Park Chung-hee

Park Chung-hee seized power in a bloodless military coup on 16 May 1961 and was elected president of South Korea in 1963, ruling until his assassination by his own intelligence chief on 26 October 1979. Over eighteen years he drove rapid state-directed industrialization, nationalizing banks and directing investment toward export industry in a transformation that became a reference case for the developmental state, while ruling through the 1972 Yushin constitution that gave him near-dictatorial power and through imprisonment, torture, and execution of political opponents.