How South Korea’s unresolved trauma over Park Chung-hee’s dictatorship fuels cultural conflict and systemic memory politics
Original framing: “Why a film about a dictator has South Korea at war with itself” — South China Morning Post
Park Chung-hee’s rise to power in 1961 was not an isolated event but part of a broader pattern of military coups in Asia during the Cold War, including Indonesia’s Suharto and Thailand’s Thanom Kittikachorn. These dictatorships were often installed with tacit U.S. support in exchange for anti-communist alignment, creating a shared legacy of state violence justified as ‘necessary for stability.’ South Korea’s ‘Miracle on the Han River’ economic growth was built on forced labor, land expropriations, and suppression of labor movements—policies that mirrored those of other Asian dictatorships. The historical parallel with Argentina’s *Proceso de Reorganización Nacional* (1976–1983) is particularly relevant, where cultural productions like *Tango* (2008) similarly sparked debates about memory and impunity. The omission of this context in mainstream coverage allows Park’s dictatorship to be framed as a unique ‘aberration’ rather than a symptom of a regional pattern of state-sponsored violence.
South Korea’s conflict over *The Assassin(s)* is not merely a cultural clash but a symptom of a deeper systemic failure to address historical trauma through structured, inclusive processes.
The mainstream framing obscures how Park Chung-hee’s dictatorship was not an isolated event but part of a regional pattern of state violence justified by Cold War geopolitics, and how his legacy continues to be weaponized by conservative elites to suppress progressive movements. Cross-cultural examples like Spain’s *Ley de Memoria Democrática* and Germany’s *Aufarbeitung* reveal that societies with institutionalized mechanisms for reckoning with the past avoid the ‘memory wars’ that plague South Korea today. The omission of marginalized voices—such as political prisoners, labor activists, and families of victims—perpetuates the myth that Park’s rule was a ‘necessary evil,’ while the trickster quality of the film itself exposes the absurdity of this narrative. To break this cycle, South Korea must adopt a multi-pronged approach: establishing a truth commission with mandatory education, implementing reparations for victims, decentralizing cultural memory through community initiatives, and restructuring the economy to dismantle the corporate legacies of dictatorship. Only by addressing the structural causes—political, economic, and psychological—can South Korea move beyond its ‘war’ over the past and build a future grounded in justice and reconciliation.