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By Root 1780 0

Carter to join them, sat on a jump seat facing the president. Berating Park, Carter threatened to continue the withdrawal despite all opposition and accused his aides of conspiring against him. Gleysteen, who barely knew the president and had never had a serious discussion with him before, took the brunt of Carter's anger, responding in strong terms about the vast difficulties of continuing the pullout and the benefits that might be gained by calling it off. After what seemed to Gleysteen an eternity, with the angry president wagging his finger in his face, Vance and Brown joined the argument on his side. Brzezinski remained silent. For more than ten minutes, the top policy makers of the Carter administration continued their heated debate in the closed car, sitting under the front portico at the ambassador's residence, with a long motorcade of puzzled officials stalled and stretched out behind them. In the second car, which could see but not hear the animated argument, Holbrooke turned to Platt and said, "I guess the meeting on Korea that we've been trying to arrange all this time is finally taking place."

When he cooled off, Carter agreed to return to the previously suggested scenario for reconsidering the withdrawal program, on two conditions: first, that Park order a further substantial increase in ROK military expenditures along the lines the two presidents had discussed in their contentious private meeting; and second, that Park make a significant move in the human rights field, such as release of a large number of jailed dissidents. That afternoon, Vance wrote later, "our Korean policy hung in the balance" while the U.S. team sought and won agreement to Carter's demands from Park's government. Ironically in view of later events, the aide designated by Park to negotiate with the Americans on the prisoner release, which ultimately involved eighty-seven dissidents, was KCIA director Kim Jae Kyu.

By the time Carter left Seoul, his demands had been agreed to, a Korean band had serenaded the first family with "Sweet Georgia Brown," and the withdrawal minuet was back on track. In the limousine en route to the airport, Carter tried in a most unusual way to reach out to Park. The devout U.S. president asked his counterpart about his religious beliefs. When Park replied that he had none, Carter said, "I would like you to know about Christ." He proposed to send Chang Hwan (Billy) Kim, an American-educated Baptist evangelist who fashioned himself as the Korean Billy Graham "to explain our faith." The Korean president agreed to receive him and did so shortly thereafter.

On July 20, three weeks later, Brzezinski announced at the White House that further withdrawal of U.S. combat elements was being suspended until 1981, which would have been the start of Carter's second presidential term, to "await credible indications that a satisfactory military balance has been restored and a reduction in tension is under way." Carter had no second term. In 1981, having been defeated for reelection, he was on his way home.

In the two and a half years of the withdrawal program, only one combat battalion of 674 ground troops was actually withdrawn, while twelve more air force F-4 fighters and their crews, totaling 900 troops, had been sent to augment those already in Korea. Including various noncombat units and some that had previously been scheduled for reduction, Carter reduced the total U.S. military strength in Korea by only about 3,000 troops, leaving nearly 37,000 in place. While Carter did not achieve his fervent aim of eliminating all U.S. nuclear weapons from Korean soil, he did reduce their number from nearly 700 to around 250 and consolidated them all at a single site, Kunsan air base, rather than having them spread around several locations.

In his haste and lack of finesse, an inexperienced president had transformed a general impulse to reduce U.S. military forces in South Korea into a highly controversial policy with which he was personally, and negatively, identified. Many of the American diplomatic and military officials