Kim Jaegyu - Park's Dictatorship

Park's Dictatorship

During Park's dictatorship, Kim was appointed as the commander of Sixth Division in 1963. When there was a widespread demonstration against the Korean-Japanese treaty in 1964, which Park pursued in secret and was widely regarded to be disadvantageous to Korean fishermen, Kim's Sixth Division was dispatched to Seoul to subdue student demonstrations. Kim's handling of the situation was said to have earned Park's trust and favor. On the other hand, it is also said that Kim refused to involve the Army in arrest of civilians and left the task to the police while instead ordering his troop to occupy itself with clean-up of streets and university campus. Afterward, he commanded Sixth Military District in 1966, Army Security Command in 1968, and the Third Army Group in 1971. While he was the commander of Army Security Command, a military organ whose chief function was to safeguard the dictatorship (Chun Doo-hwan was the commander of Army Security Command when he successfully staged a military coup on December 12, 1979), President Park ran for the third term in the 1971 presidential election. Kim persuaded President Park to promise to voters that it would be his last term. He also opposed the formation of Hanahoe, a secret organization formed by Chun Doo-hwan and other young officers who took personal oath of loyalty to Park and the group itself above all else, and criticized it as a private army. (Eventually, Hanahoe staged a military coup under Chun's leadership after Park's assassination to seize power and drove out older generation of military generals.)

While Kim was the commander of the Third Army Group in Kang-won Province, President Park declared national emergency and martial law, dismissed the National Assembly, and prohibitied all political activities in October 1972. The purpose was to ratify the Yushin Constitution of 1972, which (a) abolished direct vote for presidential election and replaced it with indirect voting system involving delegates, (b) alloted one third of the National Assembly seats to the president, (c) gave the president the authority to issue emergency decrees and suspend the Constitution, (d) gave the president the authority to appoint all judges and dismiss the National Assembly, and (e) repealed a term limit to presidency. In the 1971 election, Park had nearly lost to opposition leader Kim Dae-joong despite spending ten percent of the national budget on his reelection campaign. The Yushin Constitution was designed to guarantee his dictatorship for life. Indeed, Park was later re-elected as the president by a unanimous vote of approximately 2,000 delegates, who all became delegates themselves with Park's approval. According to Kim's subordinate officers at Third Army Group, Kim did not hide his displeasure at learning of Yushin Constitution.