• Reagan team was able to witness the first democratically elected government
since due not only to a changed internal political environment but also
helped by the private representations of effective ambassadors such as
“Dixie” Walker and Jim Lilley.
Third, I have been impressed by the importance of personal relations and
personalities and the role these factors play in successful diplomacy. This is
particularly true in Asia, where an in-depth understanding of the relation-
ships between individuals and their sometimes-hidden agendas is often di-
fficult to acquire. In retrospect, some have speculated that the outcome of
the / incident and subsequent events might have been different if the
blunt and forceful Chun Doo Hwan had been dealing with an equally blunt
and forceful Ambassador Lilley and the highly respected Gen. John Vessey
rather than the capable but somewhat mild-mannered and cerebral
Gleysteen and Wickham, Vessey’s successor. I am not certain that it would
have produced a different outcome, but that the question is even raised is
testimony to the importance of personalities in diplomacy.
Fourth, we need to learn and profit from our mistakes. Although the ul-
timate result might have been the same, I believe we made several errors in
dealing with the events of –. In retrospect, we should have paid more
attention to intelligence reporting in the days between the assassination of
Park Chung Hee and the / coup. Specifically, the pending reassignment
of Chun Doo Hwan to an unattractive position far removed from his power
base in Seoul should have been a tip-off of problems to come. We should have
opened a channel to the military moderates immediately after the assassi-
nation but never did. Instead, our focus remained too concentrated on the
North Korean threat. Over the entire period from October, , until Chun
became president in September, , there was never any hard evidence
that the North intended to take military advantage of a confusing situation
in the South. I also believe that it was a mistake to postpone the security
consultative meeting in response to Chun’s power grab. Not only is it gen-
erally questionable policy to link security issues to political events, but this
move also alienated many of the moderates in the ROK Army, unnecessar-
ily antagonized those in the civilian government whose influence we needed,
and lessened the ability of the Department of Defense to favorably influence
the situation.
Lastly, we should have been more aggressive in ensuring that the Ameri-
can position and views regarding /, Kwangju, and the power grab by
Chun Doo Hwan were available to the Korean public. We failed to use all
the information-dissemination tools at our disposal, and to this day many