January 1960, Seoul

President Syngman Rhee has entered the final winter of his rule. After the Rhee government secured victory through the rigged March 15 election, students enraged by its actions poured into the streets, crying out for democracy. With prices rising and American aid declining, the political upheaval gripping the nation could hardly fail to draw the attention of an Army major general stationed at the Busan Logistics Base Command.

That man is you.

You had originally planned to overthrow the Rhee government and launch a military revolution on May 8, 1960. But with only a few weeks remaining before the operation, the democratic uprising of April 19 forced you to abandon the plan. Yet the corrupt old-guard politicians who came to power afterward proved even more inept than the Rhee government before them. Before long, the flame of national renewal burned once again in the major general's heart. From then until the early hours of May 16, 1961, you must win military units to your side, secure the funds you need, evade the eyes of counterintelligence, and ultimately make your way to the Han-river Bridge at three in the morning to bring the operation to success.

But until its cause is carried out, every revolution is nothing more than a failed treason.

• Supreme Council for National Reconstruction · If the uprising of 16 May ends in success, you will have to deliver the thing you kept calling for: a settling of accounts with the old order. Then again, you may turn out to be exactly the sort of ruler they were.

• Economic Planning Board · Plan against performance, drawn on graph paper. For the Korea of 1960, one of the poorest countries on earth, the first thing is the economy and the second thing is the economy.

• Ministry of Finance · The keepers of the national granary. Through them you can pour money into the plan and take the public's resentment as the price, or cut taxes year after year and change the way people live.

• National Assembly · A bill does not end with one click. Introduction, standing committee, legislation committee and plenary vote take five to seven months, and the vote is decided by the seats your party won at the general election.

• Judiciary · The articles of the constitution are generated from your own choices. Amend it and the wording changes, and the people will not forget which article you rewrote.

• The Bank of Korea, the conglomerates, the New Village Movement, Health and Social Affairs, the oil crisis office and the nuclear programme, each with a screen of its own

The major events have screens of their own

• The Seoul Operation, 16 May

• Presidential elections

• The claims negotiation with Japan

• The restoration council

• Dinner at Gungjeong-dong

History is not fixed

Every decision that matters has more than one branch, and on your judgement Korea's history either follows the course we know or turns down one of the hundreds, the thousands of paths it never took. Whatever you choose, at the end a chronicler's record of every turning point will set it down and show it to you.

Twenty-four endings

The coup can fail before dawn. You can reach the 1963 election with no organisation behind you. You can lose control of prices, or decide that twice was enough and walk out in 1971, or accept the opposition's victory and do something this country had never done.

Proclaim Yushin and the night of the twenty-sixth of October is waiting. Remember one thing, though. Choices that cost people their lives come with a price to match.

One last word

Glorification, or denunciation · There is hardly a thing in the world that casts no shadow. This game takes as its subject a figure who remains fiercely contested, and we are fully aware of what that means. Whether Park Chung-hee's course makes him the true father of the Republic of Korea, or closes as nothing more than that of a military dictator, rests entirely on the choices you make inside the game.