⁄ • order to provide staff support to Ambassador Gleysteen and to see what other
information was available concerning the situation. At this time Bob
Brewster also arrived and accompanied us into the rear room.
In this room were Ambassador Gleysteen; General Wickham; Major Gen-
eral Prillaman, who was the J-, or plans and operations, chief; General
Wickham’s aide; and Brewster, Blottie, and myself. Also present was Gen.
Lew Byong Hyun, who was the deputy commander of Combined Forces
Command. At the main table Ambassador Gleysteen and General Wickham
sat side by side, and General Lew sat opposite, facing them. Major General
Prillaman stood at the large map, which contained the positions of ROK
forces. The rest of us sat behind the main table. No one else was present.^2
Neither General Wickham nor Ambassador Gleysteen had a clear pic-
ture of the situation. In fact, everyone present appeared confused. Wickham
was asking questions of Lew, and Prillaman was on the telephone attempt-
ing to find out the situation involving those ROK forces assigned to guard
Seoul and the critical attack corridors along the DMZ. Gradually they be-
gan putting together what had happened. Wickham seemed concerned that
there would be an attempt by Chun to physically seize the Blue House or
the Ministry of National Defense (MND), and quite a bit of time was spent
studying special maps of these areas. Also, there were reports of Korean
military units fighting each other; these reports continued coming in
throughout the night. Later we determined that these accounts were
untrue and were in most cases only retellings of the shooting incident at
General Chung’s residence when he was arrested. At the time, however, the
situation appeared to be much worse than it actually was—we learned later
that, while several individuals were indeed shot, including the Special Forces
commander and the capital defense commander, the stories about actual
battles between South Korean units were exaggerated. General Wickham
took the lead in directing activity since both he and the ambassador felt
this was primarily a military situation. He had an immediate objective: to
ensure that there were as few friendly casualties as possible, that ROK forces
not fight themselves. Unfortunately he was unable to make contact with any
of the Korean forces involved despite several attempts to contact Chun Doo
Hwan directly. This was either due to the chaotic situation or was a deliber-
ate desire of Chun to avoid contact with the U.S. side until he had complete
control of the situation. Later General Wickham did have some success by
persuading forces loyal to Chung Sung Hwa to suspend their movement,
but he was never able to get through to Chun. He also ordered increased
surveillance of North Korea by our intelligence units, for both he and