Life is like a ronin, after a short pause and departure,
It won't come back.
--Park Chung-hee
The world's richest man
In the mid-1930s, Sun Jong-kyung, a South Korean from Daegu, fled to Kyushu, Japan, first digging coal in the northwest and later raising pigs in the Korean village of Saga Tosu. To avoid discrimination, he took a Japanese name: Abenza Jongkei.
Zhong Qing gave birth to a total of 7 children, and the family lived next to the railway tracks in the village, with a tin roof and simple wooden plank walls. When it rains, pig manure flows with the rain into the well where the pots and feet are washed.
Japan annexed the Korean Peninsula in 1910, a large number of refugees fled to Japan, and during World War II, many cheap coolies were captured. In this way, Japan left behind nearly 1 million immigrants from the Korean Peninsula.
At the end of World War II, Japan was out of the way, the United States and the Soviet Union were vying for hegemony, and the Korean Peninsula was divided into South Korea and North Korea. Koreans stranded in Japan face the question of nationality: Are they Koreans, Koreans or Japanese? Japanese citizenship is difficult; Korean citizenship is simple; and there are also many Korean nationals, but Japan does not recognize the country's political power, and this part of the population has actually become stateless.
Chung Kyung-bong was originally from Daegu in the south, and came to Japan before World War II, so he was admitted to South Korea. However, no matter which country you are a national, as long as you come from the Korean Peninsula, you will encounter serious discrimination and exclusion in Japan, which advocates a single ethnic group and advocates pure blood. Zhong Qing is an honest man and it is difficult to survive in Japan. But he had a capable son: Ayamoto Sanken.
Optimistic three constitutions
Sanxian is different from his father's personality, optimistic and broad-minded, with a lively brain. He brews bootleg liquor, sells it everywhere on his bicycle, does not pay taxes, and there are artificial rumors that "the wine brewed by North Koreans is catty", and he personally tries it in front of the guests. He took the lees left over from the wine to raise pigs, and in order for the pigs to sell for a good price, he parked the pig truck at the station and went to the city to write down the prices of all the pork shops, and whoever had the highest price was sold to whomever was high.
Relying on the accumulated capital, in the 70s and 80s, Sanxian started the most common business of Korean immigrants - Bai Qingge, also known as the marbles machine or slot machine, a semi-gambling game machine, quite popular with Japanese men and women, young and old, until now, 90% of Japan's Bai Qingge, are controlled by Korean Peninsulars.
Sanxian did a good job, with 56 Baiqingge stores at its peak. He was rich and confident, but because of his origins, he and his family were always excluded by the Japanese. In 1957, his second son was born and named "Abeen Justice". At the age of 16, he was admitted to kurume University High School, a key high school in Japan. Sanxian was very happy, almost a little swollen, and he said to his son, "Looking at you, I am a little whimsical." Why? Maybe you'll become a genius. Wow, the number one genius in Japan. ”
It turns out that the slot machine business limits the imagination of the three constitutions. The future of justice is not only the first in Japan, but also the first in the world.
In the 1980s, Masayoshi Abe, who returned from studying in the United States, disregarded his family's opposition and changed his name back to his real name: Son Masayoshi. Later, he founded SoftBank, and in the late 90s, he invested in companies such as Yahoo and UTStarcom, and his wealth once surpassed Bill Gates, and he was truly the first in the world. In 1999, in Beijing, he chatted with Ma Yun for 6 minutes and invested $20 million in Alibaba. When Alibaba went public in 2014, Son zhengyi returned $35.18 billion in total returns.
Who would have thought that the Sun family could have today? In 1990, the family finally obtained a Japanese passport and became a righteous Japanese. But when he was in middle school, Sun Zhengyi still chased after him and scolded: Hate, North Koreans.
assassin
Son can prove that South Koreans are no less profitable than anyone else. But it was the poorest country in the world, with a per capita GDP of less than $100, a large number of South Koreans smuggled to North Korea, and in 1965 Kim Il Sung said that "the southern compatriots are too pitiful to live by begging the Americans to give them some food."
Bunseko, the second generation of Koreans stranded in Japan, is 6 years older than Son and also has a Japanese name: Nanjo Semitsu. His father, who worked in the asbestos manufacturing industry and lived in Osaka, was half a rich second generation, but he did not like to do business since he was a child, but instead indulged in various great works day and night, such as "Kim Il Sung Anthology". It is not surprising that in that era, North Korea was like His Highness Qiao Biluo, which was particularly reverie.
In his sophomore year of high school, Moon Se-kwang dropped out of school to join the "Korean Militia in Japan" with the intention of saving Koreans from fire and water. In 1973, Kim Ho-yong, political director of the Osaka branch of the General Association of Koreans in Japan, noticed MoonSeek's "good seedling" and told him: "As long as you kill South Korean President Park Chung-hee, people will revolt, and then they can save their southern compatriots." ”
The "Korean Militia in Japan" and the "General Association of Koreans in Japan", referred to as "Militia Groups" and "General Union" respectively, are the two most popular organizations of korean Peninsulars in Japan, as the name suggests, one supports South Korea and one supports North Korea, and at present 65% of people join the militia and 25% join the Federation. Members of the two organizations, regardless of nationality, will join the Federation of Koreans and Koreans will join the vigilante groups.
The "All-Union" is more mysterious and powerful, and north Korea has funded it for many years, and it has developed 18 media, 23 enterprises, as well as 60 North Korean primary and secondary schools and 1 North Korean university, and has been doing one thing all year round: boasting about North Korea's great guangzheng. The schools under their jurisdiction use official North Korean textbooks, and the heads of Kim Il-sung Kim Jong-il are hung in the classrooms. It is rumored that it controls 70% of Japan's Pachinko and infiltrates Japan's underworld, cults, and politics.
Over the years, the "Chongryon" has created a "small kingdom of Korea" that has drifted overseas. In 1988, it released the movie "Song of the East Sea", boasting that North Korea is a "paradise on earth", and many people were fooled and lame, and went to North Korea. As a result, most never returned, and a few came back to scold the liars. Japanese-born Korean star Jeong Dae-se, a South Korean national who graduated from the "Chung-Mundo" Korean University, represented North Korea in the South African World Cup in 2010, and the North Korean national anthem sounded and immediately burst into tears.
It is conceivable that Wen Shiguang, who already liked to read the great works of the great men, was certainly powerless to resist the flickering of the leaders of the "All-Union Federation." In August 1974, moon se-kwang successfully entered South Korea after receiving a 500,000-yen paycheck, carrying a U.S.-made pistol with five bullets and a fake passport.
On August 15, South Korea's Comerset, Park Chung-hee is scheduled to give a speech at the National Theatre Hall in Seoul. At 10 a.m., Wen Shiguang entered the hall, and by the 23rd minute of his speech, he pulled the pistol with the silencer mounted, and because he was too nervous, he hit himself in the thigh (true genius), and almost no one noticed his twisted face of remorse and pain.
Enduring severe pain, he ran to the podium, fired a second shot, and deflected again. The venue was in chaos, and Park Chung-hee, who was a military man, quickly hid behind the podium. Immediately after the third shot, the dud. The fourth shot, a tragedy, hit the president's wife Lu Yingxiu, who was sitting on the rostrum, and died on the spot. The audience tripped wen Shiguang, and the fifth shot hit the national flag of the podium. Five shots were fired, and the guards raised their guns to shoot each other, killing a high school girl with stray bullets and subduing Wen Shiguang.
Assassination scene and Wen Shiguang
Sharpshooters are often found on TV, but not often in reality, and "General Union" can really be fooled.
The assassination looked like a farce, so no one expected it to have far-reaching historical aftermaths, affecting the national fortunes of the Republic of Korea and shaking the political situation in South Korea today. Of course, the most pitiful is the innocent and tragic death of high school students and the president's wife Lu Yingxiu.
Shadow control Lu Yingxiu
In 1925, Lu Yingxiu was born in Wocheon-gun, ChungcheongBuk-do, South Korea, a beautiful and kind hearted person, with a Western-style higher education, English slip, his father Lu Zhongkuan was the richest man in the local area, and his mother was the daughter of the great literary hero Lee Qixian. Before the Korean War, the family lived in the "XuedongFu", a historical and cultural heritage site dedicated to the residence of the Prime Minister in ancient times.
Lu Yingxiu
Why such a rich lady looked up to Park Chung-hee, the head of the small section of the Intelligence Bureau of the Army Headquarters, has become a mystery to this day. Chief Park is not tall, short, fierce-looking, low salary, lives in a dormitory, marries for the second time, and has a daughter. The two knew each other on a blind date, and Song Zai, a colleague of the Army Intelligence Bureau and Lu Yingxiu's cousin, was on a red line.
Lu Yingxiu's father strongly opposed it, hating the short and poor chief of the Park Section, but Miss Lu fell in love at first sight. Maybe it's called the eye rim. Years later, she said that the back of Lu Section Chief attracted her: "The back of him taking off his military boots and standing in the house made me feel an unspeakable sense of solidity, people's faces can lie, but the back shadow definitely can't deceive people." ”
Park Chung-hee, 8 years older than Lu Young-sup, was born in Sunsan-gun, North Gyeongsang Province, to a poor sharecropper family, the sixth child of the family. His wife was 44 years old when she was pregnant with him, she had two grandchildren under her knees, the family was poor, did not want to regenerate, drank a large bowl of sauce wine, a large pot of weeping willow soup, and various fetal secret recipes, did not work, jumped from the high firewood pile, still useless, a few months later, Park Kechang was born strongly.
Park Chung-hee as a young man
At the age of 20, Xiao Pu taught in a primary school, and was later admitted to the "Pseudo-Manchurian Army Officer School" and the "Japanese Army Non-Commissioned Officer School", during which he took the Japanese name Masao Takagi, joined the Kwantung Army and the Pseudo Manchurian Army after graduation, fought the Eighth Route Army in northeast China, encircled and suppressed the anti-Japanese base areas in Yutian and Zunhua, Hebei Province, slaughtered Chinese in front, and was known as "Takagi Commando". When the Japanese surrendered, he joined the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea's Guangfu Army (part of the Kuomintang Central Army) and attacked the Chinese People's Liberation Army in Miyun, Beijing.
After returning to South Korea, he followed his brother Park Dong-hee and joined the underground revolutionary party to oppose the Syngman Rhee regime, but was arrested and imprisoned after his defeat. In prison, the future President Park did the most humiliating thing in his life - betraying his life and betraying his comrades-in-arms, resulting in the arrest of 1,600 officers and soldiers, and the tragic murder of his brother Park Dong-hee and 400 underground parties.
President Park's military career in his youth was quite unbearable, and it was almost difficult to talk about, so he once again couldn't understand how Lu Yingxiu could look at him. When the two met, the Korean War began for two months, South Korea had no pure land, various wives and children were scattered, the Lu family abandoned their fields and mansions, and fled to Daegu, and the war just became a springboard for Park Chung-hee to fly Huang Tengda, Lu Yingxiu married, and may also have the meaning of finding a soldier to ensure peace.
By the spring of 1961, Chief Park had been promoted to commander of the Busan Theater Quartermaster Base. It can be seen that the back shadow control Lu Yingxiu's vision is very accurate. Of course, she did not expect that her husband would become president and that she would be killed by mistake.
Xingnan Retreat
On June 25, 1950, the Korean War broke out, the North Korean army rushed into Seoul, South Korea lost 90% of its land, countless people fled to the south with their families, and Lu Yingxiu's family was only one of many refugee families. Some later returned to their hometowns, and some never returned in their lifetimes. This is a wave of refugees inside the Korean Peninsula, a nightmare for countless families.
After MacArthur Inchon landed, the war situation was reversed, the North Korean army was attacked on its back, and the US-ROK coalition army broke through the 38th Line and captured Pyongyang. In just a few days, the coalition army held a "reunification celebration" in Hamhung, North Korea, and then South Korean President Syngman Rhee came to the scene with great interest, confident that the general situation had been decided, And MacArthur said: "Hit the Yalu River and go home for Christmas." ”
However, when the coalition forces were proud, the Chinese volunteers secretly entered the DPRK. On November 25, during the frozen winter, Song Shilun led the 9th Corps of the Volunteer Army to resist the 1st Marine Division of the United States, and staged a fierce "Bloody Battle of Chosin Lake" at an altitude of more than 1,000 meters above sea level and dripping water into ice. At the cost of rudimentary equipment and heavy casualties, the Chinese soldiers defeated the coalition forces and drove them back to the port of Xingnan.
The 9th Corps, originally stationed in the Taiwan Strait, most of the soldiers came from the south, but they encountered no snow for decades, and the cold was -38 °. Many southern sons wearing thin cotton coats, for the first time in their lives, saw heavy snow, frostbite and frostbite tens of thousands, some companies washed their feet with hot water at night, and the next day all their feet were swollen to the point of being unable to walk, and the soldiers creeping on the ground, maintaining a posture for a long time, were frozen into heroic ice sculptures. But even so, the 1st Marine Division, which is known as the ace army, was still defeated by our army.
Battle of Chosin Lake
The Provisional Government of South Korea, established in Hamhung, was busy retreating again. The question is, what about the local people who supported the provisional government when the army is easy to withdraw, and what about abandoning it? Hyun Fung-hseh, a Korean translator at the time, pleaded with Edward Almond, commander of the U.S. 10th Army: "Please take away the people who have helped the Coalition, especially the Christians." ”
As a result, 105,000 soldiers, 91,000 refugees, 17,500 vehicles, and 350,000 tons of supplies staged a "Dunkirk evacuation" at the port of Xingnan, but the total of 400 meters of food, soap, lard, coffee, juice, 400 tons of solidified glycerin explosives and 500 thousand pound bombs could not be stopped. Two cruisers, seven destroyers and three rocket launchers lined up, firing nearly 34,000 shells and 12,800 rockets into the harbor, black smoke rising, the sound of gunfire deafening, and not a single grain of rice remained.
Xianxing refugees Wen Yongjiong and Jiang Hanyu, with their suckling daughters, boarded the US LST ship, but the couple did not know where the US military would take them. They lived at the bottom of the cabin, were forbidden to climb on the deck, and after three days and two nights of sailing, during which they were not hungry except for the crowded point, and it was Christmas, and the Americans gave each of them a few candies.
Disembarking the ship, the family settled in a makeshift shelter. When they got on the ship, they were wrapped in silver, and after disembarking, the southern scenery was both excited and nervous, and after inquiring about it, they learned that this place was Geoje. Wen Yongjiong and Jiang Hanyu originally thought that with the strong firepower of the Americans, they would go back after staying in the south for two or three weeks, so they didn't bring much with them, and they didn't think about it, and after half a lifetime, they never returned to their hometown in the north, and they didn't even know when the old man in the family died.
Wen Yongjiong was originally the head of the agriculture unit of the Xianxing Municipal Government, and now everything is starting all over again. He learned to do business, went to the Busan sock factory to buy goods, and then sold them to other small traders. But the character of Mu Ne, he is not a business material, repeatedly defeated, impoverished, and finally sick. The burden of the family all falls on the wife, a woman has no special skills, it is easy to talk about, and can only rely on the media cake to make ends meet.
Their family was a typical refugee family, unfamiliar with life, poor and hopeless, and living without livelihood. But the couple was lucky enough to have a president in 1953: Moon Jae-in.
Gunshots in Seoul
A war, some people are unlucky, some people are gaining power.
The Outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 was a great tragedy for Lu Young-so and Moon Yong-jiong, but for Park Chung-hee, who was born in Di Si, it was a great fortune to make meritorious achievements and become a knight, otherwise it would be impossible for him to climb Miss Lu high in terms of his appearance. Fortunately, after getting married, Park Chung-hee is still honest and loves his wife.
On the night of May 15, 1961, the family was in a commotion, and the young officers were swallowing clouds and spitting in and out. After Lu Young-suk had finished sleeping with Geun-young and Ji-wan, it was already 10 p.m., and Park Chung-hee and the officers were ready to go out. Lu Yingxiu stopped her husband: "Check Geun Hui's homework and go again." ”
The serious father took his homework, followed his wife into the bedroom, looked at Park Geun-hye, who was writing homework on the case and was reading the fifth grade, and then looked at Geun Young and Ji Wan, who were sleeping next to their grandmother, no words, no parting hugs, and after a caring look, he turned back to the living room, changed into military uniforms and boots, and put on a pistol. The phone rang, Park got up to answer the phone, only to see his eyes become more and more solemn, then outside the door walked into the two generals, saw the people together, park Chung-hee, who had no expression on his face, whispered: "All exposed." ”
Park Chung-hee's family
Because they could not bear to see South Korea defeated at the hands of mediocre officials, Park Chung-hee and his niece and son-in-law Kim Jong-bismuth, including nine young officers, plotted for eight months, the Joint Artillery Regiment, marines, and airborne regiments, planning to launch a military coup on May 16.
But on the eve of the uprising, a combat regiment leader rebelled against the water, causing the plan to leak. The army top brass declared a state of emergency, Park answered the phone that meeting, and the suppression of the gendarmes was already on the way.
When Park went out, he did not explain any special words to Lu Yingxiu, but the two knew in their hearts that this time they were separated, and there was a high probability that they would never say goodbye.
Kim Jae-chun, chief of staff of the Six Districts Command, who participated in the coup, was the first to call to inform that the plan had been exposed. He asked anxiously on the phone, "What now?" Park Chung-hee replied, "Die like this, die like that, you have to die anyway, and you still have to worry about something." ”
Some of the young officers involved in the uprising have stepped up the destruction of leaflets, statements, backup lists and other confidential documents, while the revolutionary troops that were originally agreed upon cannot be contacted by telephone, and the gendarmes who suppressed the rebellion have arrived at the rebel command post first. Park Chung-hee had no bottom, and his subordinates suggested that it would be better to lead a group of brothers to flee to the mountains to fight a guerrilla war.
If it were not for Park Chung-hee's almost cold-blooded will, the coup would have failed. When he came to the rebel command post, the young officers and the suppressed gendarmes confronted each other, and the slightest inadvertent wipe of guns went down in a river of fire and blood. In the midst of the chaos, Park Denggao shouted and gave a small speech to suppress the gendarmes, and successfully persuaded the gendarmes to defect:
"Guys, we've been waiting for the country to get on track since the 4/19 revolution, but what's going on now? What does it look like for high-ranking officials, including the Prime Minister, to just book hotels and receive money? The corrupt and incompetent regime is pushing the country into the abyss of destruction, and we really can't look at it, so we risk our lives for revolution, comrades, join us. ”
The rebel troops, who had originally planned to do so, also set off in the early hours of the morning and were marching into Seoul. The advancing troops did not receive any decent resistance, dismantled several barricades, and clashed only with a few gendarmes and policemen. The sleeping citizens of Hancheng heard sporadic gunshots and woke up the next morning with the paraphrases and bans of the coup d'état.
5.16 coup
Zhang Mian, who was in charge at the time, heard that the rebels had entered the city and was frightened to hide from the shadows, and President Yin Yushan did a good thing, resisting the pressure of The Commander of the US Forces in South Korea, Mag Luther, refusing to order the dispatch of front-line troops to suppress the rebels, avoiding a bloody tragedy of internecine internecine cannibalism.
Dig up coal to wash the body
For South Koreans at the time, the "5.16 coup" seemed to be just a new dictator coming to power. But it was this coup that pulled South Korea out of the quagmire of decadence.
As we said earlier, after the restoration, South Korea was so poor that North Korea, which was more powerful at that time, lurked like a hungry wolf, leaving it in constant fear and no time to build.
How to take into account national security while investing in economic construction was a difficult problem for the South Koreans at that time. Before Park seized power, neither the first president, Rhee, nor the later president, Yoon Hyun-sun, failed to unlock the puzzle.
But the answer is also simple, and later South Korea, West Germany, and even today's China have provided the answer: economic development is the greatest national security. Without an economic base, no amount of nuclear weapons would be safe, as in North Korea today. The significance of 5.16 is that it brings to power a regime that understands this truth.
Shortly after seizing power, Park Chung-hee first went to the United States and personally explained it to Kennedy. He put it bluntly: "South Korea's biggest task at the moment is to develop the economy. Just like Germany, if the economic strength of the country is not equal in the case of division, the economically backward side will also lag behind in various other areas. ”
But construction requires money, and it is useless to just shout slogans. But the country that Park undertook was a mess, only 24 enterprises with more than 200 people, and there was really no money, so in order to make money, at the beginning, I also did a lot of absurd things.
In the summer of 1961, with the clamor of several financial officials, Park Chung-hee launched a currency reform, spending $4.5 million on printing fees, rushing to produce four new versions of the currency at a German printing factory, changing the original monetary unit "yuan" to "yuan", and depreciating it 10 times. It is said that such a toss can "suck out" a large amount of invisible funds, and the country will have money to carry out construction.
This barbaric reform, which is essentially the government's plundering of private property, has predictable results: the circulation of money is solidified, society is in chaos, and economic activity is paralyzed.
Then, the government wanted to grab money from business owners, and under the pretext of cracking down on "illegal fund-raising", it arrested a group of entrepreneurs, saying that they had too much financing, monopolized foreign exchange trading, evaded taxes, and transferred property abroad. It has made entrepreneurs panic and their confidence has been greatly frustrated.
One of the first entrepreneurs to be arrested was Li Bingzhe, the first sugar factory owner. Park Chung-hee interrogated him personally, and the two had an awkward conversation. Li told Park: "It is really unjust to say that I have evaded taxes, and the current tax law follows the wartime tax system, and the tax amount far exceeds the operating income. ”
Fortunately, although Park is dictatorial, he holds a fist and patriotism, and soon understands respect for entrepreneurs and market laws. After Boss Li complained to him, he went back and scolded the subordinates who arrested people: "Since we are now in power, we should let the people eat enough, relying on the economic strength that is not even good in the north." Let the entrepreneurs go back as soon as possible to contribute to the economic revival. ”
After his release, Boss Lee held a press conference and expressed his willingness to donate all his assets to the government, saying that Park would be able to save the country. Although he said something against his heart in order to save his life, Lee did not read it wrong, and he himself received great benefits, and eventually developed an unprecedented giant: Samsung.
It turns out that it is not feasible to plunder the private property of entrepreneurs and secretly print paper money. In South Korea at that time, there were many people working, but there were not enough jobs. The country has a total population of 24 million, 1/10 of the labor force is not employed, more than half of the miners are high school students, 24% of whom are college students, and even doctors are rushing to dig coal.
There are too many idle people in society, and the government cannot look down on it, prohibiting young people from dancing in dance halls during the day, on the grounds that "we should devote ourselves to the reconstruction of the country and should not use the precious time during the day to indulge in singing and dancing." They arrested 200 "hooligans" and marched on the streets of the city center to repentance, with slogans such as "I am a hooligan and willing to accept the national trial" and "Farewell to the life of a hooligan, we dedicate our young hearts to the country." (Good familiar recipe)
If you don't have a job, you will be poor.
In December 1961, the situation finally took a turn for the better. As the Cold War intensified, East Germany abruptly suspended contracts for sending labor to West Germany, and industrially developed West Germany suddenly became a reflection of South Korea: more jobs and less labor. In the same brotherly camp, Germany and South Korea just complement each other's advantages, and they signed the "Economic and Technical Assistance Agreement" at once, with Germany paying for it and South Korea contributing labor.
The contract stipulated that the former strong laborers should first go to West Germany to learn mining technology, known as "mining technology trainees", which is to put it bluntly, cheap coolies.
The Park government was worried about the lack of a large number of laborers, so it spared no effort to facilitate this. The Ministry of Health and Social Affairs issued recruitment advertisements throughout the country tout how good it is to work abroad, and the media reported that "Germany is calling you".
The first batch of applicants exceeded 14,000, and only more than 250 people were selected, many of whom were university students. One of the selected workers cried with joy when he heard that he could go abroad to earn dollars: "The family is really too hard, and I hope that my hard work alone can save the family." ”
From the election of the first laborers in 1963 to the last in 1977, South Korea sent a total of 7936 miners to Germany, which is known as the "Paid Movement".
Padd miners and nurses
The miners at the bottom are quite heavy at work, and the working environment is dark, often facing the danger of landslide leakage. One miner recalled: "We worked in damp and cramped mines, and many of us died when we blew up mines with explosives. ”
The living environment is not good, in order to save money, often dozens of people crowded in a collective dormitory, bed bugs, disease, loneliness and discomfort of the climate, always bother these workers, usually there is no leisure activities, Germans bar chat, Koreans curled up in a group, occasionally dorm side kicking ball.
In 1964, South Korea and Germany again signed a labor agreement, this time sending female nurses. These nurses, like the miners, were selected through rigorous recruitment, the first batch was 128, and by 1977, a total of 11,057 nurses had been dispatched. These young women, who were treated like male miners, used to do the hard work that the Germans did not want to do: caring for lepers, paralyzed elderly people, mentally ill people, urinating and urinating, scrubbing corpses, and working more than 9 hours a day.
Female nurses earn 280-400 marks per month, and male miners earn more than $160 per month. This salary is not high in Germany, but it is much higher than at home, and Koreans can endure hardships, save money, and send 80% of their income home.
According to statistics, South Korean labor earned an average of more than $50 million in foreign exchange per year, accounting for 2% of the GNP in South Korea at that time, providing the first pot of gold for the "Miracle of the Han River" created by the Park government and stimulating the enthusiasm of Koreans.
On December 10, 1964, Mr. and Mrs. Park Chung-hee went to Germany to find loans and made a special trip to the coal mine in the Ruhr region to comfort more than 300 miners and nurses. The laborers formed a band and played the national anthem to welcome the presidential couple. In a speech in a large hall, the president exhorted his compatriots who worked outside the country: "Even if we can't see it ourselves, we must lay the foundation of prosperity for future generations..."
Tears flowed during the speech
The president's speech evoked the bitterness of the migrant workers, and a nurse suddenly stopped crying. For a moment, whether it was a man or a woman, the whole room was crying. The president who was speaking and his wife Lu Yingxiu, who was speaking, and all the entourage also burst into tears.
Koreans, too southern.
Bloodshed for development
After seizing power, Park Chung-hee sent laborers to Germany and borrowed money from Japan, and he opened up for the development of the country, but he knew that the United States was still the biggest father.
When he first seized power, the Americans did not trust the junta, so he needed to explain it repeatedly. At that time, the focus of Lao Mei's attention in the Asia-Pacific region had shifted to Vietnam. Park Chung-hee grabbed Daddy's G-spot and offered to send reinforcements to Vietnam when he first met Kennedy in November 1961.
Park's willingness to follow the United States in the Vietnam War has many considerations, one of which is that he is afraid that after the Americans divert their energy, they will withdraw their troops from South Korea, and it is not good that North Korea, which is looking at the tiger, will pounce on it. By 1964, the Park administration predicted that the Americans would not be able to win the war because its legitimacy was in doubt, but still advocated sending troops, because war was also a good opportunity to get rich. Even if the United States is defeated, if it can earn foreign exchange by participating in the war, how about doing something bad with a conscience?
But to fight a war is not to send laborers, but to die. The ruthless Park Chung-hee thought it would be better to get South Korea out of poverty as soon as possible, not to mention the death point of young people, and a generation would even have to make sacrifices. For the United States, some people are screaming for their own lives, and it is not a matter of calling for some money.
In September 1965, South Korea formed its first Vietnam War force, numbering 17,890 men. At the send-off ceremony, Park Chung-hee said to the young faces: "Now and in the past, we always accept help from others, and history is about to turn into a new era in which we help others." ”
By 1973, South Korea had sent 320,000 people to the Vietnam War, with 48,000 simultaneous online at its peak. The price was that a total of 5,099 people were killed on the battlefield and 11,232 wounded. Of course, there are many benefits, young people earned back $1.036 billion for South Korea, once accounting for 36% of South Korea's exports, contributing enough foreign exchange to the local economy.
South Korean troops in the Vietnam War
In its heyday, more than 80 Korean companies and 16,000 technicians signed contracts with the US military to undertake projects such as road construction, transportation, loading and unloading, dredging and construction engineering, learned technology, exercised their ability to make money, and laid a solid foundation for large-scale entry into the Middle East construction market in the future.
The Hanjin Group, founded by the brothers Cho Chung-hyun and Cho Kai-shek, used the money earned from logistics in Vietnam to acquire Korean Air and eventually became a chaebol. A South Korean woman named K.R Kim opened a laundromat in Vietnam for the U.S. military, and later opened the laundromat in Nha Trang, Quy Nhon, Cam Ranh and other places, earning $1.7 million in four years. Hyundai Collective received the Mekong Vinh Long Port Dredging Project and the Cam Ranh Construction Project, especially the latter, which made it $17.83 million over 4 years.
Bloodshed for development, the Koreans did it.
But is it really worth it? At that time, most Koreans gritted their teeth in tears and said "it was worth it", but Park Chung-hee's historical notoriety also added a touch.
In 1992, Jeong Hisohoyo, a South Korean student who came to Vietnam to study, spent three years visiting villages bombed by the Vietnam War. She found that the Rok army had created a serious humanitarian disaster, killing more than 8,000 civilians, including killing pregnant women, burning villages, assassinating babies and raping women, including the Taiping Village Massacre, the Fengyi Massacre, and the Hemei Massacre.
In 1998, then-South Korean President Kim Dae-jung visited Hanoi to apologize for the crimes committed by the Rok military and pledge to support Vietnam's future construction. But South Korean presidents Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo, who had personally participated in the Vietnam War, pretended to be dead and didn't even let go. Ms. Park criticized Kim's apology as ignorance of history, but when she became president in 2013, she visited Ho Chi Minh's cemetery and bowed with flowers.
History is sometimes cruel and sometimes ironic, who would have thought that today South Korea and Vietnam have abandoned their past grievances and become the most important trading partners, in 2017 South Korea even surpassed China to become Vietnam's largest trade deficit country, Samsung also moved most of its factories to Vietnam.
One blood for development, one tear for factory.
In the 1960s and 1970s, South Korea was a small and poor country, and the infinite oppression of its own people was his only way out, except for the young people who were sent to Germany, the Middle East and Vietnam, domestic labor was also squeezed dry.
On November 13, 1970, a small-scale worker protest broke out in the Textile Industrial Park of Hepyeong market on the outskirts of Seoul, with more than a dozen young people chanting slogans and demanding that the government and industrial park managers improve the working environment for workers. But as soon as they got together, the police and security guards rushed in, beat them, and expelled them.
This small team, composed of more than a dozen tailors in the park, is organized by a 22-year-old young quan Tai Yi, also a tailor, a doll, looking like a teenage high school student.
Jeon Tae-yi was born on August 26, 1948 in Daegu, South Korea, the father is a seamstress, originally made a living by making student uniforms, but because of political turmoil and business failure, he owed a bunch of debts, borrowed alcohol all day long to dispel his sorrows, and beat his children's wives. Quan Taiyi, who was less than 13 years old, took on the burden of the family, first selling tripods in his hometown, leaving his grumpy father at the age of 16 and taking his mother to seoul's peace market to work as a textile worker.
Seoul has three major markets, Donghua, Unification, and Peace, where the textile factory produces 70% of South Korea's garment products, and under the Park government's "export processing oriented" policy, it is also the industrial zone that squeezes the lowest laborers.
Both men and women, working 15 hours a day is the norm, orders come, in the summer 30-40 degree environment continuous overnight overtime 3-4 overnight. In the 1970s, the female workers of Haida Bread Company went on strike to protest, and the petition read: "We work more than 12 hours a day, we know the 8-hour working system, but considering the company's situation, we are willing to work to 12 hours, but more than 12 hours, it is too difficult for us to bear." ”
In order to cope with high-intensity work, workers generally take anti-drowsiness drugs, jokingly called "timing", workers take one tablet a day the year before, but after the formation of drug resistance, taking 3 tablets a day does not work.
In order to avoid losing their jobs, workers have learned to "hold their urine" and endure beatings, abuse, and humiliation. According to the Korean Labor Administration, in the 70s and 80s, the average wage of manufacturing workers was only enough to meet 50-60% of the needs of survival, and young workers were plagued by various diseases: malnutrition, chronic digestive disease, pneumoconiosis, tuberculosis, neurasthenia, women's menstrual irregularities, gynecological inflammation and so on.
Korean female worker
But before the all-Thailand One protests, South Korean workers rarely protested en masse, let alone strike. On the one hand, because job opportunities were rare at that time, protests were easy to lose their jobs, most workers could only endure, on the other hand, like Chinese, Koreans were influenced by Confucian culture, attached great importance to family concepts, and were willing to swallow any suffering for the sake of their younger siblings and aging parents. At the time, a worker wrote in his diary: "When I was too sleepy to bear it, I thought of my father lying in a hospital bed. When my body was too tired and my hands were numb, I pursed my hands and thought of my younger siblings. But then, my eyes began to glaze over Venus. ”
Before organizing the protest, Quan Tai Yi was already a bed cutter, and for the benefit of the workers, he negotiated with the boss and reflected the problems to the officials, but it was ineffective, which led to a protest march. Police quickly subdued the protesters and seized a banner that read" that read "We are not machines."
When the protest failed, the desperate Jeon Thai Yi pulled the workers into the alley, telling them, "The situation has developed to this point, one of us must make a sacrifice", finished, threw a can of gasoline on himself, and lit a match, and the flame spread throughout the body in an instant. Before being burned to death, he also held the Labor Standards Act and shouted, "We are not machines."
The workers extinguished the flames and sent him to the hospital, but he was dying, relatives and friends could not collect 30,000 yuan for the operation, and his mother, Li Xiaoxian, pleaded with the Labor Department officials present to do a guarantee to save his son's life, but was refused. Before taking his last breath, he said to his mother, "Don't waste my life, please complete the task I didn't complete." After a moment of unconsciousness, he continued, "Mom, I... Hungry. ”
At 10:00 a.m. on November 14, 1970, Quan Tai Yi passed away.
Movie poster: Quan Tai Yi self-immolation
The self-immolation incident in Thailand caused an uproar in South Korea, and the long-squeezed workers were deeply angered. But he did not die in vain, becoming a symbol of South Korean labor, marking the beginning of the struggle for economic democratization.
Beginning with Quan Tai Yi, the female workers were the first to rebel. Including Jeon Tai Yi's mother, Li Xiaoxian, who later became a representative of the labor struggle.
In the 1970s, at the Dong-il Textile Company in Incheon, women workers protested against the movement. In order to make the female workers withdraw from the protest organization, the factory has threatened and seduced them, made all kinds of cheap tricks, and even encouraged male workers to sexually harass and intimidate timid women.
In July 1976, as women workers were on strike in the factory, a group of policemen in blue and black uniforms rushed in, and the timid girls were so frightened that they cried, and one of them suggested taking off her shirt and fighting the men naked. I saw 500-800 naked women, holding hands, singing union songs, clinging to each other.
The police and the male workers were stunned, but the shameless men eventually rushed into the crowd, grabbed the women's hair, and dragged them one by one into the police car, and 200 women lay on the ground to stop the police car from driving away. A large number of female workers were injured, and two were sent to the intensive care unit, which eventually developed into a nervous disorder.
YH Commercial Trading Company, founded in 1966, is a company specializing in the manufacture of wigs, in the 70s, the world wig market declined, the company declined, the boss reduced 4,000 employees to 1800, in March 1979 announced the closure of the factory, triggering union protests.
As the incident grew louder, religious groups and intellectuals joined in, and on August 9, 187 workers poured into the NDP building to continue the protests, supported by political parties. Two days later, more than 100 explosion-proof police smashed glass windows, knocked down furniture and entered the building to arrest people, including many members of the New Democratic Party and kim Young-sam, the party's president and south Korea's future first "literati president."
This incident linked the workers' movement to party politics for the first time. Roh Moo-hyun, who later sympathized with low-level workers who specialized in labor dispute lawsuits, entered politics under kim Yong-sam's promotion, and Roh Moo-hyun's predecessor Kim Dae-jung, as well as Roh Moo-hyun's young fan Moon Jae-in, are considered to be the spokesmen of the bottom and the rebels of the military and government, and constitute the most important main line in South Korea's modern history: resistance and democracy. This main line formed the ultimate confrontation with the military-political line formed by Syngman Rhee, Park Chung-hee, and his two successors, Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo.
Presidents
inclined
Syngman Rhee
Military
Yin Shushan
transition
Park Chung-hee
Choi Gyu-ha
Quan Dou Huan
Lu Taiyu
Kim Yong-san
democracy
Kim Dae-jung
Roh Moo-hyun
Lee
zaibatsu
Park
Moon Jae-in
South Korea's past presidents tend to lean in
The YH business incident is not the first time the two camps have met, and Kim Dae-jung and Park Chung-hee have fought many times before. Park Chung-hee sent people to assassinate and kidnap him, but this man was killed, and several times he was in danger, but he managed to escape. In 1971, Kim Dae-jung ran for the presidency and won 5.4 million votes, nearly bringing down Park Chung-hee.
So in addition to looking around for money, Park also has to wrestle with these democrats. This is an inevitable problem encountered by using military and political orders to drive the people at the bottom to develop the economy. In 1970, Park Chung-hee called Kim Yong-sam to the Blue House, and the two had a secret meeting, and Park told him: "Brother, let's not make trouble, it's not that I don't want to give up power, but once I let go, the country is bound to be in chaos."
In addition to the occasional political connection, the YH business incident also had another unintended consequence: it split a rift within the monolithic Park government and directly led to the death of Park Chung-hee.
Deadly meal
Many small incidents that occur occasionally in history can often have unintended and significant consequences.
Many years ago, the assassin Moon Se-kwang accidentally killed Lu Young-so, there was a little girl, her life was completely disrupted, and experienced a serious mental crisis, this is the 22-year-old Park Geun-hye.
At that time, she was studying in France, and when she learned that her mother had been shot, she rushed back to China. Park Chung-hee did not continue the string, but let the daughter of the young young Ai replace her mother and carry out the duties of "first lady".
What this means for a 22-year-old girl who has just lost her mother is difficult for ordinary people to imagine. She said that when she sorted out her mother's belongings, her heart was as painful as a knife. In the middle of the night, she often remembered the words that her mother hung on her lips: "If you can unload the burden on your shoulders, even if you live in a small house, the family can live happily and harmoniously." ”
Years later, Park Geun-hye published her autobiography, Chinese titled "Despair Exercises Me." Later, she also became president, but soon suffered impeachment, removal, and imprisonment because of "witches interfering in politics". People look back at the growth history of the female president and find that it was at the time when her mother was assassinated, and Choi Soon-min, the father of Choi Soon-sil, the protagonist of "Witch Gang Government Gate", took advantage of the void to enter her fearful spiritual world.
In this sense, the aftermath of The Moon Se-kwang assassination has shaken the political situation in South Korea today, which is not an exaggeration at all.
Similar to this incident, another accidental event with major historical consequences is the YH business event we just talked about. Unfortunately, the consequences of this time are also related to Park Geun-hye, and it is like a sharp knife into her heart.
After Lu Young-suk's death, Park Chung-hee, a straight man of steel, looked OK on the surface, but his mentality also changed. He used to like to eat sashimi, smoke American "ship" brand cigarettes, and drink French "emperor" brand whiskey. Lu Yingxiu understood these hobbies very well, and was thoughtful and considerate, even accompanying him to drink heavily in the middle of the night. But after the death of his wife, these things disappeared at once, and life became boring and full of longing.
Park Geun-hye's fearful heart is drilled by Choi Tae-min, and Park Chung-hee is replaced by a personal guard named Cha Ji-cheol, who takes the place of Lu Young-so in daily life.
After the outbreak of the YH business incident, it triggered a series of chain reactions, and student riots for democracy broke out in Busan, Seoul, Daegu, Masan and other places.
This made Park Chung-hee furious and dismissed Kim Young-sam as president of the New Democratic Party on the grounds of electoral fraud. But this caused dissatisfaction in the United States, which demanded that he soften the measures of governance, and US President Carter visited South Korea, not to see President Park first, but to chat with Kim Yong-san for an hour.
But Park, the man, has never taken the threat set, but has become more and more tough, not only warning the United States not to interfere in South Korea's internal affairs, but even saying: "If there is another situation similar to Busan, I will personally order the firing of artillery." ”
Army Chief of Staff Jeong Seung-ho, Intelligence Minister Kim Jae-gyu, and Secretary General Kim Gye-won are the heads of Park's three most important organs of power, but like the United States, they also exhortEd Park to change his previous way of doing things, advocating a moderate solution to the current predicament, and even asking him to abolish the "Restoration Constitution" with a serious authoritarian color.
Only Cha Ji-che, the head of the Rainbow Fart Maker and the Guard Room, supports his tough attitude in order to curry favor with Park Chung-hee. Che this man graduated from elementary school, has no culture, five big and three rough, as a guard, his responsibility is to protect the safety of the presidential palace, and it is reasonable to say that he has no right to interfere in state affairs. However, after Lu Yingxiu's death, he took the place of Lu and took care of Park's private life, so he slowly gained the right to speak, so that even figures such as Jeong Seung-ho, Kim Jae-gyu, and Kim Gyu-won had to look at his face.
Park Chung-hee's importance and favor for Cha Ji-cheol, as well as Cha Ji-cheol's own face as a courtier and thief, made several subordinates increasingly angry. Kim Jae-gyu, in particular, because he is in charge of analyzing the intelligence of the situation, is easily reprimanded by Park Chung-hee in person.
One day, Kim Jae-gyu suggested that the current policy should be completely changed. Unexpectedly, Park stretched his face after listening to it, not only severely refuting his suggestions, but angrily scolding him and the intelligence department for being weak and incompetent. Che Zhiche, who was on the side, said: "Just because your intelligence department has not taken effective measures and has not taken tough measures to suppress the YH company incident, there will be a bad thing in the future." ”
Feeling humiliated, Kim Jae-gyu no longer wanted to endure it, secretly killing the opportunity, and later vaguely heard that he was included in the cabinet reorganization list and would soon be removed, and he was even more disheartened. Responsible for such a big matter as the cabinet reorganization, it is said that President Park handed over to Cha Ji-che, a villain.
On October 26, at about 7:00 p.m., 500 meters from the Blue House, kim jae-gyu, Kim Gyu-won, Cha Ji-cheol, Park Chung-hee, as well as singer Shen Shoufeng and junior shin Jae-shun, called by Cha Ji-cheol, gathered for dinner.
During the banquet, after being left behind by Che Zhiche again, an angry Kim Jae-gyu pulled out a pistol from his waist and shouted loudly: "Your Excellency, with such a wine bag and rice bag, can you do politics well?" ”
He then fired two shots in a row, the first hitting Cha Ji-cheol's right wrist and the second piercing Park Chung-hee's chest, bleeding profusely.
After Kim Jae-gyu's arrest, the incident was reconstructed
Cha Ji Che fled to the toilet, and Kim Jae-gyu chased after him. The dying Park Chung-hee lay in a pool of blood, and the frightened singer Shen Shoufeng, who was sitting next to the president, was confused, she lifted the president into her arms, and asked with tears: "Is your excellency okay?" Park replied, "It doesn't matter to me." ”
Subsequently, Che Zhiche was shot and died. Kim Jae-gyu, who had already killed the red-eyed, returned to find the president lying in a pool of blood, and fired another shot at him in the head, resulting in his life. The two frightened young ladies fled.
It is a very fortunate thing for a country to have a strong force for good, pushing the country forward, and at the same time having the power of resistance to hedge. Unfortunately, in South Korea, the balance between the two forces has never been found, but has been trapped in the quagmire of hatred, and people with different political ideas cannot peacefully understand and fight to the death, forming the famous "Blue House Curse". Park Chung-hee's death is just one of the victims of this quagmire of hatred.
When the military and political president Chun Doo-hwan was found to be corrupt, the husband and wife ran to the temple to take refuge in seclusion and asked the people for forgiveness, and his good friend, President Lu Tae-woo, who was also a soldier, also helped to play the round: "Let the sins of the former president pass." But the political enemies did not spare, and when Lu Tae-woo stepped down, the successor Kim Young-sam government beat them both up and sent them to the trial table together. At that time, on the streets of Seoul, citizens put up signs: Gather people who are willing to throw stones at Lu Tae-woo.
After the trial of Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo, the South Koreans truly ended military politics. However, after the collapse of the military and government, the chaebols supported and ripened by it became a new force to squeeze the people, and they were more difficult than the military and government.
In the military era, chaebols were protected by the government and trade unions were considered forbidden. Zheng Yongzhou, the founder of Hyundai, is known for being anti-union, and Samsung's Lee Byung-cheol said: "Until the loess covers my eyes, otherwise the establishment of a union will never be allowed." ”
The chaebols of the time managed the workers like prisoners. The workers of the Modern Group come to the door of the company every day, the doorman with the ruler checks the hairstyle and hair length first, the hairstyle is not qualified to let in, the hair is too long to be cut off on the spot, after entering the company, it is mandatory to do morning exercises, regular quantitative meals, eat more than pigs than donkeys, and be searched after work out of the factory.
The climax of hyundai group workers' strike protests came in the 1980s during the Lu Taiyu government. Roh Tae-woo is softer than Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan, but Hyundai Asks for help and sends police to suppress workers.
The junta's bias in favor of the chaebols is quite obvious. In 1962, the government allocated nearly 2,000 acres of land for POSCO (then state-owned), but more than 80 families sued the project side for dissatisfaction with the relocation. Seeing that the project was blocked, the Park government resolutely took compulsory measures, dispatched security guards and police, dug ancestral graves, demolished houses, showed no mercy, and gave special rewards to workers who dared to move the graves of villagers.
When POJM set up the project, foreign banks were worried about South Korea's repayment ability, refused to lend, and saw that the project was going to be yellow, and the founder Park Tae-joon went straight to the Blue House and complained to Park Chung-hee, demanding that the remaining Japanese war reparations of 100 million US dollars be embezzled. These reparations were exchanged for death and disability by the ancestors, and were originally intended to be used in agriculture, forestry, fishing and other projects. Park Tae-joon cried, "If I don't fight for this money, Pohang is likely to be reduced to wilderness forever." Park Chung-hee felt hairy in his heart, but after thinking for a moment, he made a decision on the spot: "Freeze this fund and allocate it to Pohang." ”
In 1969, Samsung responded to the government's "cultivation of export industries" and prepared to establish Samsung Electronics, but other domestic electronic companies opposed, believing that Samsung's participation would dominate the domestic market (guessed correctly), and the Electronics Industry Association also opposed the establishment of Samsung Electronics with domestic oversupply. Lee Byung-chol has been training Park Chung-hee since he was trained, and Park often consulted him for policy advice, and in 1965, with Park's encouragement, he established Korean fertilizer. This time, faced with opposition from his peers, he personally found Park Chung-hee himself, without suspense, and quickly got government permission.
The government tilts individual chaebols, resulting in the fact that it is difficult to collect water and the tail is not big. Big chaebols get loans from banks at very low interest rates, if inflation is considered, there is time to borrow money, resulting in chaebols disregarding market laws and production capacity, desperately expanding production capacity and business scope, not afraid of debt, they are afraid of debt, they are less debt, more than the best to die.
As a result, the South Korean economy experienced serious duplication of investment and excessive debt, and before the 1997 financial crisis, the average debt ratio of chaebol companies was as high as 300-500%. In 1997, South Korea's economy collapsed, Hanbao, Sammet Steel, Jinlu, Kia and other large consortiums collapsed, and the government signed a lending agreement with the International Monetary Fund, which was not repaid until 2001.
After the literati president Kim Young-sam came to power, he carried out market liberalization reforms, and in 1998 Kim Dae-jung came to power, he also introduced the so-called "5 + 3" principle to improve the transparency of enterprise operations and prevent illegal inheritance and gifts, but these reforms cannot solve the problem from the root. The reason is that the chaebols have penetrated into the fabric of South Korea's economy, and the revenue of the top 30 chaebols accounts for 75% of South Korea's annual GDP.
Taking today's Samsung as an example, its market value accounts for 22% of South Korea's GDP, going deep into all aspects of Koreans from birth to death, and lee myung-bak, the "migrant boy" of the chaebol, even if he becomes president and meets Samsung President Lee Kin Hee, he does not consciously bow deeply. The self-proclaimed enlightened Roh Moo-hyun was no different, and in order to remedy a bad credit card company, he had to violate the principles of the free market and implement semi-compulsory fund-raising for financial enterprises on the grounds of "preventing systemic risks".
Today's South Korea, per capita income exceeds $30,000, ordinary people are very hard, the economy has grown, job opportunities and wages have not risen, because the chaebols have hoarded most of the company's income and are unwilling to distribute. In 2017, the cumulative revenue and profit of chaebol companies increased by 54.8%, but the unemployment rate rose to 9.9%.
Workers have been defending their rights since the 1970s, but their rights and interests have not been protected, formally hired employees will go on strike, chaebols will be hired as temporary workers and hourly workers, paying only 56% of wages, young people work hard to go to college, but 37% of them can only work as temporary workers after leaving school.
The chaebols that can't be left behind limit South Korea's creativity, and any innovative product will be acquired by a large group as soon as it appears, so that there have been almost no entrepreneurial heroes in South Korea in the past 20 years, and micro-enterprises have lost the soil for rise.
In recent years, the heirs of the chaebols have caused various corruption and life scandals, and many South Koreans have suffered from "Park Chung-hee nostalgia" and fantasized about the emergence of strong people to save the situation again. But where do they know that Park is the beginning of their happy life today, and it is also the creator of today's dilemma.
Epilogue: The Future of South Korea
Literati presidents Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung, and later Roh Moo-hyun, were all peacefully handed over, a honeymoon period in South Korea's political history when hatred was rarely forgotten. But Lee Myung-bak came to power and forced Roh Moo-hyun to die, plunging South Korean politics into a quagmire of hatred again.
At that time, Roh Moo-hyun had already gone to the wilderness and lived a carefree peasant life in the countryside, but because the people had any grievances, they were always willing to come to him, the former civilian president, so his popularity did not drop after he left the wilderness.
Lee Myung-bak, who claimed to be the "spokesman" of the chaebol, was very upset and mistakenly thought that he had any political goals, so he exposed the trouble of his wife and son accepting bribes, and used the procuratorial system to harass and threaten by any means, making Roh Moo-hyun miserable.
Roh Moo-hyun is already known as a low-level spokesman, morality is the foundation of his life, can't stand the humiliation of public opinion provoked by Lee Myung-bak, and doesn't want to commit suicide by jumping off a cliff because he is involved with his family.
Roh Moo-hyun's young fan Moon Jae-in, witnessing the causes and consequences of this tragic and ugly drama, hid his grief and indignation, and sent Lee Myung-bak to prison as soon as he took the stage.
In this historical context, Moon jae-in is actually the "Blue House Curse" – the latest link in South Korea's hate politics quagmire.
Born in 1953, Moon Jae-in, whose parents were refugees and came from the bottom, worked with Roh Moo-hyun and worked as a human rights lawyer for many years, specializing in defending the rights of low-level workers. If it were not for the invitation of his eldest brother Roh Moo-hyun, he would not have been interested in participating in the work of the Blue House.
When he and Roh Moo-hyun were young, they mainly did one thing, that is, to resist dictatorship, to resist the junta's interference in the judiciary, and to promote modern democracy and the rule of law. It was a period of burning passion that belonged to both of them, although life was turbulent, occasionally caught in prison for a few days, and the money was not much, but it was full of the dizziness of justice and the satisfaction of being needed by the people at the bottom.
Young Moon Jae-in
But after Kim Young-sam and Kim Dae-jung came to power, South Korean politics became democratic, and the traditional resistance struggle has actually withered away, and there is no need to even exist, because the military government has been declared over and there is nothing to resist.
So Moon Jae-in assisted Roh Moo-hyun as president, it was his most painful day, plagued by a deep sense of boredom, the real political life was not as exciting as the resistance struggle he was when he was young, and the day after day was all kinds of trivialities. During his reign, he offered his resignation three times, but only to hinder Roh Moo-hyun's face and obediently returned.
It is hard to imagine why a man who is extremely tired of the political life of the Blue House would roar and run for president.
Many people interpret his motives as revenge, but more accurately, in fact, in his autobiography has long been made clear: he has been rebelling against the military and government all his life, and it was Lee Myung-bak who forced Roh Moo-hyun to die, which made him realize that South Korea's democratic legal system is not really a democratic legal system, especially the so-called independent procuratorial system, which can easily become a tool of personal vendetta. This means that he also needs to continue to fight for the ideals of his youth.
So, what kind of force is it that distorts the hard-won democratic rule of law?
Because Lee Myung-bak is regarded as the "watchdog" of the chaebol, many people believe that it is the chaebol behind the distortion of democracy and the legal system. Therefore, Moon Jae-in's rise to power is also considered to be a "you die and I live" contest with the chaebols. But this kind of facial imagination is only the obscenity of public opinion.
Moon Jae-in is deep in the political and economic center of South Korea, and he certainly understands better than anyone that with his own efforts, there is no hope of reversing the chaebol system in South Korea. All he could do was remedial relief. To put it simply, he cannot shake the fundamental interests of the chaebols, but can only attack the spokesmen and watchdogs of the chaebols.
Therefore, when the scandal of Li Shengli was exposed, the deeper and more sinister black hole behind it, he could only look out outside.
In fact, just dealing with the watchdogs, he was already half tired and half dead.
Ignoring controversy in September, he dismissed the newly promoted justice minister Cao Guo, who was dismissed after his daughter ,35 days into office, considered the president's "confidant" and tasked with reforming the prosecutorial system that forced Mr. Roh to die.
As a result, with the fall of Cao Guo, there was a big parade in Seoul, people not only shouted Cao Guo's bastards, but also shouted "Moon Jae-in stepped down", and the president's approval rating fell from a peak of 80% to the current 40%. Even more frightening is that Moon Jae-in's daughter, who is said to have been sent abroad, has also been targeted by political enemies and is being investigated for alleged corruption.
Cao Guo bowed his head
The repeated "Blue House Curse" seems to be on the way to come again.
In the 1970s, the youthful Moon Jae-in was sent to prison by the Park Chung-hee government, and he and Roh Moo-hyun worked for years to finally overthrow the military government of Representative Park. But it cannot be denied that he, roh Moo-hyun, is also a generation that grew up on the basis of the material created by the blood and sweat of Park's predecessors.
Hatred only understands black and white, but history is never gray. Park Chung-hee and his ripe chaebols cannot be summed up in simple bad guys and good guys. Contributions and sins, cold-bloodedness and warmth, if we cannot understand the complexity of human nature and the depth of history, the quagmire of hatred will not dry up one day.
END
Key References:
Sun Luogui[Han], "Real Estate Class Society". Lu Heng, trans. Yilin Publishing House
Behegen[j]. "Korean Workers". Liang Guangyan, trans. Social Sciences Literature Press
Zhang Xiacheng[Han], "Korean-style Capitalism". Xing Liju, Xu Meng, trans. CITIC Publishing Group
Cho Ka-ji [Han], "The Biography of President Park Chung-hee". Li Shengquan, trans. Jiangsu Literature and Art Publishing House
Moon Jae-in [Han], Destiny: Moon Jae-in's Autobiography. Wang Meng, trans. Jiangsu Phoenix Literature and Art Publishing House
Kim Dae-jung [Han], "Kim Dae-jung's Autobiography: My Life My Way". Huang Yujin,Jiang Li,trans. Foreign Language Publishing House
Park Geun-hye [Han], "Park Geun-hye's Autobiography: Despair Tempers Me". Lan Qingrong et al., translation. Yilin Publishing House
Kang Canxiong [Beauty], "Crony Capitalism". LI Wei,SHI Yan,WANG Yin,trans. Shanghai People's Publishing House
SUN Minghua,YU Guiling. The Disillusionment of the Myth of the Korean Chaebol. Tianjin People's Publishing House
HE Mu. "The Combined Biography of the Four Chaebols of Korea". Central Party School Press
LIU Hongzhong. "A Study on the Chaebol System in South Korea's Catch-up Economy". Guangming Daily Press
LI Baoping. "Literati President Kim Young-sam". China Radio and Television Publishing House
XIA Haiqiang. "Who's Trying the President". Oriental Publishing House