Eye on Korea_ An Insider Account of Korean-American Relations

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relationships. Eventually the expanded course was approved, and we added

sections on the organization and structure of the Korean armed forces, the

peninsular defense plan, and a tactical exercise designed to test all newly

acquired information in a practical application. That was in , and the

Korea orientation course is still being taught today. I am told that Korea is

still the only country with its own course at the CGSC.

After two years as an instructor, I was selected for promotion to full colo-

nel and put in charge of the Joint and Combined Operations Committee,

which included not only a core curriculum on joint-combined operations

but courses on Europe and the Middle East as well. Korea remained my first

love, however, and I was the only full colonel on the faculty who continued

to teach as well as be an administrator and manager.

Return to Washington

In the early spring of , I was asked by the office of then Assistant Sec-

retary of Defense Richard Armitage to work on a special project involving

Korea.^1 I was told that this project would be very important to our future

security relationship with the ROK. Immediately accepting this assignment,

in the summer I reported to the Office of the Secretary of Defense in Wash-

ington.

Pentagon duty in  was not much different than it had been when I

was assigned there in . The building was still old, dusty, and impersonal.

As a colonel I had my own office, but it was very small, consisting of a desk

and chair, one chair for a visitor, and a large wall safe for document stor-

age. I had enjoyed much better office space as a major and lieutenant colo-

nel but was determined to make do with the situation.

To grasp the importance of this study to the U.S. Department of Defense,

it must be understood that our defense policy toward Korea had not changed

significantly in almost thirty years. Since the mid-s we had maintained

forces in South Korea with basically the same objective and with very little

alteration of command relationships. U.S. ground forces were reduced by

one infantry division in the early s, and the Combined Forces Command

was formed in , but no other major changes had occurred. The Depart-

ment of Defense wanted to reevaluate this relationship for the future, not

in terms of the basic commitment to Korea’s security, which was firm and

secured by treaty obligation, but in terms of the present and projected threat

from North Korea, the growing economic disparity between North and

South, the organization of the CFC, the relative roles and responsibilities of