Park Chung Hee
3rd President of the Republic of Korea
Park Chung Hee (Korean: 박정희, pronounced [pak̚ tɕ͈ʌ̹ŋʝi] ; November 14, 1917 – October 26, 1979) was a South Korean politician and army officer who seized power in the May 16 coup of 1961, and served as the third president of South Korea from 1962 until his assassination in 1979. His regime oversaw a period of intense economic growth and transformation, making Park one of the most consequential leaders in Korean history, although his legacy as a military dictator remains a bitter subject.
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. After serving for two years as chairman of the military junta, he was elected president in 1963, ushering in the Third Republic. A firm anti-communist, he continued to maintain close ties with the United States, which had maintained a large Army garrison in the country since the end of the Korean War. He supported American military involvement in Southeast Asia, and sent South Korean troops to fight in Vietnam soon after seizing power. Park began a series of economic reforms that eventually led to rapid and unprecedented economic growth and industrialization, a phenomenon that is now known as the Miracle on the Han River. 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.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q14356. VIAF identifies the subject as 32001182. The Library of Congress control number is n79058355. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1917, 1979, 1961 and 1962.
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This entry incorporates text from “Park Chung Hee” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.