She was once a veritable "little princess", and her father was comparable to a prince, but when she was 25 years old, her father fell in a pool of blood;
In the years since, she has gone through several ups and downs, becoming a member of Parliament, and also encountered violent attacks while running for mayor;
At the age of 61, she was elected president of South Korea, and the scenery was unlimited.
Yes, her is Park Geun-hye.
Just three years later, Park Geun-hye rebelled and was forced to step down, after which she became a prisoner of the order, spending three years in a high wall and a high window, until recently, she was pardoned by President Moon Jae-in.
However, just after leaving prison, her new book in prison was at the top of the best-seller list in South Korea just a few days after its publication, and some of the previously published works were also reprinted and sold well.
Perhaps, Park Geun-hye's next days will be accompanied by pen and ink...
01
"If I Had Been Born in an Ordinary Family"
Park Geun-hye was born in Daegu, South Korea in February 1952.
At that time, her father, Park Chung-hee, was already a big man in the Korean military circles.
From an early age, Park Geun-hye was born with a golden key.
When she was 9 years old, one day, the family moved to the "Blue House" of the presidential palace, and everyone in the family became more bullish and prominent than before.
This is a memory that Park Geun-hye will never forget.
It turned out that his father had staged a military coup and became the president of South Korea.
Park Geun-hye also became a veritable little princess and received the best education.
When he staged a coup d'état in 1961, Park Chung-hee made a promise to end the rule of the samurai within two years and return the government to the people, which was also an important reason for his support.
However, absolute power is absolutely corrupt, and Park Chung-hee, who "conquered the Blue House by force", became more and more greedy for supreme privileges.
By 1963, Park Chung-hee had merely announced his retirement from the military and continued to hold power as a "civilian" for more than a decade.
The military leaders at the time, including Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo, who would later become presidents, were park chung-hee's direct cronies.
However, as she grew older, Park Geun-hye did not live happily, but on the contrary, she was frightened all day.
The power against Park Chung-hee is constantly accumulating and may erupt at any time, and Park Chung-hee's country is like a huge pressure cooker.
In 1974, Park Geun-hye's mother, Lu Young-so, the "first lady" of the Blue House, was assassinated.
This triggered a crackdown by Park Chung-hee, and his actions further led to rebellion.
Five years later, in 1979, Park Chung-hee was shot and assassinated by his former confidant, Intelligence Minister Kim Jae-gyu.
That year, Park Geun-hye was 27 years old, living in the shadow of her father, and her own life seemed to have not yet begun.
After that, with the help of some of her father's friends, Park Geun-hye continued her studies and earned a doctorate, while living a low-key life and disappearing from politics.
In 1993, South Korea achieved a democratic transition and played down the historical problems of the past.
That year, Park Geun-hye published her autobiography from childhood to adolescence, titled "If I Had Been Born in an Ordinary Family."
The book recalls the above experience and says with emotion:
In contrast, if I were the daughter of an ordinary person, I would be happier...
02
"Feeling pain means you are still alive"
In 1998, Park Geun-hye successfully ran for parliament in Gyeongsangbuk-do, the birthplace of her father Park Chung-hee, and has since entered politics.
She has been subjected to great controversy.
On the one hand, during the 18 years of the reign of her father Park Chung-hee, South Korea's economy developed rapidly, and until many years later, there were still many supporters in South Korea, and Park Geun-hye was highly supported as Park Chung-hee's daughter;
On the other hand, there are also many Koreans who regard Park Chung-hee as the dictator of the old era, and believe that the privilege left by her father is the key factor in Park Geun-hye's ability to enter the political arena.
On May 20, 2006, Park Geun-hye was violently attacked while helping a teammate of the same party run for mayor of Seoul, and was slashed in the right side of her face by a stationery knife.
Fortunately, the wound was not deep and did not cause much harm to Park Geun-hye, but this fright made her unforgettable for a long time.
During her political career, she continued to write, and successively published books such as "People and People", "A Big Handful, a Small Point", etc., mainly with her own experiences and feelings.
Park Geun-hye talked about her parents, no matter how merit and sin are judged, they have all died one after another, and the bloody scenes have reappeared again and again.
She also said that for a long time, she did not want to go into politics, and finally entered politics for a lot of ambitions that surpassed her own advantages and disadvantages.
In 2012, Park Geun-hye was elected South Korea's 18th president and the first female president in South Korean history.
"I have no parents, no husbands, no children, and the state is the only thing I serve."
"I have worked hard for this, but I firmly believe that the pain itself shows that we are still alive!"
At the beginning of his election, these words became golden sentences that were recited for a while.
This was the highest point of her life, but soon she "fell off the altar" of god.
On April 16, 2014, the shipwreck of the Sewol suddenly fell to the lowest point in the hopes of Park Geun-hye.com.
The Sewol was a large passenger ship, also known as the Year, that could theoretically carry more than 800 passengers. On april 16, the ship carried 476 passengers from Incheon to Jeju Island.
Of those, 325 were high school students who boarded the boat because the school organized a school trip.
At about 8:58 a.m. on the same day, the passenger ship Sewol was involved in a flooding accident 20 kilometers north of Pingfeng Island in Jindo-gun, South Jeolla Province.
When the accident first occurred, when some passengers wanted to go out of the cabin to understand the situation, they were asked by the ship's staff to wait for rescue in situ, and many passengers, especially the middle school students, mostly chose to obey the order.
However, the rescue helicopter has been delayed, and the passengers on board have not received any news of evacuation.
An hour and a half later, the belated rescue helicopter finally appeared, and by this time, the situation was already very critical.
In the end, only 179 people were rescued, and the other 297, all killed or missing. The so-called disappearance is that the remains have not been found.
For a time, the whole country was in an uproar. In particular, Park Geun-hye's delay in responding to the report at the time of the tragedy was particularly outrageous.
In addition, the day before the sewer sank, Park Geun-hye issued a decree that a "first-class navigator" could act as a captain, so the ship Waswol was not the original captain on the day of the accident.
The families of many of the sewol victims gathered in bustling areas such as Gwanghwamun Square to protest against Park Geun-hye.
Park Geun-hye's prestige has dropped to the freezing point, and after that, there are more tragedies waiting for her...
03
Right and wrong are left to future generations
In 2016, Park Geun-hye broke out the "Girlfriend Gate" scandal, which led to her stepping down and imprisonment.
In the autumn of that year, a girl surnamed Zheng showed off her wealth on the Internet - she had mediocre grades, but in the name of "horse racing students", she entered South Korea's top Ewha Women's University.
The mother of the girl surnamed Jung, Choi Soon-sil, has a relationship with President Park Geun-hye.
After the news broke, some students of Ewha Womans University found evidence that the girl surnamed Zheng had entered the school by means of a backdoor relationship, so they publicly protested and even demanded that the principal step down.
The more noisy the matter, the national media have also paid attention to it, and more "black history" of Cui Shunshi has also been dug up and exposed.
In October 2016, Choi found about 200 documents on his computer, 44 of which were Park Geun-hye's speeches, which were opened before the presidential speech.
According to the relevant laws, the speech of the South Korean president was an important secret before it was released, and only the president himself and a very small number of high-ranking officials could access it, and these materials in Choi Soon-sil's computer became important evidence that she violated the law and interfered in politics.
Choi Soon-sil has a religious background, and his father, Choi Tae-min, is the founder of the "Korean Mission for the Salvation of the Nation", and Park Geun-hye has regarded him as a spiritual teacher for many years.
Choi Soon-sil, who has no public office, controls actual power that cannot be ignored.
Further findings show that in 2015, Samsung Group remitted 2.8 million euros to The "Widec Sports" company founded by Choi Soon-sil and his daughter Zheng in Germany.
Even the death of the Sewol was suspected by some to be a cult group of the Choi family, who colluded with Park Geun-hye to sacrifice to the so-called ghost gods with the lives of many middle school students — in other words, Park Geun-hye and Choi Soon-sil deliberately created this tragedy.
The "cult sacrifice" is obviously out of thin air and is not enough to believe. But this boiling grievance swept across the country.
A few months later, Ms. Park was forced to resign, was subsequently indicted, and jailed, and her biggest opponent, Moon Jae-in, became the new president.
It is said that after being imprisoned, Park Geun-hye's physical condition plummeted and she was plagued by illness; her favorite book was the novel Tokugawa Ieyasu by the Japanese writer Shohachi Yamaoka; she sometimes wrote a lot of things to defend herself.
She spent four years in her cell, and she wrote a lot of words.
At the end of December 2021, Park Geun-hye received a pardon from President Moon Jae-in, and after leaving prison, she quickly published her own words in prison, her new book "Not Everyone Misses".
The book suddenly topped the Korean bestseller list.
Some protested, but many more bought her book, expecting to see Park Herong-hye herself, her explanation of the Sewol and the "Girlfriend Gate."
All this is right and wrong, and may become an endless topic for future generations.
Whether Park Geun-hye, who is in her seventies, will return to politics in the future, no one can be sure; but at least, she has become a best-selling author, which is not bad...