Memories of Dictatorship from Not Long Ago

One night in 1972, I was having dinner with an American friend and her fiancé at the restaurant of the YMCA in downtown Seoul. It was a dangerous time. The talk of the town was a constitutional change the government was pushing for so that then-President Park Chung-hee could assume even more power, but the media were under the strictest censorship so no dissent could be aired in public. I told my foreign guests, “There is no democracy here, and you have to be careful with what you say”. Littl