By Michael Breen
The two military coups which characterized South Korea’s pre-democracy period involved the removal of leaders who enjoyed legitimacy but lacked power. As the promise of democracy was snuffed out on their watch, their stories are all but forgotten. They nevertheless merit inclusion in this series, even if it is only to highlight what might have been.
On April 28, as a U.S. CIA plane flew Korea’s disgraced first president, Syngman Rhee, into exile, the prime minister, Heo Jeong, took over as head of a caretaker government. Heo was a politician who like most had been an independence activist during the Japanese period before World War II.
In an effort to put the authoritarian past behind them, the National Assembly a few weeks later changed the constitution to allow for an upper and lower house and, while retaining the office of the presidency, pulled its teeth by replacing the American-type presidential system with a European-style parliamentary democracy. Elections to the two houses were held in July with the former opposition party winning a predictable victory.
In mid-August, Heo and 11 other candidates stood in a presidential election. The election was indirect with the 288 members of the two houses voting in a joint session, with the winner needing the approval of two thirds of the members of both houses.
With prior agreement between the two main factions of the majority Democratic Party, the “old” faction head, Yun Bo-seon, gained a clear victory, winning 208 of the 253 votes cast. His nearest rival with 29 votes was Kim Chang-sook, a Confucian and president of Sungkyunkwan University who had opposed Rhee. The other candidates, including Heo, received between one and three votes each.
The new president was born in 1897 in Dunpo, in Asan county, South Chungcheong province. He studied arts and law-related subjects at the University of Edinburgh. He was unable to complete all the course requirements, apparently due to illness, but in 1930 was awarded what is known as an Aegrotat degree. He returned to Korea in 1932. After World War II, he entered politics with Syngman Rhee as his mentor. Rhee appointed him mayor of Seoul in 1948 and in the following year he became the minister of commerce and industry.
Disenchanted with his authoritarianism, Yun broke with Rhee and, after serving as president of the Red Cross Society, ran for election to the National Assembly in 1954. The next year he was one of the founding members of the opposition Democratic Party.
Immediately after becoming president, Yun surprised the members of the rival “new” faction in his party by appointing someone from his own faction, Kim Do-yeon, as the prime minister. The new faction members refused to endorse the choice and Kim failed to win the necessary Assembly confirmation. The president then nominated the person he had been expected to choose, Chang Myun of the new faction. Chang was confirmed and became the powerful prime minister.
Like Yun, Chang was overseas educated. Born in Incheon in 1899 and raised in Seoul, Chang got into trouble when, at age nine, he heard of the first barbershop in Incheon and had his long hair cut off without his parents’ permission.
Chang married when he was 16 years old, the year before he graduated from Suwon Agricultural School. A Roman Catholic who went by the name “John,” Chang went to America in 1920 to study. He studied education for three years at Manhattan College, a Catholic school in New York, but failed to graduate.
During his five years in the United States, Chang developed “a taste for liberty and democracy,” he later wrote. “I came to believe that enlightening people through education was the most effective and shortest way to contribute to my country. I also realized that the enhancement of national ethics was possible only when they were deeply rooted in religious faith.”
In 1925, he went to Rome to represent Korea at a beatification ceremony for 79 Korean Catholic martyrs. Back home, he worked for five years for the church in Pyongyang and then returned to Seoul to work as a teacher at the Catholic-run Dongsung commercial high school, becoming the principal in 1936.
When Korea was freed from Japanese rule and placed under American military authority, Chang, like Yun, with his rare English-speaking ability, went into politics.
When South Korea formally established as the Republic of Korea, he was assigned to head a delegation to the United Nations to seek recognition from member states. He was then appointed the country’s first ambassador to the United States.
In June 1950 when the Korean War broke out, Chang appealed for US support and presented Korea’s case at an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council. In November, Rhee appointed him prime minister. Like Yun, Chang also separated from Rhee who he considered to be dictatorial, and helped found the Democratic Party.
In 1956, in an election campaign in which his party’s presidential candidate died, Chang won the separate vice-presidential vote. As an oppositionist vice-president to Rhee, Chang felt like a prisoner in the role. He was snubbed, kept under surveillance and was even shot in the hand in what he believed was an assassination attempt.
In 1961, with Rhee gone, Chang and his democratic government faced mounting problems. In the freer environment, campus activists formed a Student League for National Unification which advocated reconciliation with North Korea and the withdrawal of foreign powers, a position that was a radical change from the post-war years.
They called for a conference between North and South Korean students. Rightist groups protested in nationwide rallies, raising fears of a return to the left-right violence of the late 1940s. Hundreds of teachers went on hunger strike when the government declared a new union illegal. Students demonstrated in sympathy after some teachers collapsed in class.
Students decided to stage a march to Panmunjom, the truce village in the DMZ. When they heard that the military was rumbling about taking over to end the chaos, they began to tone down their activities, but it was too late. The leftist agitation had provided what one scholar has called “useful justification” for a military coup.
Chang was tipped off several times that military officers led by Maj. Gen. Park Chung-hee were having regular meetings in a Chinese restaurant in Daegu to plot a coup. Chang relayed this intelligence to the Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Chang Do-yong, who denied such a rebellion would be possible. (The prime minister later came to believe that Chang, and also President Yun, were supporting Park’s coup attempt).
At 2 a.m. on May 16, 1961, Chung received information that the coup was underway. Before soldiers could come to arrest him in the Bando Hotel (now the site of the Lotte Hotel in Seoul), Chang left to seek refuge in the US embassy but found it locked. He drove to the former U.S. Embassy compound across from the former Hankook Ilbo building, but guards did not open the gate to him. He then headed to a convent in Hyehwa-dong. It was an ignominious end to a 9-month effort at democracy. Chang was eventually jailed for “violating the interim special act and the National Security Law, interfering with the accomplishment of the revolution and forming anti-national organizations.” He died in 1966.
President Yun remained in his position to provide legitimacy to the regime. He resigned after 10 months and opposed Park, running failed bids for the presidency in 1963 and 1967. He retired from politics in 1980 and died in 1990.
In 1979, when Park Chung-hee was assassinated after ruling for 18 years, the prime minister, a man named Choi Kyu-hah, took over as head of state. This was unfortunate for Koreans, for Choi lacked both the power base and the inclination to prevent the military from taking over once again and setting the democracy clock back.
Choi was born in Wonju, Gangwon Province, in 1919. As a young man, he learned Chinese Classics. He graduated from the prestigious Kyunggi High School in 1937 and went to Tokyo where he studied at the High College of Education, graduating in 1941. He then spent two years at the Manchuria Daedong College.
In 1945, Choi became a lecturer at the College of Education at Seoul National University before going into the bureaucracy. His government career began with a stint as head of planning at the central food administration in 1946, and from there he became head of food policy at the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and, later, director of trade at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
A career government official, Choi was foreign minister from 1967 to 1971 and presidential security advisor from 1971 to 1975. He became the prime minister in 1976.
In Park’s government, as indeed in all subsequent administrations, there was no vice president and the prime minister, who was constitutionally second-in-command, was often a weak or symbolic figure. Thus, when Choi was thus forward after Park’s murder as the acting head of state, his position was deficient to say the least.
Six weeks after Park’s death, Choi formally became the president after winning an election in which he was the only candidate. The 2,560 members of the electoral college, called the National Council for Reunification, had been elected in May 1978. They confirmed Choi by a margin of 2,465 for and 84 against, with 11 members absent.
Six days later, on Dec.12, 1979, the military intelligence chief Gen. Chun Doo-hwan led a mutiny and took control of the military. Within a few months, Chun was effectively controlling the government.
In April 1980, Choi appointed Chun as head of the civilian Korea CIA. In May, Chun declared martial law and became the de facto ruler. When student protests escalated in Gwangju, Chun sent special forces to do the police work, with predictable results. Choi resigned after the massacre in Gwangju and Chun became president.
Choi retired and took no more part in public life. He died in 2006.
Michael Breen is an author, former foreign correspondent and the chairman of Insight Communications, a public relations consulting company. He can be reached at mike.breen@insightcomms.com.