I don't think it's fair to take anecdotes from American peace corp which was known to be by large, a front to promote American interests in foreign countries. PCH and CDH wouldn't be where they are if the American government didn't recognize them as a legitimate force. PCH's head of intelligence, ultimately tried unsuccessfully to pull off a coup, panicked when Americans ignored him and spun it as a patriotic martyr who "shot the dictator", to save face. Why else would KJG try to contact American embassy repeatedly? It wasn't to run, after all he wouldn't have ordered his bodyguards to kill those who weren't in the know. It has all the sign of a coup.

I am not saying life in the late 60s and throughout 70s was equally oppressive on the full spectrum of society but it was nevertheless rigid, militant and thugs were used to suppress worker's union and human rights activists. You don't hear about the thousands of families who had suffered under Park and Chun, instead you only hear about the nominal GDP. If North Korea had the Kim family, South Korea had Republic of Korea, the country itself became an idolized almost humanized symbol of the state it was in-war torn, politically unstable, national security under constant threat and skirmishes from a nearby enemy. When you force people to stop and sing the national anthem everyday and arrest people for failing to comply, when you attempt to torture and assassinate political rivals (former president KDJ), when you enforce martial law and national curfew, when you dictate the consciousness of millions through a government run media, how is that not any different from the massive cult that North has built up? A cult built up on jingoism, the ends justify the means sort of approach, sure one could argue the sacrifice of that generation was necessary but for who's benefit? Ultimately, the profits and power only grew and consolidated under the handful of men and women who simply happened to be in a position to work with the government's generous credit loans to build the empire they dreamed of. Koreans today are not happy, students are killing themselves more than any other region, people don't want to raise kids, instead grow old like Japan.

My father was a journalist for a then military dictatorship run media outlet. He saw firsthand and told me stories of how the system worked and how it permeated through out the entire social hierarchy with impunity, no checks or balances, just pure straight up brainwashing.

The miracle of the Han river is red with the tears, sweat and blood of our forefathers who imagined a different type of Korea, one that isn't a glorified feudalism with smartphones that spy on the citizens, a military aiming their guns at the citizens, while the Samsung and the Hyundais happily go through generation after generation of brainwashed citizens who are reaching for that elusive "Korean Dream" through a institutionalized natural selection process that preaches neo-confucian values when in reality, it's a thin veil for the otherwise corrupt social hierarchy that dictates a person's age and seniority plays more importance then merit, competence and transparency.

The woke Koreans are the ones who are desperately trying to leave a country covered in fine dust pollution, where kids no longer play outside without a industrial mask, while the chaebol's offsprings are partying it up in prestigious American institutions in pristine clean neighborhoods.

This is the glorious post-ww2 Japanese model in which PCH has adhered to, with hopes of becoming an economic and a military power that is supposed to provide a roof over the citizens head that weathers through storms, instead it has largely become a state which coerced its citizens into working in squalor conditions to meet the material demands of the West with cheap labor.

"A perfect slave is the one who thinks he is free" couldn't be more true in South Korea.