime and remained indifferent towards the opposition movement. Even when antiregime worker mobilization intensified, the urban middle class opted for the status quo, aligning itself with state ideology. Working‐class exclusion and middle‐class inclusion constituted the central mechanism for the generation of regime hegemony that blocked democratization.

The Political Economy of Heavy Industrialization: The Heavy and Chemical Industry (HCI) Push in South Korea in the 1970s

Korea under the Park regime (1961–1979) is known as a typical example of the East Asian developmental state. Many students of development, both economists and political scientists, have studied it, producing a substantial accumulation of knowledge. However, most writers have, in fact, focused on the policies and politics of the first half of the era. The second half was, politically, a notoriously authoritarian dictatorship, through which the regime strongly pushed its controversial heavy and chemical industrialization program. This program is frequently criticized for being based upon irrational industrial targeting that generated great inefficiency in the economy. The explanation for such irrational policy has been attributed to politics, or the authoritarian nature of the regime, which actually does not explain much.

Discipline and Development: Middle Classes and Prosperity in East Asia and Latin America (review)

Reviewed by: Discipline and Development: Middle Classes and Prosperity in East Asia and Latin America Erik Mobrand (bio) Discipline and Development: Middle Classes and Prosperity in East Asia and Latin America, by Diane E. Davis. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2004. xii + 421 pp. Notes, appendixes, bibliography, index. $80.00 cloth; $29.00 paper. Diane E. Davis has a new idea about why some governments have been more successful at promoting economic growth than others. Building on the developmental state idea that disciplining of certain actors has something to do with growth, Davis adds that a regime's social bases inform whether that state can be disciplinary. Economies where states have important rural middle-class constituents experience economic growth led by the state's ability to subdue capital and labor. In short, small-farm constituents make for a disciplinary state. A comparison of four country-cases is used to make the argument. The author contrasts the experience of successful state-led development in South Korea and Taiwan with those of less success in Mexico and Argentina. Davis notes in the preface that South Korea prompted the cross-regional comparison, and South Korea is treated in its own ninety-four-page chapter while Taiwan is covered in only half of a chapter. The South Korea case is crucial to the argument of Discipline and Development. Scholars of Korean development, argues Davis, have focused too much on the state, capital, and labor. Davis looks elsewhere and comes up with an original interpretation of South Korean political economy. The author begins by pointing out that while Syngman Rhee had important constituents in big business, the Park Chung Hee regime lacked those links. Instead, Park and company turned for support to small farmers, whose ranks had been increased by land reforms under American occupation. "Embedded" in rural society, the Park regime's "overwhelming concern with rural development" (p. 75) was the impetus behind its support for industrialization. This rural constituency allowed Park to pump capital out of industrialists and work out of laborers. In Davis's words, "rural middle classes originally endowed Park's administration with the will and capacity to discipline industrial capitalists" (p. 65). By the early 1970s it was evident that the countryside and farmers were [End Page 134] faring far less well than cities and industry. While Park responded with an effort to lessen the urban-rural divide from the late 1960s, new price policies and the Saema1l Movement were too little, too late. By the mid-1970s, the regime reversed its earlier intentions and was pursuing industrialization fully for its own sake (p. 146). The rural basis of industrialization policies slipped away. Davis is not a Koreanist; she is a Latin Americanist. Her background and comparative framework afford the potential to provide Korean studies with a fresh perspective on old issues. But the new interpretations in Discipline and Development need new data, and a main problem with the Korea chapter—and with the whole book—is that many are lacking. The first big claim, that small farmers were main constituents of the Park regime, will raise eyebrows. Davis notes that "[r]ural middle classes became institutionally embedded in the governing apparatus" (p. 90) through links to the military, agricultural cooperatives, and the Democratic Republican Party (created by sometime CIA director Kim Jong-pil). But what is the distinction between "embeddedness" and penetration or subjugation? Other sources show that these institutions could be coercive, forcing farmers to cultivate crops and sell products in specific ways and intimidating them into voting for the regime. These organizations did indeed link the regime to rural people, but that does not mean they served to increase state responsiveness rather than control. The insistence that business was at the mercy of the state in the 1960s also seems excessive. Were not state-business relations cooperative as well as coercive? How separate were business leaders and political leaders? Big businesses still made money when the state was "disciplining" them for national growth. Facts about businessmen's close relationships with state networks, including staffing influential economic bureaucracies, do not mesh well with Davis's story. Oddly, the book makes no mention of the regional alliances and...