century Second Republic: could democracy have succeeded in 1960?

By Michael Breen

Korea Times columnist

The now forgotten months between the collapse of the government of President Rhee Syngman in April 1960 and the military coup of Park Chung-hee in May 1961 present one of the intriguing what-ifs of modern Korean history. The Second Republic, as this period is known, was a democracy. What if there had been no coup? Would that democracy have been sustained?

After Rhee's departure, the country was run by a caretaker government under Prime Minister Heo Jeong. The National Assembly rewrote the constitution to replace the U.S.-type presidential system with a European-style parliamentary democracy.

This structure had in fact been preferred by many 12 years earlier during the drafting of the first constitution when the southern half of the peninsula gained its independence

from the American Military Government. But the U.S. played a role in shaping that constitution and Rhee, the veteran independence politician and American favorite, had successfully argued for the U.S. model.

But when Rhee was chased out of office after widespread protests against a rigged election, and a nudge from Washington, Yu Chin-oh, the head of Korea University, which had been at the forefront of anti-government protests, articulated popular sentiment when he said that the country needed to escape from the ``hell'' of the presidential system. The new constitution allowed for an upper House of Councilors with 58 seats and lower House of Representatives with 233 seats, and a ceremonial president elected by a two-thirds majority of the parliament. Power centered on a prime minister, who would be chosen by the president and confirmed by a majority in the lower House of Representatives.

In elections on July 29, the Democratic Party won 175 seats in the lower and 31 in the upper house. The new president was Yun Po-sun. The Edinburgh-educated former mayor of Seoul and founder of the Democratic Party, Yun was a highly respected figure (who would later go on to run against the dictator Park in elections).

Three weeks later, the Democratic Party leader Chang Myun, who went by his Catholic name John, became the prime minister of the new democracy.

But, as soon as the former opposition party took over the government, it succumbed to internal divisions and split into Democratic and New Democratic parties. This fissure led to a rambunctious political environment and a noisy and bitterly fragmented National Assembly.

The devoutly religious Chang, a gentle and considerate man, who Rhee had seen fit to appoint some years earlier as the country's first ambassador to the U.N. and then to Washington, was not up to the task.

His party's immediate recourse to infighting underscored the argument made later in defense of dictators that Koreans need strong leaders.

At the same time, the students who had brought Rhee down began to protest incessantly, making demands that the authorities were unable to reject. Around 2,000 demonstrations were held during the next eight months.

A telling moment came in October when student activists barged into the Assembly and occupied the rostrum, demanding a special law retroactively punishing Rhee officials involved in election rigging. The notion that this ``ex post facto'' law was unconstitutional, too sophisticated for the moment and the Assembly passed it. Under the special law, some 40,000 people were investigated, and 2,200 government officials and 4,000 police officers were purged. Such acquiescence of the elected representatives to the student mob highlighted the fragility of the leadership and further foreshadowed what was to come.

On the economic front, the government found itself dealing with mounting instability. The country at the time was appallingly poor. Per capita income was $80 which put Koreans on a par with the people in Sudan and Haiti. A government survey at the time showed that people actually cared little about democracy and the finer points of civil rights. They wanted jobs, price controls, and affordable loans.

Government planners, led by Finance Minister Kim Young-sun, dusted off a five-year economic plan, a concept which had rejected three years earlier by Rhee as too ``communist,'' and set about reworking it.

Lee Kie-hong was a young member of the planning team: ``With the assistance of the Asia Foundation we invited Dr. Charles Wolf, a prominent US development expert at the RAND Corporation, for guidance and to brainstorm,'' he remembered. ``The first priority we proposed was eradication of hunger and poverty. Along with this socially explosive issue, we proposed that the five-year plan emphasize building up basic industries, electric power, coal and fertilizer.''

The government officially submitted the outline of the plan to the US government along with a request for $420 million for the plan and emergency aid funds of $80 million for financial stabilization necessary for the adoption of the realistic exchange rate policy strongly demanded by the US.

``These amounts seemed enormous to we bureaucrats,'' said Lee, who wrote the memo requesting the funds. ``We were not accustomed to thinking so big.'' In those days, a government minister's monthly salary was 30,000 hwan (around US$46) and a department chief received 6,000 hwan ($9.23). (By February 1961, the dollar value of the hwan had halved.)

Interestingly, while his fellow bureaucrats thought he was wasting his time with economic planning, Lee's work was closely followed by another audience. He was invited by the War College to lecture on the government policies that he was engaged in: the five-year plan, the National Construction Service (see box) and the creation of a new ministry to be called the Economic Planning Board.

``These key military officers not only requested separate sessions after the formal class was over, but they also later visited my office and even my home. I was moved by their enthusiasm which contrasted so starkly with the attitude of my fellow government officials,'' he said. ``I had absolutely no idea that they were part of the core group preparing a coup.''

The economic plan was to start in the spring. As it was a long-term project, the government also launched an initiative called the National Construction Service to meet popular demand for jobs and food.

This project and the growth plan had strong support from the United States. A summit between US President John F. Kennedy and Prime Minister John M. Chang was scheduled in Washington in July 1961 with a focus on aid for economic development, as to be distinct from the economic ``assistance'' provided to the Rhee government.

Meanwhile, 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, meanwhile, held 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. Union leaders expressed their support for students who were trying to hold a North-South students conference, a move which was thought to reveal a political agenda, and further inflamed the right. Students then 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 the Korea University scholar Han Sung-joo, in his book ``The Failure of Democracy in South Korea,'' called ``useful justification'' for a military coup.

When Park's tanks rolled into Seoul on May 16, 1961, the Cabinet fled and the Prime Minister escaped to a nunnery. The Second Republic was over.

But, to return to our question, what if there had been no coup? Most people from that time believe the coup was inevitable given the threatening presence of North Korea. Absent that military threat, it is still unlikely that the government would have survived. Perhaps Koreans, their political parties forever fragmenting and reforming, would have experienced the kind of revolving-door government that typifies Italian politics.

Lie Kie-hong, the economic planner, has no doubt. The military regime implemented the plan he and his colleagues had developed and took the credit for it themselves. ``Of course, authorship is a historical footnote,'' Lee says. ``The significant thing is how effectively the plan was implemented. In view of its success in the context of national development, I still consider Korea was fortunate to have had the military government headed by General Park Chung-hee. I am convinced that no civilian government at that time could have achieved the goals set by the plan.''

At the same time, perhaps democracy, albeit chaotic, would have taken hold had the economic growth plans been given a chance under Chang. People may not have been ready for the idea of democracy, but that is not to say those ideas would not have taken hold later.

Whichever way we look at it, Chang Myun was a man ahead of his time. In 1999, at the 100th anniversary of his birth, Kim Dae-jung, who was Chang's party's spokesman and who converted to Catholicism under his guidance, said: ``One day, Dr. Chang told me, quite seriously, 'It would be better for the true democracy of this country for change of power to be realized, rather than I keep my position (as prime minister) for a long time.' I thought to myself, 'People say Dr. Chang is too soft and here he goes again, he is being too soft.' Only after the long dictatorial regime of Park Chung-hee did I realize that his remarks embodied the very principle of democracy. I was deeply impressed by his belief in democracy.''