On secular saints

By Deauwand Myers

On April 4, 1967, in his speech, "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence," Martin Luther King, Jr. stated, "The greatest purveyor of violence in the world" is America. From this speech, a whirlwind of criticism and frayed relationships ensued.

Indeed, King's anti-war, anti-poverty stance brought him to near ruin, and greatly diminished his standing in the American zeitgeist. President Johnson, an indispensible ally in the Civil Rights Movement, who deftly passed Civil and Voting Rights legislation, took great offense to King's stance on the Vietnam War.

Moreover, 75 percent of America, and nearly 60 percent of blacks disliked him, and African-American luminaries no longer supported King: the NAACP's Roy Wilkins, the Urban League's Whitney Young, legal scholar and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., and fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Ralph Bunche are all examples.

King spent the last year of his life dejected, marginalized, and nearly broke. He privately spoke about a feeling of imminent demise, much as Malcolm X did a few years earlier. King was assassinated in 1968, and in a strange, even perverse way, his untimely and violent death resurrected his image into American sainthood.

His "sin," of questioning the American empire, was "forgiven" and forgotten. Some American conservatives even co-opt his name and legacy, saying he'd be a Republican and a Tea Party member nowadays ― ridiculous. Martin Luther King, Jr. had far from conservative ideology, (especially on voting rights, and social justice issues like living wages, equal pay for women, the amelioration of poverty, quality education for all, and unions).

King was no saint. He was a homophobe (not uncommon in the 1960s), and distanced himself from James Baldwin and Bayard Rustin. And, as documented in Diane McWhorter's magnum opus, the Pulitzer Prize-winning civil rights work, "Carry Me Home," King was an adulterer.

Nonetheless, America owes a great deal of its progress towards racial and social equality to Dr. King and those like him, and we ought to be very grateful for their sacrifices.

In that gratefulness, we should also reflect on the humanity of King, and the entirety of his message. Yet, many Americans don't do this. We've Santa Claus-i- -fied King like the Easter Bunny. Streets, schools, parks, and the beautiful Washington memorial of King are good, but they do not cover the vast and complicated expanse of King, nor do they encapsulate the totality of his vision, one that seriously, courageously, and unapologetically criticized American domestic and foreign policy.

President Park Chung-hee, in many ways, is a larger figure in Korean history than even King was to America. For nearly a generation, before his assassination in 1979, President Park ruled Korea like a quasi-dictator. Yet, through his ingenuity, sheer will, and yes, brutality, he helped lift Korea from poverty to an export-oriented, industrialized powerhouse envied by developing nations.

In many ways, President Park's ascension is the quintessential distillation of "pulling one's self up from one's bootstraps." Park's talent, tenacity, intelligence, diligence, and ruthlessness read like a very good novel.

Park rose in the ranks of the collaborationist Manchukuo Imperial Army during the Japanese colonial rule of Korea.

He spoke Korean, Japanese, and English, and he had a working knowledge of Chinese. He understood the problems living under Japanese occupation, yet saw opportunities to advance in such a system in the hopes of bettering Korea.

The tumultuous beginnings of Korea as a republic, after the disastrous and economically-ruinous Rhee administration, and the short, unsuccessful attempts at democracy thereafter, created a political vacuum ripe for a military coup.

Through some intriguing machinations, too long to detail here, Park, by then a four-star general, seized power of the fractious and chaotic government under the auspices of the newly-formed intelligence/secret police force, the KCIA, along with the American military.

Having consolidated power, Park squelched dissent and marginalized political enemies. His administration indefinitely suspended normal rights of citizens, like that of peaceful assembly and free speech. This is the darker part of Park's legacy (and why Koreans and historians are split on accessing his life).

Korea wouldn't enjoy a true democracy for more than another decade. Park's harsh constraining of civil rights made Korea's democratization longer and bloodier than it would have been had he liberalized the government, particularly in reestablishing basic civil liberties, and annulling the Yushin Constitution.

Yet, few deny Park's economic policies, like government-private partnerships, and the creation of agencies like the Ministry of Finance, played an integral and foundational role in Korea being what it is today. He effectively created a strong industrial infrastructure, where companies like Samsung and LG could prosper.

We should reflect on the complex portraits of these secular saints, endeavoring to see a more complete and enriching portrait of them.

Deauwand Myers holds a master's degree in English literature and literary theory, and is an English professor outside Seoul. He can be reached at deauwand@hotmail.com.