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on the emerging leadership of the ROK Army. Although during my second
stint in Korea the North Korean military situation was of importance, my
duties also included monitoring the ROK military, which was heavily involved
in political matters and thus both a source of and potential threat to inter-
nal stability. Because of this past work and because I had good relations and
access to the Korean military, I now was given the responsibility to research
and prepare a report that would identify the most likely future leaders.
My earlier job in this area had given me a good sense of the key person-
alities in the army—their likes and dislikes, their assignment histories, and
their attitudes toward the United States. At the time the information was of
a rather low priority in the overall intelligence picture, but it became useful
when foreign officers were visiting their American counterparts or one of
our senior officers was going on a trip overseas. Through my reading of
many “bio” reports, I began to notice a pattern that convinced me there was
a recognizable division between the older Korean generals and the younger
officers. This split was sharpest between the generation of officers who had
served in the Korean War and the group who had been trained at the four-
year Korean Military Academy. It became evident that this latter group
would be the predominant power in the ROK Army in a few years and that
it would be in the interest of the United States to begin to cultivate close
relations with the four-year KMA (Class and below) group.
To most Koreans who were familiar with the ROK Army, these divisions
were probably well known, but they were not to Americans. Despite the fact
that the United States had maintained forces in South Korea for many years,
only a few Americans understood the Korean Armed Forces in any detail.
Most U.S. officers served in Korea only for one or two years and were more
concerned with short-term issues than developing an understanding of
their Korean counterparts. In addition, there were significant differences in
the cultures of the two militaries. In the U.S. military, for example, the source
of one’s commission was of little importance. An ROTC graduate could rea-
sonably expect to become a general or attain an equivalent rank on almost
an equal basis with a graduate of West Point. The concept of family back-
ground was only of passing interest, and the region where one came from
was unimportant. Officers from Texas, for example, might well have among
their best friends officers from New York or California. Yet in the Korean
military system, officers from one province tended to band together, and it
was then almost unheard of for a non-KMA graduate to reach the highest
ranks in the military. As a result of this cultural difference, most Americans