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Acceptance and controversy

In spite of this second rejection, Park was somehow eventually accepted to the academy. The circumstances surrounding his acceptance are not known with certainty, and are a source of controversy. The leading theory is that Arikawa, then a colonel in the Kwantung Army, personally asked the commandant of the academy Major General Nagumo to let Park in.

Another theory, proposed by the Korean Chinese historian Ryu Yŏn-san (류연산) in 2003, posits that Park may have joined the Gando Special Force as another show of fealty. The unit was meant to suppress Korean independence activism in the Jiandao region ("Gando" in Korean, "Kantō" in Japanese) of Northeast China. However, this theory is rejected by biographers Cho Gab-je and Chong-Sik Lee, who argue that the testimony that the theory is based on does not align with the chronology of widely accepted events in Park's life.