Word: parkes
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Boom. The prime force in Korea's resurgence is President Park, the taciturn ex-army general who seized power in a 1961 coup, then went public two years later and held elections, squeezing into office by 156,000 votes, out of 11 million cast (in a population of 27 million). Going to work on the country's feeble economy, Park devalued Korea's inflated currency, lured new investment with tax concessions and low-wage labor and started a five-year development plan. To help pay the bills, Park even ignored virulent anti-Japanese feelings in Korea...
...Park's government embarks on its second five-year plan, Korea is pulsing with activity. The war demands of Viet Nam have created a huge export market for uniforms, boots, rubber goods, plywood, construction materials and galvanized sheet plate. This, along with other expanding Asian civilian markets, helped to lift the country's commodity exports last year to a record $255 million. To reduce imports, South Korea's first oil refinery, built two years ago at Ulsan, is being expanded, and another $50 million refinery is going up at Yosu, providing the base for a $100 million...
Price of a Patriot. Park permits the press and politicians to say almost anything they choose. Last September he even refused to intervene after an opposition member of the National Assembly, carried away by an emotional debate, poured a can of excrement over the heads of Park's Cabinet ministers. But Park's tolerance does have its limits. His government maintains a midnight-to-4-a.m. curfew over most of the country, and has enacted a tough anti-Communist law that gives the security police and the courts wide leeway in dealing with real or imagined subversives...
...guard against frequent subversion attempts from the North, Park maintains a 600,000-man army along the 151-mile, tense demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas; they are backed up by 50,000 U.S. troops. Park has also sealed the border area with a high wooden fence and hundreds of "K.P.s," or killing posts, manned by ten-man teams of sharpshooters. Not even mail is permitted to pass. To catch agents who do slip through, bounty signs are scattered all over the country, offering 200,000 won (about $700) for the capture of enemy agents. "Become a patriot and become...
...Park admits that there are conspicuous problems, including corruption at lower levels of government. Unemployment amounts to 7% of the country's labor force, and another 25% are underemployed. Some working women earn as little as 50? a day, and per-capita income last year was only $123, compared with Taiwan's $225 and Japan's $740, the two highest in Asia. But starvation has been almost completely eliminated, the literacy rate has been lifted to 90%, and the traditional spring question-enough rice or revolution?-is a bitter memory of the past...