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After graduate studies, the army sent its FAS officers to an in-country
training phase for one or two years, depending on the country in which they
specialized. For some countries, such as the Soviet Union, there was a well-
established training program already in place. These officers were sent to
Garmish, West Germany, where they further developed their area expertise
by traveling in Eastern Europe and parts of Russia and improved their lan-
guage skills. Since I was the first specialist on Korea, no such program was
in effect for that country. In I was assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Seoul
and the Defense Attaché Office for the purpose of training and also devel-
oping a program of instruction for those Korea specialists who would fol-
low. This was to be the first of three assignments to the embassy.
The defense attaché at the time was Col. Donald Hiebert, who had served
in Korea previously and had been a liaison officer with the Korean forces in
Vietnam. Colonel Hiebert had a long career in the army’s Special Forces and
as a result knew most of the Korean Army’s Special Forces officers quite well.
One of his frequent associates was a young colonel, Chun Doo Hwan.
Hiebert had met the colonel in Vietnam, where Chun had commanded a
battalion, and had continued their association in Korea. They met rather
frequently. I recall meeting Chun for the first time at the U.S. ambassador’s
residence during the summer of and once or twice after that, usually
accompanied by Colonel Hiebert. Hiebert was also acquainted with several
others from the Korean Military Academy Class , such as Roh Tae Woo
and Chung Ho Young, but I believe he was best acquainted with Chun.
Chun had the earmarks of a comer. He was part of a close-knit group,
all from the Taegu area, who had been in the first class to graduate from the
academy with four full years of education. That class had been selected to
attend the academy from a talented pool of applicants, literally the cream
of the crop of high school graduates during the Korean War. Chun himself
was of average height, somewhat stocky, and carried himself with a bit of a
swagger. He was very direct for a Korean, efficient, intelligent, and bold—
capable of making decisions without a lot of hand-wringing analysis. He
already possessed a rather impressive following in the army and had been
selected for early promotion several times. He spoke adequate English and
had little difficulty communicating with Americans.
In addition to becoming acquainted with present and future leaders of
the Korean military, the goals of the training program were to improve lan-
guage skills, learn the Korean military system, and assimilate as much Ko-
rean culture, history, geography, and economics as possible. I accomplished
much of this by study as well as by traveling extensively within the country.