Park Chung Hee Era

by Byung-kook Kim

  In the case of normalizing relations with Japan, the military’s role was that of a loyal guard defending Park and his regime from the massive demonstrations that broke out in June 1964. With the university campuses in revolt, Park had to suspend negotiations with Japan, but at the same time proclaimed martial law to clamp down on the opposition to clear the way for a resumption of the talks. Thus began the “June 3 Incident,” when for the first time since the transition to civilian rule, Park had to mobilize four infantry divisions to defend his presidency.7 The military having reestablished order, Park directed the police to take student leaders into custody and request arrest warrants from the court. When the court refused, twelve armed members of the airborne unit under the Capital Garrison Command broke into the court and forced the judges to issue the warrants.8 Paratroopers also broke into the Dong-A Ilbo newsroom to threaten reporters and editors for their critical reports on the crackdown.

  The Counter Intelligence Command (CIC), the predecessor of the Army Security Command, also resorted to physical violence, terrorizing journalists at Dong-A Ilbo and the Dong-A Broadcasting System.9

  In the end, it was the military—especially the CGC and the CIC—that protected Park’s reign from the student activists and opposition politicians during the worst days of the June 3 Incident. The two security forces and other military leaders and their troops removed political obstacles to the South Korea–Japan normalization of relations that Park believed was a precondition for not only economic development but also the strengthening of South Korea’s alliance with the United States. Moreover, by allowing the military to voice its concerns regarding Kim Chong-p’il’s efforts to consolidate his front-runner position in the race for presidential succession, Park was able not only to find a scapegoat to protect himself from the

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  angry public but also to eliminate a potential challenger to his power. Kim had been Park’s right-hand man and also a secret negotiator of the normalization agreement. The 1964 treaty crisis showed the armed forces as the defender of Park’s political rule, in cracking down on the political opposition, building a growth-friendly security environment, and weeding out potential challengers by playing into Park’s game of divide and conquer.

  By contrast, the dispatch of combat troops to South Vietnam caused far less domestic controversy. For most South Koreans who had experienced the horrors of the Korean War, anticommunism was a way of life and pro-Americanism an instrument for survival. No major political force could seriously challenge Park’s call to help the U.S. war effort in South Vietnam as a way to repay the debts South Korea owed the United States for coming to its defense in June 1950. At the same time, the troop dispatch was defined as an opportunity to secure capital and export markets for economic modernization projects. Military interests proved critical as well, with the Vietnam War judged to provide the South Korean armed forces with an opportunity to gain invaluable combat experience and also to modernize its forces with cutting-edge U.S. weapons systems. Moreover, South Korean military intervention convinced the United States not to relocate some of its troops stationed in South Korea to the battlegrounds in South Vietnam. Accordingly, after President Lyndon B. Johnson formally requested in May 1964 that South Korea support U.S. efforts in South Vietnam, Park had by September sent 1,954 military officers, a number of Mobile Army Surgery Hospital (MASH) units, and ten Taekwondo martial arts instructors, all for noncombat purposes.10

  The dispatch of combat troops was more challenging, but antiwar sentiment still proved to be too weak to prevent it. To prepare for this effort, Park sent Ch’ae Myông-sin, chief of army operations, on a fact-finding mission to assess the military situation in South Vietnam, only to hear Ch’ae advise against military intervention.11 The ruling Democratic Republican Party (DRP) had its own internal fissure in 1964, with Acting Chairman Chông Ku-yông openly opposing the dispatch of combat troops for fear of tarnishing the image of the South Korean armed forces, whom some were already branding as mercenaries. Even National Assembly member Ch’a Chi-ch’ôl—one of Park’s most trusted lieutenants since his days as Park’s bodyguard in the 1961 coup—joined some twenty DRP legislators in preparing a resolution to rescind the decision to dispatch combat troops. The opposition National Democratic Party (NDP), university students, and progressive intellectuals also opposed sending troops, but certainly not on the scale of the opposition they showed against Park’s drive to normalize relations with Japan. The voice of the opposition was

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  weak and dispersed. In January 1965, eight months after Johnson’s formal request for military intervention and four months after the dispatch of noncombat troops, two thousand South Korean combat troops sailed to South Vietnam.

  Given the political risks and dangers of sending combat troops to South Vietnam in the midst of social unrest caused by the South Korean–Japanese normalization of relations, Park was intent on winning as many economic and security concessions from the United States as possible. Before sending additional combat troops to make South Korea’s military intervention full-scale in October 1965, Park asked for a U.S. pledge to increase bilateral economic assistance, to aid the strengthening of combat readiness of the South Korean armed forces, and to maintain the current level of U.S. military presence in South Korea despite the rapid escalation of U.S.

  troop requirements in South Vietnam. The negotiations were formalized in the Brown Memorandum of March 4, 1966, whereby the United States agreed to finance the cost of South Korea’s troop dispatches to South Vietnam and to support the modernization of its armed forces with an eye to closing the military capability gap vis-à-vis the North.12 It is estimated that through this agreement a billion dollars’ worth of economic and military aid were transferred to South Korea during the 1965–1970 period, which amounted to as much as 19 percent of its total foreign exchange earnings.13

  North Korean Threats, 1968–1971

  The year 1968 ushered in a period of security transition. On January 21, thirty-one North Korean guerrillas successfully infiltrated the western front of the demilitarized zone, which was under the command of the U.S.

  Army Second Infantry Division, and marched to within one kilometer, or 0.6 miles, of the Blue House to mount a surprise attack on Park himself. A fierce gunfight broke out in the heart of Seoul, killing Ch’oe Kyu-sik of the Chongno Police Station and some of the passengers on a commuter bus that was blown up by the guerrillas. The “January 21 Incident” shook the South Korean military, showing the vulnerability of Seoul to guerrilla infiltration and exposing the South’s unpreparedness for nonconventional military conflict despite its combat experience in South Vietnam and the modernization of its weapons systems. The tactical capability and the ideological resolve of the guerrillas to wage a suicidal mission were shocking as well. Among the thirty-one guerrillas, only one was captured alive.

  The rest fought to the last man, demonstrating the fighting spirit of North Korean special forces units. The news that it took only a single day for the

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  guerrillas to move some 25 miles (40 kilometers) along the ridge of the western front to reach Seoul heightened the sense of vulnerability.

  On January 23, two days after the failed North Korean commando attack, came the news of the North Korean capture of the USS Pueblo, an American intelligence vessel reportedly operating in the high seas east of Wônsan, North Korea. While in captivity, the U.S. crew members were forced to apologize publicly for entering North Korean territorial waters for the purpose of espionage. The question of how to counter the North Korean provocations created a rift in the South Korean–American alliance. Whereas Park demanded that the United States first deal with the North Korean guerrilla attack on the Blue House, Johnson focused on the release of the Pueblo crew. Moreover, in contrast to Park’s readiness for military retaliation, Johnson chose to seek a negotiated settlement; he could not afford to
risk war in another part of Asia when the situation in South Vietnam was continuing to worsen. Park felt abandoned by the United States when Johnson separately negotiated the release of the Pueblo crew without taking action to prevent the recurrence of North Korean guerrilla attacks against the South. The sense of betrayal was especially acute because Park thought he had risked his presidency to stand by Johnson in the Vietnam War. But he was also pragmatic enough not to escalate conflict with the United States.

  On the contrary, Park transformed the rift into another opportunity to strengthen South Korean defense capabilities. To appease Park, U.S. presidential envoy Cyrus Vance visited Seoul to issue a joint communiqué in which the United States pledged to increase military assistance. In addition, Vance agreed to equip the newly established reserve forces, whose mission was to protect the rear from nonconventional threats; to hold a regular bilateral defense ministers’ meeting to upgrade the alliance; and to reaffirm the policy of using the United States Forces in Korea (USFK) troops as a human “trip-wire” against invading North Korean military forces by maintaining their forward deployment near the DMZ.14 The forward deployment ensured an automatic military engagement of the United States in the event of war on the Korean Peninsula, because the invading North Korean troops could reach Seoul only after running over the USFK

  troops stationed between the DMZ and Seoul on the flat western front.

  The show of U.S. commitment to the defense of South Korea notwithstanding, military provocation by the North continued throughout the late 1960s. On October 30, 1968, over a hundred guerrillas landed at the east coast villages of Uljin and Samch’ôk to harass the South Korean military from the rear. On April 15, 1969, North Korea shot down an EC-121 U.S.

  reconnaissance plane to test the allies’ intentions and capabilities. On De-

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  cember 11 of the same year, the North hijacked a Korean Air domestic flight.15 Presumably, Kim Il Sung engaged in military provocations in the belief that the South Korean masses would revolt to overthrow Park at the slightest sign of his weakness. The success of the North Vietnamese with guerrilla warfare encouraged Kim to experiment with nonconventional military actions as well.16 To his disappointment, the South Koreans rallied behind Park’s efforts to strengthen military capabilities. The new reserve forces joined the regular troops in antiguerrilla operations in Uljin and Samch’ôk. Park also established the Third Military Academy to train junior army officers on a scale much larger than that of the Korea Military Academy (KMA);17 established various special forces units for counterinsurgency and counterespionage operations; created new command posts to strengthen defense capabilities in the rear; adopted new weapons systems; and lengthened the service period of enlisted soldiers from two to three years.18

  The security situation, however, continued to worsen. With the Guam Doctrine, announced in July 1969, newly elected U.S. president Richard M. Nixon began preparing for an “honorable” exit from the Vietnam War.

  Although the doctrine pledged continued U.S. support for the allies in Asia within the framework of existing defense agreements, it was interpreted by Park as a sign of weakening U.S. commitment to South Korea and to the East Asian region. With per capita GNP and gross military expenditures still lagging behind those of the North, South Korea became deeply unsettled by the Guam Doctrine. To raise its anxiety even more, the U.S. search for an exit from the Vietnam War culminated in national security adviser Henry A. Kissinger’s secret visit to Beijing in July 1971 to prepare for a Sino-American summit meeting and China’s entry into the United Nations as a permanent Security Council member. The coming of détente at the level of great power relations was, however, joined by an opposite trend of rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula. P’yôngyang had announced its Four Military Principles to increase military pressure on Seoul in 1962.19

  And in January 1969, it embraced the simultaneous pursuit of conventional and nonconventional warfare should it launch a surprise attack on the South.20

  With the change of U.S. military goals in the Vietnam War, Park lost his major source of leverage over U.S. policy. During the 1960s, Park had used Johnson’s need of South Korean support for the war effort not only to secure U.S. assistance in the modernization of the armed forces and the development of his country’s economy but also to win U.S. acquiescence in his increasingly heavy-handed treatment of his domestic political opposi-

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  tion. As the Guam Doctrine weakened Park’s position, he frenziedly tried to control the damage. The goal was to get the United States to retract or scale down its rapidly emerging plan for troop reduction or withdrawal from South Korea. If that goal could not be achieved, the next was to get increased U.S. military assistance as a compensation for any removal of U.S. troops. At the same time, Park knew he was working against forces of change that were ultimately beyond his control, and began preparing for the worst by embarking on an ambitious plan to make South Korea self-sufficient in military defense through heavy and chemical industrialization.

  The reduction and relocation of USFK military troops began in earnest in the early 1970s. Twenty-four thousand soldiers of the U.S. Seventh Infantry Division and three combat air force battalions left South Korea by March 1971, while the U.S. Second Infantry Division, with 20,000 soldiers, pulled back to Tongduch’ôn, south of its original front-line military bases, making the First Infantry Division of the South Korean Army formally take over the defense of the western front from the U.S. Eighth Army. There were still a total of 46,000 USFK soldiers stationed on the Korean Peninsula, enough to maintain deterrence against the North. Nonetheless, the Guam Doctrine made Park realize that South Korea had to take charge of a substantial part of its own defense, and that meant more modernization for its military.

  In the 1971–1975 period the Ministry of National Defense (MoND) pushed forward an aggressive military modernization project, with a U.S.

  military assistance program worth $1.5 billion secured by foreign minister Ch’oe Kyu-ha in his negotiations with U.S. ambassador William J. Porter finalized in February 1971, in return for accepting the U.S. withdrawal of one of its two ground divisions.21 The Ministry of Commerce and Industry backed the MoND by starting the construction of a giant industrial complex in Ch’angwôn in April 1974 in order to put in place an industrial infrastructure for the manufacture of military weapons. The Ministry of Science and Technology joined in the effort, creating the Agency of Defense Development22 to take exclusive charge of the production of new weapons systems as well as taking over war matériel transferred from U.S. military troops leaving South Korea as part of a bilateral agreement signed in September 1973.23 In this way Park began to implement his ambitious plan to develop the heavy and chemical industries as a self-sustaining basis for modernizing South Korean military capabilities to a level sufficient to deter a North Korean attack. While South Korea had agreed with the United States in February 1971 to establish a bilateral Security Consultative Meeting of their defense and foreign ministers as an effort at alliance

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  building, Park focused on self-reliance, given the uncertainty of U.S. goals, intentions, and strategies.

  Military Catch-Up, 1972–1979

  To back the development of a national defense industry institutionally, Park appointed O Wôn-ch’ôl as second senior secretary for economic affairs in 1971 and entrusted him with the coordination of heavy and chemical industrialization (HCI). On the recommendation of O Wôn-ch’ôl, Park established a Defense Industry Bureau inside the Ministry of National Defense and organized a Logistics Council, chaired by the prime minister, to orchestrate interministerial coordination on defense industry policy in March 1973. Three weeks before, Park had enacted a Special Logistics Act for Procurement to support the chaebol conglomerates’ entry into strategic HCI projects with the goal of transforming them into defense-related firms.24 The MoND enthusiastically respon
ded to Park’s initiative, eventually creating the post of Assistant Vice Minister for the Defense Industry in September 1977 and spinning off its Defense Industry Bureau into three separate bureaus in December of the same year.25 Park even developed, or tried to give the appearance of developing, a nuclear weapons program with the goal of either reversing President Jimmy Carter’s campaign pledge of military withdrawal or securing South Korea’s own instrument of deterrence (see Chapter 17).26

  The inter-Korea balance of power began to shift visibly in favor of the South in the mid-1970s. The South Korean economy continued to grow at breakneck speed, outstripping the North in terms of per capita GNP in 1974 and enlarging the gap by over 50 percent of North Korea’s per capita GNP in 1977. In the area of defense expenditures, the change was also dramatic. Whereas South Korea managed to provide only 50 percent of its total defense requirements through domestic resources in 1969, its ratio of self-sufficiency in defense expenditures surpassed 90 percent by 1975. Indirect U.S. military assistance ended in 1974, and direct U.S. military assistance terminated by 1978, but this did not threaten South Korean capabilities. After winning the $1.5 billion military assistance program from the United States in 1971, Park made an extra effort to extract domestic resources to maintain the armed forces at the level of 600,000 to 650,000

  troops. In July 1975, he introduced a defense tax to support an increase in the defense budget from 4 percent to 5 percent of the country’s GNP starting in 1976.

  The weapons improvement program also made great headway during the yushin era (see Chapter 8). The 1971–1976 period saw the South Ko-