Eye on Korea_ An Insider Account of Korean-American Relations

 •   

Why the Carter Policy Failed

By the summer of , the U.S. government had resigned itself to the fact

that Chun Doo Hwan and his followers were the future political leadership

of South Korea. Despite endless meetings and numerous attempts to encour-

age political liberalization, this policy had failed. Some of the reasons for

this failure are by now obvious, but let me summarize them.

First, we allowed our fear of North Korea to dominate our policy deci-

sions, perhaps in part as an overreaction to the recent furor over intelligence

estimates and U.S. troop withdrawals. In reality, North Korea should have

been only a minor concern. To be sure, we believed its military to be a pow-

erful and dangerous force, but even in – it was evident that the ROK

was far outstripping the North in almost every measure of national power,

including international recognition, economic development, and others. We

ignored these developments as well as the fact that North Korea gave no

signs of initiating aggressive military action. In this way, we put stability

ahead of democracy and became a hostage of our own Korea policy. By

concentrating so much on maintaining stability, we allowed the North Ko-

reans to influence our policy in the South, even though they never were a

real factor in any of the events of –.

Also, I believe some senior U.S. government officials had a fear that Ko-

rea might disintegrate the way Vietnam and Iran had during the same

timeframe. To those of us who knew Korea well, this was very unlikely, but

to certain policymakers in Washington, the warning signs in Korea were

similar to Iran. They were prepared to live with another military regime

before they would take a chance of further instability. In this regard, the

Kwangju incident had truly shaken the confidence of the Carter govern-

ment.

Not all the mistakes were made in Washington. Neither the U.S. Embassy

nor USFK fully appreciated the ambitious nature of the KMA Class  group,

despite early and continuing reports. After /, USFK spent far too much

time and effort complaining about proper CFC OPCON procedures. These re-

sources would have been better used in other ways, for example, linking our

security commitment with the ongoing support of the American people,

who were more apt to approve of a democratic government in South Korea

than another military dictatorship. But USFK’s considerable influence with

the ROK military was never used to its full potential—perhaps because of

institutional jealousy and the embassy’s desire to be “in charge” of some-

thing that it could never really control.