President of Korea Pak Kun Hye: biography and photos

What is the name of the President of Korea ( referring to the Republic of Korea, or South Korea), who is in power today? Her name is Pak Kun He, and she is the daughter of the third president of this country and the long-standing military dictator Pak Jong-hee. He ruled the country for almost two decades in the 60-70s of the last century.

A few words about Father Pak Kun He

The future President of the Republic of Korea, Pak Jong-hee, was a peasant son, who had studied at the elementary school teacher. After three years of pedagogical practice, he realized the further lack of prospects of teaching work and in 1940 he volunteered for the Japanese army. He served in Manchuria, participated in battles against communist guerrillas (among whom, by the way, there were many Koreans, such as the future first president of North Korea, Kim Il Sung). He fought apparently not for fear, but for conscience, as he was honored to study at the Japanese military academy and left it in 1942 as a lieutenant with a Japanese name.

About his service as an officer of the Japanese army, the president of Korea Pak Jong-hee never spread, and journalists who tried to understand this period of his life were deported from the country. When 1945 came and the Japanese Empire was defeated, Pak did not at all make himself a hara-kiri following the example of many of his Japanese colleagues, but quickly settled into the newly created army of South Korea.

And here there was one more surprising episode in his destiny. In 1948, Pak was involved in a communist uprising in the province of Yesu, which was brutally suppressed with the support of the Americans. It is not known what brought the young and promising officer into the ranks of the members of the Communist underground. Maybe the role of peasant genes played a role, maybe influenced by a brother who was a Communist, now we are unlikely to find out.

Although several thousand participants in the Yesu rebellion were killed, but Pak personally was pardoned by President Lee Seung-Mans. It was such a refined Asian form of punishment. The offender is demonstratively pampered, but he has only two ways: either commit suicide, or join his former enemies (after all, his former comrades will no longer join his ranks, considering him a traitor). And Pak preferred to become not an imaginary, but a real traitor. He issued to the authorities a whole list of military men who knew him, sympathizing with the Communists, including his own brother, for which he was recruited into military counterintelligence.

Children and youth of the current president of Korea

Pak Kun Hye was born in 1952. She became the first child of Pak Jong-hee, who was born into a marriage with his second wife Yuk Yong-su (his first marriage was childless).

It was a hard time for Korea. Two of its parts - the communist North Korea with its capital in Pyongyang and the bourgeois South Korea with its capital in Seoul - have come together in a truly deadly battle. And this is by no means an exaggeration. After all, during the so-called Korean war, the opposing sides took Seoul twice and Pyongyang once, that is, through the whole country from north to south, at least three times in two years the fiery war-tree swept.

In such circumstances the early childhood of our heroine passed. Her father was an active participant in this fratricidal war, having made a dizzying military career on it: from the captain advanced to the brigadier general and the commander.

His family since 1953 lived in Seoul, where Pak Kun Hye graduated from high school in 1970. When the girl was seven years old, the so-called April Revolution of 1960 took place in the country, which resulted in the overthrow of President Lee Seung Man, and a year later her father came to power as the head of the military junta. Since 1963, he was at the helm as a popularly elected president of Korea.

His eldest daughter, Pak Kun Hye, studied at the University of Seoul after graduation, having received a bachelor's degree in electronic engineering in 1974. The choice of her specialty is an eloquent testimony to what happened in the country during her father's reign of change. South Korea enters the world's leaders in the field of electronics, and the corresponding specialties become the most prestigious and popular.

To continue education, Pak Kun Hye enters the University of Grenoble, but the tragic events at home force her to return to her homeland.

Killing mother Yuuk Yong Soo

On August 15, 1974, the President of Korea, together with his wife, attended the National Theater at a solemn ceremony marking the 29th anniversary of the liberation of Korea from Japanese rule. During Pak Jong-Hee's speech, a certain Mun Se-Gwang, a Japanese citizen of Korean origin and probably a North Korean agent, opened fire on him from his gun. He did not get to the president, but mortally wounded his wife. Characteristic for Pak Jong-hee is his behavior after the incident: when the dying Yuuk Yong-soo was taken off the stage, he continued his speech.

After this attempt Pak began to communicate only with a limited circle of people, and returned to the country Pak Kun He began to accompany him at official events, including foreign visits, playing the role of "First Lady".

Murder of the father

President of Korea Pak Jong-hee is considered the creator of the so-called Korean economic miracle. Over the twenty years of his rule, the country's GDP has grown nine-fold. However, in the early 1970s he established the regime of the most cruel personal dictatorship in the country, called the Yusin period, which means "restoration." The name was chosen with a clear hint at the analogy with the period of the Meiji restoration in Japan in the second half of the 19th century.

In fact, the regime that was established in South Korea at that time was not much different from that set by the president of North Korea, Kim Il Sung, in his country. Suffice it to say that all citizens' assemblies were banned in the country, except weddings and funerals. We do not know if Pak Keng Hyo had any influence on his father during the fifth anniversary, when she lived in the country as a first lady. Most likely, not, she was too young and inexperienced for this.

Naturally, the number of people dissatisfied with the dictatorial rule of Pak grew, and this discontent included representatives of the country's top leadership. October 26, 1979 at a private dinner in the residence of the president between him and the chief of Korean intelligence Kim Jae-Kyu arose a sharp conflict, as a result of which the latter shot himself Pak and the head of his personal guard.

Twenty years of reflection

According to the official website of the President of the Republic of Korea, following the murder of her father for 18 years, Pak Kun Hye held "in quiet contemplation and in serving the underprivileged."

It is known that in the early 80's she founded her own fund, which bears the name of her deceased mother and finances educational programs, and also produced her own newspaper. Since 1994, she is a member of the Korean Writers' Association.

Pak Kun Hye also actively engaged in her own education. In 1981, she studied at one of the Korean Christian colleges, in 1987 received a doctorate in literature from the Chinese University of Culture in Taiwan, in 2008 - a doctorate in political science from the national university in Busan (South Korea) and a doctorate from Korea Institute of Science and Technology, and in 2010 - Ph.D. in political science from the University of Sogang (also South Korea).

Such a strong focus on self-improvement led to the fact that Pak Kun Hye was never married and has no children.

Return to policy

It took place on the wave of discontent with the former politicians after the financial and economic crisis in the Southeast Asian countries in 1997. In 1998, there were additional elections to the National Assembly of South Korea, where Pak Kun Hye was elected to parliament. Then, for 10 years, she was elected three times a member of parliament in the same district from the Party of the Great Country, which originated from the Democratic Republican Party, created by her father in 1963. For two years in the middle of the 2000s she headed this party and achieved serious success in the elections.

In 2011, the party conducted a rebranding and changed its name to "Senuri", ie, the "Party of New Horizons". The actual leader was Pak Kun He, who led the party to victory in the 2012 parliamentary elections. At the end of the same year, she was chosen by the president of the country with a margin of over three-and-a-half percent of her opponent, Moon Jae-In. With her election, the period of the country's presidency in the country ended, and a conservative woman president came to power, seeking to reduce taxes for business, reduce the regulatory role of the state in the economy, and establish a strengthened law and order (well, how can one not remember her famous father! ).