“How did an impoverished country that was fully reliant on US military support until the 1970s modernize its defense and commercial industries in less than a decade?” This question propels the story that Peter Banseok Kwon (Assistant Professor of Korean Studies at the University at Albany, SUNY) traces in his new book, Cornerstone of the Nation: The Defense Industry and the Building of Modern Korea under Park Chung Hee (Harvard University Asia Center, 2024). Kwon received a Publication Support Grant from the 2022 AAS “Striving for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Asian Studies” funding program, made possible by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Cornerstone of the Nation begins in the late 1960s, when South Korea faced increasing security tensions with North Korea and the prospect of reduced military support from the United States. Determined to protect his country, President Park Chung Hee steered South Korea onto a path of self-reliance by promoting an aggressive policy of militarization, focused on independent arms development. Park and high-level officials in his administration worked with private-sector companies to build a defense industry through government contracts, funding for research and development, and promoting a culture of scientific nationalism. Beyond the private sector, the Park government also trained and engaged a new generation of scientists, engineers, and skilled workers (such as craftspeople and technicians), and mobilized business entrepreneurs and tax-paying citizens, rallying them toward an all-out national effort for domestic arms production.
Within only a decade, these initiatives had resulted in both a vibrant defense industry and a thriving commercial economy, thanks to overall improvements in technology and production quality filtering down from the defense divisions of private firms. The enhancement of skills among Korean industrial workers, combined with the convergence of the state and society in fully mobilizing for defense industrialization, fundamentally transformed the nation’s infrastructure, human resources, and the political and socio-economic landscapes.
Park Chung Hee has commonly been regarded as achieving economic growth thanks to a top-down authoritarian developmental approach. In Cornerstone of the Nation, however, Kwon argues that “The military modernization that led to South Korea’s rapid economic growth was produced by an inharmonious yet complementary relationship between state-initiated militarization and civilian participation.” Park, in other words, was an authoritarian who understood the importance of getting buy-in for his projects from both business leaders and the general public, and perhaps nothing exemplifies this more than the story of South Korean militarization in the 1970s. Through careful cultivation of the citizenry and conglomerates (chaebol), Park Chung Hee and his officials saw their vision of “rich nation, strong army” come to life.
After reading an advance copy of Cornerstone of the Nation, I emailed Peter Kwon to learn more about the book and his research.
Maura Elizabeth Cunningham (MEC): Peter, thanks for the opportunity to read Cornerstone of the Nation—I learned so much and really appreciated your ability to create a clear narrative from a fairly tangled history (and one peppered with innumerable acronyms!). I’d like to start our conversation with a question about the new sources you’ve drawn on for the book, which have recently been declassified. How did you learn about these sources, and how did having access to them shape the direction of your project?
Peter Banseok Kwon (PBK): Thank you, Maura, for your kind introduction and for posing such an important question. It’s my pleasure to participate in this interview, and I appreciate the opportunity to introduce my book to the AAS members. Your feedback on the clarity of my book’s narrative is also deeply appreciated. Recognizing the relevance of the topic for anyone interested in Korea and its development, my publishing team and I dedicated a lot of effort to ensuring the book’s accessibility to a broad audience, from lay readers to experts and scholars across diverse fields. Therefore, I am grateful for your recognition of our effort in this regard!
The discovery of newly declassified sources was a turning point in my academic journey. As a doctoral student conducting field research in South Korea in 2012, I visited the Presidential Archives, then located in the city of Seongnam, to explore a different topic related to the Park Chung Hee era. It was there that I stumbled upon recently declassified documents related to the Yulgok Operation, a clandestine weapons program initiated by President Park Chung Hee in 1974, in response to declining US military aid. This discovery ignited a deep interest in the secretive origins of South Korea’s defense industry and completely shifted my research focus.
I quickly realized that uncovering additional primary sources would be challenging due to the extensive secrecy surrounding military operations and decisions from that era. Despite increasing accessibility to Korean government archives, many military records from the 1970s are still classified. In addition, the culture of secrecy under Park’s military programs, influenced by North Korean threats and US surveillance (which banned South Korea’s development of nuclear arms under Yulgok), led Park’s policymakers to often rely on oral decision-making for Yulgok’s weapon programs. We must also remember that the two Koreas are technically at war, which further hinders the release of military records. The lack of documentary evidence made piecing together a coherent historical account quite daunting. This environment, compounded by the highly polarizing topic of the military and Park Chung Hee himself in South Korea, along with the defense industry’s poor public image due to past financial scandals, has presented major obstacles to researchers conducting academic inquiry on this topic.
However, these challenges only deepened my curiosity and determination to explore this hidden history. I decided to take a punt and began extensive travels to find and gather any and all data related to the defense industry. This involved visits to various national archives, libraries, corporate archives, and research institutions across Korea, as well as building a network of contacts in the government, military, and business sectors to access exclusive information not available through archival evidence alone. I think I spent around three years gathering the necessary data for my doctoral dissertation, which I completed in 2016. Afterwards, I spent additional years collecting more data and conducting interviews with former scientists and skilled workers who had worked in the defense industry in the 1970s.
The new sources I found allowed for a fresh historical examination of the emergence of South Korea’s military-industrial complex during the Park era, elucidating the dynamics between the state, defense corporations, industrial workers, and ordinary citizens. Traditionally, studies on Korea’s military modernization have focused on more readily available US foreign policy documents related to US military aid for Park’s militarization efforts. While these sources are important (and I used them in my book as well), my access to internal sources illuminated not only the independent policies of the Park government and its innovative adaptations of foreign aid for military modernization but also the significant, though often overlooked, contributions of civilian and private sector efforts to the development of the defense industry. Through archival research and interviews for oral histories, I sought to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the defense industry’s impact on Korea’s modernization trajectory under Park, as well as the collaborative and domestic efforts behind its growth.
Conducting oral histories became a very valuable component of my research. My interviews with Park’s former policymakers, plant managers, defense factory workers, corporate engineers, and scientists from the Agency for Defense Development (ADD), among others, provided firsthand accounts of the policies and processes that shaped Korea’s distinct militarized industrialization, which brought to light the human element behind the policies. Through these interviews and the diverse new sources, my book aims to reveal the intricate interplay of internal policies, military forces, economic needs, ideologies, bottom-up human agency (by various non-state actors), and external Cold War dynamics that influenced the rise of the Korean defense industry. In doing so, it goes beyond the figure of Park Chung Hee, ultimately highlighting the collective effort of a nation committed to self-reliance. I hope readers will see this.
MEC: There’s a classic economics model that posits governments can spend on guns or butter—that is, finite resources limit what can be expended on defense versus social programs. But your picture of complementary militarization and economic growth shows that in this case, spending on guns yielded butter for everyone. How did this manage to come about in Park Chung Hee’s Korea? Do you see such a result as an intended goal of the militarization policy, or an unexpected consequence?
PBK: Maura, your question insightfully touches upon a central aspect of South Korea’s economic development under Park Chung Hee, which I detail in my book as “militarized industrialization.” The classic “guns versus butter” model typically suggests a trade-off between defense spending and social or economic welfare. Yet, under Park’s government, South Korea presents a compelling example of how militarization and capitalist economic growth can, under certain conditions, synergistically reinforce each other.
This synergy was indeed an intended outcome of Park’s militarization policies from the beginning. Driven by escalating threats from North Korea and the US’s plans to withdraw its troops in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Park was compelled to pursue greater military self-sufficiency. He recognized the need for South Korea to develop its economic capabilities to support military strength, encapsulated in his slogan “rich nation, strong army”—a concept borrowed from Meiji Japan that symbolized the intertwined goals of economic prosperity and military might.
However, the extent and pace at which the defense sector’s growth spurred widespread economic development likely exceeded even Park’s initial expectations. Up to the early 1970s, South Korea lacked the capability to produce even basic military supplies, such as guns and ammunition, relying almost entirely on US military aid. Its transformation into a nation that could leverage military technology for economic gain by the late 1970s is a testament to the effectiveness of Park’s strategy.
Indeed, the synchronization of militarization and economic development resulted from a meticulously planned and deliberate strategy by Park and his technocrats in the Blue House (South Korea’s equivalent of the White House). A prime example, as discussed in Chapter 3 of my book, is the 1973 Heavy and Chemical Industrialization Policy (HCI Policy), which aimed to enable mass arms production while simultaneously driving economic advancement, through the development of six core industries. This dual-purpose strategy not only built the domestic military-industrial complex based on civilian manufacturers but also laid the groundwork for national economic development. Furthermore, the resulting advancements in technology, manufacturing processes, and skilled labor, necessitated by the defense industry’s growth, benefited the civilian sector, creating a synergy that propelled Korea’s rapid industrialization and technological advancement. This development was closely guided by the Blue House, where Park’s direct leadership and the empowerment of his technocrats played a key role.
As I note in my book, it’s also crucial to acknowledge the drawbacks of this development strategy, including the human and social costs. The defense industry, reflective of Park’s militaristic leadership style and development philosophy, was a project that “most simply and directly displayed President Park Chung Hee’s ideology and philosophy for national development,” as stated by Kim Kwangmo, Park’s former secretary. Yet, the implementation of this militarized industrialization model, which was highly undemocratic and exclusive, posed serious challenges that hindered political progress in South Korea—and led to rising protests against draconian measures prioritizing expedited production, as well as exacerbating social and economic disparities.
At the same time, the production of advanced arms by civilian enterprises in the HCI sectors facilitated the transfer of military technology and manufacturing techniques to commercial production, which boosted South Korea’s exports and economic growth. The in-depth examination in my book of this integration of the defense industry with broader industrial/economic policies under the controversial Yusin system represents, I believe, a critical contribution of my work, shedding light on a topic often overlooked due to the politicization of the Park era.
Finally, I think it’s important to note that South Korea’s rise as one of the world’s leading arms exporters today, popularly coined as “K-Defense” (K-Bangsan), along with its status as an economic and technological powerhouse, reflects the lasting impact of Park’s defense industrialization efforts fifty years ago.
MEC: The relationship between South Korea and the United States was really interesting, because although the U.S. wanted to reduce its military commitment in the country, it also seemed wary of Park’s decision to pursue his self-reliant national defense ideology. In your view, how did South Korean militarization and economic growth affect U.S.-Korean relations during the 1970s and later?
PBK: The relationship between South Korea and the United States during the 1970s underwent some fundamental changes that transcended simple patron-client relations, producing unprecedented tensions and challenges as well as establishing the foundation for a more reciprocal and multifaceted partnership. The United States, amidst an evolving foreign policy aimed at reducing its military commitments abroad, including in Vietnam, was reassessing its military involvement in the Korean peninsula. The US administrations supported South Korea’s need to defend itself but were wary of military developments that might contribute to regional instability or trigger an arms race, particularly opposing Park’s efforts to develop nuclear capabilities. South Korea’s aggressive pursuit of banned weapon technologies, especially for a nuclear missile program under Yulgok, eventually led to a series of rifts between the US and South Korea from the mid to late 1970s.
Park’s initiative for an indigenous defense capability, exemplified by the Yulgok Operation and the HCI Policy, signified South Korea’s determination to carve its own path toward military modernization. These developments involved mobilizing the entire nation, leveraging civilian capabilities and their resources, including revenues, taxes, and even defense donations. It illustrated a deep integration of state and society in the pursuit of security independence, embodying South Korea’s agency in forging its own modernization and empowerment beyond reliance on US aid.
Adapting US technical support to South Korea’s industrial environment revealed some practical difficulties in this relationship as well. The transfers of Technical Data Packages (TDPs) from the US often encountered challenges, as they required substantial adaptation by Korean engineers and the Agency for Defense Development (ADD) to “Koreanize” (or indigenize) these TDPs for local use. As Chapter 4 of my book demonstrates, this process of adaptation/indigenization highlighted the innovative spirit and relentless determination of Korean scientists and engineers, further complicating and enriching the narrative of US-ROK relations during this transformative period.
This period also saw a deepening of economic ties between the two countries, as South Korea’s militarized industrialization under the HCI Policy fueled increases in commercial production, exports, and foreign investment. The United States played a critical role in this economic advancement by providing South Korea with both economic aid and access to its markets; such support enabled Korea to capitalize on its export-led industrialization strategy under the HCI Policy. This growing economic partnership helped mitigate some of the tensions stemming from Park’s militarization efforts. By the late 1970s and into the 1980s, as South Korea’s economic capabilities expanded, policymakers in Washington began to view Seoul not only as a military ally but also as a vital economic partner. Overall, this period laid the foundation for the dynamic and multifaceted alliance structure between South Korea and the United States that persists to this day.
MEC: The conventional summary of the Park Chung Hee era is “strong state, weak business,” but you find a much more dynamic relationship between the chaebol and government. How did the militarization program provide an opportunity for the chaebol to actively participate in shaping it, and, in turn, how did the program shape the chaebol?
PBK: Thank you for this question. The perception of Park Chung Hee’s era as a time of “strong state, weak business” is indeed prevalent, yet my research details a more complex relationship between the government and the chaebol (large Korean conglomerates), particularly in the context of militarized industrialization. As discussed in my book, my interviews with managers and workers from leading corporations that functioned as government contractors for arms production under Park—such as Hanwha, Kia, Daewoo, Samsung, and Hyundai—and an examination of various corporate documents, suggest a more nuanced and dynamic partnership between the government and the chaebol that diverges from the conventional narrative. This period certainly involved heavy-handed state coercion and compulsory mobilization, make no mistake, but we must also understand the collaborative efforts that provided substantial opportunities for the chaebol (and other leading corporations) to actively engage in national defense and developmental initiatives and, in turn, be shaped by these efforts. This argument builds upon the pioneering studies by scholars like Eun Mee Kim, who have highlighted the chaebol’s agency beyond what the Chalmers Johnson-inspired “developmental state” arguments have suggested.
The militarization program under Park Chung Hee was instrumental in offering the chaebol rare opportunities to enter and expand within industries critical to national arms production and, by extension, the broader economy. Initiatives like the HCI Policy required a level of industrial and technological capability that elevated the chaebol as essential contributors to South Korea’s self-reliant national defense policy. It opened unprecedented avenues for them to develop advanced technologies, expand into new sectors, and accrue significant financial and technical benefits.
The government’s concentrated investments in weapons-related R&D, infrastructure, and technical education provided the chaebol with the necessary tools and environment to grow, innovate, leverage, and profit from their involvement in the militarization program. This reciprocal relationship meant that the chaebol were not merely participants in the state’s agenda or mere cogs in its machinery, but active partners. This partnership allowed them to diversify their business products, improve technological capabilities, and enhance their quality control and competitiveness—a process that facilitated their evolution from large companies into global conglomerates. This narrative is elaborated upon in Chapter 3 of my book, which features the case study of Hanwha, one of the earlier defense contractors under Park, as well as anecdotes from other corporations in the 1970s.
MEC: I’m always interested in the other works of scholarship that have influenced and/or complement the books I’m reading. What are a few of your recommendations to go with Cornerstone of the Nation?
PBK: My work on Cornerstone of the Nation has greatly benefited from the insights and analyses provided by past scholarship. Among these influential works, Carter Eckert’s Park Chung Hee and Modern Korea stands out for its historical investigation into the origins of the Park regime’s militarism. Eckert’s examination of Park Chung Hee’s training as a colonized soldier in Japanese-occupied Manchuria during the early 1940s, and its postwar influence on the organizational principles of the Park regime’s modernization efforts in South Korea, offers vital context to the era discussed in my book. Hyung-A Kim’s Korea’s Development under Park Chung Hee offers insightful analysis into the crucial role that national security played in Park Chung Hee’s and his government’s developmental strategies for South Korea. Seungsook Moon’s Militarized Modernity and Gendered Citizenship in South Korea is also noteworthy for its exploration of militarism’s social and political impact on rigid gendered distinctions in Korean citizenry and the workforce. For those interested in comparative analysis, I found Richard Samuels’ Rich Nation, Strong Army, which focuses on postwar Japan’s dual-purpose industrialization strategy, and Evan Feigenbaum’s China’s Techno-Warriors to be enriching and insightful. Through their works, I observed striking similarities and differences in the approaches to militarized industrialization adopted by postwar Japan and China, compared to Korea under Park, which adds a rich layer of comparative insight to my analysis.
There are many works I want to mention, as the Park era represents one of the most debated and controversial periods in Korean history. Influential works by scholars such as Namhee Lee, Hwasook Nam, Hagen Koo, Paul Chang, and Ingu Hwang offer insightful analyses of the democracy movement, human rights issues, labor struggles, and the conditions of women workers. These studies illuminate the societal costs and responses to South Korea’s authoritarian policymaking under military regimes and delve into the political, social, and cultural ramifications of Park’s policies that prioritized development over social progress, providing a detailed examination of these critical issues beyond the scope of my work.Top of Form
Recent publications that examine the historical formations of powerful mobilization strategies for industrialization and modernization by Korean authoritarian states, such as Shinyoung Kwon’s Moral Authoritarianism and Yong-Chool Ha’s Late Industrialization, Tradition, and Social Change in South Korea, would also nicely complement my book chapters that discuss the “total security system” under Park Chung Hee, in my view.
The geopolitical context of US-Korea relations during this period is another crucial facet of this narrative. Historical works by Gregg Brazinsky, Mitchell Lerner, Katharine Moon, Park Taegyun, John DiMoia, Hong Sung Gul, and Ma Sang-yoon are highly informative for anyone seeking to understand the complex interplay between South Korea’s national policies and its relationship with the United States, particularly regarding the topics discussed in my book. For those interested in US-ROK arms relations, I also recommend the works by Um Jungsik and Moon Chung-in.
Sorry I named so many works (there are more I could mention, but I think I should stop here), but I believe these works, both individually and collectively, enrich the narrative explored in Cornerstone of the Nation. They not only complement (and/or challenge) the discussions within my book but also enhance the reader’s understanding of the contested history of South Korea under Park Chung Hee, encouraging a conscientious appreciation for the multifaceted nature of this story and the diverse perspectives that shape our understanding of Korea’s past.
MEC: And last but not least, are you working on a new project now, or still wrapping up Cornerstone of the Nation? Are there other interests, hobbies, or pursuits occupying your time these days?
PBK: My work on Cornerstone of the Nation is officially complete, and I’m happy to share that the book was officially released last week, on March 19. The book is available in both hardcover and paperback versions through various platforms, including Harvard University Press (Hardcover) (Paperback), Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.
Interesting to note, the publication of my book in March 2024 coincides exactly with the fiftieth anniversary of launch of the Yulgok Operation in March 1974.
As for new projects, I’m working on a new book that builds upon the research conducted for Cornerstone of the Nation. Thanks to the support of the Fulbright US Scholar Award to South Korea for the academic year 2024-2025, I will be conducting field research on the history and long-term impact of the Yulgok Operation, which spanned from 1974 to 1995.
In addition, I have always been intrigued by the history of Christianity in modern South Korea, particularly the influence of the Assemblies of God denomination and the Yoido Full Gospel Church on the nation’s postwar socio-economic and political transformation, a concept I term “Christianized modernity.” I’m also working on a project about North Korea’s Juche ideology and its impact on the country’s diplomatic and military relations. There are other projects covering different topics.
Outside of my academic pursuits, I enjoy various interests and hobbies. Martial arts, particularly Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, are a passion of mine, though a recent knee injury has temporarily sidelined me. Spending time with my three daughters, aged 3, 5, and a newborn, provides a welcome break from my research and serves as a source of inspiration and new ideas.
MEC: Congratulations once again on the publication of your work, Peter!
PBK: Thank you very much for this interview and for the opportunity to share my work! I would like to express my gratitude once again to the Publication Support Grant from the 2022 AAS “Striving for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Asian Studies” funding program, which played a pivotal role in bringing my manuscript to life.