[Articles] Park Hyun-Chae’s Life and Thought (Searching for K-Discourse 6) / Lee Il-young
The Quarterly Changbi 208, Summer 2025
Abstract
The ambitious series “Searching for K-Discourse,” which aims to rewrite the genealogy of practical reform discourse rooted in the Korean Peninsula’s realities, has reached its sixth installment. Economist Lee Il-young offers an in-depth reexamination of the life and thought of Park Hyun-chae, a singular figure who challenged the Park Chung-hee regime’s development-first model with his theory of a national economy. Tracing Park’s journey from his experience as a partisan fighter, through the People’s Revolutionary Party incident, to his later work as a dissident economist, the article explores how his intense life became the foundation for a uniquely Korean alternative economic philosophy.