The May 16 military coup d'état (Korean: 5·16 군사정변) or the May 16 Military Revolution (Korean: 5·16 군사혁명) was a military coup d'état in South Korea in 1961, organized and carried out by Park Chung Hee and his allies who formed the Military Revolutionary Committee, nominally led by Army Chief of Staff Chang Do-yong after the latter's acquiescence on the day of the coup. The coup rendered powerless the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Chang Myon and President Yun Posun, and ended the Second Republic, installing a reformist military Supreme Council for National Reconstruction effectively led by Park, who took over as chairman after Chang's arrest in July.
The coup was instrumental in bringing to power a new developmentalist elite and in laying the foundations for the rapid industrialization of South Korea under Park's leadership, but its legacy is controversial for the suppression of democracy and civil liberties it entailed, and the purges enacted in its wake. Termed the "May 16 Military Revolution" by Park and his allies, "a new, mature national debut of spirit", the coup's nature as a "revolution" is controversial and its evaluation contested.
Background and causes
The background to the coup can be analysed both in terms of its immediate context and in terms of the development of post-liberation South Korea. Although the singularly problematic economic and political climate of the Second Republic encouraged a military intervention, the roots of the coup go back to the late Rhee period. Historians like Yong-Sup Han argue that the common view of the coup as caused solely by the vagaries of a new regime paralyzed by instability is too simplistic.
South Korea under Syngman Rhee
From 1948, South Korea was governed by President Syngman Rhee, an anti-Communist who used the Korean War to consolidate a monopoly on political power in the republic. Rhee represented the interests of a conservative ruling class, the so-called "liberation aristocrats" who had risen to positions of influence under American occupation. These "liberation aristocrats" formed the bulk of the political class, encompassing both Rhee's supporters and his rivals in the Democratic Party, which advanced a vision of society broadly similar to his own. Rhee eliminated any significant source of real opposition, securing for example the execution of Cho Bong-am, who had campaigned against him in the presidential elections of 1956 on a platform of peaceful reunification and had attracted some 30% of the vote, an unacceptably high level of support for an opposition candidate.
Even such significant opposition figures as Cho, however, can be considered to have been part of the broad conservative consensus of the governing class, which rested on a traditionalist, Confucian worldview that saw "pluralism in ideology and equality in human relationships [as] foreign concepts", and which upheld the value of paternalist government and the power of extensive networks of political patronage. Rhee, under this traditionalist model, was the foremost "elder" in Korean society, to whom Koreans owed familial allegiance, and this relationship was strengthened by the ties of obligation that connected Rhee to many in the ruling class.
One result of the rule of the "liberation aristocrats" was the stalling of development in South Korea, in marked contrast to the situation in nearby Japan. Where South Korea had been intensively developed under the Japanese colonial system, Rhee's presidency saw little significant effort to develop the South Korean economy, which remained stagnant, poor and largely agrarian. The lack of development under Rhee provoked a growing nationalistic intellectual reaction which called for a radical restructuring of society and a thorough political and economic reorganization. Park Chung Hee, the later leader of the May Coup who at that time was a second-tier army officer with decidedly ambiguous political leanings, was heavily influenced by this unfolding intellectual reaction.
Social and economic problems of the Second Republic
After rigged elections in March 1960, growing protests developed into the April Revolution, and Rhee was pressured by the United States into a peaceful resignation on April 26. With Rhee out of the way, a new constitution was promulgated establishing the Second Republic, and legislative elections on June 29 resulted in a landslide victory for the Democratic Party, with Rhee's Liberals reduced to a mere two seats in the newly constituted lower house of the National Assembly. The Second Republic adopted a parliamentary system, with a figurehead president as head of state; executive power was effectively vested in the prime minister and cabinet. Democrat Yun Posun was elected as president in August, with former vice-president Chang Myon becoming prime minister.
The Second Republic was beset with problems from the start, with bitter factionalism in the ruling Democratic Party competing with implacable popular unrest for the government's attention. The South Korean economy deteriorated under heavy inflation and high rates of unemployment, while recorded crime rates more than doubled; from December 1960 to April 1961, for example, the price of rice increased by 60 percent, while unemployment remained above 23%. Widespread food shortages resulted. Chang, meanwhile, representing the Democratic Party's "New Faction", had been elected prime minister by the thin margin of three votes. Purges of Rhee's appointees were rendered ineffective in the public eye by Chang's manipulation of the suspect list to favour wealthy businessmen and powerful generals. Although Rhee had been removed and a democratic constitution instituted, the "liberation aristocrats" remained in power, and the worsening problems facing South Korea were proving insurmountable for the new government.
The breakdown of South Korean politics and the administrative purges racking the army combined to demoralise and discourage the Military Security Command, which was charged with the maintenance of the chain of command in the military and weeding out insubordination. The reluctance of the Military Security Command to act allowed plans for a coup to unfold, and the problems of the Second Republic provided the context for the coup to be organised and realised.
Factionalism in the military
A direct factor in paving the way to the coup was factionalism in the South Korean army itself, one of the largest in the world at the time with 600,000 soldiers. The army had been given a distinctive identity by the dual Japanese and subsequently American training that many of its members had received, "combin[ing] the Japanese militarist ethos with the American spirit of technical efficiency to expand its mission from defending the country against communist aggression to that of helping it build itself into a modern nation". Reformist junior officers viewed the senior generals as having been corrupted by party politics, and the problem was compounded by a bottleneck in promotions caused by the consolidation of the positions of the senior commanders of the army after the end of its rapid expansion in the Korean War.
The army was also divided along regional lines and between factions of officers who had graduated from the same school. Of the latter, the most influential were the competing factions who had graduated from the Japanese Military Academy and from the Manchurian officers' school at Xinjing respectively, while more lower-ranked officers were divided by their class of graduation from the post-liberation Korean Military Academy. Park had attended all three institutions, and was uniquely positioned to lead what would become the coup coalition, with his extensive ties among both the senior commanders of the army and the younger factions.
After the overthrow of the Rhee regime and the institution of the Second Republic, the reformists, led by KMA alumni, began to call for the senior commanders to be held to account for complicity in the rigging of the 1960 and 1956 presidential elections. Park, relatively high-ranking as Major General, threw himself into the spotlight by declaring his support for the reformists and demanding the resignation of Army Chief of Staff Song Yo-chan on May 2. On September 24, 16 colonels, led by Kim Jong-pil, demanded the resignation of Chairman of the Combined Chiefs of Staff Choi Yong-hui in an incident known as the "revolt against seniors" (하극상 사건; 下剋上事件; hageuksang sageon). By this point, initial plans for a coup were already advanced, and they were accelerated by the "revolt against seniors".
Planning and organization
Central organization
The first plan for a military coup to evolve was the so-called "May 8 plan", a plan calling for a putsch on May 8, 1960. This plan was discussed and formulated at the start of 1960 by reformist officers including Park, and was aimed at unseating Rhee from the presidency. This plan never moved significantly beyond being an idea, and was soon superseded by the April Revolution. From May to October 1960, however, Park assembled a variety of officers to organize a new plan for a coup, largely on the basis of his ties with other graduates of the Manchurian Military Academy. He also secured the loyalty of the editor of the Pusan Daily News, aiming to ensure a propaganda basis for the coup. By October, Park had gathered nine core members, tasking his close associate Kim Jong-pil with the role of general secretary.
Fortuitously in November, Park was transferred from his post at Pusan to Seoul, and at a meeting on November 9 at his Seoul residence, the core group decided that they would manipulate the anti-corruption movement within the military to support their aims. Furthermore, it was decided that Park would focus on building support for the coup among other generals, while the other core members would recruit younger officers and construct revolutionary cells within and outside Seoul. By Chang Do-yong's account, however, on January 12, 1961, it was discovered that Park had been placed on a list of 153 officers scheduled to be moved to the Reserve Army in May. This discovery would likely have accelerated the plans for the coup. The historian Kim Hyung-A suggests by contrast that it is possible that Chang, as Army Chief of Staff, deliberately spread the rumors of Park's imminent removal in order to provide political cover for the coup; he concludes that "it is obvious that Park had received extraordinary support from someone in power".
Over the course of the next half-year, the coup plans became an open secret within the military. Park failed in winning over the army's Counter-Intelligence Command and the 9th Division, but neither organization reported the plans to higher authorities, allowing the planning to proceed unimpeded. As 1960 drew to a close, moreover, Park began parallel talks outside of his core group, structuring a loose network of supporters for his plan; among those brought in by these talks was Major General Lee Chu-il, with whom Park agreed that once the coup had taken place, Chang Do-yong would be placed as head of the Revolutionary Council in order to get the entire army's support. In March 1961, the core group met at the Chungmu-jang Restaurant in Seoul, and fixed the date April 19 for the coup, expecting significant disturbances on that day due to its being the anniversary of the revolution that had overthrown Rhee's regime. Park also secured the financial backing of prominent businessmen, amassing a total of 7.5 million hwan.
Finally, on April 10, 1961, Park took the initiative in revealing the details of the plan to Chang Do-yong himself. Chang's subsequent ambivalent response was decisive in allowing the coup to take place. While he turned down the leadership position offered to him, he neither informed the civilian government of the plan, nor ordered the arrest of the conspirators. This allowed Park to present Chang as an "invisible hand" guiding the organization of the coup. According to Han, this ambivalence was most likely because Chang had calculated that the coup organizers had by this time gathered too much momentum to stop, though this analysis assumes Chang's earlier non-involvement. The date of April 19 passed without the expected disturbances, however, and the planners rescheduled the coup for May 12.
Failed coup of May 12 and emergency planning
Some time shortly after this, the May 12 plan was finally leaked by accident to the military security forces, who reported it to Prime Minister Chang Myon and Defense Minister Hyeon Seok-ho. Chang Myon was dissuaded from commissioning an investigation by the intervention of Army Chief of Staff Chang Do-yong, who convinced him that the security report was unreliable. Pervasive unrealized rumours of the imminence of a military coup also contributed to Chang Myon's decision, and the report on the May 12 plan was dismissed as a false alarm. The coup organizers responded by aborting the May 12 plan and fixing a new, and final, date and time, 3 am on May 16.