Park Chung-hee

According to Park, his father had actually been upper-class (yangban) and set to inherit the family's moderate holdings, but he was disinherited and banished from the clan after he participated in the 1894–1895 Donghak Peasant Revolution.

In 1916, the elder Park moved to his wife's village of Sangmo-dong, where he was given a small plot of land.

According to later interviews, he did not work the land along with his wife, and instead took to drinking alcohol and wandering around.

The scholar Chong-Sik Lee speculates that the elder Park did not wish to be seen working, as that signaled an acceptance of his lost status.

Unlike Park's father, Park's mother was seen by her contemporaries as diligent and focused.

She managed both the household and the farming.

She was around 43 years old at the time of Park's birth.

Due to her advanced age and disastrous economic situation, she tried to abort the pregnancy using multiple techniques, including by drinking bowls of soy sauce and throwing herself off of high places.

However, when Park was eventually born, she was reportedly deeply affectionate towards him.

Park did not eat well as a baby.

His mother, older and thin, struggled to produce breast milk.

One of his older sisters sometimes breastfed him, but he otherwise was fed a porridge of rice and fruit.

Park Chung Hee (, ; November 14, 1917 – October 26, 1979) was a South Korean politician and army general.

Park was born around 11:00 am on November 14, 1917, in Sangmo-dong, Gumi, Keishōhoku-dō (North Gyeongsang Province), Korea, Empire of Japan to father Park Song-bin and mother Paek Nam-ui.

He was the youngest of five brothers and two sisters.

He was of the Goryeong Park clan.

Park was born into an extremely poor family that consistently lacked food.

This made South Korea one of the fastest growing economies of the 1960s and 1970s, albeit with costs to labor rights.

This era also saw the formation of chaebols: family companies supported by the state similar to the Japanese zaibatsu.

Examples of significant chaebols include Hyundai, LG, and Samsung.

Although popular during the 1960s, Park's popularity started to plateau by the 1970s, with closer than expected victories during the 1971 presidential election and the subsequent legislative elections.

After seizing power in the May 16 coup of 1961, he was then elected as the third President of South Korea in 1963.

After serving for two years as chairman of the military junta, he was elected president in 1963, ushering in the Third Republic.

Park began a series of economic reforms that eventually led to rapid economic growth and industrialization, a phenomenon that is now known as the Miracle on the Han River.

While some credit him for sustaining economic growth, which reshaped and modernized South Korea, others criticize his authoritarian way of ruling the country (especially after 1971) and for prioritizing economic growth and social order at the expense of civil liberties and human rights.

A Gallup Korea poll in October 2021 showed Park, Kim Dae-jung (an old opponent of Park whom he tried to have executed), and Roh Moo-hyun as the most highly rated presidents of South Korean history in terms of leaving a positive legacy, especially among South Korean conservatives and the elderly.

In 1972, Park declared martial law after carrying out a self-coup.

He then introduced the highly authoritarian Yushin Constitution, ushering in the Fourth Republic.

Now ruling as a dictator, he constantly repressed political opposition and dissent and completely controlled the military.

He also had much control over the media and expressions of art.

He ruled the country until his assassination in 1979.

He is regarded as one of the most consequential leaders in Korean history, although his legacy as a military dictator continues to cause controversy.

Before his presidency, Park was the second-highest-ranking officer in the South Korean army.

His coup brought an end to the interim Second Republic of Korea.

In 1979, Park was assassinated by close friend Kim Jae-gyu, director of the KCIA, following the Busan–Masan Uprising.

Whether the assassination was spontaneous or premeditated remains unclear to this day.

Economic growth continued in spite of the 1979 coup d'état and considerable political turmoil in the wake of his assassination.

The country eventually democratized with the June Democratic Struggle in 1987.

Park remains a controversial figure in modern South Korean political discourse and among the South Korean populace in general, making a detached evaluation of his tenure difficult.

Park's eldest daughter Park Geun-hye later served as the 11th president of South Korea from 2013 until she was impeached and convicted of various corruption charges in 2017.