Park, as an Olympic and Asian Games medalist, was granted an exemption from two years of mandatory military service.

In the same year, Korea Swimming Federation (KSF) refused to give Park his 50 million won (approximately $44,950 USD) for winning two silver medals in the London Olympics.

[17] In mid-Aug, 2016, Seoul Central District Court of final appeal ruled the doctor who injected Park with the steroid Nebido guilty of breaching medical code for failing to log into her patient's records, but cleared of the more serious charge of causing Park bodily harm.

[35] This early success led to Park's selection to the Korean Swimming Federation as a national team member in 2003.

At the 2004 Summer Olympics, which was his first international competition, 14-year-old Park was the youngest athlete of Team South Korea.

[37] Park later confessed that his disappointment over this fueled him to improve his starts, and he now has one of the fastest reaction times among top elite swimmers, consistently posting under 0.70 of a second.

The 8th FINA World Swimming Championships (25 m) swam April 5–9, 2006 at the Qizhong Forest Sports City Arena in Shanghai, China.

The Swimming competition at the 2006 Asian Games took place December 2–9 at the Hamad Aquatic Centre in Doha, Qatar.

[38] The tenth edition of the Pan Pacific Swimming Championships, a long course (50 m) event, was held in 2006 in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, from August 17–20.

Park was named the 2006 Pacific Rim Male Swimmer of the Year by Swimming World Magazine, beating out Olympic medalist (and 2005 awardee) Australian Grant Hackett for the honor.

The Swimming competition at the 12th FINA World Aquatics Championships was held in Rod Laver Arena in Melbourne, Australia, from 25 March to 1 April 2007.

In swimming 1:44.85 in the 200-meter freestyle final, Park joined Michael Phelps, Ian Thorpe, and Pieter van den Hoogenband as the only men to have ever swum under 1:45 in the event.

At the 2009 World Aquatics Championships held in Rome, Italy, Park surprised many after failing to qualify to swim in the finals of the 200- and 400-meter freestyle.

Shortly after the South Korean Federation met with the FINA bureau the ruling was overturned and Park was reinstated into the race.

[44] In the 200-meter freestyle, Park managed to repeat his silver medal from Beijing by tying China's Sun Yang with a matching time of 1:44.93.

[45][46][47][48] In his third and final event, 1500-meter freestyle, Park posted a South Korean record of 14:50.61, but missed the podium by a 10.3-second margin behind defending Olympic champion Oussama Mellouli of Tunisia.

In this event, Tae Hwan Park became the first man to ever win the 400-meter free Pan Pacs title three straight times (2006, 2010, 2014) as he put up a 3:43.15 in the finale.

[50] Park, a national icon who remains the only South Korean with an Olympic swimming gold, had previously argued that a Seoul-based doctor named Kim had given him an injection without fully disclosing that it could contain a banned substance.

[70][71][72][73] Moreover, his winning time of Men's 1500 metre freestyle broke the Asian record set by Chinese Zhang Lin in 2009.

[74][75][76][77][78] In the FINA Official Feature Interview, Park said that his recent performances made him much more self-confident, he would look forward to 2020 Tokyo Olympics.