Eye on Korea_ An Insider Account of Korean-American Relations

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to prevent the coup of /. Furthermore, when General Wickham raised

the issue of unrest and discontent among Class  and Class  officers with

Minister Rho and General Lew earlier, they did not take the reports seriously.

However much I regret the failure of American officials to communicate

directly with General Chung, I believe it would be unfair, considering all

available information, to have expected us to either predict or prevent those

events. In the final analysis, Chun and his followers were better prepared to

carry out the / coup than General Chung and the existing authorities

were to prevent it. That is the ultimate reason for its success.

During the  National Assembly investigations of the / incident

and the suppression of the Kwangju uprising of May, , it was suggested

that the U.S. intelligence network in Korea, particularly reconnaissance

aircraft, should have detected the movement of CFC forces in the first case.

This is ridiculous. First, our intelligence resources in Korea in –, as

they are today, were focused on North Korea, not South Korea. Second, these

actions happened suddenly and at night, which increased the difficulty of

detecting them even if they had been a matter of prior concern. In fact, the

American side was not even certain of exactly which ROK Army units were

actually involved until two or three days later, when the whole story was

reconstructed. Third, we had no reason to suspect that CFC forces would be

moved illegally. It had never happened before, and such a thing is so foreign

and unbelievable to most U.S. officers that even today most of us who were

personally involved in these events still cannot forget the betrayal by our

ROK Army counterparts. Fortunately the CFC structure is now stronger and

the South Korean Army much less politically oriented, so perhaps the real

legacy of / is that it eventually resulted in a stronger CFC and a better

professional relationship between the American and Korean military.

Effect of 12/12 on the ROK-U.S. Relationship

Despite the good professional relationship today, the immediate effect of /

 on the ROK-U.S. military relationship in – was to greatly dimin-

ish the respect we had previously held for our Korean comrades in arms. It

left General Wickham and his staff suspicious of their counterparts and

reduced the general’s own credibility in Washington. In my personal opin-

ion, General Wickham was a fine officer and true gentleman, but his effec-

tiveness as CFC commander was probably diminished as a result of /.

To really understand the depth of American feelings on this matter, one

must understand the code by which military officers live, embodied in the