Paik was born in Kangsŏ-gun, South P'yŏngan, currently the city ofNampo, on November 23, 1920, during a time when Korea was under Japanese rule. He was born the second of three siblings, with an older sister and younger brother, being raised by a widowed mother. In 1925 the Paik family moved to Pyongyang where it lived under extremely poor conditions in a single, rented room. Unable to feed her family, Paik's mother attempted to take the children and commit family suicide by jumping from the Taedong River bridge but was dissuaded from doing so by her older sister.
Career
Paik's mother and sister soon took jobs at a rubber factory to pay for his schooling. He attended Mansu Primary School for four years before transferring to Yaksong Primary School. After, he spent five years in Pyongyang Normal School, training to be a teacher in 1939. Instead of getting into teaching, he entered Mukden Military Academy of Manchukuo. After graduation, he became an officer of the Manchukuo Imperial Army, and served in the Gando Special Force. He engaged in guerrilla suppression work inJiandao. He joined the Japanese campaign on northern China for ten months from 1944 to 1945 until its defeat by the Soviet Army. After the end of World War II he returned to Pyongyang but in December 1945 fled south since rising communists threatened his safety. In South Korea, he was commissioned as a first lieutenant in the Constabulary, the predecessor of the ROK Army. He was committed to build the army, crush communist guerrillas, and purge the army of leftists. However, he did help Park Chung-hee, who was at the time tried as a communist, by persuading President Rhee to commute his sentence and have him released. Paik eventually got him reinstated into the army during the Korean War.
Korean War
When the fighting broke out on June 25, 1950, he was assigned to defend Seoul as the 1st Infantry Division's commanding officer. He finally retreated to South Gyeongsang but made an important contribution to the defense of the Pusan Perimeter, especially to the victory at the village of Dabudong. On the move north, his 1st Division under the United States I Corps became the first to enter Pyongyang on October 19. He was one of the first officers to realize the Chinese entry into the war. He assumed the defense of northwestern Korea but was plagued by a larger Chinese army. In April 1951, Paik was placed in command of the ROK I Corps in charge of eastern Korea. He soon found the South Korean military insufficiently trained; they took intensive training while the battle line was fixed. In July 1951, Paik was elected to represent the ROK military at the Kaesong Truce Talk but failed to attain results. In November, Task Force Paik was set up to destroy communist guerrillas on Jirisan. The campaign, known as Operation Rat Killer, was successfully finished in March 1952. In recognition of the success, he was promoted to Lieutenant General and Task Force Paik was transformed to the new ROK II Corps. Then he was appointed to Army Chief of Staff in July 1952. He devoted himself in building up the ROK Army. In January 1953, he was promoted to the rank of general in the ROK Army; which made him the first 4-star general in the South Korean military.
Later career
Paik successively filled the positions of commander of the First Field Army, the Army Chief of Staff, and the Chairman for the ROK Joint Chiefs of Staff until his retirement from the army in May 1960. He was fully aware of the political developments taking place in Korea at the time, but chose not to participate with either side. He was overseas when the May 16 coup occurred. He was appointed as an ambassador to the Republic of China（Taiwan） in 1960, to France in 1961, and to Canada in 1965. From 1969 to 1971, he served as Minister of Transportation and launched the construction of the Seoul Metropolitan Subway. In 1970 he faced the hijacking of Japan Airlines Flight 351 at Gimpo Airport by the Japanese Red Army. He served as the presidents of two national policy companies in sequence. He participated in the construction of the War Memorial at Yongsan, which opened in 1990. Paik is the author of From Pusan to Panmunjom: Wartime Memoirs of the Republic of Korea's First Four-Star General. On January 30, 2019, a group in consisting of retired South Korean generals of which Paik served as an advisor, released a statement criticizing the administration of South Korean PresidentMoon Jae-in and the Comprehensive Military Agreement which was co-signed with North Korea at the September 2018 inter-Korean summit in Pyongyang. He died on July 10, 2020, at the age of 99, 143 days before his 100th birthday and several years after suffering a stroke.
