Congress; to assist in the improvement of KFV capabilities; to suspend the implementation of the MAP transfer program, which had envisioned the reduction of U.S. military aid through South Korea’s sharing a greater burden in the procurement of military supplies; to help South Korea’s expansion of exports to South Vietnam; to encourage economic cooperation among South Korea, the United States, and South Vietnam; and to provide a $50 million package of USAID loans and other financial assistance.37
Moreover, Yi Tong-wôn asked the United States to agree to each of these requests in writing. The United States’ initial response, delivered by Ambassador Brown, was lukewarm at best, positively responding only on the issues of modernizing the South Korean armed forces. Park and his staff were furious.
To break the deadlock over the issue of revising the Mutual Defense Treaty, Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey visited Seoul to meet with Park on February 23, 1966. During his stay, Humphrey reassured Park that the United States would immediately intervene in case of an armed attack from the North. The vice president also promised to make further economic concessions, including an increase in the overseas allowances for KFV troops in South Vietnam paid for by the United States and an increase in the United States’ role in facilitating the expansion of South Korean
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exports to South Vietnam.38 South Korea had been demanding that the United States drastically increase the overseas allowances for the South Korean soldiers to the level of Southeast Asian troops fighting in South Vietnam. But Yi Tong-wôn was not persuaded, demanding that Humphrey examine the possibility of revising the Mutual Defense Treaty. When Humphrey turned down the request on the grounds that the issue was under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Congress, beyond the influence of the executive branch, the South Korean leaders protested even more, because they were aware of the growing antiwar and isolationist forces within the United States, which they thought would make U.S. intervention in a future military conflict on the Korean Peninsula that much more difficult.39
On March 4, the United States came back with a proposal to provide additional military and economic assistance in the form of a written memorandum by Ambassador Brown. Initially, the memorandum involved sixteen items in all, ten on military assistance and six on economic assistance. After minor revisions to make room for expanded assistance, the
“Brown Memorandum” was formally exchanged between the two allies on March 7. The memorandum called for the United States to:
• Provide over the next few years substantial military equipment for the modernization of the South Korean armed forces;
• Equip as necessary and finance all additional costs of the additional South Korean military troops deployed in South Vietnam;
• Provide training programs for KFV troops in South Vietnam and finance the replacement of its personnel;
• Contribute to the improvement of South Korea’s anti-infiltration capabilities to deter North Korea from waging guerrilla war and destabilizing South Korea;
• Provide equipment and facilities to expand South Korea’s ordnance map with the goal of increasing ammunition production within South Korea;
• Provide communications facilities exclusively for KFV use in South Vietnam, in order to enable direct communication between the South Korean government and its KFV troops in South Vietnam;
• Provide four C-54 aircraft to the South Korean air force with the goal of strengthening its support for KFV troops in South Vietnam;
• Improve military facilities for troop welfare from proceeds of the excess sales of MAP;
• Assume the costs of overseas allowances paid to KFV forces at the rate agreed on March 4, 1966;
• Provide death and disability gratuities resulting from casualties in
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South Vietnam at double the rates recently agreed to by the Joint United States–South Korea Military Committee.
There were also six agreements on economic assistance, whereby the United States pledged:
• To provide South Korea with a budgetary fund equal to the net additional costs of deploying additional military troops in South Vietnam and of mobilizing and maintaining in South Korea one combat-ready reserve division, one brigade, and their support units;
• To suspend the MAP transfer program as long as there were two South Korean army divisions deployed in South Vietnam;
• To procure as much as possible from South Korea the military supplies, services, and equipment used by South Korean troops in South Vietnam, and to procure as much as South Korea can provide in a timely manner, at a reasonable price, and under the principle of fair competition any goods purchased by USAID for use in its projects for rural construction, pacification, relief, and supply in South Vietnam;
• To increase technical assistance to South Korea in the general area of export promotion;
• To provide new USAID loans to support South Korea’s economic development, in addition to its already pledged loan of $150 million;
• To provide $150 million in program loans in 1966, for the purpose of supporting South Korean exports and development projects in South Vietnam.40
By contrast, on the issue of revising the Mutual Defense Treaty, the United States maintained its stance that any revision could only be initiated by Congress. To ameliorate South Korea’s frustration, Ambassador Brown wrote his second letter on the issue on March 8, 1966, with the hope that the reaffirmation of U.S. security commitment would minimize the political damage arising from the absence of a treaty revision.41 In contrast to the United States’ readiness to make military and economic concessions as an inducement for Park’s second dispatch of combat troops to South Vietnam, it never thought of making concessions on an issue as fundamental and strategic as its range of strategic-military choices in the event of an armed attack against South Korea. For their part, Park and his confidants tried to use their commitment of troops to South Vietnam as leverage to tie down the United States’ military options on the Korean Peninsula for good. Park’s failure to do so, despite what the press called the
“honeymoon” (milwôl) between Seoul and Washington since 1964, con-
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firmed his earlier fears of U.S. ambivalence toward its security commitment to South Korea.
In the end, with his eye on the military and economic concessions enumerated in the Brown Memorandum, Park put the bill for a second dispatch of combat troops to a vote in the National Assembly in March 1966.
Park was sure of his legislative victory. With the DRP controlling 110 of the total 175 legislative seats and the major opposition political parties still staging their boycott of the National Assembly since the passage of the treaty bill to normalize relations with Japan in August 1965, the bill passed with 95 in favor, 27 against, and 3 abstentions. Although defeated, the opponents of the war were gaining in number. Only one DRP legislator had opposed the first dispatch of combat troops in 1965; now a total of 27
DRP legislators voted against the second dispatch in 1966. But even combined with the opposition New Democratic Party (NDP), the opponents of the war still remained a minority. The two rounds of troop dispatch were to increase annual U.S. military aid to South Korea from $163 million during the 1961–1965 period to $336 million in the next five years.
Military Disengagement
South Korea’s second dispatch of combat troops ended with the deployment of the White Horse Division in 1966, but U.S. requests for more South Korean troops continued through 1967. Then came two political-military shocks that brought a freeze to South Korea’s military presence in South Vietnam, followed by its phased pullout of combat forces from Saigon. The shocks were triggered by North Korea’s escalation of provocations toward the South in January 1968 and newly elected president Richard M. Nixon’s “Guam Doctrine” of July 1969. The shocks developed into a security crisis with profound domestic political repercussions for South Korea (see
Chapters 6 and 8), when the United States unilaterally countered North Korean provocations with a mixture of benign neglect and negotiation against South Korea’s hard-line posture and, again unilaterally, an expansion of its policy of military disengagement from South Vietnam to include its USFK troops stationed in South Korea against vigorous South Korean protests. It was the United States’ unilateralist style of response that transformed the security shocks into a crisis of alliance—and a crisis in South Korean domestic politics.
The first of the two shocks began on January 21, 1968, when thirty-one North Korean commandos tried to raid the Blue House to assassinate Park. Two days later, military tensions worsened even more with North
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Korea’s seizure of the Pueblo, a U.S. intelligence ship, which was operating in the East Sea. The United States and South Korea responded very differently to the two North Korean provocations. Whereas Park reacted in a rage, calling for immediate military retaliation, U.S. ambassador William J. Porter and USFK commander Charles H. Bonesteel called for restraint from any military response.42 The United States opted instead for dialogue with the North Koreans for the return of the Pueblo crew and adopted a policy of hands-off vis-à-vis the issue of North Korea’s failed commando attack.
Within South Korea, some of the hard-liners urged military sanctions not only to deter further North Korean provocations, but also to curb the United States’ unilateral negotiations for the return of the Pueblo’s sailors.
A few even called for the withdrawal of military troops from South Vietnam to protest the United States’ separate negotiations with the North over the Pueblo crew in the middle of South Korea’s security crisis.43 The United States quickly came down on Park, with Cyrus R. Vance, a special envoy, warning that U.S. troops would be pulled out of South Korea if South Korea acted similarly in South Vietnam.44 Park was furious, feeling betrayed after having taken risks in joining the United States’ Vietnam venture. Park even toyed with the idea of launching a unilateral retaliation against the North Korean military bases responsible for the preparation of the commandos’ raid against the Blue House.
The United States’ attempt at a separate deal with the North was Park’s wake-up call regarding South Korean security vulnerabilities. The sense of betrayal and insecurity spreading throughout his inner policy circles had an instant negative impact on the United States’ request for the dispatch of a third combat division to South Vietnam. Before North Korea’s provocations in January 1968, Park had toyed with the idea of sending civilian personnel to the rear areas in place of a third combat division.45 Now, in dispute with the United States, Park shelved plans for further military or civilian deployment on the grounds that South Korea faced a growing security threat from North Korea—possibly, all alone. As the United States’
negotiations with the North Koreans over the Pueblo proceeded, Park began to stress the importance of enhancing self-defense capabilities. In April 1968, he established a 2,500,000 men-strong reserve force. He also moved to build production facilities for weapons, starting with M-16 rifles and ammunition.46
Meanwhile, the military situation in South Vietnam deteriorated from bad to worse throughout 1968, forcing Johnson to search for ways to
“Vietnamize” the Vietnam War. His successor, Richard M. Nixon, followed with the Guam Doctrine, which led to the policy of reducing the
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number of U.S. troops in South Vietnam from 550,000 soldiers in 1968
to 430,000 by 1970. By December 1972, the United States completed the withdrawal of its combat troops, leaving only 24,000 behind for noncombat purposes. That instantly prompted its allies to pull out their troops as well. Park announced South Korea’s military disengagement from South Vietnam in his 1971 New Year’s Address.47 The first stage of troop withdrawal began in December of the same year.
Initially, the United States tried to limit its military disengagement to South Vietnam. In August 1969, a month after publicly declaring the Guam Doctrine, Nixon held a summit meeting with Park in San Francisco to pledge not to reduce the number of USFK military troops stationed in South Korea.48 Then, in March 1970, contrary to his earlier assurance, Nixon had Ambassador William J. Porter inform Park of the United States’ decision to reduce USFK troops. The news confirmed the doubts Park had developed about U.S. intentions since the United States’ 1966 refusal to revise the Mutual Defense Treaty and its 1968 separate negotiations for the return of the Pueblo’s sailors. The USFK presence in South Korea was gradually reduced from 64,000 soldiers in 1969 to 40,000 in 1972. Aware that South Korea could trust only its own military capabilities to protect vital national interests, Park followed the United States in bringing KFV troops home to shore up military deterrence against rising North Korean threats.
At the same time, Park intended to get whatever leverage he could by linking the speed, scale, and timing of KFV troop withdrawal with the United States’ concessions on South Korean security issues. Although U.S.
policy regarding East Asia had fundamentally changed toward military disengagement, the idea of leveraging based on the Vietnam War had worked so well for Park in the mid-1960s that he clung to this negotiating strategy of issue linkage through much of the 1969–1973 period. The strategy worked—but only partly—because the United States also sought a similar deal. When Porter informed Park of the United States’ decision to withdraw its troops from South Korea in March 1970, he also suggested that this move could be postponed to correspond with South Korea’s time table for its own troop withdrawal from South Vietnam. Park strongly objected, but at the same time, he recognized the utility of linking the timing of the two military withdrawals to his advantage, once he became sure of the irreversibility of the United States’ plans.49
Moreover, Park adopted the strategy of extracting as much military and economic aid as possible from the United States as the price of his acquiescence. At the Third Annual Bilateral Defense Ministerial Meeting held in July 1970, South Korea demanded that the United States support its mili-
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tary modernization program before reducing the USFK presence. Unable to bridge their differences, the allies had no provision for U.S. military reduction in their joint statement. A month later, Vice President Spiro T.
Agnew visited Seoul to persuade Park. Negotiations continued under the leadership of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Sim H¤ng-sôn, and USFK commander John H. Michaelis. Before the two countries succeeded in exchanging a memorandum in November 1970 after ten rounds of negotiation, they had to overcome several hurdles. Hindering their easy agreement, the allies had different conceptions of South Korea’s strategic role, potential capabilities, and preferences. Fearful of being abandoned by the United States to face the North and its Soviet and Chinese allies alone, the South Korean side began negotiations with an extensive shopping list of cutting-edge military equipment, estimated to be worth $4
billion, whereas the United States offered a military sales list ranging between $1 billion and $1.5 billion. Moreover, with an eye to establish self-sufficient defense capabilities on the basis of rapid and extensive military modernization, South Korea wanted to bring its KFV troops home with all of their U.S.-financed military equipment used in the Vietnam War. The United States, by contrast, allowed only two of the six KFV regiments to leave South Vietnam with their equipment.50 In the end, the two sides ended up issuing a joint statement on February 6, 1971, whereby the patron state agreed to assist South Korea’s Five-Year Military Modernization Plan (1971–1975) with an appropriation of $1.5 billion.51 The assistance was conceived as helping South Korea fill in any power vacuum that could result from the reduction of USFK troops by 20,000 soldiers.52
The agreement did not stick, however. The United States soon revealed its plan to further reduce its USFK troop levels in 1973. As expected, Park resisted. To cut off the U.S. troop reduction at the level of 20,000
, he once again fell back on the the Vietnam card, proposing to keep his troops in South Vietnam beyond 1972, in return for a U.S. pledge not to push its policy of military withdrawal from South Korea any further in April 1971.
Initially, the talks got nowhere. The United States rejected linking the time table of KFV troop withdrawal with its level of USFK troop reductions by telling the South Koreans that it was inappropriate for the United States to intervene in what it saw as a bilateral issue between South Korea and South Vietnam.53 With its military disengagement from South Vietnam proceeding rapidly, the United States was intent on not playing into Park’s hands. Rather, the United States only promised to maintain its troop presence in South Korea through 1974, without any definitive word on its long-term policy for the Korean Peninsula. U.S. policymakers were not being disingenuous. In the middle of constructing a new regional order of
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détente, they had yet to formulate a new long-term vision for the United States–South Korean alliance that fit in with the still-evolving broader policy of détente. In spite of, or perhaps because of this lack of new U.S. strategic doctrine, Park continued to delay the withdrawal of KFV troops from South Vietnam in hopes of influencing U.S. policy toward the Korean Peninsula.
The problem with Park’s strategy of issue linkage was that his instrument of leverage on the United States’ regional and peninsular security policy—the speed, scale, and timing of his withdrawal of KFV troops from South Vietnam—worked only while there were KFV troops deployed in South Vietnam to assist the United States’ orderly military pullout. Park refrained from carrying out his threat of early military disengagement because that would have depleted the ability of his only source of leverage, KFV troops, to attempt to slow down, if not reverse, the United States’
policy of USFK troop withdrawal. Consequently, he initially planned to pull out 17,000 KFV soldiers before February 1972, but ended up bringing home only 10,000 by February. Formally, it was South Vietnam’s request for a slowdown in KFV troop withdrawal that put in motion his change in the speed, scale, and timing of the first of South Korea’s three stages of military withdrawal. However, given Park’s agenda of shaping the United States’ emerging security strategy, he must have welcomed South Vietnam’s request as an opportunity to protect his source of leverage over U.S.
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