En 1959 South Korea was mired in poverty.  By 1979 it was a powerful democracy of considerable political, economic, and cultural influence.  The great breakthrough came during the years of Park Chung Hee´s presidency.  Park seized power in a coup in 1961 and ruled as a virtual dictator until his assassination in 1979.  He is credited with modernizing South Korea, but at a huge political and social cost. South Koreas´s political landscape under Park defies easy categorization.  The state was predatory yet technocratic, reform-minded yet quick to crack down on dissidents in the name of political order.  The nation was balanced uneasily between opposition forces calling for democratic reforms and the Park government\'s obsession with economic growth.  The chaebol (powerful South Korean conglomerates) received massive government support to pioneer new growth industries, even as nationwide campaign of economic shock therapy-interest hikes, devaluation, and wage cuts-met strong public resistance and caused considerable hardship.  The landmark volume examines South Korea´s era of development as a study in the complex politics of modernization.  Drawing on an extraordinary range of sources in both English and Korean, these essays recover and contextualize many of the ambiguities in South Korea´s trajectory from poverty to a sustainable high rate of economic growth**, the editors.

The Case for political history, Byung-kook Kim.  BORN IN CRISIS. The May Sixteenth Military Coup, Yong-Sup Han. Taming and Tamed by the United States, Taehyun Kim and Chang Jae Baik. State Building: The Military Junta´s Path to Modernity through Administrative Reforms, Hyung-A Kim.  POLITICS. Modernization Strategy: Ideas and influences, Chung-in Moon and Byung-joon Jun. The Labyrinth of Solitude: Park and the Exercise of Presidential Power, Byung-Kook Kim. The Armed Forces, Joo-Hong Kim. The Leviathan : Economic Bureaucracy under Park, Byung-Kook Kim. The Origins of the Yushin Regime: Machiavelli Unveiled, Hyung Baeg Im. ECONOMY AND SOCIETY. The Chaebol.  The Automobile Industry. Pohang Iron And Steel Company.  The Countryside. The Chaeya. INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS. The Vietnam War: South Korea´s Search for National Security. Normalization of Relations with Japan: Toward a New Partnership.  The Security, Political and Human Rights Conundrum, 1974-1979. The Search for Deterrence: Park´s Nuclear Option. COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE. Nation rebuilders: Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Lee Kuan Yew, Deng Xiaopin, and Park Chung Hee, Ezra E. Vogel. Reflections on a Reverse Image: South Korea under Park Chung Hee and the Philippines under Ferdinand Marcos, Paul D. Hutchoroft. The Perfect Dictatorship? South Korea versus Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico, Jorge I. Domínguez. Industrial Policy in Key Developmental Sectors: South Korea versus Japan and Taiwan, Gregory W. Noble. Conclusion: The Post-Park Era, Byung-Kook Kim.

Kim, Byung-Kook. Vogel, Ezra F.. (2011). The Park Chung Hee Era : The transformation of South Korea (1a.ed. ed.). President and Fellows of Harvard College.