Read the article with great pleasure. I was Korea "expert" in a Dutch ministry during the last years of the Park administration, so you may imagine I enjoyed the political part also.
South Korea has long looked at the two Germanies as a model of their own situation, so I am not surprised they used the introduction of the DM as a model for their own reforms, including the easy assumption that war profiteers had made a bundle, that should be taxed away. On another level, they must have looked at Japan's post-war devaluation, its development by "bureaucratic guidance" (which in Japan also, was far less efficient than people often assume) and its conglomerates (keiretsu in Japan, chaebol in South Korea). Park was the last South Korean president who spoke Japanese, the language he was educated in.
I get the feeling you are underestimating US influence, though. Korean civil servants often rejected offers for big projects from non-US countries with the argument that they could only order in the US. In hindsight, that may have to do with "development aid" being granted on the condition that it would be spent in the donor country (tied aid). In other words, the money never left the US. That may also have motivated Park to seek "economic independence". Anyway, economic control was in US hands. No wonder the ambassador bridled when he heard about the coinage reform when it was too late to stop it.
One Park initiative that sticks in my mind is a programme, that allowed villages some cement (Park had set up a grandiose concrete plant, one of his civilian plants for military use). The programme was executed by
Saemaul Undong, a Park creation. The villages that used the cement got more, plus iron bars (yup, Park also had a dual use steel plant built) to reinforce the cement. Those who sold it or let it rot got nothing. The villagers were automatically motivated to work together, agree on a project and contribute work and they were rewarded with self-constructed bus stop shelters, schools and libraries. The project went out with Park as politically incorrect, but I wish other countries would try it.
One of the dark sides of the Park administration was a curious kind of women's discrimination. They were divided in normal women and
Kisaeng. The normals were required to lead a painfully sheltered life in which little could be done outside the home. The Kisaeng could do anything, from running a business to prostitution and from travelling unaccompanied to singing in public, but they were not considered honourable or even marriageable by honourable men. That strange dichotomy went out with Park also.
Park is a good example of a dictator who was a benefit of his country when he started his rule, was unable to quit and became a burden of his country when he left. Yet, South Korea is the only country I know, where a military dictator Chun Doo-hwan) has abdicated on TV, apologising in tears.
Peter
