The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [67]
With the demise of Park and the nominal passage of power to a civilian authority, South Korea entered a delicate transitional period. Acting President Choi, taking U.S. advice, repealed Park's emergency decree forbidding criticism of the constitution and released the most prominent opposition leaders and dissidents from house arrest or prison. An outpouring of ideas and emotions came from an uncertain yet excited populace. Apparently becoming ambitious in his own right, Choi spurned U.S. advice that he announce he would serve as interim president for only a year-which American officials hoped would buttress his standing and encourage a peaceful transition.
Although both Washington and a Korean consensus favored changes in the constitution, the government and military leaders insisted that Park's discredited yushin charter remain in effect through the selection of Park's successor rather than open the process to the popular political contenders. Using its easily controlled procedures, Acting President Choi was elected to the presidency on December 6. Choi, who had no independent political backing, was not a forceful leader. It seemed likely that the military leadership was the real power. The question was, who would be the military leaders?
THE COMING OF CHUN D00 HWAN
The answer came suddenly on the night of December 12, when a group of generals headed by Chun Doo Hwan shifted troops into key positions and used force to depose the existing military authorities. Moving without warning, they arrested the martial-law commander and army chief of staff, General Chung Seung Hwa, and commanders loyal to him and occupied army headquarters, the Defense Ministry, media outlets, and key bridges and road junctions. The takeover was so swift and decisive that firefights were rare and there were few casualties.
The justification for the mutinous action was suspicion that General Chung had had a hand in Park's assassination, which Chun Doo Hwan, as defense security commander, was charged with investigating. Another reason, more cogent to U.S. military officers, was that the established army leaders were making plans to rid themselves of the ambitious and troublesome Chun Doo Hwan by reassigning him to a distant command. Ignoring lawful procedures, Chun and his coconspirators took their dramatic actions before obtaining the approval of President Choi.
Ambassador Gleysteen and the senior U.S. commander in Korea, General John Wickham, spent a tense and surreal night in the fortified command bunker at Yongsan, the headquarters of the joint U.S.-ROK Combined Forces Command, headed by Wickham, which had been created a year earlier to provide continued American military leadership even if U.S. ground troops were being withdrawn. In theory, the underground bunker was the most important control center for military forces in South Korea. Like the sprawling central Seoul base where it is located, the bunker had been built by the Japanese army during its long occupation of Korea and was inherited by the U.S. Army after World War II. Nearly thirty-five years later, the Americans still commanded the base and the bunker, but on this night their influence did not go much further. The U.S. ambassador and senior commander were important onlookers as power was wrested from one Korean group by another almost before their eyes, with massive implications for the future of the country.
Gleysteen and Wickham, sitting at the worn wooden table in the VIP section