Validez y Confiabilidad del Instrumento

• The functional characteristics

In this part I would like to compare the life of Park Junghee with other historic figures in terms of the prerequisite qualifications for deification. The following table illustrates common qualifications among traditional human gods and Park Junghee.

Choi Yeong

Factor for death and restoration of status

Political

Divine attributes after death The legend

of red grave,

Gumi, the birthplace of Park Junghee and the south-eastern part of the Republic of Korea lie in the region that gained the biggest benefits from rapid economic growth under Park’s leadership. It is impossible for older-generation people to forget his achievement because they witnessed the great transformation of the economy and also remember the history of exploitation, wars and poverty. However, it has been extremely difficult to find a rational method to merge the diverse opinions on his personal achievement due to the economic discrepancies across the provinces, the negligence of human rights during his regime and alienation of the south-west part of South Korea and how this led to regional conflicts. It still seems unattainable to idolise Park as an absolute great man by way of political compromise, social unification

or objective academic research as is wished by his followers. Therefore, quite possibly the traditional method which is embedded in the vernacular faith of Korea and also has played role in transferring communal values to later generation was chosen by the local government, which longed to establish a foundation for the deification of Park’s family.

II. Analysis of the process of deification

Now I will exemplify the following basic components to illuminate the aforementioned factors of the narrative, rites and representation in images required for the process of deification.

A. Narratives

The narrative takes the most important part in the deification of a historic figure irrespective of nation or culture. Legends regarding birth and childhood play a significant role in dignifying the celestial attribute.

Gumi city, which leads the deification process for Park’s family, is collecting narratives related to Park’s birth and life, and will publish them on the Internet. A number of legends which are believed to reveal Park’s pre-destined fate to become president were collected and published on the Internet homepage of the President Park Junghee Memorial Foundation, although finally deleted from the site as antipathy grew among other citizens:

A fengsui expert who visited the birthplace of the future president has said that ‘a great man will be born in this place’, and later another fengsui expert who met president Park confessed that it is of no use to buy this land because a great person was already born here’.

The chief monk of a nearby temple described the land where the birthplace will be located as the shape of ‘a crow preparing to take the nest from magpies’. He said that Park will take the nation with a coup d’état because he inherited the energy.

The above are excerpts from the materials once posted on the Internet homepage, but now deleted.

In addition to these, many narratives still circulate among the followers regarding Park’s boyhood spent in the military academy in Japan, which would in future be used to justify the coup d’état, for example:

I remember that it was in the spring in 1966. President Park had a sinus infection. One day he spared one day to see a doctor during the day.

Before the operation he asked the doctor how many hours the operation would take and the doctor said that it wouldn’t need much time, but that it would take more time to wake from the anaesthetic. Then Park ordered him to operate without anaesthetic because he doesn’t have time to waste. The doctor refused saying that it will be very painful, however the president was so stubborn that the doctor had to operate without anaesthetic. We cannot image how astonished the doctor was to see that the president didn’t make any sound during the operation despite the great pain.

B. Rites

Rituals commemorating birth and death have been held before, but the official commemorative ceremony of Park’s birth took place in 2012 for the first time when his daughter Park Geunhye announced her candidacy for the presidential election, bringing the cult of Park Junghee to its peak.

Ritual has the significant function of converting the deific attributes of a person, as narrated in legends about them, into the collective memory and into authoritative belief. Today ceremonies to commemorate the birth on 14 November, and the death on October 26, are held in Gumi city each year.

The commemorative ceremony for Park’s birth is called sungmoje in Korean, meaning ‘the ceremony yearning for the president’.

Gumi had the plan to hold a magnificent centennial celebration of the birth in 2017, which would have cost around 4 million US dollars; however ultimately it was held on a smaller scale since his daughter had been impeached, after which the critical view of his regime increased. The commemorative ceremony for his birth was organised as a mixture of Confucian ceremonies dedicated to the Joseon dynasty Royal family, and traditional prayer rituals based on Confucian customs. The attribute highlighted most frequently during the ceremony was the sacredness of Park Junghee, who has both divine and mortal qualities in the manner of a demi-god.

Kim Haegyu, from the President Park Junghee memorial foundation, clarified the background for assigning this appellation in response to my Email interview, saying that “it was a linguistic expression to evaluate highly his great achievement because president Park has established economic growth for the Republic of Korea”.

According to traditional belief, the conception of demi-god is extremely difficult to clarify. The figures found in the aforementioned table regarding the classification of gods in Korean belief and worship co-exist with people in the same realm, with the function of mediating celestial and mortal worlds,

although they actually exist only at the border and don’t display the attributes of both existences at the same time.

In Jongmyojerye, which displays a similar format, the Joseon dynasty royal family is the object of the ceremony not as demi-gods but as ancestor spirits who dwell in a world totally different from the mortal realm. In this ceremony the deceased kings are represented as features symbolic to history and clans.