Democratic Republican Party (South Korea)

The Democratic Republican Party (Korean: 민주공화당, hanja: 民主共和黨; DRP) was a conservative, authoritarian and broadly state corporatist^[1] or fascistic^[2] political party in South Korea, ruling from its formation in 1963 to its dissolution under Chun Doo-hwan in 1980. Under the control of Park Chung Hee, leader of South Korea from his military coup d'état of 1961 until his assassination in 1979, the party oversaw a period of accelerated, state-directed industrialization and socio-economic modernization known as the "Miracle of the Han River", where a predominantly poor and agrarian country was transformed into a powerful industrial "tiger economy". The combination of state and corporate chaebol power pioneered by the party, which was influenced heavily by the precedent of the structures of Japanese rule,^[3] continues to be deeply built into the foundations of the South Korean economic system.

Following the promulgation in October 1972 of the Yushin Constitution, which implemented numerous authoritarian centralizing measures such as the direct appointment of a third of the National Assembly by the President, the DRP assumed an unprecedented level of political power.

After Park's assassination on 26 October 1979 and the seizure of power by Chun Doo-hwan in the coup d'état of December Twelfth, the DRP was dissolved in 1980, and nominally superseded by the Korean National Party. However, leadership of the state was assumed by the Democratic Justice Party, which may be seen as a spiritual successor of the DRP in terms of its constitutional vision and mimicking of Park's leadership style. Through this evolution, the Grand National Party may be seen as the modern heir of the DRP, though the policies advocated by Korean conservatives have changed significantly since South Korea's democratization in the late 1980s and 1990s.

References

1. ^ Kim, B. K. & Vogel, E. F. (eds.) (2011). The Park Chung Hee Era: The Transformation of South Korea. Harvard University Press. p. 125.
2. ^ Kohli, A. (2004). State-Directed Development: Political Power and Industrialization in the Global Periphery. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 92.
3. ^ Kohli, p. 27.