Park Chung-hee

Shot on 26 October 1979 at a dinner in the Korean Central Intelligence Agency safehouse by the KCIA director Kim Jae-gyu; the eighteen-year ruler of South Korea was killed by his own intelligence chief.

Overview

Park, the general who seized power in 1961 and drove the industrial miracle while strangling dissent under the Yushin constitution, grew harsher through the 1979 crisis of the Pusan and Masan uprisings. At a private dinner with the KCIA director Kim Jae-gyu and bodyguards, an argument over repression ended when Kim shot Park in the chest and, after a wounded scuffle, in the head; the chief bodyguard was killed as well. Kim was executed within months, his motive debated between outrage at the repression, bureaucratic rivalry, and improvised fury. General Chun Doo-hwan coup of December 12 ended any transition, and the Gwangju massacre followed. Park daughter Park Geun-hye became president in 2013 and was impeached in 2017; the assassination remains the hinge of modern Korean political history.