• With Chun in control of the military and the government of Choi Kyu
Ha weak and ineffective, only the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA)
remained as a potential power center. The KCIA was already weakened at
the top by the actions of its former director, Kim Jae Kyu, the assassin of
President Park. Now Chun moved to take control of the organization be-
fore it could reinvigorate itself.
On April Chun was appointed KCIA director. The announcement came
late in the afternoon, a mere half hour after the U.S. Embassy was informed
of the move. Although some of us had speculated that Chun might try to
do such a thing, we had thought that he would do it indirectly by having a
surrogate appointed, not himself personally. This meant that he now con-
trolled both the military and the civilian intelligence agencies. Soon after
his appointment, Chun began purging many positions at the KCIA in the
same manner he had done in the army during the days following /.
Now it was clear that Chun’s ambitions had expanded. The prevailing
feeling in Washington was that it would be necessary for the U.S. govern-
ment to take positive action in order to oppose this move. There were meet-
ings held similar to those following /, but again there appeared to be
few courses of action available that would have the desired effect of retard-
ing Chun’s march to power while not hurting the overall interest of the U.S.
government and the Korean people. Ultimately it was decided that it was
necessary to demonstrate that failure to implement political reform, and
further attempts to consolidate power by Chun would have a negative effect
on U.S.-ROK relations. Accordingly the U.S. government informed ROK
officials that the security consultative meeting was indefinitely postponed,
hoping this would deter Chun.^6
Many of us disagreed with the meeting’s postponement. The Defense
Department, which had opposed linking our political objectives in South
Korea to security policy, had argued strongly against this option. Although
they were unsuccessful, their objections did result in having the meeting
“postponed” rather than “canceled.” This had the effect of watering down
the desired message. Also, it gave the correct impression that the U.S. gov-
ernment was not united in its desire to punish Chun. This was reinforced
because virtually none of the U.S. military in Korea supported the decision
to postpone the security consultative meeting, which became well known
to the ROK military within a few days.^7 Thus, the move by Washington was
totally ineffective; indeed, it served to make Chun stronger. It also tended to
split the embassy and USFK, since USFK blamed the State Department and
by extension the embassy for supporting the postponement.