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By Root 1810 0

decided at the outset not to reveal to South Korea their certain knowledge of its clandestine nuclear weapons program, but instead centered their attack on its openly acknowledged plans to import a reprocessing plant. In July 1975, Ambassador Sneider was authorized to begin taking the American objections to reprocessing directly to South Korean officials. A National Security Council memorandum recognized that the campaign to persuade Seoul to forgo the planned reprocessing plant would approach the limit of what the South Korean government would accept from the United States. In order not to confront Park and to allow him to save face, Sneider took the case against the reprocessing plant methodically up the chain of command, first to the minister of science and technology, then to the foreign minister, and eventually to the secretary general of the Blue House. The U.S. ambassador never made direct allegations that Seoul was embarked on a weapons program, recalled Cleveland, who accompanied him on the visits, but emphasized "how important it was that Korea not buy this because of the appearances of things and the kinds of suggestions this would make back in the United States and the difficulties that it would cause."

Sneider's efforts in Seoul were closely coordinated with those of Washington officials. On his morale-boosting visit to South Korea in August 1975, Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger personally told Park that a South Korean nuclear weapons program was the one thing that could endanger U.S.-ROK relations. In what he later called "an elliptical conversation," Schlesinger did not refer to the U.S. intelligence findings, and Park did not admit to a secret weapons program. The U.S. defense secretary got the feeling, though, that "he knew that I knew."

In Washington that fall and winter, Philip Habib, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs who had preceded Sneider as U.S. ambassador, held a series of increasingly intense conversations with South Korean ambassador Hahm Pyong Choon. By this time the French contract had been signed, but Habib demanded the Koreans cancel it. Park refused through his ambassador, declaring that this could not be done "as a matter of honor."

Washington concocted a number of incentives that it offered in return for cancellation of the French plant, including guaranteed access to reprocessing under U.S. auspices when it was needed by the ROK civilian nuclear industry, and access to additional American technology under a formal science and technology agreement. On the disincentive side, the U.S. administration, with congressional help, threatened to block Export-Import Bank financing of the next steps in Seoul's ambitious civil nuclear power program if the proliferation concerns were not resolved.

Finally both Sneider and Habib were authorized to employ the heaviest threat ever wielded by the United States against South Korea: that the entire U.S. security relationship would be put in doubt if Seoul went through with the plan.

At the height of the campaign in December 1975, Sneider pointedly informed a senior ROK official that the "real consideration" for Koreans was "whether Korea [is] prepared [to] jeopardize availability of best technology and largest financing capacity which only U.S. could offer, as well as vital partnership with U.S., not only in nuclear and scientific areas but in broad political and security areas." In deciding what to do, said Sneider, the ROK government "had to weigh the advantages of this kind of support and cooperation which USG could provide against the French option." According to an ROK participant, Donald Rumsfeld, who succeeded Schlesinger as secretary of defense, bluntly told his ROK counterpart in May 1976 that the United States "will review the entire spectrum of its relations with the ROK," including security and economic arrangements, if Seoul insisted on developing nuclear weapons.

Faced with such powerful and adamant U.S. opposition-all done in secret-Park reluctantly canceled the contract. The episode demonstrated