Those ties had been tarnished by the Koreagate scandal of the mid-1970s, when the Korean CIA was involved in a covert attempt to influence U.S. legislation by bribing U.S. lawmakers, and President Carter's aborted plan to withdraw U.S. ground troops from South Korea. They were also marred by President Park's authoritarian policies under the Yushin system, which were sharply criticized by President Carter as part of his emphasis on human rights.
By February 1979, U.S-Korean relations were back on course. The key goals and objectives of the United States were laid out in a secret cable from Secretary Vance to the U.S. Embassy in Seoul and the Pacific Command in Hawaii. The U.S. goals, said Mr. Vance, were peace and stability on the Korean peninsula, gaining a "maximum U.S. share of economic benefits from economic relations with (an) increasingly prosperous South Korea;" and "improvement of the human rights environment through evolution of a liber al, democratic political process," in that order. Despite the tumultuous events of the next 18 months, those policies did not change.
In June 1979, after extensive negotiations between Washington and Seoul, President Carter visited South Korea and met with President Park. During that visit, President Carter declared an end to his troop withdrawal policy and the two countries agreed to f orce closer military ties to counter what was perceived as a growing Soviet and North Korean military threat. President Park responded by relaxing some political controls.
The political unrest that erupted in the fall of 1979 and the shocking assassination of Mr. Park on October 26, 1979, disrupted those plans. The events also created a sense of panic within the administration that, at a time of rising tensions with Iran and the Soviet Union, a political confrontation in South Korea could spark an explosion and precipitate a third crisis point in the world. Above all else, U.S. officials said repeatedly, the United States must avoid another Iran in Korea.
Ensuring that political instability in South Korea did not trigger another crisis point for the United States became the overriding policy goal throughout the Chun period. U.S. officials expressed that policy by dealing with Mr. Chun at arm's length and occasionally expressing to him their dismay at his actions. At the same time, the Carter administration grew increasingly wary of the opposition's tactics and tried hard to persuade dissidents not to press too hard for democratic change.
The deepening sense of anger and frustration was echoed in several cables to Seoul from Mr. Holbrooke, who presided over U.S. Asia policy in the Carter administration. The cables convey his disgust for South Koreans who did not share his concerns that maintaining stability was essential for U.S. national security.
For example, in a Cherokee cable dated Dec. 8, 1979, Mr. Holbrooke asked Mr. Gleysteen to send a direct message to Korean Christians that they should not expect long-term support for their struggles. Mr. Holbrooke wrote the cable after a period of discussing the Korean situation with Congress, including top Democrats involved in East Asian affairs, Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., and Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio. "We have their full support at this time," Mr. Holbrooke wrote. "Their attitudes, like everyone else, are dominated by the Iranian crisis, and, needless to say, nobody wants 'another Iran' - by which they mean American action which would in any way appear to unravel a situation and lead to chaos or instability in a key American ally."
Mr. Holbrooke said he was encouraged by "many of the things the Korean leadership has done." But he added that "certain events have caused us to share our concern over the potential polarization that exists as a result of the actions of what appear to be a relative handful of Christian extremist dissidents."
To deal with those "hard-liners" Mr. Holbrooke proposed a "delicate operation designed to use American influence to reduce the chances of confrontation and to make clear to the generals that you (Gleysteen) are in fact trying to be helpful to them provided they in turn carry out their commitments to liberalization."
The United States, Mr. Holbrooke said, should send a direct message to the dissidents that "in this delicate time in Korean internal politics, the United States believes that demonstrations in the streets are a throw-back to an earlier era and threaten to provoke retrogressive actions on the part of the Korean government." "Even when these meetings are in fact not demonstrations but rather just meetings in defiance of martial law, the U.S. government views them as unhelpful, while martial law is still in effect," Mr. Holbrooke said. Mr. Gleysteen was shown this cable in his interview with Sisa Journal and asked if he had followed up on Mr. Holbrooke's advice. "No, that was too tricky," Mr. Gleysteen replied. "This was an armchair suggestion from Washington, something we just couldn't do."
Nevertheless, throughout this period, Mr. Gleysteen continued to press Korean dissidents to take a moderate approach to the military and avoid confrontation. While warning the military to be tolerant, "on the left, we tried to get the message across to t he moderates that they should keep down their inflammatory actions," Mr. Gleysteen explained. This effort was so successful, he said, that by December 1979, "people were beginning to talk about a 'Seoul Spring'" as Kim Dae Jung was released from prison an d other dissidents were freed to take part in political activities.
Even the December 12 incident, when Mr. Chun and Noh Tae Woo seized control of the military command, did not dampen the U.S. enthusiasm that democratic change might come to South Korea. To be sure, Gen. Chun's deployment of Korean troops on the DMZ withou t the permission of the U.S.-Korean Combined Forces Command deeply angered the Carter administration and U.S. military officials in Korea. "There was highest level concern over the apparent violation of the CFC structure and over any backtracking from mov ement towards civilian governments," Mr. Holbrooke cabled Mr. Gleysteen in a Dec. 18, 1979, message signed by then-Secretary of State Cyrus Vance.
But the Carter administration saw the incident as a temporary setback, not a dangerous signal that Gen. Chun was preparing the way for a military takeover. According to the cable, Mr. Holbrooke's primary concern was that dissidents might use the Dec. 12 i ncident as an excuse to "take the offensive" against the Choi government. "If that occurred at a time of instability within the military, North Korea might be tempted "to test the waters for meddling in the south," he said. With that in mind, Mr. Holbrooke instructed his ambassador to extract a promise from President Choi for eventual democratization, even if the promise was vaguely defined and meant only for public consumption.
If President Choi demurred, Mr. Holbrooke argued, "you could even point out, if you were a very cynical person, that setting a date now does not necessarily mean that this date will be kept...but that setting a specific date is more important than exactly when that date is." Apparently, President Choi agreed to that reasoning. On December 19, according to a classified cable, Korean ambassador Kim Yong-Shik called on Mr. Holbrooke and reassured him that the political process would continue. Mr. Kim's actu al statements are censored by the State Department, but Mr. Holbrooke's reply is not.
According to the cable, Mr. Holbrooke said he "found the ROKG message reassuring and hoped that it would be possible to carry out the commitment to broadly based political development. He then "assured Amb. Kim that the USG would not publicly contest the ROKG version of recent events, but he would not wish to see further military changes of command 'Korea style.'"
By making that assurance, Mr. Gleysteen said in his interview, the United States was saying "we won't argue about who did what to whom." Although U.S. policy makers, including Mr. Gleysteen himself, had "the deepest suspicions" about Mr. Chun, "we still had that hope that he could be constrained by the total situation to behave himself in a capable manner."
....Dealing with Mr. Chun in this way, Mr. Gleysteen said, was a "distasteful process, and he hated me for it." Several times, Mr. Chun called Mr. Gleysteen "governor-general," he recalled. Ms. Derian, the human rights official, scoffed at the idea that Mr. Chun was threatened by this policy. "This was not a slap of the wrist, it was more like a wave of the hanky," she said. "I find the whole thing not credible."
Consider this Carter's failed attempt to create yet another victory for Communism.