demands. Contrary to his earlier denial of the existence of political prisoners, Park grudgingly released fourteen leading dissidents from prison on July 17, 1977. He also set free ten more people, arrested for their public call to abolish the yushin constitution, on March 1, 1978, only to see them rejoin the dissident chaeya. 57
Carter’s human rights policy was thus a policy that satisfied neither the human rights activists nor the security advocates. By emphasizing “positive incentives” rather than negative sanctions like aid withdrawal to punish “governments guilty of serious violations of human rights,”58 Carter’s key advisors still viewed human rights as secondary to “military, economic, and strategic considerations.”59 Vance later recalled that “given the importance of South Korea for the security of Japan and for [the United States’] political and military position in East Asia, [it was] recommended that [the United States] continue to press hard on [the] issue [of human rights], but not to tie it to [American] economic or military assistance.”60
Vance argued that the decision to withdraw ground troops from South Korea was a strategic one that needed to be made on the basis of military security calculations.
Another Quagmire: Koreagate, 1976–1978
The Koreagate Investigation
On October 24, 1976, the Washington Post reported the illegal lobbying of congressmen by South Korean lobbyists, thus opening up what the press was to call “Koreagate,” hearkening back to the Watergate scandal that had led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation. Identified by the Washington Post as the “most sweeping allegations of congressional corruption ever investigated by the federal government,” Koreagate centered around Pak Tong-sôn, a South Korean businessman and unregistered lobbyist.
The newspaper cited FBI sources reporting that a number of U.S. government officials and congressmen had been on Pak Tong-sôn’s payroll for their pro–South Korea positions. The New York Times followed with an estimate that as many as 115 members of Congress might be implicated in Koreagate. Senator Howard H. Baker gave another estimate, suggesting that about 50 congressmen had been the target of Pak Tong-sôn’s bribery.
The charges were serious, prompting U.S. media to work on tracking down those who had been bribed for nearly two years. Needless to say, bilateral relations between the two countries suffered in consequence.61
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Over the next twenty-four months, Koreagate developed into a major political scandal. Not only the Justice Department but also the House and Senate ethics committees as well as the House Committee on International Organizations and Movements investigated South Korea’s systematic efforts to bribe congressmen through Pak Tong-sôn. Soon the investigators zeroed in on other South Koreans for illegal lobbying, including the former ambassador to the United States, Kim Tong-jo; a Baltimore-based businessman, Hancho C. Kim; Suzi Park Thomson, former secretary to retired House Speaker Carl B. Albert; and Pak Bo-h¤i, Mun Sôn-myông’s aide in the Unification Church.
The investigations by Fraser’s Subcommittee on International Organizations eventually led to a comprehensive review of U.S.–South Korean relations. Citing U.S. intelligence sources, the Fraser report found that Park began organizing his Washington lobby in 1970, when Nixon announced the withdrawal of the U.S. Seventh Army Division from South Korea. The goal was to build a lobby in Washington that would work to prevent the United States from going further down the road of troop reduction and to secure U.S. assistance in the modernization of the South Korean armed forces. When Koreagate erupted, the yushin regime adopted the strategy of denying all allegations.62 When former ambassador William J. Porter acknowledged the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s past practice of eaves-dropping on the Blue House to back the United States’ claim that it had the evidence to trace the ties between the Washington lobbying and Park Chung Hee, the yushin regime accused the United States of violating the universal norm of respect for national sovereignty. Yushin backers also called Carter’s moralistic foreign policy hypocritical, given U.S. interference in South Korea’s internal affairs.63
The Fraser report concluded that Pak Tong-sôn’s lobbying efforts had proved effective, getting Congress to approve a $1.5 billion military aid program to South Korea for fiscal years 1971–1975.64 In addition, the report revealed that since 1972, Park’s Washington lobby increasingly came to rely on the KCIA to run the illegal lobbying. Moreover, the Fraser committee found that the KCIA had been threatening and intimidating anti-yushin Korean Americans prior to the outbreak of Koreagate.
In this context of extensive congressional investigations into the yushin regime’s human rights violations and illegal Washington lobbying, the news that former KCIA director Kim Hyông-uk would testify at the hearings of the Fraser committee seemed to indicate that the very foundations of the yushin regime were being threatened. Kim had been a key member of Park’s inner circle, serving as the KCIA director for six years (1963–
1969), a period when Park made fundamental decisions that shaped the
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character of his political rule, including the dispatch of combat troops to South Vietnam (1965), normalization of relations with Japan (1965), and the constitutional revision to allow a third presidential term (1969). Since 1973, Kim had been in what he termed “exile.” Despite the yushin regime’s attempts to stop Kim Hyông-uk from testifying, sometimes with threats and other times with the offer of ambassadorial positions in Mexico or Brazil,65 the former KCIA director stood before the Fraser committee and said that he himself had helped Pak Tong-sôn get the highly lucrative license for importing American rice to South Korea in return for Pak Tong-sôn’s efforts to lobby for South Korea in Washington. Kim Hyông-uk also revealed that he had transferred $3 million to U.S.-based banks for Pak Tong-sôn as “loans” for his operating the George Town Club.66
Kim Hyông-uk blamed Park Chung Hee for the lobbying scandal. But despite Kim’s testimony, the Fraser committee could not come up with definitive evidence of Park’s direct link to the illegal lobbying activities.67
Summoning Pak Tong-sôn to the hearings thus became imperative. Carter wrote a letter urging his return to the United States.
Escalation of Conflict
Congress also delayed approving the Carter administration’s military aid bill. The yushin regime reacted as expected, rejecting outright Congress’s request for the testimony of Pak Tong-sôn and Kim Tong-jo. To the surprise of Park’s political opponents in South Korea, the U.S. congressional hearings and investigations triggered nationalistic reactions, making South Korean society rally around the head of the yushin regime. Some student activists and political dissidents demanded that Park completely disclose the details of the Koreagate scandal, but the public mood was hardly
“anti-Park.” In the midst of the Koreagate scandal, the South Korean National Assembly adopted a bipartisan resolution in June 1978 to oppose the U.S. troop withdrawal policy.68 Park’s problem had less to do with his mass base of support than with the rising fragmentation within the ruling elite. The mounting criticism in the United States could not be taken lightly by the political elite because South Korea depended on U.S. military, economic, and political support for national survival. The rift in the alliance was to fracture the yushin regime’s internal cohesion, with dire consequences in October 1979 (see Chapters 5, 6, and 13).
In 1977 Leon Jaworski succeeded Philip A. Lacovara as special counsel for the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct. Backed by Speaker Thomas P. O’Neill and Chairman John J. Flynt of the House Ethics Committee, Jaworski kept up the pressure on Park by arranging an eth-
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ics hearing. On October 31, 1977, the House passed a resolution demanding South Korea’s cooperation in the investigation into Koreagate.69 In the end, the two disputing allies compromised in December 1977 by having Pak Tong-sôn questioned by Jaworski’s men in Seoul. The United States also agreed to give Pak Tong-sôn imm
unity from prosecution during his subsequent visit to the United States for further interrogation. In January 1978, the U.S. prosecutors went to Seoul to question Pak Tong-sôn. In February, South Korea acceded to the terms of Pak Tong-sôn’s testimony before the House and Senate ethics committees. The actual testimony was an anticlimax, with Pak Tong-sôn simply denying that he was an agent of the South Korean government and that he conspired with Representative Otto E. Passman to buy influence for South Korea.70
Kim Tong-jo was another person Jaworski wanted to summon.71 But South Korea rejected his request on the grounds that the former ambassador to the United States enjoyed diplomatic immunity. Congress cut economic aid by $56 million to pressure the South to hand over Kim Tong-jo to U.S. investigators, only to find South Korea even more adamant. Ambassador Gleysteen actively mediated between Seoul and Washington and arranged a compromise solution whereby the United States would interrogate Kim Tong-jo through a written questionnaire. As expected, in September 1978 Kim Tong-jo denied all allegations of bribery in his written response.
The congressional investigations and hearings continued after the testimony of Pak Tong-sôn and Kim Tong-jo, but with much reduced media scrutiny and public attention. The issue soon became buried. Despite the anticlimactic end of the scandal, Koreagate damaged the integrity of Congress, particularly its Democratic members. Park and his yushin regime suffered much more. Throughout the two-year-long Koreagate dispute, the U.S. media zeroed in on the seamy side of Park’s political rule, making it more difficult for the advocates of the U.S–South Korean alliance to stop the tides of U.S. military withdrawal and human rights activism.
The Anticlimax: Revision of Carter’s Troop
Withdrawal Plan, 1977–1979
The U.S. Congress Steps In
While Koreagate was in full swing and the human rights dispute had deteriorated into a contest of wills, many senators on the Committee on Foreign Relations began to advise caution regarding Carter’s troop withdrawal plan. In June 1977, the Senate passed Democratic Majority Leader
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Robert C. Byrd’s amendment that required the president to consult with Congress on the issue of troop withdrawal from South Korea. The Byrd amendment was brought about by Carter’s earlier failure to consult with Congress.72 On January 9, 1978, Senators John H. Glenn and Hubert H.
Humphrey warned in their report to the Committee on Foreign Relations that Carter’s decision to remove U.S. ground troops “reduce[d] the deterrent effect” on the North, which enjoyed military superiority over the South by deploying its military troops in an offensive posture. In the senators’ eyes, the reduction of U.S. military assistance, coinciding with the precipitous fall in South Korean confidence in the United States’ commitment to the defense of South Korea, also came at the wrong time. The Glenn-Humphrey report warned that “each phase of U.S. troop withdrawal should be approached most cautiously” and demanded the submission of “a detailed Presidential report prior to each withdrawal phase.”73
After holding its own hearings, the House Armed Services Committee issued a report highly critical of Carter’s troop withdrawal policy in April 1978, describing it as “lacking advice, assistance, recommendations, or estimates” of the JCS. Closely supervised by Chairman Samuel S. Stratton, an outspoken critic of Carter’s troop withdrawal policy, the report argued that troop withdrawal should proceed with a transfer of military equipment worth $800 million. Deeming the North to be superior in military capabilities, it also warned of the destabilizing effects that Carter’s policy of troop withdrawal would have on the Korean Peninsula and in East Asia generally.74 By this time, the opposition against troop withdrawal had become bipartisan as key Democrats like Glenn, Sam Nunn, Henry M. Jack-son, and Gary W. Hart joined the Republican critics.75
When Carter held a summit meeting with Fukuda Takeo in 1977, the Japanese prime minister reluctantly agreed to Carter’s plan of troop withdrawal. However, encouraged by the changing tides of opinion in the Congress, Fukuda urged Carter to reconsider his decision, especially in the absence of adequate compensatory measures to prevent a power vacuum from developing on the Korean Peninsula. Fukuda’s growing anxiety over the destabilizing impact of Carter’s withdrawal policy was widely shared in Japan. Only two years earlier, its Defense White Paper had classified the Korean Peninsula as “one of the highest threat areas in the world,” because it was thought that North Korea might miscalculate and believe that it would go unpunished in the event of war with the South.76
Becoming increasingly isolated, Carter announced on April 21, 1978, that troop reduction would be limited to only one battalion in 1978 and that the withdrawal of the other two battalions would be postponed until a year later. Carter justified the adjustment of his original plan as forced on
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him by the delay in Congress’s passage of a military equipment transfer bill he had submitted to counter the possible danger of military imbalance on the Korean Peninsula.77 Despite his placing the blame on Congress for its inaction, the adjustment was clearly a victory for the opponents of troop withdrawal. Congress eventually unanimously passed Carter’s bill to transfer military equipment worth $800 million.
The Armstrong Report
In reversing the political climate in Washington, it was the U.S. intelligence community that played a pivotal role. In December 1975, John Armstrong, a young intelligence analyst in the Defense Intelligence Agency, reported a dramatic surge in North Korean military capabilities since 1972.
In January 1978, General John W. Vessey, commander of the USFK, urged the Defense Department to reassess the military capabilities of North Korea upon hearing Armstrong’s startling intelligence analysis.78 The news of the ensuing Defense Department review was leaked to the Army Times in January 1979, making the Armstrong report itself a political issue. Moreover, from mid-1978 on, the result of more extensive studies of North Korean military capabilities became available as classified intelligence reports, putting Carter even more on the defensive. The Armstrong report and others suggested that the North Korean armed forces were two times larger in size than the South Korean military.79 When some of the findings were made public, Congress gained the upper hand over Carter on the issue of troop withdrawal.
The National Security Council (NSC), too, began preparing Presidential Review Memorandum 45 (PRM-45) on the basis of new estimates regarding the North Korean military in January 1979. PRM-45, which called for a “comprehensive review of U.S. objectives and policies toward [South]
Korea,” was a product of combined efforts by the National Security Council and the State Department. Vance had assistant secretary of state Richard C. Holbrooke orchestrate a concerted effort to reverse Carter’s troop withdrawal plan by preparing PRM-45, reappraising the military balance on the Korean Peninsula and planning Carter’s tour of East Asia.80 PRM-45 had the effect of transforming the “isolationist” Carter administration into a supporter of containing threats from the Soviet Union and its allies, including North Korea.81 Gleysteen recalled that the presence of Vance at the NSC meeting on PRM-45 in May 1979 was a precursor to the reversal of Carter’s troop withdrawal policy.82
As noted above, Brzezinski had once taken the position that human rights activism could be a valuable instrument for promoting U.S. values
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and interests in the third world as well as in other democratic nations.
However, he soon realized that human rights activism could severely damage U.S. interests by exacerbating the superpower rivalry with the Soviet Union and by alienating authoritarian regimes in geopolitically crucial third world countries. In 1978, facing the reality of power politics, the Carter administration was active in the selling of newly developed aircraft to South Korea, delivering eighteen F-4E Phantom jets out of a total of thirty-seven contracted for sale by 1979 and planning for a sale of sixty F-16 fighters worth $1.2 billion in the 1980s. Aiming to maintai
n deterrence against the North, the United States reconfirmed its provision of a nuclear umbrella for South Korea, in addition to holding regular massive joint military exercises.83 Ironically, the more Carter pushed for an active human rights policy toward South Korea, the more he was pressured by Congress and the Defense Department to support traditional containment policy and to increase military aid to South Korea with the goal of minimizing the damage to deterrence.
The Park-Carter Summit
By the late 1970s, maintaining the military balance on the Korean Peninsula came to be widely recognized within the U.S. foreign policymaking community as a key precondition for the continuance of Carter’s troop withdrawal policy. Drawing on new intelligence reports, the U.S. army and the CIA came out with a strong recommendation to suspend Carter’s troop withdrawal plan. In June 1979, the JCS also officially put its weight behind the suspension of troop withdrawal. Carter signed PRM-45, and he publicly made the U-turn in July 1979 when he visited South Korea to hold a summit meeting with Park.
Having been consulted on the drafting of PRM-45, Ambassador Gleysteen had been preparing for the Park-Carter summit meeting since late 1978 to improve strained U.S.–South Korean relations. To clear the way for Carter’s U-turn on the issue of troop withdrawal, Holbrooke stated before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April 1979 that “further withdrawals [were] in abeyance until [the United States] complete[d] [its]
reassessment of North Korean military capabilities.”84 In May 1979, however, Carter toyed with the idea of holding a trilateral meeting between Seoul, Pyôngyang, and Washington either during or after his summit meeting with Park rather than making any public statement on troop withdrawal policy. The idea of holding a trilateral peace talk had been suggested earlier by Yugoslav president Josef Tito, upon Kim Il Sung’s proposal for a U.S.–North Korean summit meeting to ease tensions on the
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