put the brakes on Carter’s foreign policy experiment. Despite the earlier threats of intervention, the sanctions the United States actually imposed proved to be very mild due to not only regional geopolitical constraints but also the internal divisions within the Carter administration and its uneasy relationship with Congress. With regard to Koreagate, the Ethics Committee of the House of Representatives ended up reprimanding only three of the congressmen accused of accepting money from Pak Tong-sôn after two years of intense investigation. On the issue of troop withdrawal, Carter made a U-turn after his decision to pull back 2,400 ground troops, including 800 combat soldiers, prompted U.S. advocates for a continued military presence in South Korea within the DoD, the U.S. armed forces, and Congress to join together in restraining him. Fortunately for the alliance between the two countries, the damage was limited.
The Origins of Park’s Troubles, 1972–1974
The Yushin Regime
The dispute between South Korea and the United States over human rights issues originated from the launching of the yushin regime in October 1972. In Park’s eyes, the yushin constitution was a legitimate response to the perceived weakening of the U.S. military commitment to South Korea that came with the ending of the Vietnam War. Ten thousand U.S. troops
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were withdrawn from South Korea by 1970 and the Seventh Infantry Division departed in 1971, although the military threat from North Korea remained unchanged. Park countered the security vacuum with the announcement of a national emergency in 1971 and the declaration of the yushin constitution in 1972.1 With it, Park thought he could put the South on the path to his twin objectives of “self-reliant defense” and heavy and chemical industrialization.2
The United States was caught off guard. Park had kept his plans secret until the final moment, and the United States saw the declaration as un-warranted, since political-military tensions on the peninsula were becoming more relaxed through the North-South dialogue that Park launched immediately before establishing his yushin regime.3 The effect on the opposition forces in South Korea was far worse. In August 1973, Kim Dae-jung, who had been the presidential candidate of the New Democratic Party (NDP) in 1971, was abducted from Japan, where he had been granted political asylum since the promulgation of the yushin, by Korea Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) operatives. Earlier in the year, Kim Dae-jung had organized the Alliance for Democracy and Unification in Korea (Hanmint’ong) to lead anti- yushin movements in the United States and Japan. His abduction in broad daylight in downtown Tokyo seriously damaged Park’s image in the eyes of South Korea’s two most important foreign patrons. Kim Dae-jung reappeared five days later in the vicinity of his Seoul residence, to the relief of opposition politicians, chaeya dissidents, and Japanese and U.S. policymakers.4 The damage was done, however, as high-level leaders at the KCIA were deeply implicated in the abduction. The yushin regime flatly denied Park’s involvement in the incident, but it knew it had to accommodate public opinion. KCIA director Yi Hu-rak was dismissed several months later.5
The frequent use of repressive measures to silence criticism and to put down chaeya-led student protests became the hallmark of the yushin regime. On January 8, 1974, Presidential Emergency Decrees nos. 1 and 2
were promulgated, which enabled the military court to try anyone who
“den[ied], oppose[d], misrepresent[ed] or defame[d] the constitution.” As justified by Park, these decrees were necessary “to safeguard the right to national existence and to lay a strong foundation for prosperity and national unification.”6 The political consequences of political rule by emergency decrees were dire, forcing Park to issue two more emergency decrees by April 1974. Presidential Emergency Decree no. 4 continued for five months, and resulted in the round-up of more than 1,000 dissidents for police interrogation and the trial of 253 by an emergency court martial.7 In the midst of widespread sympathy for Park over the death of the nation’s
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first lady at the hand of an ethnic Korean resident of Japan who was aiming to assassinate him, Park removed the decree as a gesture of political reconciliation on August 23, 1974, only to see a greater challenge from the opposition. The escalation of political conflict led Park to issue Emergency Decree no. 7 in April 1975 and no. 9 in May 1975. The yushin became rule by emergency decrees.
Human Rights Movement
As Park tightened his grip on political society, the anti- yushin movement grew both in numbers and in intensity. The movement was initially led by church leaders and student activists, but quickly expanded to include opposition NDP politicians. In October 1974, the NDP came under the leadership of hard-liner Kim Young-sam with the platform of “clear opposition” (sônmyông yadang). The opposition party soon joined forces with Dong-A Ilbo and Dong-A Radio to agitate for the Movement for the Amendment of the Yushin Constitution. The journalists of the newspaper and radio station protested against censorship, issuing a “Declaration for the Practice of Freedom of Speech” on October 24, 1974, which by mid-December had resulted in the business community’s cancellation of their advertising under pressure from the political authorities. Christian leaders had been vocal in their opposition, organizing a Human Rights Committee on May 17, 1974, to support the “prisoners of conscience” (yangsimbôm) and their families, in addition to the promotion of human rights.8 Toward the end of 1974, these different groups of the anti- yushin movement launched the People’s Congress for the Restoration of Democracy as an umbrella organization to challenge Park.
The driving force of the anti- yushin movement in South Korea consisted of the Alliance for Democracy and Unification in Korea (Mint’ongryôn), the Coalition for the Restoration of Democracy in the Motherland (Cho-minryôn), and the Alliance of Korean Youth (Hanch’ông). 9 Combining forces with other nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to coordinate a political challenge to Park, these dissident groups received support from abroad, including from Reverend Pharis J. Harvey’s North American Coalition for Human Rights in Korea, Asia Watch, Amnesty International, and the International Human Rights Law group. The NGO-led human rights campaign paid off when prominent Americans began criticizing Park for his political repression. Former U.S. ambassador to Japan Edwin O. Reischauer wrote an article in the New York Times to call for a reexamination of current U.S. policy toward South Korea. Arguing that the U.S.
commitment to democracy in South Korea was seriously threatened by
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Park’s yushin regime, and asserting that Park’s resort to political repression to stay in power would only increase domestic political conflict that could drive the Korean Peninsula into a Vietnam type of quagmire, Reischauer proposed to put human rights at the top of the U.S. agenda.
Until Carter’s ascent to the presidency in 1977, however, this was a minority position—albeit with an increasing number of supporters in the United States.10
The United States Divided, 1974–1976
U.S. Congressional Hearings on Human Rights Abuses During the Gerald R. Ford administration (1974–1977), the human rights dispute between South Korea and the United States centered on congressional hearings. Donald M. Fraser, chairing the U.S. House Subcommittee on International Organizations and Movements, on July 30, 1974, held joint hearings with Robert N. C. Nix of the House Subcommittee on Asia and Pacific Affairs on human rights in South Korea. Representative Fraser was to become a key investigator of the illegal South Korean lobbying campaign allegedly to buy support in the U.S. Congress. Much of his work was supported by American human rights lawyers and church leaders, as well as by dissident South Korean intellectuals working on anti- yushin campaigns.11
The House hearings succeeded in identifying human rights abuses in South Korea and the Philippines as a genuine challenge for U.S. foreign policy. At the hearings, New York attorney William H. Butler, in his capacity as a member of the Amnesty International mission to South Korea, criticized the yushin regime for
its “mass arrests, prolonged detention without trial,” “other denials of due legal process,” and “constant surveillance by the KCIA.”12 Jerome A. Cohen of Harvard Law School testified that the choice facing the United States was not one of choosing security at the expense of human rights, or human rights at the expense of security interests.
Rather, Cohen saw military security and human rights interests to be mutually complementary. He asserted that continuing U.S. support for Park despite his resort to authoritarian rule and political repression would severely damage South Korea’s internal cohesion, which would render the society vulnerable to communist infiltration and subversion.13
Representative Fraser expressed frustration over the yushin regime’s negative response to the rising tides of criticism within Congress regarding South Korea’s human rights abuses. When Fraser visited South Korea in March 1975, the yushin regime refused to allow him to meet with victims
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of state torture. U.S. human rights activists, including Cohen, echoed Fraser’s warning that Park’s oppressive rule risked not only weakening South Korean democracy but, more seriously, bringing on another war on the Korean Peninsula by breeding domestic political instability in the South.
Thus arose the liberal strand of intellectuals, human rights activists, and the left wing of the Democratic Party that directly linked the issue of human rights to military aid.14 The Republicans were more cautious, putting security interests above human rights interests in the bilateral relationship.
The Park sympathizers saw South Korea’s history of national division, civil war, and military confrontation as compelling Park to choose the path of authoritarian modernization. At the hearings, Franz Michael of George Washington University explained the yushin regime as a response to answer the security dilemmas brought by the weakening of U.S. commitment to the defense of South Korea. Chong-Sik Lee of the University of Pennsyl-vania saw the “threatening international environment” as the basis for Park’s fear and his resort to authoritarian rule in 1972. Lee recommended that the United States pursue a policy of mutual dialogue and persuasion rather than the path to sanctions.15
In December 1974, Fraser proposed reducing military aid to South Korea from the original request of $165 million to $145 million. Fraser also called for inserting a human rights clause in the bill that made an additional supply of military assistance worth $55 million contingent on Park’s effort to make substantial progress in the human rights conditions in South Korea. The direct linkages Fraser made between military aid and human rights constituted a “major psychological blow” to the yushin regime.16 On April 2, 1976, with the support of 118 congressmen from both parties, Fraser petitioned the U.S. government to reconsider the program of military support for South Korea on the basis of an “intensification of the longstanding crisis of democracy in South Korea.”
Deepening Security Crisis in the Korean Peninsula While some members of the U.S. Congress began toying with the idea of making military aid an instrument of human rights diplomacy, the presidents of the two countries doggedly held on to the traditional policy of putting security interests ahead of other goals and values. In fact, the security dilemmas brought by the deepening crisis in Indochina had only strengthened their view that the core value of the bilateral relationship was military security. In August 1974, when Park narrowly escaped the assassination attempt that took the life of his wife, it was alleged that the assail-ant, an ethnic Korean resident of Japan, had been trained by a sympathizer
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of North Korea. In November 1974, the South Korean armed forces discovered a North Korean–built underground tunnel four feet high and three feet wide south of the demilitarized zone.
The Ford administration recognized Park’s security concerns as legitimate, although it was careful not to make them a rationale for political repression. As early as February 1974, secretary of defense James R.
Schlesinger testified before the House Armed Service Committee that a continued U.S. military presence in South Korea was vital for the security of Northeast Asia. On March 20, national security adviser Henry A.
Kissinger confirmed to minister of foreign affairs Kim Tong-jo that there would be no more withdrawals of United States military troops from the South. Peter Hayes has argued that it was Kissinger who reversed Schlesinger’s plan for continuing with the phased withdrawal operation previously drawn up by his predecessor as secretary of defense, Melvin R.
Laird.17
Amid the strengthening of the communist challenge in Cambodia and South Vietnam, Ford made sure not to inadvertently encourage North Korea into military ventures by hurting the credibility of the U.S. military commitment to South Korea. Despite the spread of opposition to his tradi-tionalist South Korea policy among many of the Christian human rights organizations in the United States, Ford paid an official visit to South Korea in November 1974 with the goal of demonstrating the strength of the alliance. In a joint declaration, Ford reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to deliver “prompt and effective assistance” to South Korea in the event of an armed attack “in accordance with the Mutual Defense Treaty.”
As for the U.S. troops stationed in South Korea, he assured Park that there was “no plan to reduce from the present level.”18 In response, Park reiterated his commitment to continue dialogue with the North with the goal of easing tensions and building peace on the Korean Peninsula. But despite Ford’s show of political support at the summit meeting, Congress sought to prevent Park from feeling wholly confident of its support; the legislators reduced military assistance to South Korea by $20 million until Ford submitted a report on the improvement of Park’s human rights record.19
Then came the news of the evacuation of what remained of U.S. military forces from South Vietnam in April 1975, followed by the report of South Vietnam’s unconditional surrender to the North Vietnamese. At the same time, to Park’s alarm, Kim Il Sung, the leader of North Korea, visited Beijing on April 18 to discuss the possibility of waging a military offensive on the Korean Peninsula. Although Zhou Enlai rejected the idea a day before the communist takeover of Saigon,20 Park issued a “Special Statement on National Security.” The news that Kim Il Sung was sounding out Zhou
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Enlai on the idea of military engagement in the midst of the collapse of South Vietnam triggered a Red scare in the South. In his speech, Park appealed for public unity and warned of the danger of an imminent war on the Korean Peninsula. Two weeks later, Park declared Emergency Decree no. 9 to strengthen the power of the yushin regime. Saying national security was at stake, the decree tried to silence the voice of human rights activism. Moreover, Park began to consider developing nuclear weapons capabilities in fear of the possible removal of the U.S. nuclear umbrella. In an interview with the Washington Post in June 1975, Park asserted that South Korea had the capability to develop nuclear weapons and hinted that it might go nuclear if the United States removed its nuclear weapons from South Korea. The nuclear option was aborted under strong pressure from the United States, who warned that pursuing the idea would threaten the break-up of the bilateral security alliance (see Chapter 17).21
Despite the unfavorable House hearings on human rights abuses and the confrontation over nuclear development, official U.S. policy emphasized stability on the Korean Peninsula and close cooperation with South Korea until 1975. The continuity of its security-first orientation was reconfirmed on May 11 of that year with the rejection of Representative Fraser’s revised foreign aid bill that proposed to reduce military aid to South Korea for fiscal year 1976–1977.
The “Carter Shock,” 1976–1977
Carter’s Campaign Pledge of Troop Withdrawal In spite of their defeat in 1975, Representative Fraser and progressive Democrats in Congress increased pressure on Park to improve human rights conditions in South Korea. Playing into their hand was the escalation of political conflict there, which led to P
ark’s decision to use force. In March 1976, eleven dissidents, all Christian activists, were arrested under the charge of plotting to overthrow the government. The crackdown was triggered by their declaration of resistance at Myôngdong Cathedral. The arrests immediately provoked a response from United Methodist churches in the United States, which had had a large missionary presence in South Korea for over a century and were in close contact with South Korean dissidents in the 1970s to call for reconsideration of U.S. support to the yushin regime.22 In June 1976, the general assembly of the United Presby-terian Church in the United States sent letters to both Park and Ford to request a fair trial for the detained dissidents. Two months earlier, Fraser had also sent a letter to Ford along with the signatures of 118 congressmen,
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urging reconsideration of military support to the yushin regime due to the
“intensification of the longstanding crisis of democracy in South Korea.”23
When the dissidents were found guilty of subversion, a total of 154 congressmen co-signed a letter to Park, warning that disrespect for human rights seriously undermined U.S–South Korean relations.
The progressive Democrats’ challenge to the traditional U.S. policy toward South Korea reached a new level when one of the Democratic Party’s presidential candidates, Jimmy Carter, promised in a campaign speech in Chicago on June 23, 1976, that if elected, he would withdraw U.S. ground troops from South Korea. Carter had revealed his idea of a complete military withdrawal in a meeting held by the Trilateral Commission in Kyoto in May 1975.24 Since then, he had developed a powerful rationale that directly linked Park’s record of human rights abuses to the issue of troop withdrawal, asserting that the yushin regime’s “internal repression [was not only] repugnant [but also] undermine[d] the [public] support for commitment of continued U.S. military presence.”25 Carter also criticized Ford’s record on human rights issues during a televised debate in October 1975, especially condemning his inaction on the issue of the Soviet Union’s violations of the Helsinki agreement.26
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