Park Chung Hee was born in 1917 in the village of Sonsangun near Taegu in southeastern Korea. He was the seventh child of a poor family; his father sometimes served as a magistrate under the Japanese occupation. Park won admission to high school through a competitive examination. After high school he taught school for a while before entering the Japanese army. He won admission to a two-year training program in Manchukuo, the Japanese puppet state in Manchuria, and graduated at the top of his class. Park was then selected for another two years of training at the Tokyo Military Academy. Park's experience with the Japanese government's program of economic development in Manchukuo strongly affected his thinking when he ruled South Korea. Park adopted the Japanese name Okamoto Minoru and was in many respect essentially Japanese.
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