President
The Constitution of 1963 limited the president to two consecutive terms, and Park had promised after being sworn in for his second term that he would leave office in 1971. However, with the assistance of the KCIA, his allies in the legislature succeeded in amending the Constitution to allow the current president—himself—to run for three consecutive terms. In 1971, he won another close election, this time over his rival, Kim Dae-jung.
Just after being sworn in for his third term, Park declared a state of emergency "based on the dangerous realities of the international situation." In October 1972, he dissolved Parliament and suspended the Constitution. In December, a new constitution, the Yusin Constitution, was approved in a heavily rigged plebiscite after a vigorous campaign on its behalf by the heavily censored press. It borrowed the word "Yusin" (維新) from the Meiji Restoration (Meiji Ishin; 明治維新) of Imperial Japan. He drew inspiration for his self-coup from Ferdinand Marcos' similar move a few weeks earlier.
The new document dramatically increased Park's power. It transferred the election of the president to an electoral college, the National Conference for Unification. The presidential term was increased to six years, with no limits on reelection. In effect, the constitution converted Park's presidency into a legal dictatorship. In the elections of 1972 and 1978 he was re-elected without any opposition.
Read more about this topic: Park Chung-hee
Famous quotes containing the word president:
“I have come to the conclusion that the major part of the work of a President is to increase the gate receipts of expositions and fairs and by tourists into town.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“Within us, the people of the United States, there is evident a serious and purposeful rekindling of confidence, and I join in the hope that when my time as your President has ended, people might say this about our Nation: That we had remembered the words of Micah and renewed our search for humility, mercy, and justice.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“It’s given new meaning to me of the scientific term black hole.”
—Don Logan, U.S. businessman, president and chief executive of Time Inc. His response when asked how much his company had spent in the last year to develop Pathfinder, Time Inc.’S site on the World Wide Web. Quoted in New York Times, p. D7 (November 13, 1995)