2001 Volume 2001 Issue 126 Pages 65-80,L11
Since the outbreak of the Korean War, South Korean government had heavily depended on the U. S. government for their military and economic security as a frontline state during the Cold War. Park Chung Hee and his Revolutionary Government, which emerged as a bearer of Korean nationalism through the 1961 military coup d'état, faced a difficult question: how to strike a balance between its self-reliance as an independent nation and excessive dependence on the U. S. government as a junior partner within the Cold War regime. The purpose of this paper is to examine how Park and his government struggled for Korean self-reliance while avoiding total dependence on the U. S.. To this end this paper focuses on the following three points.
First, this paper examines Korean nationalism as a causal element of the 1961 Coup and an ideological basis of the Revolutionary Government there-after. Analysis of remarks which Park and the graduates of the Korean Military Academy, the main actors of the Revolutionary Government, made before and immediately after the coup, shows that their independence-orientedness and distrust of the big powers became the keynote when they formulated its foreign policy, at least for some time.
Second, this paper examines how the Park Administration's perception of the U. S. at the beginning and how the perception transformed as time went on. The Revolutionary Government, in spite of their distrust of the U. S. government, came to conclude that the presence of the U. S. Forces in Korea and their economic assistance were important for preserving Korean independence amid the Cold War conflict. Because of the dilemma they faced, Park and his government had to re-define the balance between its self-reliance as an independent nation and dependence on the U. S. in terms of the reality surrounded them.
Finally, this paper examines actual policy steps which the Park Administration took as attempts to achieve Korean self-reliance. Among them, the Revolutionary Government regarded, as the most important steps, its developments in social-economic dimension and improvements of people's everyday life in addition to the build-up of its military power and completing of anti-communism. However, Park's attempts to achieve these things by itself reached a dead end after a while and they realized there was no way other than “temporary dependence” on the U. S. to preserve Korean independence.
In the end, Park's struggle for self-reliance resulted in “temporary dependence” on the U. S. However, we have to notice that Park's quest for self-reliance did not end in spite of the acceptance of “temporary dependence.” His endeavour at acquiring Korean self-reliance carried on at all occasions and with his full energy. In this sense, the “temporary dependence” was literally temporal and did not mean “overall dependence” or “subordination” to the U. S. government.
