Park Chung-hee seized power in a 1961 military coup and ruled South Korea for eighteen years until his own intelligence chief shot him dead at a dinner party. During that time, he transformed one of the poorest countries in Asia into an industrial powerhouse through a program of state-directed capitalism enforced by authoritarian control. South Korea’s economic miracle was real — and so was the repression that made it possible.

This episode traces Park from his impoverished rural childhood and Japanese military training through the coup, the economic transformation, the Yushin constitution that made him dictator for life, and the assassination that ended his rule.

• Park’s poverty, his Japanese military academy training, and the controversial wartime service
• The 1961 coup and the state-directed industrial policy that launched the economic miracle
• The Yushin constitution, the KCIA surveillance state, and the suppression of democracy
• The assassination by his own intelligence chief at a private dinner in 1979