WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
General Park Chung-hee, center, on the day of the coup d’état, May 16, 1961.As Samsung’s founder and a reviled symbol of illicit wealth in South
Korea, B.C. was on the interrogation list. Two Korean government agents
showed up at B.C.’s Japanese hotel. They left a note telling him to return to
South Korea—or else.
So B.C. flew back to Seoul, where “a fresh summer rain was pouring
out of the pitch-black night sky.” A young man picked him up in a Jeep.
After a night spent in his hotel suite—he felt lucky he wasn’t joining his
business colleagues in jail cells—he went before the “Supreme Council for
National Reconstruction.” B.C. did not know what awaited him.
“Passing the secretary’s office, I entered a large room....From the other
side, several military personnel and a man wearing black glasses who gave
off an air of integrity walked over. Immediately I recognized the man in the
black glasses as Vice Chairman Park Chung-hee.” He was the new dictator
of South Korea and the leader of the coup d’état.
“The room was filled with a tense and heavy atmosphere,” B.C. wrote.
Short, stern, and almost always wearing either a suit or fatigues and
aviator sunglasses, General Park had a small frame. A lifetime soldier