[8][4] According to Park, his father was upper-class (yangban) and set to inherit the family's moderate holdings, but the clan banished him after he participated in the 1894–95 Donghak Peasant Revolution.

According to Lee, a significant part of the biography is disparaging toward politicians and even Koreans in general, as the competent admiral was treated poorly by these groups during his lifetime.

The living expenses his education incurred (at a time when currency was scarce and bartering was the norm), as well as the loss of his help on the farm, created a significant burden for the family.

Around this time, Asia was experiencing the effects of the Great Depression and Japanese colonial policies mandated that Koreans send to Japan a significant portion of their agricultural output for what was seen as inadequate compensation.

In addition, Park's older brother Sang Hee lost his job (and two children to disease) in 1935, making him unable to assist the rest of the family.

On March 31, 1939, the Manchukuo newspaper Manshū Shimbun ran an article called "Blood Oath: Desire to be an Army Officer: Young Teacher from the Peninsula".

[54] On the 29th, admissions officers of the Military Government command were deeply moved by a piece of registered mail from Park Chung Hee, a teacher at Western Mungyeong Public School in North Gyeongsang Province, Korea.

Included in the mail was a passionate letter that expressed Park's desire to be an army officer, as well as an oath written in blood that read "Service Until Death" (一死以テ御奉公)...

[57] Another theory, proposed by the Korean Chinese historian Ryu Yŏnsan (류연산) in 2003, posits that Park may have joined the Gando Special Force as another show of fealty.

[82] On June 19, 1961, the military council created the Korean Central Intelligence Agency in order to prevent counter-coups and suppress potential enemies, both foreign and domestic.

Under its first director, retired Brigadier General Kim Jong-pil, a relative of Park and one of the original planners of the coup, the KCIA would extend its power to economic and foreign affairs.

In return for troop commitments, South Korea received tens of billions of dollars in grants, loans, subsidies, technology transfers, and preferential markets, all provided by the Johnson and Nixon administrations.

In 1961, the North Korean leader, Kim Il Sung secretly sent Hwang Tae-song, a former friend of Park Chung Hee and a vice-minister in ministry of trade, to South Korea, hoping to improve inter-Korean relations.

The would-be assassin, who was a Japanese-born North Korean sympathizer, missed Park but a stray bullet struck his wife Yuk Young-soo (who died later that day) and others on the stage.

In January 2005, the South Korean government uncovered 1,200 pages of diplomatic documents of the Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea of 1965 that had been kept secret for forty years.

[97] Park's government had no diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China, but did attempt to establish trade in chili peppers unsuccessfully in 1974 and successfully in 1978, contributing to a softening of tensions between the two Cold War enemies.

[102] In 1970, Hyundai finished the construction of the Seoul-Pusan Expressway, which became one of the busiest highways of South Korea, and in 1975 produced the Pony, its first car that was designed entirely by its own engineers.

[107] During the Yushin era, television productions were subjected to strict censorship with, for example, men with long hair being banned from appearing on TV, but soap operas became a cultural phenomenon in the 1970s, becoming extremely popular.

Park's favorite architect Kim Swoo-Geun and his office designed the Ekbatan Complex in Tehran and the South Korean Special Forces helped train the Imperial Iranian Navy Commandos.

[113] Among Park's first actions upon assuming control of South Korea in 1961 was to pass strict legislation metrifying the country[117] and banning the use of traditional Korean measurements like the li and pyeong.

In May 1970, the Catholic poet Kim Chi-ha was arrested for supposedly violating the Anti-Communist Law for his poem Five Bandits, which in fact had no references to Communism either explicitly or implicitly, but instead attacked corruption under Park.

Police officers, assisted by shop owners, rounded up panhandlers, small-time street merchants selling gum and trinkets, the disabled, lost or unattended children, and dissidents, including a college student who'd been holding anti-government leaflets.

[citation needed] While Park had legitimised his administration, using the provisions laid down in the state of emergency laws dating back to the Korean War, he also failed to address the constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and the press.

[citation needed] Furthermore, the security service, the KCIA, retained broad powers of arrest and detention; many of Park's opponents were held without trial and frequently tortured.

[135] The action, which was part of the "Pu-Ma" struggle (named for the Pusan and Masan areas), soon moved into the streets of the city where students and riot police fought all day.

[136] On October 26, 1979, six days after the student protests ended, Park Chung Hee was fatally shot in the head and chest by Kim Jae-gyu, the director of the KCIA, after a banquet at a safehouse in Gungjeong-dong, Jongno District, Seoul.

[150] An October 2021 Gallup Korea public opinion poll showed Park Chung Hee, Roh Moo-hyun, and Kim Dae-jung as the most highly rated presidents of South Korean history.

[153] Economic growth continued after Park's death and after considerable political turmoil in the wake of his assassination and the military coup d'état of December Twelfth.

[157][page needed] There were also many economic feats established during Park's regime, including the Gyeongbu Expressway, POSCO, the famous Five-Year Plans of South Korea, and the New Community Movement.

[162][163] The state nationalist (국가주의,國家主義) policies of the Park Chung-hee administration were influenced by Manchukuo economic system, and Japanese pre-war "statist" politics.