ABSTRACT
By mid-1974, the state and the Korean people were sharply divided. Park had become increasingly isolated from the working masses (minjung), who constituted a powerful and active anti-Yusin force. An unexpected calamity was to give Park some breathing space – but it came at the cost of his wife's assassination by a bullet meant for himself. On 15 August, at the ceremony for the twenty-ninth anniversary of national liberation in the National Theatre, Park's wife, Yuk Yŏngsu, was shot by Mun Segwang, a Korean resident of Tokyo allegedly connected with North Korea. The First Lady died later that night.
