The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [71]
In an effort to press Chun and deny him full legitimacy, Gleysteen and Wickham, with Washington's approval, avoided meeting with him on a regular basis and sought to do as much business as possible through the official channels of the Choi government. The U.S. Embassy and the State Department pressed Choi to take bolder steps to assert his authority, but without much success. He was increasingly a figurehead. Nonetheless, Carter sent a personal letter to Choi in early January saying he was "deeply distressed" by the events of December 12 and that any similar actions "would have serious consequences for our close cooperation." In an unusual gesture, the embassy distributed the letter widely throughout the ROK government and military establishment.
In a message to Washington at the end of January, Gleysteen summed up the dilemma he felt in accepting "an unprecedentally activist role" in Korean domestic affairs. "If we don't do enough, dangerous events could occur; if we try to do too much, we may provoke strong, chauvinist reactions." This is particularly difficult, he observed, because "most Koreans sense a reduction in the real power of the U.S. and are increasingly concerned over what they perceive as our unwillingness to face up to the Soviet challenge, and they are also somewhat skeptical of our ability to handle Beijing." Apparently referring to the Iran hostage crisis, Gleysteen added that Koreans "suspect that we may be too preoccupied elsewhere to respond resolutely to difficulties on the peninsula."
Nevertheless, he concluded, "All significant political elements seek the image of U.S. support and many seek rather crude U.S. intervention to shore up their weaknesses; ultimately we will therefore be criticized for undue interference in domestic affairs by those who see our support for them as less helpful than desired. Few of them realize that our influence is limited in large part by the fact that we could not pull our powerful security and economic levers without risk of destroying the ROK's stability."
THE KWANGJU UPRISING
In early 1980, with the economy sagging and the country still under partial martial law, the South Korean government modestly began to relax the repression. Opposition politicians began to speak up, and student demonstrations, which are traditional in the spring, began on an increasingly large scale to demand that martial law be lifted and an early date be established for a presidential election. Well-known political figures began maneuvering publicly with an election in mind. Chun, operating with the immense power of martial law, was at the same time extending his personal network throughout the armed forces from his post as chief of the Defense Security Command. In mid-April he had Choi name him acting KCIA director, an act that provided him immense new authority and that convinced the U.S. Embassy that he was bent on taking over the presidency. In a gesture of disapproval of Chun's move, Washington "indefinitely postponed" the annual Security Consultative Meeting between the top defense officials of the two countries and informed ROK officers of its reasons for doing so.
As the number of student demonstrators demanding elections grew to the tens of thousands and spilled off the campuses into the streets, both the civilian and military sides of the South Korean government raised with American officials the possibility of using military forces to back up the hard-pressed police. On May 8, Gleysteen reported that he would try to defuse "this uncomfortable situation" the following day in separate meetings with Chun and with Choi Kwang Soo, the civilian chief of staff at the Blue House. After describing Korean attitudes on several sides, Gleysteen told Washington, "In