Eye on Korea_ An Insider Account of Korean-American Relations

 ⁄   • 

next few days will be instructive. If Chun moves to remove those officers

senior to Class , particularly those from Class 8 which form the majority

group which is now blocking the advancement of his followers from Class

 and below, then the Army will be consolidated under his control. The

political implications of this move are obviously significant, and we will con-

tinue to report accordingly.

I left this report with a clerk to type and transmit to our Washington head-
quarters, then returned to the Yongsan bunker.
By the time I returned it was almost dawn, and the atmosphere at the
bunker had changed dramatically. General Wickham and Ambassador
Gleysteen had departed and would be consulting with their senior staffs later
that morning to decide on a future course of action. By now almost every-
one realized that Chun Doo Hwan had been successful and that his move
had greater ramifications for the future since he had taken effective control
of the army. Whether he intended to use this new power for political pur-
poses was still open to debate and would remain so for several months. The
“Night of the Generals” had ended, and for all the concern expressed and
effort expended by the American side, it was apparent that we had had little
influence on the outcome.

The U.S. Role

In the days following the / incident, some Koreans wondered what the
U.S. role had been. Specifically, questions were asked about our prior knowl-
edge and why our sophisticated intelligence capability could not observe the
movement of the ROK Army forces that had illegally participated in that
incident. My opinion on these questions is as follows.
Simply stated, we had no prior knowledge that a coup was imminent,
though perhaps we should have. Certainly we had information regarding
the pressure on Chun to show some progress in the investigation of Presi-
dent Park’s assassination, particularly concerning the continued suspicions
about Chung Sung Hwa’s actions. We also had received reports about the
possibility of Chun Doo Hwan being reassigned to the east coast, which
would have removed him from the army’s power center. With considerable
hindsight, one can argue that we should have suspected some sort of ac-
tion by Chun.
But South Korean authorities had this information as well and consider-
ably more resources with which to influence the situation, yet they also failed