Lesson Plan: The Daughter

Subjects: History (Cold War South Korea, 1990s Peru), Civics (presidential systems, impeachment, pardons), Comparative Politics (dynastic political parties, populism, transitional justice), Current Events (Peru's 2026 presidential runoff), Geography (the Republic of Korea, the Republic of Peru).

Recommended grade: 10-12 (high school) and undergraduate History, Political Science and Comparative Politics electives.

Duration: Two 50-minute sessions, or one 90-minute block.

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Learning Objectives

By the end of this lesson, students will be able to:

1. Trace Park Geun-hye's biography from age 22 (the assassination of her mother Yuk Young-soo on 15 August 1974) through her father's assassination (26 October 1979), her eighteen-year withdrawal from politics, her 2012 election as president, her 2016 impeachment, and her 2021 pardon.

1. Trace Keiko Fujimori's biography from age 19 (pausing university in 1994 to serve as her father's first lady) through her father's flight to Japan and resignation by fax in November 2000, his 2009 conviction for human rights crimes and 2017 Christmas pardon, his 2024 death, and her four consecutive presidential runoffs.

1. Identify the structural parallels between the two careers: daughter as first lady in her early twenties, eighteen-to-twenty-year political wilderness, return to politics on the family brand, runoff against a left-leaning rival, and the unresolved question of the authoritarian father's legacy.

1. Distinguish between the developmental record and the human-rights record of each authoritarian father, and explain why both remain contested in their respective countries decades later.

1. Reason about why families of deposed authoritarian leaders are often able to win elections decades after the fall of the original regime, drawing on comparative cases (Marcos in the Philippines, Suharto in Indonesia, the Bhutto dynasty in Pakistan).

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Session 1: Park Geun-hye

Warm-up (5 minutes)

Show students a photograph of Park Geun-hye at her presidential inauguration on 25 February 2013 alongside an archival photograph of her at age 22 as her father's first lady in 1974. Ask: "What does it mean for a country to elect the daughter of its former military dictator thirty-three years after his assassination?"

Define dynastic restoration: the return to elected office of a member of a previously deposed or discredited political family.

Reading (10 minutes)

Distribute the first half of "The Daughter" (up to "the country keeps the question of what to do with the father's legacy unresolved"). Students read silently.

Discussion (15 minutes)

Whole-class:

• What happened to Park Geun-hye's mother in August 1974? (Yuk Young-soo was killed at the National Theatre of Korea by Mun Se-gwang, a Japanese-born ethnic Korean sympathiser of North Korea, while he was attempting to assassinate her husband President Park Chung-hee.)

• What role did Park Geun-hye play between 1974 and 1979? (She served as her father's de facto first lady from age 22 until his assassination in October 1979.)

• What was the trade-off at the heart of Park Chung-hee's rule? (His developmental record drove the South Korean economic miracle, including the country's rapid industrialisation. His authoritarian record included the 1972 Yushin Constitution, the imprisonment of dissidents and a torture-and-detention regime against political opponents.)

• Why did Park Geun-hye win the December 2012 election against Moon Jae-in? (Several reasons: continued nostalgia for her father's developmental record among older voters, the conservative party's organisational strength, her own decades of patient party-building since 1998. Notably, Moon Jae-in had himself been imprisoned in the 1970s for protesting against her father's regime.)

• What ended Park Geun-hye's presidency? (The Choi Soon-sil scandal: revelations in October 2016 that a longtime friend with no government position had been editing speeches, vetting cabinet appointments, and channelling donations from the chaebol to two foundations she controlled. Impeachment 9 December 2016 by 234-of-300 votes; Constitutional Court upheld 8-0 on 10 March 2017.)

• Who pardoned Park Geun-hye in December 2021? (Moon Jae-in, the same man she had defeated to win the presidency.)

Hands-on activity: build the timeline (15 minutes)

Working in pairs, students build a timeline of the Park Geun-hye arc with these dates:

1. 15 August 1974: Mother assassinated at National Theatre, Seoul.

1. 26 October 1979: Father assassinated by KCIA director Kim Jae-gyu at Gungjeong-dong safehouse.

1. 1998: Park enters electoral politics.

1. 19 December 2012: Wins presidential election against Moon Jae-in.

1. 25 February 2013: Inaugurated as 18th president.

1. October 2016: Choi Soon-sil scandal breaks.

1. 9 December 2016: Impeached by National Assembly 234-of-300.

1. 10 March 2017: Constitutional Court upholds impeachment 8-0.

1. 6 April 2018: Sentenced to 24 years in prison.

1. 24 December 2021: Pardoned by Moon Jae-in.

Then they answer in two sentences: how much time passed between the daughter's first political appearance (1974 first lady) and her impeachment (2017)?

(Answer: 43 years.)

Exit ticket (5 minutes)

One sentence: "Why did Park Geun-hye win the 2012 election, and why did she fall?"

(Expected answer: she won on her father's brand, her party's machine, and conservative voters' nostalgia for the developmental years. She fell on her own scandal, the Choi Soon-sil influence-peddling case, which had nothing to do with her father's legacy and everything to do with her own choices in office.)

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Session 2: Keiko Fujimori

Warm-up (5 minutes)

Show students an archival photograph of Keiko Fujimori at age 19 as her father's first lady in 1994 alongside a campaign photograph from her 2026 presidential run. Ask: "What is the same and what is different about Keiko Fujimori's career and Park Geun-hye's career?"

Reinforce the structural parallel: both daughters served as their authoritarian fathers' first ladies in their early twenties.

Reading (10 minutes)

Distribute the second half of "The Daughter" (from "Now look at Lima this week"). Students read silently.

Discussion (20 minutes)

Whole-class:

• What happened in Peru on 17 May 2026? (The National Jury of Elections certified the final first-round results: Keiko Fujimori (Fuerza Popular) took 17.19% and Roberto Sánchez (Juntos por el Perú) took 12.03%. They will face each other in the runoff on 7 June 2026.)

• Why did Keiko Fujimori serve as first lady from age 19? (Her parents had publicly separated; Alberto Fujimori needed a first lady; Keiko paused her university education to fill the role from 1994 to 2000.)

• What was Alberto Fujimori convicted of in 2009? (Human rights violations: the 1991 Barrios Altos and 1992 La Cantuta massacres carried out by the Grupo Colina death squad operating within his security services during the counter-insurgency against the Shining Path. He was sentenced to 25 years.)

• What was the autocoup of 5 April 1992? (Alberto Fujimori dissolved Congress and the judiciary by decree, ruling by emergency powers; he subsequently rewrote the constitution to permit his own re-election.)

• How did Alberto Fujimori leave the presidency in November 2000? (While abroad at the APEC summit in Brunei, he travelled to Japan and on 20 November 2000 faxed his resignation to the Peruvian Congress. Congress refused to accept the resignation and on 22 November voted to remove him on grounds of 'permanent moral disability'.)

• What was the "Christmas pardon" of December 2017? (President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski pardoned Alberto Fujimori on Christmas Eve 2017. The pardon was later annulled, Fujimori returned to prison, was released again on a Constitutional Court order in December 2023, and died at his daughter Keiko's home on 11 September 2024.)

• How is Keiko Fujimori's run for president in 2026 different from her previous three runs? (It is her fourth consecutive runoff. The previous three (2011 to Humala, 2016 to Kuczynski, 2021 to Castillo) were all narrow losses. Her own legal troubles, three preventative-prison stints 2018-20 on money-laundering charges, were dismissed by the Constitutional Court in October 2025. Her father died in September 2024, ending a question that hung over the previous three campaigns. If she wins, she would be the first woman elected president of Peru.)

Hands-on activity: comparative parallel chart (15 minutes)

Working in groups of three or four, students fill in a two-column comparison chart with these rows for Park Geun-hye (left column) and Keiko Fujimori (right column):

1. Age at which she became first lady to her father.

1. Reason mother was absent.

1. Year father took power.

1. How father lost power.

1. Father's conviction (year, charges, sentence).

1. Father's pardon (year, by whom).

1. Year daughter entered electoral politics.

1. Number of presidential bids before winning (or, for Keiko, before the 2026 runoff).

1. Daughter's own legal troubles.

1. Outcome of daughter's career (or, for Keiko, current status).

Each group presents one row of comparison aloud. Discuss which row shows the closest parallel.

Exit ticket (5 minutes)

Two sentences:

1. Name one structural feature shared by both careers.

1. Name one important difference.

(Expected: shared features include serving as first ladies for their authoritarian fathers in their early twenties, entering politics decades later, building a national party around themselves, and facing left-leaning rivals in presidential races. Different features include the outcomes: Park won and then fell; Keiko has lost three runoffs in a row and is running again. Or: Park's father was assassinated by his own intelligence chief; Keiko's father lived another 24 years after his presidency ended and died of natural causes at his daughter's home.)

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Optional extension: comparative dynastic restorations

Students choose one other historical or contemporary dynastic restoration and write a one-page comparison with either Park Geun-hye or Keiko Fujimori:

• Bongbong Marcos, son of Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr (deposed 1986), elected president of the Philippines 2022 by landslide.

• Megawati Sukarnoputri, daughter of Indonesian founder-president Sukarno (overthrown 1967), served as Indonesian president 2001-04.

• The Bhutto-Zardari dynasty in Pakistan: Zulfikar Bhutto (hanged 1979) → Benazir Bhutto (PM 1988-90, 1993-96, assassinated 2007) → Bilawal Bhutto Zardari (Foreign Minister 2022-23, ongoing).

• Sonia and Rahul Gandhi continuing the Nehru-Gandhi family in India.

• Justin Trudeau, son of Pierre Trudeau, prime minister of Canada 2015-25.

Comparison criteria: relationship to the family patriarch, age at first political appearance, scale of family discredit at the time of the daughter's or son's entry, time between original fall and dynastic return, current status.

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Vocabulary

• First Lady: the ceremonial wife (or in some cases daughter) of a head of state; in both Korea and Peru, an adult daughter has historically been called to fill the role when the president's spouse is absent

• Autocoup (autogolpe): a self-coup in which a sitting head of government uses executive power to dissolve the legislature and judiciary and rule by decree

• Yushin Constitution: the October 1972 South Korean constitution that abolished direct presidential elections and effectively made Park Chung-hee president-for-life

• Grupo Colina: a death squad organised within Alberto Fujimori's security services, responsible for the 1991 Barrios Altos and 1992 La Cantuta massacres

• Chaebol: South Korean family-controlled industrial conglomerates such as Samsung, Hyundai, SK and Lotte

• Choi Soon-sil scandal: the 2016 South Korean political scandal that resulted in Park Geun-hye's impeachment

• Fuerza Popular: Keiko Fujimori's conservative political party founded after her 2006-11 term in the Peruvian Congress

• Juntos por el Perú: Roberto Sánchez's left-leaning political party

• Odebrecht scandal: the regional Latin American corruption scandal centred on the Brazilian construction conglomerate Odebrecht (now Novonor), which paid bribes to politicians in twelve countries including Peru

• Permanent moral disability (incapacidad moral permanente): the Peruvian constitutional grounds on which Congress removed Alberto Fujimori in November 2000

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Teacher's note on neutrality

The essay does not endorse either Park Chung-hee's developmentalism or Alberto Fujimori's neoliberal stabilisation. It also does not endorse Keiko Fujimori or Roberto Sánchez. The structural argument is comparative and offered as a historical observation: dynastic restoration after the fall of an authoritarian father follows a recognisable pattern in many countries, and South Korea's experience between 2012 and 2017 is one available data point for what might happen in Peru if Keiko Fujimori wins on 7 June. Encourage students to evaluate the comparison on its structural merits, not on whether they sympathise with either daughter politically. The Korean precedent is not a prediction; it is a question about what happens after dynastic restoration succeeds.