The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [75]
The "Kwangju massacre," as it was called, remained a central issue in Korean life for many years thereafter. It was the focus of much bitterness against Chun. The United States, which was also held responsible by many Koreans, for a long time spoke only sparingly and ineffectively about its role, evidently out of consideration for Chun. In 1985, after the U.S. Information Agency library was occupied by students protesting Kwangju, the Embassy recommended that it be permitted to make an extensive statement of the facts about American involvement, but this was rejected in Washington. It was not until June 1989, nine years after the fact and with Kwangju still a traumatic issue, that the United States responded to questions from a special committee of the ROK National Assembly by making public an extensive account of its involvement in the Kwangju events.
Charges of American complicity were given new currency in 1996 in reports by Tim Shorrock, a Journal of Commerce correspondent who obtained more than two thousand declassified U.S. documents on the events of 1979-80 under the Freedom of Information Act. Shorrock cited Gleysteen's statements of May 9 that the United States would not oppose contingency plans involving the use of the army to reinforce Korean police, as well as a U.S. military intelligence report transmitted to Washington on May 8 listing the whereabouts of seven special forces brigades and battalions. It included the information that "the 7th bdg [brigade] was probably targeted against Chonju and Kwangju universities." Gleysteen and Wickham told me they did not recall seeing this report, which in any case gave no hint of the wanton brutality that would be wielded by the special forces against the citizenry of Kwangju. At this writing, the 1980 events in Kwangju still remain a controversial and painful subject in South Korean-American relations.
In the immediate wake of the violent denouement, the United States adopted a "cool and aloof" public stand toward Chun and the other generals in order to signal disapproval and in hopes of affecting their future behavior. Washington indefinitely postponed a planned U.S. economic mission to Seoul and asked the Asian Development Bank to delay action on two pending loans to South Korea. In Seoul, Gleysteen met Chun twice in June, the month after the Kwangju uprising, and again in early July to advocate political liberalization and, on the last occasion, to emphasize the U.S. view that Chun had "abused" the U.S.-ROK security relationship. Nonetheless, U.S. intelligence reported, "Chun feels that he can more or less do as he pleases, irrespective of U.S. warnings." Donald Gregg, now an NSC official, commented that "We do have limited leverage, and Chun knows this." He thought Gleysteen's strong words might strengthen the U.S. hand. But Deputy National Security Advisor David Aaron argued that these are "all empty words ... the only way to get leverage on this guy is to start a dialogue with the North." That course was rejected.
It was in this chilly diplomatic climate, on a week-long visit in mid-July 1980, that I first met Chun and Roh Tae Woo. My meetings with them were arranged by Sohn Jang Nae, the KCIA minister in the ROK Embassy in Washington, a retired major general who had been Chun's and Roh's English teacher at the Korean Military Academy. To my surprise, I found two very different personalities: one decisive, strong, and ambitious; the other conciliatory, flexible, and much less openly ambitious.
Roh, whom I met at his Seoul Security Command headquarters, was so eager to explain himself that a conversation of several hours in length was continued at his request over lunch at his home the following day. I had never met a senior ROK general on active duty before-they had usually stayed away from American correspondentsand was impressed by Roh's openness, intelligence, and supple mind. I was also surprised, in view of what I had heard and read about Chun, that Roh said emphatically that he did not believe any military man was ready to become Korea's political