In the 1980s, as president of the student council in the linguistics department of
Seoul National University, he was one of the activists in universities struggling against
Chun Doo-hwan's dictatorship and the aftermath of the 1980
Gwangju Massacre. Detained during an investigation into such activities, Park refused to confess the whereabouts of one of his fellow activists. During the interrogation, authorities used
waterboarding techniques to torture him in the National Police Headquarters' Anti-Communist Division, leading to his death on January 14. A doctor from
Chung-Ang University Hospital, Oh Yeon-sang, arrived at the scene and performed
CPR for 30 minutes before eventually giving up. Once he told the officers of Park's death, he later recalled that "they rolled his body in a blanket and shoved it in an elevator. On January 15, Oh was interviewed by multiple reporters who came to his office. Later that day the authorities detained and interrogated him for 20 hours; afterwards Oh fled to Seoul outskirts for a week. His death by torture helped spark the
June Democracy Movement of 1987. His death, including the events of its immediate aftermath, was the subject of the movie
1987: When the Day Comes. ==See also==