What is the name of the President of Korea (meaning the Republic of Korea, or South Korea), who is in power today? Her name is Park Geun-hye and she is the daughter of the third president of this country and long-term military dictator Park Jung-hee. He ruled the country for almost two decades in the 60-70s of the last century.
A few words about Father Park Geun-hye
The future president of the Republic of Korea, Pak Jung-hee, was a peasant son who had learned to become an elementary school teacher. After three years of teaching practice, he realized the further futility of teaching and in 1940 he volunteered for the Japanese army. He served in Manchuria, participated in battles against communist partisans (among which, incidentally, there were many Koreans, such as, for example, the future first president of North Korea, Kim Il Sung). Apparently, he fought not for fear, but for conscience, as he was honored to study at the Japanese military academy and left it in 1942 as a lieutenant with a Japanese name.
Korean President Park Jung-hee never spoke about his service as an officer in the Japanese army, and journalists who were trying to figure out this period of his life were expelled from the country. When the year 1945 came and the Japanese Empire was defeated, Pak did not at all make himself hara-kiri, following the example of many of his Japanese colleagues, but quickly joined the newly created army of South Korea.
And here another amazing episode occurred in his fate. In 1948, Pak was a member of a communist uprising in the province of Esu, which was brutally crushed with the support of Americans. What brought the young and promising officer into the ranks of the participants in the communist underground is unknown. Maybe peasant genes played a role, maybe a sibling, a former communist, influenced, now we are unlikely to find out.
Although several thousand participants in the uprising in Yesu were killed, but President Lee Sung Man personally pardoned. It was such a subtle Asian form of punishment. The offender is demonstratively pardoned, but he has only two ways: either to commit suicide, or to join his former enemies (after all, his former associates will no longer accept him, considering him a traitor). And Pak chose not to be imaginary, but a real traitor. He gave the authorities a whole list of the military men he knew, sympathizing with the Communists, including his own brother, for which he was recruited for military counterintelligence.
The childhood and youth of the current President of Korea
Park Geun Hye was born in 1952. She became the first child Park Jung Hee, born in a marriage with his second wife, Yuk Young Soo (his first marriage was childless).
It was a tough time for Korea. Its two parts - communist North Korea with the capital in Pyongyang and bourgeois South Korea with the capital in Seoul - came together in a truly deadly battle. And this is by no means an exaggeration. Indeed, in the course of the so-called Korean War, the warring parties took Seoul twice and Pyongyang once, i.e., across the whole country from north to south, at least three times in two years the fire shaft of the war rolled.
It was in such conditions that the early childhood of our heroine passed. Her father was an active participant in this fratricidal war, making her a dizzying military career: from the captain he advanced to the brigadier general and commander.
His family has lived in Seoul since 1953, where Park Geun-hye graduated from high school in 1970. When the girl was seven years old, the so-called April Revolution of 1960 took place in the country, as a result of which President Lee Son Man was overthrown, and a year later her father came to power in the country as head of the military junta. Since 1963, he has been at the helm as the popularly elected president of Korea.
His eldest daughter, Park Geun-hye, studied at Seoul University after school, receiving a bachelor's degree in electronic engineering in 1974. The choice of her specialty is eloquent evidence of the changes that took place in the country during the reign of her father. South Korea is becoming the world leader in the field of electronics, and the corresponding specialties are becoming the most prestigious and in demand.
To continue her education, Park Geun-hye enters the University of Grenoble, but the tragic events that happened at home force her to return to her homeland.
Killing mother Yuk Yong-soo
On August 15, 1974, the Korean president and his wife attended the National Theater at a ceremony marking the 29th anniversary of the liberation of Korea from Japanese rule. During a speech, Park Jung Hee, someone Moon Se Gwang, a Japanese citizen of Korean descent and probably a North Korean agent, opened fire on him with a gun. He did not get into the president, but mortally wounded his wife. Characteristic for Park Jung-hee is his behavior after the incident: when the dying Yuk Yong-soo was taken off the stage, he continued his speech.
After this attempt, Pak began to communicate only with a limited circle of people, and Pak Geun-hye, who returned to the country, began to accompany him at official events, including foreign visits, playing the role of “first lady”.
Killing father
Korean President Park Jung-hee is considered the creator of the so-called Korean economic miracle. Over the twenty years of his reign, the country's GDP has grown nine times. However, in the early 70s, he established a regime of severe personal dictatorship in the country, called the Yusin period, which means “restoration”. The name was chosen with a clear hint of analogy with the Meiji restoration period in Japan in the second half of the 19th century.
In fact, the regime established then in South Korea was not much different from that established in his country by the President of North Korea, Kim Il Sung. Suffice it to say that all meetings of citizens, except weddings and funerals, were banned in the country. We do not know whether Park Geun-hye had any influence on her father during the five-year period when she lived in the country as the first lady. Most likely, no, she was too young and inexperienced for this.
Naturally, the number of dissatisfied with the dictatorial rule of the Pak grew, and this discontent already covered representatives of the country's top leadership. On October 26, 1979, at a private dinner at the president’s residence, a sharp conflict arose between him and Korean intelligence chief Kim Jae-gyu, as a result of which the latter shot and killed Pak himself and the head of his personal guard.
Twenty years of reflection
According to the official website of the President of the Republic of Korea, the next 18 years after the murder of her father, Park Geun-hye spent "quietly contemplating and serving the disadvantaged."
It is known that in the early 80s she founded her own fund, bearing the name of her dead mother and financing educational programs, and also published her own newspaper. Since 1994, she has been a member of the Korean Writing Association.
Park Geun-hye was also actively involved in her own education. In 1981, she attended a course at a Korean Christian college, in 1987 received a doctorate in literature from the Chinese University of Culture in Taiwan, in 2008 received a doctorate in political science from the National University in Busan (South Korea) and a doctorate from Korea Institute of Science and Technology, and in 2010 - a doctorate in political science from Sogang University (also South Korea).
Such a strong focus on self-improvement led to the fact that Park Geun-hye was never married and has no children.
