Through this thesis I have showed the way President Park Chung Hee’s ruling methods

made life unbearable for some Koreans. During his period (1964 when he got the power through
a coup d’état -1979 when he was assassinated by the KCIA chef at that time), he made some
decisions which indeed, helped Korea to rise its economy but there were many sacrifices made
by the lower classes and so many basic human rights were ignored.
In my thesis I have showed how the literature was a tool against his oppression and how
Koreans managed to fight the censorship imposed to them. More specifically, with the help of
some short stories, I managed to build an image of the things people from lower classes had to
endure. I have focused particularly on factory workers as they were the ones who suffered the
most from President Park’s leadership but also I have touched the subjects of the lack of
democracy, as basic human rights were violated by his new Constitution.
The short stories that I’ve used have been praised for the way they fought against the
unfair rules during that time. Their authors have been persecuted for telling this stories, even
though they wrote these as fiction. It was a very dangerous time to go against the system and
people had to find ways to expose the unfair treatments without directly telling it.
With all these information as a backup story, I would like to talk a bit about the short
stories I chose for my study. First of all, the three authors that I included in my thesis have been
praised for the way they ignored the consequences and decided to speak up for those in need.
Cho Se-hui, Hwang Sok-yong and Yun Hung-gil, all of them risked so much in order to expose
the reality. Cho Se hui collection of short stories called “The Dwarf “present the life of a
working family and the hardships they had to go through. His story is inspired from one moment
in his life when he saw a family eating for the last time on the porch of their house that was
being destroyed right in that moment. That was the point when he started writing the short
stories. They are all connected but can be read independently. Hwang Sok-yong uses a somehow
ironic voice in his short story, “A Dream of good Fortune”, where he depicts a fortunate day in
the life of a poor family. The irony in his story is that, even though that day is presented as a
good one, it is filled with awful events and hard moments. Both of them focused on the negative
effects of rapid industrialization. On the other hand, Yun Hun-gil exposed the problems that
appeared in a corrupt system, where free will and free speech were disregarded. In his short story
“The man that was left as 9 pairs of shoes” he presents the story of an ex-convicted who, now
released, tries to get his life back together but it is impossible for him while being under
surveillance. The author shows how easily it was for someone to became a spy or how fast things
changed when people were faced with the possibility of protests.
I chose to study this subjects because, at the beginning, I was intrigued by the methods
President Park used to help the economic growth. However, searching further, I stumbled upon
some critics against his methods and as I looked more and more into it, I found out about the
outrages that took place under his leadership. He wanted to be known for his method of ruling
with a Steel Fist. Indeed, what he did was solely for the country and was considered one of the
most dedicated presidents of South Korea but his actions and his decision to overlook the basic
human rights were a big mistake.
 The way I decided to approach this topic is a very delicate one because I presented the
injustices of that period through literary works. These short stories, in turn, are fictional works
but they depict moments and events from reality.
I think the element of novelty brought through this thesis consists of the way I decided to
analyze the events happening then through literature. With the help of short stories and other
reliable sources, I managed to match events that were happening in real life with those depicted
in the stories (for example, rapid industrialization, house demolition, protest and their
consequences, the level of poorness in South Korea and so on).
In conclusion, my study was meant to show both how factory workers and poor people
were the ones who suffered the most injustices in the name of the economic growth, and how the
lack of democracy and free will or free speech destroyed so many lives, all these being proved
with the help of literature.