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Mythbusting Park Chung Hee: A Reexamination Of Park And His Coup, Justin Malzac

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

Park Chung-Hee is a divisive figure. For some he is a saint that rescued his country from the brink of collapse and helped it rise into modernity. For others he is a devil, an iron-fisted dictator who cared more about his own power than his people. Both of these are politically slanted myths promoted as part of a corresponding political agenda. But even politically neutral writings on Park unwittingly conduct a mythmaking of their own. This paper is an attempt to show that Park Chung-Hee has become a mythological figure in Korean history because the scope of his power, agency …