• Most of the foreign officers were the best from their country. Many went
on to become generals and even chiefs of staff of their respective national
services. In Korea, for example, both former Army Chief of Staff Kim Jin
Young and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and later Minister
of Defense Kim Dong Jin were graduates, and former Minister of Defense
Rhee Byong Tae was a graduate of both the CGSC and the even more pres-
tigious U.S. Army War College at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. There are
other examples as well.
The primary purpose of the CGSC was to teach professional military sub-
jects such as tactics, logistics, command, leadership, and strategy. I was
assigned to the strategy department and placed in charge of the Asia cur-
riculum. We taught geopolitics, strategy formulation, international rela-
tions, and similar subjects. Most of the student officers were at the rank of
major and had not been exposed to these subjects before, so there was a high
interest.
Although the CGSC had what was probably the finest military curricu-
lum in the world, I was dissatisfied about one thing. Each year about thirty
new CGSC graduates were assigned to duties in Korea immediately follow-
ing graduation. These officers were among the best in the U.S. Army, but
few had been to Korea previously or knew anything about the culture, his-
tory, language, combined ROK-U.S. military system, or any of the other
things that were unique to the region. Building on the work of my prede-
cessor, Lt. Col. Don Boose, who was also a Korea expert, I asked the college
commandant to authorize an expanded course of instruction especially for
these students. As designed, this course would be given during the last se-
mester and would be ten weeks in duration. Such a course could not make
instant Korea experts of the students, but it could produce officers who were
ready to effectively serve almost immediately after arriving, instead of spend-
ing several weeks adjusting to the country. This was particularly important
because many of the officers assigned to Korea were there for only one year,
so there was a real need for them to be productive from the very beginning
of their assignment.
It was at first difficult to get approval to expand this course; not only was
it a new idea but also there was no such course for any other country. For
example, each year more than one hundred CGSC graduates were ordered
to West Germany, yet there was no special course for any of those officers. I
argued long and hard that Korea was not the same as Europe, that military
duty in Korea was quite different from duty in Europe because of the sharper
disparities in culture and language and the more complex command