The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [23]
The Heavy and Chemical plan, which Park conceived and rammed through despite the misgivings of the Economic Planning Board and other economists, was the foundation of Korea's later success in automobiles, shipbuilding, and electronics, but it was also very costly and eventually was scaled back considerably. Cho Soon, a prominent economist and scholar who later became mayor of Seoul, wrote in a retrospective analysis that the scale of Park's projects "exceeded by far what the country could accommodate" and substituted government decision-making for private initiative in the economy. Accordingly, Cho wrote, "The results were waste and distortions in resource use, inflationary pressure, the emergence of immense conglomerates, and widening inequality in the distribution of income and wealth,"
Nevertheless, the overall results of the development program that Park put in place between 1961 and 1979 were spectacular. In broad terms, according to the World Bank, South Korea's inflationadjusted GNP tripled in each decade after Park's first year in office, thereby condensing a century of growth into three decades. At the same time, the country dramatically reduced the incidence of poverty, from more than 40 percent of all households living below the poverty line in 1965 to fewer than 10 percent in 1980. Per capita income shot up from less than $100 annually when Park took power to more than $1,000 at the time of his death and more than $10,000 today. In view of these achievements, it is small wonder that he is viewed by most South Koreans in retrospect as a leader of unparalleled greatness.
WASHINGTON BLINKS AT PARK'S COUP
At six P.M. on October 16, 1972, Park's prime minister, Kim Jong Pil, notified U.S. ambassador Philip Habib of a sweeping change in the country's political direction, requesting that it be kept secret until made public twenty-five hours later. The surprise announcement by Park, a copy of which was handed to Habib, declared martial law, junked the existing constitution, disbanded the National Assembly, and prepared a plan for indirect election of the president. At the same time, to silence opposition, Park arrested most of the senior political leaders of the country.
Park called his new system yushin, which his spokesmen translated as "revitalizing reforms," and justified his actions on the grounds that the nation must be strong and united to deal with the North and maintain its independence in a changing international environment. The proposed announcement laid heavy stress on perils beyond Korea's shores, as "the interests of the third or smaller countries might be sacrificed for the relaxation of tension between big powers."
Despite the emphasis on external threats, Habib had no illusions about the real purpose of Park's dramatic moves. He cabled Washington within a few hours to say that "the measures proposed are designed to insure that President Park will stay in office for at least twelve years with even less opposition and dissent and with increased excutive powers" and that "if these proposals are carried out Korea will indeed have, for all practical purposes, a completely authoritarian government." While the ambassador conceded that Park might believe that he must strengthen his domestic position to deal with the North, Habib informed Washington that "there is little doubt that these measures are unnecessary given any objective view of the situation."
The pressing question was what the United States should do in view of its extensive interests and its historic leverage in South Korean politics. In the aftermath of World War II and the division of the peninsula, Washington had played the central role in anointing Syngman Rhee as the country's first president, and in 1960, in the face of a student-led popular uprising, it had also played a major role in forcing him to leave power. In 1961, the U.S. Embassy and the U.S.