structural:expansion
Early life and education

Park was born around 11 am on November 14, 1917, in Sangmo-dong, Gumi, Keishōhoku-dō (North Gyeongsang Province), Korea, Empire of Japan to father Park Sŏng-bin and mother Paek Nam-ŭi. He was the youngest of five brothers and two sisters. He was of the Goryeong Park clan.

Park's family was extremely poor and consistently lacked food. According to Park, his father was upper-class (yangban) and set to inherit the family's moderate holdings, but the clan banished him after he participated in the 1894–95 Donghak Peasant Revolution. In 1916, the elder Park moved to his wife's village of Sangmo-dong, where he was given a small plot of land. According to later interviews, he did not work the land with his wife and instead drank alcohol and wandered around. The scholar Chong-Sik Lee speculates that the elder Park did not wish to be seen working to avoid showing acceptance of his lost yangban status.

Park's mother was seen by her contemporaries as diligent and focused. She managed both the household and farming. She was around 43 at the time of Park's birth. Due to her advanced age and disastrous economic situation, she tried to abort the pregnancy on a number of occasions. When her son was eventually born, however, she was reportedly deeply affectionate toward him.

Park had a number of health concerns in his youth. For much of his early life, he did not eat well and was often described as sickly. When he was two years old, he crawled off a raised floor and landed in a smouldering fire pit. He was quickly rescued from the pit, but his forearms were significantly burned. For the rest of his life, he reportedly intentionally wore shirts with long sleeves to hide his scars.

A significant biographer of Park, Cho Gab-je, interviewed many people who knew him and got the impression that Park's childhood was otherwise fairly happy. According to Cho, Park had many close friends, his parents got along well, and his family was affectionate toward him.