Politician and speaker of the National Assembly
| Life | 1925 ~ 2014 |
| Era | 근현대 |
| Clan | 순천 박씨 |
Park Jun-kyu, a politician from Daegu, earned a degree in political science from Seoul National University in 1949 and a master's in international politics from Brown University in 1964. After serving as a university professor and president of the Busan Ilbo newspaper, he entered politics in 1955 as secretary to Democratic Party leader Cho Byeong-ok. Following two failed bids in 1954 and 1958, he won a seat in the 5th National Assembly, aligning himself as a young reformist within the Democratic Party's old faction alongside Kim Young-sam.
After joining the Democratic Republican Party in 1963, he was reelected repeatedly for a total of nine terms, holding key ruling-party posts such as chairman of the Democratic Republican Party's Policy Committee and representative of the Democratic Justice Party. He served as Speaker of the National Assembly during the first halves of the 13th and 14th Assemblies and the latter half of the 15th. In 1993, amid the civilian government's asset-disclosure controversy, he left his party rather than yield to pressure to resign his seat.
He died of natural causes in 2014 and was buried at the Daejeon National Cemetery, remembered as one of modern Korean politics' most veteran long-serving legislators.