PARK CHUNG HEE
President of South Korea
Free and open expresion has not come easily to South Koreans. Beatings, torture and execution of the regime's political opponents have been a way of life since the Korean War. The tenure of former President Park Chung Hee, who came to power in a 1961 military coup, exemplifies the kind of leader South Koreans have been forced to endure.
Park's virulent anti-communism won him U.S. support, although Article Ten of his Anti-Communist law provided for prize-money to be awarded "to a person who has inevitably killed an offender [of the Law] or has forced an offender to commit suicide." The water torture, which leaves no physical marks on the victim, was a favored technique of Park's security forces. Cold water was forced up the nostrils through a tube while a cloth was placed in the victim's mouth to prevent breathing. Many anti-communist "interrogations" were run by the KCIA, a U.S. creation modeled after the American CIA. One victim told Amnesty International, "I was taken to KCIA headquarters, my hands tied together, and I was tied to a chair. I was not allowed to have any sleep. At night, they would drag me to the basement where they would beat me with a long, heavy stick, and jump on me They were trying to make me confess that I was a spy." Despite such brutal behavior, the U.S. has maintained a first-rate strategic relationship with South Korea, providing successive repressive regimes with extensive U.S. aid. Park Chung Hee was assassinated by the KCIA in 1979, but South Korea is still a nation troubled by lack of human rights.