’ • ixEDITOR’S INTRODUCTION
Historians are ever on the lookout for new sources. Most of them come in
the form of written documents from the period of events described and are
tucked away in government archives, private libraries, or even people’s at-
tics. For the historian of the recent past, the sources are sometimes oral or,
if written, exist in the form of memoirs covering the experiences of an indi-
vidual going years, even decades, into the past.
In the case of the document presented between these covers, I was fortu-
nate enough to meet the author in at the annual conference on Korea
sponsored by the Richard L. Walker Institute for International Studies at the
University of South Carolina. I was beginning research for a history of U.S.-
Korean relations and was particularly interested in the American role in
South Korea’s democratization. Colonel Young, I discovered, had been sta-
tioned in Seoul in – and again in , both key periods in the Re-
public of Korea’s circuitous path toward an open political system. I came to
look forward to our yearly meetings, where I could pick his brain both for
knowledge and wisdom about America’s relationship with Korea.
Eventually I discovered that Young had published an account of his ex-
periences in serialized form in a Korean magazine. Although encouraged
by Ambassador Walker and others to adapt his story for an American audi-
ence, Young procrastinated, uncertain that he wanted to put the time and
effort into the project. It became my goal to bring that procrastination to an
end. Finally in May, , while once more enjoying Ambassador Walker’s
hospitality and listening to Young reminisce about his Korean experiences,
I worked up the courage to ask him if I could assist in preparing for publica-
tion an English-language edition. He agreed and provided a manuscript for
my examination.
The manuscript did not disappoint. Written in a direct, unpretentious
style, it offered frequent displays of the sharp wit and intellect that I had come
to enjoy in him through personal contact. It also told the fascinating story
of Young’s Korean odyssey, from his first assignment on the peninsula as a
junior officer in the early s through his retirement from the U.S. Army
in and his trip a year later to North Korea as a member of an unofficial