Park Heong-joon

Park Heong-joon (born 19 January 1960) is a South Korean journalist, educator and politician.

Park Heong-joon was born in Choryang-dong, East District, Busan, in 1960.

His father was a doctor, whom he described as "an iron hand in a velvet glove".

Little is known of his early family life, as he prefers to not talk about it.

Park was educated at Daeil High School and Korea University.

While studying sociology at Korea University in 1980, he worked as an editor of the school magazine titled KU Culture (고대문화), as well as joining anti-government protests.

During a protest on 13 May, he ran away from the venue after he found the riot police firing tear gas, which later hit the wall of Plaza Hotel.

One of the shrapnels soon attacked his right eye and he was soon collapsed in the road.

Not only his legs were burnt, his right eye was also injured till being unable to see properly regardless of wearing spectacles, in which he was later exempted from the national service.

During the 1980s, Park was interested with left-wing ideologies i.e. Marxism.

Not only studying those ideologies, he worked at left-leaning magazines, for example, Creation and Criticism and Reality and Science.

He then continued postgraduate studies and following the graduation, he was hired at JoongAng Ilbo in 1983 and worked for 2 years.

In the early 1990s, Park was a founding member of the Popular Party; others are Kim Moon-soo, Cha Myong-jin and Lee Jae-oh; all of them are now notable conservative figures.

He was a former professor of the Sociology Department and Graduate School of International Studies at Dong-a University from 1 September 1991 to 12 March 2021.

He has been the Mayor of Busan since 8 April 2021.

He was elected to the position in the by-election a day before that was provoked following the resignation of Oh Keo-don due to the allegations of sexual harassment.

He successfully defeated the Democratic candidate Kim Young-choon with a large margin.

In June 1991, he was briefly an editor of Monthly Mal, along with Jung Tae-in, who later joined the Justice Party and became a progressive economist.

The party was, however, won no seats in the 1992 election and was deregistered.

In 1993, Park was hired by Park Se-il, who was later appointed the Senior Secretary to the President for Policy Planning to the then President Kim Young-sam, to write and help the government's projects and policies.

He had completed The Plan and Strategy of Globalisation (세계화 구상과 전략) announced by the President Kim.

From 1995, he hosted important television debates in Busan.

He was an emcee for the debate for the 1997 and the 2002 presidential elections.

He also organised civic movements in Busan, such as establishing Forum New Thinking, Cultural City — Busan Creation Network and Movement for Decentralisation of Busan.

Park joined the main opposition Grand National Party (GNP) instead of the de facto ruling Uri Party.

Despite public criticism, he later revealed that the reason was to not just "rebuild" the GNP but also run under the GNP banner was more likely to win in right-leaning Busan.

However, from what Sisa Journal reported was that he could not trust the leadership of the then President Roh Moo-hyun.

Park represented the Grand National Party (GNP) in the National Assembly as the Member for Suyeong from 2004 until in 2008, when he was defeated to the independent candidate Yoo Jae-jung, who later returned to the GNP.

He was nominated the GNP candidate for Suyeong in the 2004 election and competed against the ruling candidate Huh Jin-ho.

Though he came behind to Huh at early polls, he was elected to the National Assembly.

On 26 August 2006, while he was a member of the Culture and Tourism Committee of the National Assembly, several sources reported that Park, along with Kim Jae-hong, an MP of the Uri Party, had visited an arcade game exhibition held in Los Angeles, United States from 13 to 15 September 2005, using the money from game industry associations.

Amid criticisms, he said that it was an official visit suggested by the committee.

On 5 September, the Uri Party sued both Park and Kim to the Ethics Committee.

On 13 December, he was summoned by the prosecution for receiving 100 million won (≒ ￡63,000) from the CEO of Andamiro and a gift voucher association.

However, he was cleared of wrongdoing on 23 February 2007.

During the 2007 presidential election, Park was one of the key figures helping the GNP presidential candidate Lee Myung-bak to be elected the country's President.

He also served as the Senior Secretary to the President for Political Affairs from 2009 to 2010 under the President Lee Myung-bak.

Prior to his political career, Park worked as a journalist of JoongAng Ilbo and Monthly Mal.

Since 2010s, he has been a commentator in various programmes i.e. Battle of Tongues, Powerful Opponents, Let's Be Politicians and so on.

Though he lost again to Yoo in 2012, he served as the Secretary-General of the National Assembly from 2014 to 2016.