•
There was some sentiment for a strong protest to the ROK government over
this matter. Ambassador Gregg immediately disagreed with this approach
and instead directed the security officer to work in a calm and measured
way with the Seoul police to review procedures in order to prevent another
such incident. He then went on Korean television to actually praise the re-
sponse of the police and stated that the break in was the work of only a small
handful of Koreans and did not represent the actions or wishes of the Ko-
rean people at large. His quick and decisive action had an overall calming
effect, and what might have been a major negative event became instead
almost a positive one. In fact, I think that this incident actually helped ease
anti-Americanism a little.
Another of Ambassador Gregg’s priorities was to expand and balance
trade with South Korea. Over the past generation we had developed a huge
foreign-trade deficit, and there was a lot of pressure from Congress and the
American business community to sell more American-made products in-
ternationally, including to Korea. In some respects, Korea was a victim of
circumstances in this regard. The United States had for many years pursued
a very generous trade policy with Japan, which had resulted in a serious
trade deficit with that country. Now a deficit had emerged with Korea as well,
and the U.S. Congress was not going to let that condition continue.^6 We in
the embassy were under instructions to do everything possible to help bal-
ance trade with the ROK.
My office became quite involved in assisting American contractors, par-
ticularly defense contractors, understand the Korean market and its re-
quirements. One of the things we always stressed to defense contractors
was honesty and care in choosing agents. Some representatives had been
rumored to be less than honest in their business dealings. This was espe-
cially the case with agents of some European companies that were com-
peting against us on certain defense contracts and were involved in bribery.
This finally caught up with them after the inauguration of Kim Young Sam
as president of the ROK in , and some of these people were arrested.
As a result, the defense market in Korea is now considerably less subject
to this type of illegal influence, and I think this will continue to work to
the overall advantage of American companies, which are prohibited by
U.S. law from these types of activities and are heavily punished if they break
the law.
Some influential congressmen and senators from certain southern
states were also pressuring us to sell more tobacco products in South Ko-
rea. The embassy staff and Ambassador Gregg all thought that these were