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"Young people don't understand the many shivering nights of blackouts, cold and hunger," said Jin Soo-chul, a 61-year-old retired businessman. "Had they lived through those times, they would feel differently about Park Chung-hee." Critics say South Korea's economic gains under Park Chung-hee are dwarfed by his harsh abuse of opponents. After a closer-than-expected victory in 1971 elections against a popular opposition candidate
-- future president and Nobel Peace laureate Kim Dae-jung -- Park had the constitution scrapped, declared a state of emergency and seized unchecked power. Park maintained he was fighting communist plots. As a politician, Park Geun-hye has created an image based partly on her devotion to father and country. She was 22 when her mother was assassinated during a failed 1974 attack on her father; the killer claimed guidance from Pyongyang. Park abandoned studies in France and began a five-year run as first lady, which her website says gave her "precious experiences in national management and history." In 1979, when an aide woke Park and told her of her father's assassination, her reply, according to her website, was, "Is the front line well?" The implication is that, despite her grief, she immediately understood that perceived instability in Seoul could spur conflict on the Koreas' tense shared border. Although Park, who never married, has been well known in South Korea for decades, relatively little is known about her personal life. She reportedly said during her previous presidential run that she turned to breathing exercises and tennis when stressed, that she liked seasoned Korean vegetables and Chinese philosophy and that she had wanted to be a teacher as a girl. She recently mentioned Queen Elizabeth I as her role model. She has a complex history with Pyongyang, which loathes her anti-communist father. But Park also traveled to Pyongyang in 2002 and met privately with then-leader Kim Jong Il. In a recent poll by the Asan Institute think tank, Park was seen as the strongest candidate on dealing with North Korea. Still, unless tensions spike with Pyongyang in coming weeks, many observers see average South Koreans' economic difficulties as the crucial issue. The Asan poll found that Park was judged the strongest candidate in leadership skills and experience, but she ranked last in "ability to reform" and "ability to communicate with the people." Park has worked to showcase her long years of service and move past controversy over Park Chung-hee. "Her father's history of raising the country out of poverty and harshly cracking down on the opposition is both her light and her shade. She has basked in the light as a politician, but she is now struggling with the shade," political commentator Jun Kye-wan said. "It is her fate that she must overcome this dilemma to become president."
[Associated
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