General Park Chung-hee of South Korea (1917-1979) is not a household name. Despite the saturation coverage of North Korea in the American press, South Korean politics remains a mystery to almost all Americans.
As President from 1961 to his assassination in 1979, Park transformed South Korea from a fourth-world basket case – one of the poorest countries on the planet – to one of the world's dominant economies.
Park was a National Socialist and his “Democratic Republican Party” was explicitly Corporatist. His three European role-models were Napoleon, Bismarck and Hitler. He was the son of a very poor farmer and remained a populist throughout his life.
Through his Yushin Constitution, he remade South Korea. He used his “Supreme Council for National Reconstruction” to create immense prosperity for all classes. In 1956, the GNP of Korea was 40 billion US dollars. In 1972, it was 90 billion, and by 1976, 170 billion.
His “Committee against Illicit Profiteering” destroyed usury, forcing interest rates on debtors to rock bottom. He instituted the Won, the new currency minted by his state run bank and his “Law on the Dispersion of Illegally Accumulated Capital” destroyed the oligarchs connected to the US and Japan. Prior to this, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York ran the Bank of Korea.
Because of his strict anti-communism and Corporatism, the US actually sided with North Korea against the South for some time. He was, after all, “another Hitler."
