The first meeting between Green and Park occurred on June 9. On the State Department’s instructions, Green stated that “the United States saw the Supreme Council for National Reconstruction ‘as an established government, with which it [was] prepared to work in good faith on [a]
friendly and cooperative basis’; welcomed the six objectives of the May 16
message from Chang To-yông and accepted them in good faith; and hoped for a fruitful relationship serving [the] ‘Korean people and our common interests and objectives.’” After the meeting, Green reported to Washington that “the military leaders were often disregarding American advice, but were somewhat influenced by it.” He suggested that it was “premature to move too close to them, since some reserve would offer greater bargaining leverage.”20
Meanwhile, in Washington, the report of the Task Force on Korea was completed on June 5 and discussed and approved as NSC Action 2430 on June 13.21 The document affirmed U.S. intentions to deal with the new military regime on a friendly and cooperative basis, continue economic and military support, and back the junta-initiated national development plan, if the military junta was intent on planning and implementing it. The report also recommended that the United States receive the chairman of the SCNR in Washington for a meeting with President Kennedy, provided that the SCNR was serious about formulating and implementing a national development plan, ready to consider the eventual return to civilian rule, and recognized the USFK-UNC’s authority to exercise operational control over the South Korean armed forces.
It was not until mid-July, however, that the United States had the opportunity to make a deal with the junta on the three issues of economic development, civilian rule, and military operational control, because (supposed) authority and (actual) power did not coincide within the new leadership.
Until the two became aligned through the purges of Park’s rivals from the junta and then his election to the presidency, the United States did not have an authoritative counterpart on the South Korean side with whom to deal.
The coup leaders first had to put their house in order. The opportunity for
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deal making came on July 3, nine days after the new ambassador, Samuel Berger, had taken office. That day Chang To-yông was purged and Park took over the SCNR chairmanship, finally surfacing from the closed-door politics of the junta. Park soon found Berger to be a challenging but constructive and reliable counterpart in negotiating the terms of political rapprochement.
What Berger had found upon his arrival in South Korea was a series of sweeping, revolutionary reforms led by a group of young, enthusiastic, but inexperienced colonels. Some of the measures were distasteful to Berger, involving countless arrests without warrants and the trial of Park’s political foes on trumped-up charges. Others looked economically reckless, often contradicting basic market principles. The military junta, led by Park, did not conceal its nationalistic tendencies, which could easily have turned anti-American or embraced the ideology of nonalignment then popular in many parts of the third world. Still, Berger found positive elements, such as “energy, earnestness, determination and imagination” among the coup leaders, attributes that could potentially lead the country out of its poverty.22 Berger’s complex attitude reflected American ambivalence toward Park and his junta. On the one hand, U.S. policymakers deplored his arbitrary military rule and pressed for the restoration of democracy. On the other hand, concerned over the geopolitical requirements of maintaining a united front against the two countries’ cold war enemy as well as encouraged by the reformist character of the junta in many areas, they were restrained in the exercise of their power to promote democratization.
Berger’s mission was to ensure political stability and an eventual transition to a democratic government, but at the same time to help the junta harness the population’s nationalistic fervor as the engine for economic development. On July 16, 1961, Berger paid a visit to Park and stressed the importance of taking steps toward a return to civilian rule. Now in control of the junta, Park accommodated most of Berger’s demands, including a promise of transfer to civilian rule within a fixed time frame. From that point on, Park’s relationship with Washington became relatively cordial.
On August 12 Park publicly pledged the transfer of power back to a civilian government by the middle of 1963. In September, Berger delivered his part of the deal by arranging the U.S. invitation to Park for a “working visit” to Washington. Park went in November, receiving hospitalities beyond his expectations.
After Park’s visit to Washington, Berger sent a letter to secretary of state Dean Rusk and praised his visitor highly:
Chairman Park Chung Hee has established himself in [the] Republic’s mind as a forceful, fair and intelligent leader who can be trusted with power, trusted
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to keep the revolution on the path of decency and moderation, and trusted to abide by the pledge he gave on August 12 to return to civilian government after the election in May 1963. Park, therefore, represents a most important link between the government and the people, and a most important stabilizing element in the situation. . . . The public support given [to] the military government by the United States and the friendly reception of Park during his visit to the United States have, however, been perhaps the decisive factors in stabilizing the situation. One Korean put it to me in a sentence, “Since the United States is impressed with Park, we Koreans value him more.”23
The U.S. recognition of Park’s leadership not only gave him the opportunity to consolidate power in the immediate post–Chang To-yông period, but also provided him with two more years of power to experiment with new ways of economic development and national reconstruction with the goal of winning the support of the common people in the elections of 1963. Park bought the time he sought to forge his image as a nation rebuilder in return for complying with the U.S. demand that he return the country to civilian rule within a set period of time.
Transition Politics, 1962–1963
After the U.S. acceptance of the coup and its legitimation of the SCNR
through the Park-Kennedy summit in November 1961, South Korea entered a new and crucial chapter in its postwar history, with Park already working to leave a lasting legacy on the South Korean polity. The Republic began a new phase of historical development, profoundly shaped by Park’s ability to hold on to U.S. support and the United States’ ability to steer Park into the restoration of civilian electoral politics.
Although Park came to consult Berger on major political decisions after November 1961,24 Washington still had reservations about the intentions of the junta and especially about its mainstream (churyu) faction led by Park and his nephew-in-law Kim Chong-p’il, who did not hesitate to make reckless decisions without notifying the United States when the moves were perceived as strengthening the SCNR or increasing Park’s chances of winning the coming elections of 1963. The SCNR put anti-mainstream (pijuryu) military officers on trial as counterrevolutionaries to continue transforming the South Korean armed forces into an organization loyal only to Park. As mentioned in Chapter 1, the junta also enacted the Political Purification Law to suppress civilian opposition. Included in the radical moves that brought U.S. opposition was also the trial and conviction of the ousted prime minister, Chang Myôn.
These conflicts revealed that U.S.–South Korean relations during the
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formative years of the Third Republic were far from smooth. On the contrary, the coup leaders frequently acted independently on their own timetable to consolidate their power, while U.S. officials exerted pressure to keep them as responsive to U.S. influence as possible.
Politics: Return to Civilian Government U.S.–South Korean relations during 1962–1963 were characterized by the United States’ efforts to twist the arm of a hesitant, if not resistant, Park to return to civilian rule. At the center of the U.S.–Sout
h Korean conflict was Kim Chong-p’il, of the eighth Korea Military Academy (KMA) graduating class. Serving as the director of the KCIA and commanding the loyalty of many of his classmates in his position as the chairman of various SCNR
subcommittees, Kim Chong-p’il was not only Park’s relative but his hench-man. As the United States suspected, Kim Chong-p’il was behind most of the junta’s unsavory moves, and the United States tried to constrain his power and roles.
The sources of U.S. concern were threefold. First, Kim wielded too much power as director of the KCIA, whose jurisdiction included not only the protection of the state from external security threats but also the maintenance of internal order. Second, the concentration of power in Kim Chong-p’il ironically aggravated the junta’s factionalism, historically a major destabilizing factor in South Korean politics, because by encouraging the eighth KMA graduating class and the natives of Kyôngsang and Ch’ungch’ông provinces to coalesce around the Park-Kim axis, it prompted the fifth KMA graduating class—sometimes alone and at other times in collaboration with the older Hamgyông generals whose educational background lay in Manchuria during the colonial era—to form an anti-mainstream faction in response to the threat of being squeezed out of power. Third, and most important, Kim Chong-p’il and his followers were suspected of being radical, extreme nationalists, or even leftist in political orientation.
In June and July 1962, South Korean politics were thrown into a deep crisis after the KCIA-led mainstream rushed into an ill-fated currency conversion and clandestinely engaged in stock market speculation to raise funds for heavy and chemical industrialization (HCI), particularly a huge project at Ulsan, and for the organization of a political party in anticipation of the coming 1963 elections. The two fiascos triggered an intense power struggle within the junta. While waging a war against his junta opponents, Kim Chong-p’il was also dragged into conflict with Berger. In a telegram to the State Department, Berger expressed his frustration by re-
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porting rumors that Kim was “out to get ‘certain Americans’” and that Park had written South Korea’s ambassador to the United States, Chông Il-gwôn, to ask that he request Berger’s recall. Berger could not substantiate the rumors, but he personally “believed that [the] idea of declaring [himself] PNG [persona non grata] [had] been considered.”25 Rusk advised Berger not to take the problem personally, but proposed that Kim could be
“removed from [the] picture gracefully, say as Ambassador to Japan.”26
Kim Chong-p’il brought matters to a head by trying to meet President Kennedy during his visit to Washington in October 1962.27 Berger, while generally opposed to Kim’s visit, found in it an opportunity “to expose him directly to Washington views and influence” and let him “be impressed with [the] limits within which the military government must remain if our support was to be maintained.”28 To Kim Chong-p’il’s disappointment, he could see neither President Kennedy nor Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, but he did meet with secretary of state Rusk, secretary of defense Robert McNamara, and attorney general Robert Kennedy in the middle of the Cuban missile crisis. In a series of conversations, the Americans emphasized the importance of holding fair and free elections within the promised timetable and improving relations between South Korea and Japan, an improvement that the United States had long sought and now thought possible after the ousting of the staunchly anti-Japanese Syngman Rhee. While Kim Chong-p’il used his visit to upgrade his public image as a next-generation statesman in domestic South Korean politics, he failed to convince his Washington audience that he was the person whom the United States had to deal with. Nor were the Americans able to moderate his actions in the coming months.
Initially, the return to civilian rule progressed on the agreed schedule. A new constitution was prepared with the participation of two American scholars and was put to a national referendum in December 1962. The public response to the proposed reestablishment of a presidential system was overwhelmingly positive. Later that month, Park announced that the presidential election would be held in the spring of 1963, followed by the general election for the National Assembly in the fall. But a crisis broke out when Kim Chong-p’il unveiled the clandestinely prepared organization of the Democratic Republican Party (DRP) as the coup makers’ vehicle to win the coming elections. The anti-mainstream military faction struck hard against Kim, calling for his purge, because they were excluded from the key positions in the DRP. Civilian politicians joined in as well, because they had been legally prohibited from organizing political parties since the day of the military coup. With martial law lifted and political activity allowed as of December 1962 in order to prepare for the transition
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to civilian rule, Kim retired from the army in early January with the rank of brigadier general and resigned from the KCIA as well in order to serve as the public head of the DRP.
Because the DRP was generally designed to exclude or limit the power of the anti-mainstream factions within the junta and to provide Park and Kim Chong-p’il with a monopoly on power, a group of senior generals, commonly referred to as the Hamgyœng faction because of its provincial origin, openly challenged the Park-Kim mainstream line and demanded Kim’s resignation from the office of DRP chairman. The factional struggle was so serious that there was rampant speculation of an impending armed struggle among the military factions. Park contemplated the use of force to quell the division within his ranks.29
Berger seized the opportunity to put pressure on Park to get rid of Kim.
Upon the ambassador’s request, Washington suspended indefinitely the delivery of already approved development loans on February 7, 1963. Berger also accepted a luncheon invitation from Yun Po-sôn, who had resigned from the presidency in March 1962 and was now preparing to launch a Democratic Politics Party to lead the civilian opposition movements. On February 17, defense minister Pak Pyông-gwôn and the chiefs of staff of all four armed services—the army, air force, navy, and marines—met with Park to deliver an ultimatum that Kim Chong-p’il must withdraw from the DRP and leave the country at once.30 Disillusioned by the factional dispute, but also planning to strike back with greater force after the worst of the crisis had passed, Park surprised the country not only by getting Kim to resign from the DRP chairmanship but also by announcing the next day that he would not run for the presidency, provided that the civilian opposition met nine conditions, including promising not to retaliate politically against the military junta and its members for the overthrow of Chang Myôn. Kim Chong-p’il subsequently resigned from all public posts, and went into “exile” in February as a roving ambassador.
On February 13, Berger had written the State Department that the
“United States Government must within next few days make [a] fundamental decision on [its] attitude toward Chairman Park, his government and their plans for election and transition to civilian government.” On the next day, in a telegram to Berger, the State Department showed its readiness to give up on Park and accept Hô Chông—the head of the 1960 interim government after Syngman Rhee was forced out—as an alternative to lead South Korea in the difficult transition to civilian rule. The U.S. embassy immediately gave public support to Park’s proposal of February 18
to withdraw from the presidential race in the upcoming election as “the best hope for political and economic stability.”31
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In mid-March, the political situation took an expected turn. The KCIA allegedly uncovered a series of coup plots and arrested a group of senior generals, mostly from the Hamgyông faction. The arrests weeded out the last remaining faction that claimed a share of power as original members of the military coup. In addition, the mainstream faction mobilized soldiers on active duty to demonstrate publicly in downtown Seoul for an extension of military rule. On the evening of March 15, Park privately informed Berger of his plan to extend military ru
le for another four years through a national referendum. The ensuing actions by the U.S. government proved to be one of its most overt and active interventions in South Korean politics.
Upon receiving Berger’s report of Park’s plan, Rusk authorized Berger to inform Park that the U.S. government, among others, could “not possibly approve and might be compelled openly to oppose continuation of military government for four more years.”32 Park’s plan for the extension of military rule was reported to President Kennedy, whereupon the president had the Department of State and the White House draw up a letter of protest to Park.33 On April 8 Park backed down partway, announcing that he would delay but not scrap the idea of holding a national referendum and that he would allow the resumption of political activities. The United States accepted Park’s proposal, although it was worded as a compromise.
Nonetheless, Berger believed that “the strong stand by the United States was an important factor in this conclusion.”34 Having defused the political crisis, U.S. attention quickly moved on to the social and economic crisis caused by the spring famine in the countryside.
In July the political situation turned more favorable for Park. Kim Chae-ch’un, a moderate in the military junta and from the fifth graduating class of the KMA, was forced to resign from the directorship of the KCIA once he had completed the task of leading the campaign to weed out the Hamgyông faction the past March. The removal of the Hamgyông faction ironically made Kim Chae-ch’un and his fifth KMA graduating class expendable. Using a classic divide-and-rule approach, Park replaced Kim Chae-ch’un with Kim Hyông-uk, a member of Kim Chong-p’il’s clique. Berger’s worries returned. He evaluated Kim Chong-p’il’s followers in the military junta as having “a will to power and a willingness to be ruthless,” inclined to “frequent rejection of U.S. advice on political matters and [tending] to originate and support unsound economic policies.” The Kim Chong-p’il faction was also seen to be tainted by a “touchy ultra-nationalism and barely concealed anti-Americanism” and as assisted by a “group of political advisors with pro-Communist backgrounds who [have] extraordinary influence.”35 The U.S. ambassador was disturbed by Kim Chong-p’il’s fol-
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