The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [43]
In the aftermath Sneider worried that this was not the end of the affair. What concerned him most about Korea's future, he told National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft in a White House meeting, was "Park's emotionally charged drive to seek self-sufficency and self-reliance through a program of nuclear weapons and missile development." He recommended that after a decent interval, the United States begin confronting Park anew on the issue, lest the program be revived, resulting in the temptation for North Korea "to go the same route." Sneider observed that "Park was guilty of sloppy thinking in believing he could somehow obtain greater security by these policies; yet, given U.S. attitudes, one had to admit that South Koreans had some reason for their concern over their future security."
Although Park was forced to give up the French reprocessing plant and later to forgo purchasing a new Canadian heavy water reactor, the program refused to die. Rather than disband his clandestine nuclear team, Park gave it a new organizational parent, the Korean Nuclear Fuels Development Corporation, and a new objective, the manufacture of nuclear fuel rods for the country's reactors. In 1978 South Korea once again began discussions with France about reprocessing facilities. Again Washington blocked the deal, this time with the personal intervention of President Carter with French prime minister Valery Giscard d'Estaing.
Nonetheless, Son U Ryun, one of Park's former press secretaries, later wrote that during a walk on a beach in January 1979, the president confided in him that "we can complete development of a nuclear bomb by the first half of 1981." When this happens, Park went on, "Kim Il Sung won't be able to dare to invade the south." In an account that has been challenged by some of those who knew Park well, the former aide quoted Park as saying he planned to show the bomb to the world in the Armed Forces Day parade in 1981 and then announce his resignation as president. Son's account is widely disputed by former officials who were close to Park. However, it is consistent with the testimony of Kang Chang Sung, chief of the powerful Defense Security Command under Park. Kang said Park told him personally in September 1978 that 95 percent of the nuclear weapons development had been completed by the Agency for Defense Development, and that atomic bombs would be produced by South Korea in the first half of 1981.
MURDER IN THE DEMILITARIZED ZONE
Or. the morning of August 18, 1976, five South Korean workmen, accompanied by a ten-man American and South Korean security detail, gathered around a prominent poplar tree near the western edge of the Joint Security Area at Panmunjom. The JSA, roughly circular and about eight hundred yards in diameter, is the only part of the demilitarized zone without fortifications, barbed wire fences, and land mines marking the division between the North and South. On that day tension was unusually high due to recent frequent threats, obscenities, and shoving matches. A year earlier an American officer had been kicked in the throat by a North Korean guard outside the building where the Military Armistice Commission met.
The purpose of the work detail on that steamy August day was to trim the boughs of a forty-foot-high tree that, in its summer foliage, obstructed the view between two guard posts manned by U.S. and ROK forces within the Joint Security Area. As the work got under way, two North Korean officers and nine enlisted men appeared on the scene and asked what was going on. After first seeming to approve, the Korean People's Army (KPA) commander, Lieutenant Pak Chul, a hostile and combative eight-year veteran of the JSA, demanded that the trimming stop, warning that "if you cut more branches, there will be a big problem." The senior American officer, Captain Arthur Bonifas,