The U.S. Role in Korea in 1979 and 1980

This article, which was reprinted in Korean for a Korean journal, was still chatted about much when I arrived in country around 1995.  My adult students (20 to 50+ year olds with the majority being non-college people between the ages of 25 to 35) wanted to talk about the Kwangju Massacre to get my thoughts and to explain to me why the US military in Korea and the US relationship with South Korea had big problems.  I knew nothing about modern Korea beyond the war, so I could only listen and ask questions. 

And sometimes my students would say that it was "proven" the US knew about the Kwangju Massacre beforehand and approved of it and that this had been recently shown by an American scholar.  It wasn't until about 6 months later that I got internet access and found the Shorrock article and figured out this is the source they were talking about --- which had received coverage by the Korean media.

I firmly believe if readers go into the article with an open mind, and if they pay particular opinion to the quotes from documents Shorrock offers as proof of his claims, you will find, as I did, that his strong language and somewhat vague accusations are not supported by the evidence.

What I mean is --- even in my early days in Korea when I was learning about this stuff for the first time --- I found myself writing in the margins of the printed out article the words "stretch" "leap" and "no." 

That is my habit when I am running across arguments that seem to bend logic and reasoning too far.  Time and time again in reading the article, I would stop a moment and say what Shorrock was telling me the quote said is not what it said or that he was reaching conclusions you couldn't justify with just the information he was providing.

I also thought after having read the article several times that he was actually too vague in what he was accusing the United States of in relation to the Kwangju Massacre --- and this is exactly what you find in Korean society as well.

Do you mean the US authorities in Korea knew the Korean special forces unit was going to slaughter people in the city beforehand and approved of it -- thus making the US guilty of a premeditated atrocity?

That is how Shorrock wants you to think through his use of strong language and jumping about throughout the piece, but he does not specifically make the claim outright.

Or, do you mean the US has blood on its hands through guilt by association beforehand --- that the US should have left Korea long before Kwangju, because it knew the Korean government was a dictatorship and used violence?

 

 

Or, do you mean the US has blood on its hands through guilt by association after the fact --- that once it learned the extent of what had happened in Korea, it should have pulled out - or overthrown the new regime that had take power through a coup - or it should have placed economic sanctions and other pressure on South Korean society until other generals and political leaders led a counter-coup?

Or, do you mean the US is guilty because it did not step in with its own force in Korea and remove Chun Do-Hwan from power --- that the United States is guilty because it did not remove Chun after it was clear he was taking power or that the US should have supported a counter-coup (which either the US Ambassador or USFK wrote in his book was offered by some unnamed men during this time period) and since Chun was the power in Korea who sent the soldier to Kwangju, the US shares his guilt?

Shorrock does not make a direct case, I believe, for any one of these charges.  Instead, like Koreans, his conclusion is that the US is clearly guilty for Kwangju - and any one of those ways listed above will do for him - and you just pick which you want to believe.

In short, the strong statements and method of presentation are meant to create a strong sense of guilty for the Kwangju Massacre without making a real case for it.

 

A. Introduction:

Like similar style news exposes, Shorrock gets a lot of mileage out of the "cloak and dagger" effect.  There is something about the phrase "declassified" and "top secret documents" that lends instant credibility to whatever the author writes.  However, on more than one occasion, when I have gone back to check news archives related to the time period classified documents were written, I was surprised to find the media was already reporting much of the information contained in the classified files.

There was confusion about what was going on inside South Korea after the assassination of Park Chung Hee and the Rise of Noh Tae-Woo, but the broad strokes were well reported.  There were also calls of US complicity due to the large role the US government had in South Korea through the alliance.  It sure as hell didn't take Shorrock requesting documents through the Freedom of Information Act for the world to find out Seoul was using elements beyond local police forces to handle the massive demonstrations.

Which leads to a very crucial point to keep in mind when reading the rest of this piece --- Besides the chic of "top secret declassified documents," Shorrock relies much on the simple idea that using non-police forces against protesters is by itself an egregious breach of civil society.

(The image is from contemporary riot control in Germany)

However, even in what we consider solid democratic societies in developed nations, protests that far exceed the ability of the local police manpower to handle, non-police forces are frequently used.  It is not unheard of, nor considered horrific, for the National Guard to be mobilized for crowd control and other purposes such as dealing with large scale riots or disasters or areas were such things could occur -- like sending the National Guard to open up all white schools in the South during the worst days of conflict during the Civil Rights Movement in the US.  That does not excuse any bad, over the top actions such troops might end up engaging in.

A Kent State episode, where Vietnam War protesters were shot by, I believe, ROTC cadets organized to regulate the campus protests, is not defensible.  The police don't have a green light to use any means of force it wants --- especially lethal force.  Nor do any non-police forces tapped to augment the local police.  --------- But, using military type units to deal with the kinds of massive, widespread protests that South Korea faced after the assassination of Park Chung Hee is not so abnormal by international standards.

As you read the article, even the "natural" outrage at the use of Special Forces troops can be called into question when you hear that the troops were known to have been given some form of training in riot control --- which doesn't give you the idea they were taught how to bayonet civilians but were taught policing techniques.

Later in the article as well, you will see that demonstrations after the assassination of Park Chung Hee and trouble in transition to a new administration were widespread throughout Korea with many of the protests being violent.  If you look around protests today ---- 2005 ----- it isn't uncommon to witness violence.  Images of the violent protests of the late 1980s in Korea around the time of the Olympics are also clearly remembered around the world.

Again, knowing the history of violent protests in Korean society ------- does absolutely nothing to justify what happened in Kwangju.

But, the US authorities at the time have argued since being accused of green lighting the Kwangju Massacre - based in part on the "outrage" that non-police forces were used - that before the reality of what had happened in Kwangju became known, nobody expected Korean forces would do what they did there.  --- Meaning, the kind of riots and suppression of protests that were going on all over Korea at the time of national turmoil were not highly unusual or unheard of in Korean society.  Nobody expected the kind of actions and bloodshed that occurred in Kwangju -- even though non-police forces were being put into use.  So, an argument based on "You should have known and thus stopped it" doesn't work here.

The articles were a sensation in South Korea when they were reported the next day, sparking a large demonstration at the U.S. Embassy and protests in Kwangju and Taegu. That day, February 28, Sisa Journal, one of Seoul's largest weekly magazines, published d the first part of a three-part series on the newly released documents, which include thousands of pages of highly classified State Department and Defense Intelligence cables from 1979 and 1980 obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

In addition to documenting U.S. complicity in the 1980 military crackdown, the cables show that the Carter administration set up a secret policy-making group to follow Korean events after the 1979 assassination of Park Chung Hee that set one of top priori ties as preventing "another Iran" in South Korea. The cables document for the first time the extent of U.S. intervention in the political process in 1979 and 1980 and the intense discussions held between U.S. officials and Korean military leaders and civilian politicians.

This is an interesting nugget in the report.  Nowhere in it does Shorrock tell us what he believes should have happened before, during, or after the Kwangju Massacre.

(A Korean school girl in 2005 writes down class notes at a gravesite for victims of the Kwangju Massacre.  In July 2005, South Korea's Unification Minister, who is also the point man on national security for the President Roh administration, said :

the Kwangju Democratic Uprising of 1980 was thwarted by an “invisible hand.” The minister was telling an Uri Party policy committee how the destiny of the Korean Peninsula has been controlled by outside forces for the last 100 years.

“A hundred years ago, the Philippines became a U.S. colony and the Korean Peninsula a Japanese one owing to the Taft-Katsura Agreement” of 1905, Chung said. “The division of the nation and Korean War were not our will either,” nor was the failure of the Kwangju Uprising. A century later, Chung promised “a hot summer in which our fate will be decided not by North Korea, China, the United States, Japan or Russia, but by our own pride and self-determination.”

(As anyone who stays in Korea for a year or more and talks to Koreans will learn, Korea can find a way to blame everything on the United States - including the colonization by Japan beginning in the late 1800s.  To accomplish this, they project America's strength in the world post-WWII, after the European powers had destroyed themselves in global industrial warfare and American society had erupted out of its isolationist mode, back into the turn of the 19th-20th Century -- to a period in which Japan had just finished destroying what was considered a major Euro-Asian Empire --- Russia --- while the United States was considered an ex-colony upstart.    President Roosevelt was picked to facilitate a peace treaty between Russia and Japan in 1905 -- in very large measure -- because America was seen as a more neutral arbiter than European powers who had vast Asian colonial holdings and had been showing great interest in acquiring more - particularly in China.  Japan shocked the world with its stunning victory over Russia fought at sea and in Korea and Manchuria.  Some decades earlier, Japan had fought a war in Korea with China over primary influence there.  In 1905, when the meeting between Taft and Katsura was held, Japan was solidly established in Korea and in control of Korea and had just wipe the floor with the biggest threat to its hold in Korea ---- but, it is the United States who caused/allowed the colonization to take place..........It is a load of shit designed to boost Korean pride and sooth its sorrow which they convince some outsiders to believe in too....)

All the powerful language aside (like "complicity"), the best case he makes against the US is one of "guilt by association."  Later on, a former official under the Carter administration will hit this point more directly, but it is the gist of what Shorrock is claiming without directly stating it.

And this leads to a question I've put to many Koreans who wanted to talk about the Kwangju Massacre --- if you were the president of the United States, what would you have had the US in Korea do?  Should the US have overthrown the part of the Korean government and military that was taking power after Park Chung Hee was killed?  Should US troops have fought with Korean troops to do so?

Or, should the US have pulled out of Korea altogether because Chun was taking power?  Should the US have pulled out of Korea altogether when Park Chung Hee instituted the constitutional changes in the early 1970s that gave him such strong, dictatorial powers?

In either the book by the former US Ambassador to Korea at the time of the massacre or the USFK commander's book on the period, the author points out Chun's rise to power was not a totally bloodless coup.  Some people died when Chun forces seized other leaders who could oppose him.  So, the author asks, why should we believe Chun and supporters would back down at pressure asserted by the United States when they were willing to fight and die against their own fellow countrymen when they were taking power away from top government officials?

And of course, none of the Koreans I talked to said the US should have used military force to prevent Chun from taking power as he was leading up to and after the Kwangju Massacre.

And in the quote above, we see Shorrock already complaining about the "extent of US intervention in the political process" in Korea.  So, what the fuck does he want?

What he wants is to find means to criticize US foreign policy.  He doesn't come right out and say the US should have never been in Korea to begin with -- so it is guilty of the Kwangju Massacre by being there in the first place.  He doesn't directly state the US has blood on its hands by being an accessory after the fact --- that the US not pulling out of Korea after the massacre is a sign of approval of it.  And he doesn't say the US should have used force to oppose Korean troops sent to Kwangju or anywhere else.

I guess Shorrock is a Derridian reporter --- it isn't his job to construct things but only deconstruct.

But, as you read the article (or you listen to Korean adults talk about the massacre), you can see they silently imply there must have been an obvious way the US could have either prevented the Kwangju Massacre or gotten rid of the Korean leaders who ordered it after the fact..

What follows is the English version of my three-part series published in Sisa Journal. Part One lays out the most explosive information in the FOIA cables concerning Kwangju. Part Two documents the U.S. response to Park's assassination and the December 12 , 1979, incident when Chun Doo Hwan led an internal coup within the South Korean military. Part Three focuses on what U.S. military officials knew about the Special Forces (including their 1982 redeployment back to Kwangju) and contrasts the State Department reports on Kwangju with the DIA's analysis.
 

Keep this line in mind as you read.  The discussion of the Shorrock article has tended to focus on what the US knew about where the Special Forces troops were going and whether they were under the USFK chain of command or just the Korean military.

Readers can contact Tim Shorrock by leaving a message at 202/383-6105 or by e-mail at TRox51@aol.com. My address is 9520 Saybrook Ave., Silver Spring, MD 20901. I welcome comments and questions on my articles. F or interested readers, my February 27 article in the Journal of Commerce is available via fax. 

B. The Cherokee Files

This is classic bait and switch material.  As noted above, the reader is supposed to have an immediate negative reaction to the idea non-police forces would be used to deal with demonstrations, but some types of military units (like the National Guard in the US) are regularly used in developed, democratic nations.

Then, rather than addressing this point --- going further into the idea of using such troops --- he jumps immediately, and I mean immediately, to the coup.  It reads as if he is directly stating the US military gave approval for Chun to seize power, right?

Well, no, he doesn't state that directly.  He simply plans for you to connect those dots yourself.  Why else melt these two things together in the sentence above?

And again in the second sentence, he baits and switches ---  He does not directly say the US in Korea approved of the massacre, but that is what he wants to imply by taking a huge leap.

His logic is ---- the US knew the SWC troops were being sent to handle protests.  Those units killed a lot of people.  Thus, the US knew they were going to kill a lot of people.
 

Later on, I will cut and paste the section in red where it comes into play again.  It is part of another rhetorical strategy Shorrock uses to great effect throughout the article.

In the early sections of it, and at the lead of many of the sections and paragraphs, when I first read this piece, I kept finding myself write "no it doesn't" and "leap" when the early strong words and claims by Shorrock did not match what he quoted from the secret cables.

I believe you will come to see this as we go on.

They provide a detailed, inside look at the decisions made at the highest levels of the U.S. government during the crisis in South Korea from 1979 to 1980. For the United States, that crisis began with the assassination of President Park Chung Hee in October 1979 and ended at the end of 1980, when Mr. Chun became president and was invited to the White House by President Reagan in exchange for commuting the death sentence of dissident Kim Dae Jung.

The cables with the highest classification are labeled "NODIS," which means no distribution outside of approved channels. Ten days after President Park's assassination, however, the Carter administration set up a top secret policy-making group to monitor the evolving situation in Korea. Departing from standard secrecy procedures, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance established a special communication link for the Korea group and gave it the code name of "Cherokee." Distribution of the NODIS/Cherokee cables wa s limited to President Carter and his Secretary of State, Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Richard C. Holbrooke and top intelligence officials at the National Security Council. In South Korea, distribution was limited to U.S. Ambassador William J. Gleysteen.
 

Cloak and Dagger...

Overall, the documents paint a devastating portrait of an administration divided between its public commitment to human rights and its desire not to disrupt important U.S. military and economic ties in South Korea. According to the documents: The U.S. assurances to Mr. Chun that it would not oppose contingency plans to use military troops were made by Ambassador Gleysteen on May 8, 1980, with the advance approval of Mr. Christopher and Mr. Holbrooke. Mr. Christopher is now Secretary of State and Mr. Hol brooke just completed a two-year term as President Clinton's chief negotiator on Bosnia.

"In none of our discussions will we in any way suggest that the USG opposes ROKG contingency plans to maintain law and order, if absolutely necessary, by reinforcing the police with the army,"
Mr. Gleysteen reported to Washington in a secret cable on May 7, 1980, shortly before a crucial meeting with Mr. Chun and top aides to acting president Choi Kyu Ha. "We agree that we should not oppose ROK contingency plans to maintain law and order," Mr. Christopher cabled back the next day. He added that Mr. Gley steen should "remind Chun and Choi of the danger of escalation if law enforcement responsibilities are not carried out with care and restraint." U.S. officials in Seoul and Washington were aware long before Kwangju that the Korean military was planning to use Special Forces trained to fight behind the lines in a war with North Korea against unarmed student and worker protests.
 

Gee Golly Wilikers!!  How "devastating" can the portrait of US responsibility for the Kwangju Massacre be when even Shorrock shows us in quotes that the US was suggesting the Korean government us "care and restraint"?

This sure as hell isn't the kind of smoking gun language I'd expect to here (though Bruce Cummings would disagree).

This is what I mean by the leaps in logic and disconnect between implied or stated claim vs. quotes he provides from the documents.

More detailed information, including the deployment of Special Forces to Kwangju, appeared in a Defense Intelligence Agency cable to the Department of Defense Joints Chiefs of Staff on May 8. It stated that all Korean Special Forces brigades "are on alert " and noted that the 13th SWC brigade had been moved to the Seoul area on May 6 while the 62nd battalion of the 11th SWC brigade had "moved into the Seoul area" on May 7. "Only the 7th brigade remained away from the Seoul area," the cabled stated. It "was probably targeted against unrest at Chonju and Kwangju universities."
 

Remember ---"U.S. officials also knew the contingency plans included the deployment of Special Warfare Command troops to Seoul and Kwangju."

                                                        and

"The documents contradict key statements....did not know in advance that Special Forces were being sent to Kwangju.

How devastating an indictment can "probably" be?

.....The Carter administration decided to support Mr. Chun's suppression of the Kwangju Uprising on May 22 at a high-level White House meeting. The decision was made after the U.S. Embassy in Seoul and military intelligence had filed extensive reports on the massacres that took place in Kwangju on May18 and May 19.
 

I split this paragraph in two, because like with too many of the paragraphs in this essay, Shorrock jumps around --- for effect.

He lays out the standard journalistic technique of the "some experts say" to imply the US in Korea was approving chemical warfare against civilians.  Then he jumps to a US decision after the massacre.

This is key and tricky to note.    So far, we haven't really gotten into much of the massacre itself.  We have been building to it.  He has been laying out the foundation of what had been taking place before it happened.

Then all of a sudden, we are jumping to "Carter administration decided to support Mr. Chun's suppression of the Kwangju Uprising on May 22."

What happened to May 18th and 19th?  --- the two days the vast majority of the killings took place?  Why jump from the US silently or overtly approving of the use of chemical warfare against civilians to a decision made on the 22nd - when the biggest days of bloodshed were the 18th and 19th???

Bait and switch --

(Wikipedia -- CS gas (commonly called "tear gas"), or ortho-chloro-benzal malonitrile, is a usually non-lethal riot control agent. Tear gas is a chemical compound (often generated by a burning process) which, in humans, causes immediate tearing of the eyes, mild respiratory convultion, an increase in blood pressure and pulse, as well as the irritation of mucous membranes. Tear gas is available in a number of different chemical formulations with effects ranging from mild tearing of the eyes to immediate vomiting and prostration.

 

CS is often delivered in a fine powder via aerosol grenades. It is often used in conjunction with OC spray, which is commonly called pepper spray. CS gas and OC sprays are usually used by police to disperse riots and demonstrations. The use of CS gas by the FBI during the siege of the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, has been the subject of controversy.

As with all riot control agents, their use for chemical warfare is prohibited by the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Members of the armed forces of the United States of America and other countries are often exposed to CS during initial training to show the importance of proper wearing of a gas mask. As the agent's presence quickly reveals improper fit or seal of the mask's rubber gaskets against the face, it is sometimes used during training refresher courses or equipment maintenance exercises as well.

CS gas was heavily used in the Bogside area of Derry, Northern Ireland during the "Battle of the Bogside", a two-day riot in August, 1969. A total of 1,091 canisters of gas, containing 12.5g of CS; and 14 canisters of gas, containing 50g of CS, were released in the densely populated residential area¹. On 30 August the Himsworth Enquiry was set up to investigate the medical effects of its use in Derry. Its conclusions, viewed in the political context of the time, still pointed towards the necessity of further testing of CS gas before being used as a riot control agent. Not long after, the British Army and RUC ceased using CS gas in Derry. It is well accepted that CS gas accentuates illness when inflicted on sufferers of bronchitis, asthma, liver or kidney diseases and epilepsy.)

Later, we shall see the US response to the question of its recommendations and the events of May 22.

After a couple of days of massacre, the city was still in a state of general unrest and turmoil, and the US agreed that it was a good idea to send in regular military troops to replace the paratroopers who had been the spearhead of the massacre.

That is supposed to be the big bombshell Shorrock plops down in the above sentence.

But isn't it slick?  We haven't even gotten to the massacre days yet, and he leaps ahead to a decision of a later day ---- AND --- he doesn't (yet) give the description of the environment that decision was made in.

In effect, he is trying to use what some might consider a reasonable decision AFTER the Kwangju Massacre became known ---- to support his main (implied) claim that the US gave approval for the massacre itself.

That is what this selective slip-n-slide of information coupled with strong words seeks to accomplish.

I'd also like to add --- Pepper spray could be considered a "chemical warfare" tool --- if used in war.  I have no idea what nations have banned or continue to use CS gas.  I especially don't know how many nations considered it too strong and harmful back in 1979-1980.  Those figures would give me a better idea of what "some experts" have to say about it.

And I'd like to point this out ----   We have just been told, here, that the special warfare troops were actually given some form of riot control training.  ???  So, how does that mesh with the start of the essay where Shorrock wants us to take it for granted the very idea such units would be used for anything but fighting behind enemy lines is outrageous?

Again, if it were not for the bold statements of conclusion and the strong language Shorrock throws in, if you just read the quotes from the Top Secret documents, you would think they were actually arguing against a claim the US in Korea approved of the Kwangju Massacre.  This is the smoking gun of guilt?

One of the books by either the US ambassador or USFK commander points out that a book written by a Peace Corps member in Kwangju at the time believes the something like 22 civilians who were killed when the regular army units moved into Kwangju to restore order after the main days of the massacre at the hands of the paratroopers had passed were 22 civilians too many.  That is an opinion that has some merit, but May 22nd was not May 19th or 18th.  The deaths on the 22nd were not in the scope and numbers as under the onslaught of the special forces.

C: State Department Reaction

The statements in the new documents appear to contradict the 1989 White Paper. In May 1980, that report said, "U.S. officials were alarmed by reports of plans to use military units to back up the police in dealing with student demonstrations." As for the Special Forces, the United States "had neither authority over nor prior knowledge of the movement of the Special Warfare Command units to Kwangju," it concluded.

In a series of interviews, the State Department acknowledged an "apparent discrepancy" between the White Paper and the statements in the secret cables. But the agency strongly defended the integrity of the 1989 study. "Its basic conclusions are unassailable and unimpeachable," a State Department official said of the White Paper. "There are no new lessons to be learned." The official said the State Department may not have had "every document that ever pertained to this" available when it wrote the report , but added "there is not a great deal of enthusiasm to reopen the report."

Asked if, by approving the contingency plans, the Carter administration may have given Mr. Chun a green light for his military coup on May 17, the State Department official said "the word approved is not appropriate." Under the rules of the Combined Force s Command, he said, South Korea must give prior notice before using troops under joint command but has "sovereign control" over those troops once they are released. "The U.S. can only review their readiness to face the North Korean threat," he added.

The official said the documents describing movements of the Special Forces "would not have raised a red flag" within the Carter administration because the use of military troops to control against student demonstrations was considered the norm in South Korea....
 

As stated earlier, the use of the National Guard or similar units is not unheard of in many developed democracies when the size of the unrest is beyond the control of local police forces.

But, as the official points out, the norm they had gotten used to was NOT massacres -- was not soldiers bayonnetting citizens in the street --- and for that matter --- the norm in Korean protests, though violent on both side - was not protesters riding around the streets in confiscated military jeeps carrying M-16s.....

"That was an unspeakable tragedy that nobody expected to happen," he said. "When all the dust settles, Koreans killed Koreans, and the Americans didn't know what was going on and certainly didn't approve it." The State Department, he said, continues to believe that the United States "has no moral responsibility for what happened in Kwangju."

Mr. Gleysteen, who is now retired from the U.S. foreign service, said the United States approved the Korean contingency plans to use the military because South Korea would have faced total chaos without it. He strongly denied any knowledge that Korean Special Forces were to be used against student demonstrators. "The U.S. understood at the time that no government would allow law and order to break down," he said during an interview in New York. "But we added that how this was done was critically important." In any case, Mr. Gleysteen said, the Special Forces responsible for the rampage in Kwangju were "employed without the knowledge of the United States...I had no idea whatsoever they were being used for the suppression of student demonstrations."

Mr. Gleysteen said he could not remember seeing the DIA cables on the Special Forces troop movements, but added that "even though they were not under our command, we did know usually where they were." Nevertheless, U.S. officials had no indication they would be sent to Kwangju with orders to kill, he said. "Given that I never believed that something like Kwangju would ever happen, that there would be soldiers sent with those kinds of orders," such a cable "would not have been surprising information," Mr. Gleysteen said. It was "absolutely unknown to the United States, either through military or civilian channels," that the Special Forces would open fire or use bayonets on peaceful demonstrators, he said.
 

This article is supposed to be a smoking gun proving the US complicity in the Kwangju Massacre?

After Kwangju, Mr. Gleysteen said, he was "highly critical of the unwarranted cruel actions" and reacted strongly to the arrests of Kim Dae June and other dissidents. Donald J. Gregg, the former U.S. ambassador to Seoul who headed the Asian intelligence desk at the National Security Council under President Carter, said in an interview that he does not recall seeing "anything special" about special forces deployments prior to Kwangju. "That was part of my job, looking at the flow of intelligence, but I read it after it was distilled by military intelligence or the CIA," Mr. Gregg said. Asked about the DIA documents stating that Special Forces were moving to Kwangju, "maybe that didn't get the attention it deserved, or maybe it was judged unreliable," he said.

Mr. Gregg was the CIA station chief in Korea from 1973 to 1975 and had a long career in U.S. intelligence. With military intelligence, "you always have to be sure of the quality of the information and the source," he said. In any case, Mr. Gregg said he could not be sure if the DIA information on the Special Forces movements "reached the policy-thinking levels" at the embassy or the White House. Asked about the May 22 meeting, which he attended, Mr. Gregg said "our real concern was that the North not use this as a pretext for intervention. Once the fat was in the fire, Brzezinski said we can't do anything until things get calmed down in Kwangju." After it was clear the Korean 20th Division had retaken Kwangju with a minimum of force, the Carter administration continued its policy of pushing Mr. Chun towards moderation, he said. Throughout this period, Mr. Gregg said, the Carter administration was "concerned about sending the wrong signal to North Korea. That was the prism through which we always saw the events of this government."
 

Again, does this information way down here match up well with the strong claims of the opening paragraphs???  This is the proof of guilt???

Critics of U.S. policy in Korea sharply disagreed with the assessments of Mr. Gleysteen and Mr. Gregg. "This is pretty close to a smoking gun," said Bruce Cumings, a leading expert on the Korean War, after reading Mr. Gleysteen's May 8 cables and the DIA descriptions of the Special Forces movements. "What you find is a logic that develops that they weren't going to do a thing to Chun Doo Hwan. In the Korean context, these documents could be incendiary."
 
 

Why does this not surprise me?  Bruce Cumings, the man who has made a career out of trying to make the Korean War the first Vietnam has no problem stretching these quotes into a "smoking gun" of US guilt in Kwangju.

I bring back up an earlier point --- what are Cumings and Shorrock and the like trying to imply the US should have done?  Words clearly weren't enough.  So what?  Trade sanctions?  Pulling USFK out?  Using Korean and US troops to overthrow the Korean government under Chun?  US soldiers trading shots with Chun's guards?

The USFK commander or the ambassador at the time of these events wrote in his book that a high level Korean officer approached him about a counter-coup.  The general said a group of military men and civil leaders were laying plans to take the government back away from Chun and his supporters, and the group wanted to know if the US would support them.

The US authorities in Korea discouraged the act, and it didn't happen.

Am I supposed to believe the US could have taken the blood of Kwangju off its hands, in Mr. Cumings' opinion, if it had supported a counter coup?  No fucking way...

But again, the argument here is weakly applied guilt for "green lighting" the Kwangju Massacre ---- but with a fall back, more directly stated guilt by association after the fact if the reader won't buy that the US authorities knew and approved of the massive killings beforehand.

Mr. Cumings, who has written extensively about the foreign policy of the Carter administration, said the Cherokee documents read very much like the secret policy papers he collected for his two-volume history on the origins of the Korean War. "Once again, it shows that the intelligence people are much closer to the people in power," he said. For people like Mr. Holbrooke and Mr. Brzezinski, "its always security first, security second and security third," said Mr. Cumings. "But what they always mean is, U. S. security."
 

Good old Bruce.  The man who decided in his history of the Korean War he couldn't come to a conclusion on who started it.

Pat Derien, who was President Carter's Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights, said Mr. Gleysteen's statements to Mr. Chun were "a green light as far as I could see then and as far as I can see now." She was particularly critical of Mr. Holbrooke and others who argued that national security concerns limited the choices the United States had in South Korea. "I'm virtually speechless when I think of them pandering to these dictators and the excuses they gave for everything," she said.
 

Guilt by association --- the 'we shouldn't have been in Korea supporting the Korean government to start with' argument.  it is a perfectly acceptable position to take.  But, it does not prove the US is responsible at all for the Kwangju Massacre.  It sure as hell isn't a "green light" that the US knew the massacre was going to take place and OK'd it beforehand.

Ms. Derien, who had sharp disagreements with Mr. Holbrooke over Korean policy during her tenure at the State Department, said "national security hysterics" frequently determined the direction of U.S. policy. Towards the end of the Carter administration, she said, the officials concerned with security issues "captured the decision-makers, including the president and the secretary of state, threatening them with endangering national security." That shift was responsible for the policies in Korea as well as President Carter's decision at the end of his presidency to send arms to the government of El Salvador, she said. 

D. Background

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 liberal, 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 force 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 image is from 2005 - a typical demonstration in South Korea's affluent, democratic society --- the use of large bamboo clubs and steel pipes being a not too infrequent protest tool...)

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....
 

I break in here for a moment of confusion.  Has he not already shown a case for the US in Korea's long term policy goals being to influence the government toward democratic reform????

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."
 

That is the quote that proves the US was telling the opposition groups they could "not expect long-term support for their struggles"?

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 and 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 without 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 movement 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 incident 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.
 

Do you think Holbrooke told Choi to speak "only" for public consumption???

Regardless, in the ambassador's book, he says the "keeping Chun at arm's length" was an effort to legitimize President Choi who had gained power through the constitution after the murder of Park Chung Hee.  He says he and USFK top brass made it a point not to meet with Chun and only meet with Choi and the constitutional leadership - even when it was clear Choi did not hold the respect or power of government - which had been taken by Chun.  The ambassador states the US authorities did not start dealing directly with Chun until it was clear he had firm control of the government and the crisis/turmoil inside Korea had reached a breaking point.  In short, he argues they had no choice but deal with Chun and his supporters.

Of course, some like Shorrock might argue the US could have pulled out its support for South Korea altogether in light of a renewed military strongman.  And some might argue the US should not have been in Korea to begin with.  Or, some might argue the US should have had the power to dethrone Chun after he took power.  ----- But none of these arguments leads to a conclusion the US is responsible for the Kwangju Massacre.

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 actual 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.'"
 

So, how does "it would be possible to carry out the commitment to broadly based political development" match up with "only" for public consumption?

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."

Mr. Gregg said U.S. military officials were concerned that a hard line towards Mr. Chun would damage military relationships strained by the Carter administration's troop withdrawal policies. "These were military to military matters, " Mr. Gregg said. President Park, he said, had been deeply threatened by the U.S. pullout from Vietnam. "He was a hardened man, and saw us as a very unreliableally. He really wondered if we had any staying power." Those feelings were shared by Mr. Chun and his closest advisers, many of whom had served in Vietnam, Mr. Gregg said.

Those views were not entirely shared within the Carter administration, however. According to Mr. Gleysteen, some administration officials pushed for sanctions to pressure the Chun group to relax its grip on power. The choices, he said, ranged from shifting U.S. military forces in Korea to stopping the supply of military equipment. "Our concern was how these moves would be interpreted by North Korea," he said. "I looked at this as a highly dangerous type of thing."

He expressed his alarm in several cables. "We must not take sanctions, symbolic or otherwise, against the ROK which would in any way diminish ROK and US/ROK defense capabilities, and we must also be careful not to do anything which would appear to the Korean public as anti-Korean, as opposed to anti-December 12," Mr. Gleysteen wrote in a Dec. 29 cable. Specifically, he said he opposed holding back on the co.-production of F-5 fighter planes or refusing to sell F-16s. Such an action "would violate all these precepts and I would strongly oppose playing around with either of them." In the end, nothing was done to disrupt U.S.-Korean military ties, with one exception: about two weeks before the Kwangju Incident, the annual U.S.-Korea Security Consultative Meeting was put off for one year.
 

A question --- If the United States had placed economic sanctions on South Korea and/or pulled US troops out as a response to Chun taking power and the Kwangju Massacre, would that have made South Koreans happy?  If these steps had been taken to punish the South Korean government, would that have diverted the assertion that the US in Korea was guilty in the Kwangju Massacre?            No.

The same logic was applied to economic sanctions. By late 1979, with U.S. aid no longer a factor in the Korean economy, the only influence the U.S. Embassy had in Seoul was its advice to U.S. and foreign business, particularly U.S. banks, Mr. Gleysteen said. But sanctions applied in the economic field, such as withholding loans or credit, would "have had the same impact on society and North Korea" as military sanctions, Mr. Gleysteen explained in his interview. "The victims would have been business people and workers in Korea," he said. "This is always a problem on the human rights side - that the sanctions would hurt the wrong people." Therefore, the choice was made to treat the Chun group "by remaining aloof" from Mr. Chun and continuing to pressure the generals to reform, Mr. Gleysteen said. "We really couldn't come up with anything better than we did," he explained. "But it in turn was better than it sounds and it really was reasonably effective. I mean Chun squirmed. He was very uncomfortable under this policy. He had a hard time explaining to his officers - when he'd say things were fine, they'd say but, but, but. This actually worked reasonably well."

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." 

E. The End Game

Even with Mr. Chun's assumption of powers at the KCIA in early April, the Carter administration had returned to a "business-as-usual" stance with the Korean government. As political tensions inside South Korea mounted in March and April and hundreds of thousands of students began demonstrating for an end to martial law, Mr. Chun and President Choi began to discuss with Mr. Gleysteen and Mr. Wickham the need to use the military, according to Mr. Gleysteen. "Chun was saying he was going to behave but he had to have contingencies if things got out of control," Mr. Gleysteen said. It was in this context that the United States agreed with the contingency plans to use the military, he said. "There was a certain amount of contradiction in it," he said. "We recognized he couldn't lose control of law and order in society. On the other hand, using soldiers was very dangerous and if there was any shooting, that would bring the house of cards down."
 

In Gleysteen's book, he does not portray everything as "business as usual."  He wrote that for a time, he and other top level US government people in Korea tried to boost the standing of President Choi and discourage Gen. Chun by refusing to deal directly with Chun.  They insisted that communication be between the US and the elected Korean leadership per the Korean constitution after the assassination of President Park Chung Hee.  The very title of Gleysteen's work is "Massive Entanglement - Marginal Influence."

Again, the US did not "control" the Korean government.  Nobody, even Koreans, or perhaps especially Koreans, do not suggest the US should have used USFK forces against South Korean forces in an attempt to guarantee Chun did not take power.  And Gleysteen (or the USFK commander in his book) asks a damn good question in relation to this period :  What kind of pressure could the US have put on Chun and crew that would assuredly have stopped them --- when these men were willing to kill or be killed to take power away from people who stood in their path?

Mr. Gregg said the Carter administration was generally satisfied with how Mr. Chun handled the student demonstrations. "I remember the general feeling," he recalled. "There was real apprehension when the riots broke out in Seoul. Chun was a very tough man . So there was relief when they were moderately handled." Even the behavior of the Special Forces in the October 1979 demonstrations at Pusan and Masan - when the Black Berets were quite willing to "break heads," according to the DIA documents - did not indicate the severity of what happened in Kwangju, Mr. Gleysteen said. "That was nothing really egregious by local standards," he said. "We had no preview of Kwangju, of what amounted to very cruel brutality...It was very much out of line with Korean military behavior in our experience." In fact, the initial reports from Kwangju were so horrific that "there was some disbelief in our minds" that it had happened, he said.
 

Take a look at some of the demonstrations today when real Korean democracy has flourished.

Later that day, he wrote that "while military will probably restore order using considerable force, sufficient damage has been done to create scars which will last for years." That night, as President Carter's security advisers prepared to discuss Kwangju at the White House on May 22, Mr. Gleysteen reported that the "massive insurrection in Kwangju is still out of control and poses an alarming situation for the ROK military who have not faced a similar internal threat for at least two decades." He estimated that "at least 150,000 people are involved" and said "there has been great destruction." He said the Korean military as "concentrating defense on two military installations and a prison containing 2,000 leftists...The December 12 generals obviously feel threatened by the whole affair."

It is clear from the Cherokee cables that the Carter administration had decided by May 22 that military force was necessary to retake Kwangju from what the United States considered a "unruly mob." In a meeting with the foreign minister that day, Mr. Gleysteen described "the extent to which we were facilitating ROK army efforts to restore order in Kwangju and deter trouble elsewhere," according to a May 22 cable. "We had not and did not intend to publicize our actions because we feared we would be charged with colluding with the martial law authorities and risk fanning anti-American sentiment in the Kwangju area."

In another cable that day, Mr. Gleysteen said he and General Wickham "have been assured by the military hierarchy" they would encourage public distribution of the official U.S. statement from the day before urging "maximum restraint" on both sides. By this time, however, military action had apparently already been approved because the military hierarchy also told Mr. Gleysteen and Gen. Wickham they "will not undercut us by taking forceful action in Kwangju for at least two days unless the situation goes completely sour."
 

Urging restraint and asking for their word forceful actions will not undermine the push for restraint.  Some stinging indictment...

By this time, Mr. Gleysteen was convinced the situation in Kwangju had reached a point of no return. In a cable sent at 10 p.m., he reported that the Kwangju "rioters" had increased to 150,000 and were seizing hundreds of vehicle and thousands of firearms. Kwangju, he said, "has turned completely into a scene of horrors." "If peaceful methods fail" to end the disturbance, Mr. Gleysteen concluded, the "government has 20th Infantry Division, plus airborne and special forces units, on alert in Cholla Namdo ."

U.S. approval of the military action - which involved allowing the 20th Division to be deployed from the CFC in Seoul - was agreed upon at the May 22 White House meeting of the newly created Policy Review Committee on Korea. It took place at 4 p.m. on May 22 in Washington, which would have been early in the morning of May 23 in Seoul.

After deciding, in Mr. Brzezinski's words, on "short term support" for Mr. Chun and "in the longer term pressure for political evolution," the White House group discussed pending visits by key U.S. officials to Seoul, including one in early June by John Moore, the president of the Export-Import Bank. "The consensus of the group was that it might be a mistake at this time to send a negative signal to the Koreans by canceling another visit," the group decided, according to the notes.

On May 23, hours after the White House meeting, Mr. Gleysteen paid a call on Acting Prime Minister Park to communicate the U.S. position. In the discussion, Mr. Gleysteen reported back, "I said that the policy decisions of May 17 had staggered us." However, the two officials "agreed that firm anti-riot measures were necessary, but the accompanying political crackdown was political folly and clearly had contributed to the serious breakdown of order in Kwangju."
 

Again, some stinging indictment of US acquiesce in the massacre...

Mr. Gleysteen also noted that the United States was "doing all we can do contribute to the restoration of order," and cited the official statements issued in Washington the day before and "our affirmative replies when asked to 'chop' CFC forces to Korean command for use in Kwangju."

Over the next few days, Mr. Gleysteen said, he tried to seek a compromise by urging restraint on the part of the people of Kwangju and asking the government to apologize for the killing that took place on May 18 and May 19. But Mr. Gleysteen said he was alarmed by the turn of events inside of Kwangju, particularly when citizens seized arms and emptied one of the local prisons. "The point is, law and order was gone. It was chaos," he recalled. "Both sides at that point were rather equivalent."

As he has said in previous interviews, Mr. Gleysteen defended the U.S. decision to allow the 20th Division to be released from the joint command to enter the city during the early morning hours of May 27. According to Gen. Wickham, he said, the 20th Divis ion had been "very careful and well-behaved" while on martial law duty in Seoul. In addition, "we did not want the special forces used even further, precisely because of what had happened."

When he received a last-minute request to mediate in Kwangju from a U.S. reporter on the scene in Kwangju, Mr. Gleysteen said the 20th Division was already rolling. In addition, Mr. Gleysteen said he had no idea of the authenticity of the group seeking the mediation decided not to act. "I grant it was the controversial decision, but it was the correct one," he said. "Do I regret it? I don't think so." 

F. A Closer Look at the Cables

F1. The Movement of Special Forces to Kwangju

On May 7, 1980, U.S. Ambassador Gleysteen sent at secret cable to Washington entitled "ROKG Shifts Special Forces Units." In the cable, he informed Washington that the Korean military had informed U.S. commanders in South Korea that it was moving two Special Forces brigades to Seoul and the area of the Kimpo Airport "for contingency purposes" and "to cope with possible student demonstrations."

On May 8, the 13th Special Forces brigade, "now in the combined field army (CFA) area, will be moved to the Special Warfare Center southeast of Seoul for temporary duty," he said. The 11th brigade, was being moved from the First ROK Army to the Kimpo Peninsula "and co-located for temporary duty with the First Special Forces Brigade," he added. The two SWC brigades totaled about 2,500 soldiers and "are being moved to the Seoul area to cope with possible student demonstrations," he said. "Clearly ROK military is taking seriously students' statements that they will rally off campus on May 15 if martial law is not lifted before that date."

According to the May 7 cable, the U.S. Command has also been alerted to the possible movement of the First ROK Marine Division, stationed in Pohang, to the Taejon/Pusan area. "First Marine Division is OPCON to CFC and U.S. approval would be required for movement," the cable said. "There has been no request for such approval yet, but CINCUNC would agree if asked." Under the U.S.-Korean Combined Forces Command structure created in 1978, Korean special forces were outside of joint U.S.-Korean control and did not need U.S. approval to be moved. However, it was customary for Korean military leaders to inform the combined command whenever troops were deployed outside of their regular designations.

More detailed information appeared in a DIA cable to the Department of Defense Joints Chiefs of Staff on May 8. It stated that all Korean Special Forces brigades "are on alert" and noted that the 13th brigade had been moved to the Seoul area on May 6 while the 62nd battalion of the 11th brigade had "moved into the Seoul area" on May 7. The 62nd battalion, the cable noted, was the last part of the 11th brigade to move to Seoul and had earlier been assigned to the Wonju area "where they had been on a stand by status due to the miners' riots" in Sabuk.

"Only the 7th brigade remained away from the Seoul area," the cabled stated. It "was probably targeted against unrest at Chonju and Kwangju universities." According to the DIA's source, which is blacked out in the cable, all Special Forces units "had been receiving extensive training in riot control, in particular the employment of CS gas had been stressed." The American author of the cable, also unidentified, had clearly observed this training. "One SF battalion, thought to be the 606th, had been seen going through some of the specialized training...This unit was unique because they all had long hair and looked out of place in their fatigues."

After a short section of a few paragraphs censored by the Pentagon, the cable continued with some thoughts on the role of the SWC in quelling domestic unrest. "Many were growing weary of the internal security role that SF was assigned," the cable said. " During the Oct. 79 Pusan/Masan riots, the officers and men sent from SF were ready and willing to 'break heads.' During their most recent deployment to standby in Wonju, there was a noticeable change in attitude. Many voiced opinions that the coal miners were in the right. It was true that the coal miners needed a higher wage, etc."

According to the DIA source, "the prospect of quelling student activities is viewed a big differently, but not with enthusiasm." The source would "not predict that SF would refuse to fire on the students, but made it clear that such demands might have si gnificant impact on SF discipline." U.S. military intelligence was aware as early as February 1980 that the Special Forces were playing a key role in domestic affairs, according to the documents.

A Feb. 27, 1980, dispatch to Washington, "ROK Special Warfare Command Locations and Key Personnel," stated that the SWC "continues to be involved in ML (internal security) activities." The report noted that the SF troops located in the Seoul area were "n ot as visible during the daylight hours, however at night, key locations are reinforced with SF personnel." According to the report, SWC "is still one of the forces Chun Tu Won, the DSC Commander, relies upon to maintain his power base." That statements i s followed by a censored section, apparently a reference to suggestions from the U.S. military that the SWC are being improperly used.

"These suggestions have been met with firm negative responses," the report said. "Despite these responses, the new SWC Commander has begun to intensify mission training. He is placing significantly more command emphasis on target plans than was previously the case." The written commentary was followed by 10 pages of detailed diagrams of the command structure of the SWC, all of which is blacked out by Pentagon censors.

F2. The Gleysteen-Christopher Cables

As the most important U.S. official in South Korea, Mr. Gleysteen said, he spent "hours and hours" with Mr. Chun discussing the political situation in South Korea and trying to persuade him to take a more moderate line against the student, labor and religious dissidents who opposed military involvement in politics. His meetings with the general in early May were part of that process.

Mr. Gleysteen's discussions with Mr. Chun and other Korean officials were described in a series of highly classified cables between the U.S. Embassy in Seoul and the Carter administration in Washington. The secret cables were labeled "NODIS," which means no distribution outside of approved channels, and given a special code, "Cherokee."

On May 8, Mr. Gleysteen cabled Robert Rich, the director of Korean Affairs at the State Department, and one of a handful of officials with access to the Cherokee files. The title of the cable was "Korea Focus: Building Tensions and Concern Over the Studen t Issue."

"We have multiplying signs that tensions are rising over the student issue, which in turn is activating many other dynamics in the situation," Mr. Gleysteen wrote. "The immediate cause is evidence that the students are proceeding remorselessly with the challenge to law and order and appear to be doing so with a great deal of coordination and direction. The government is determined to maintain order, if necessary, with troops but is highly conscious of the enormous dangers involved."

In the cable, Mr. Gleysteen said that "much of the blame" for the situation "can be laid on immature students and radical student leaders." But he added that "President Choi is also very much at fault for adding to the general sense of suspicion rather th an setting forth clearly what needs to be done." The populace, he said, "is grumpy but by no means in a rebellious mood."

The next day, May 9, Mr. Gleysteen said, he was planning to meet with Chun Doo Hwan and Blue House aide Kwang Soo Choi. "In none of our discussions," he said, "will we in any way suggest that the USG opposes ROKG contingency plans to maintain law and order, if absolutely necessary, by reinforcing the police with the army. If I were to suggest any complaint of this score I believe we would lose all our friends within the civilian and military leadership."

Mr. Christopher cabled Mr. Gleysteen back within a few hours, expressing his concern that "tensions are now rising and government tolerance perhaps lessening" and sharing Mr. Gleysteen's frustration "by the absence of forthright public leadership by President Choi." As for the upcoming meetings with Mr. Chun and Mr. Choi, "We agree that we should not oppose ROK contingency plans to maintain law and order, but you should remind Chun and Choi of the danger of escalation if law enforcement responsibilities are not carried out with care and restraint," Mr. Christopher said. 

G. Kim Jae Kyu's Washington Connection

I will not cover this section.  It is an effort to say the US (well, the CIA) was guilty of the assassination of Park Chung Hee because it was associated with the head of the KCIA.

I will also stop here in my review of the whole article.  He presents below events beyond Kwangju 1980, and he gives more quotes from the cables, and the quotes do more to call into question his charge of a "smoking gun" than support it.

The concerns were first expressed by U.S. Ambassador William J. Gleysteen in a secret cable on Nov. 6, 1979, to Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. Mr. Gleysteen was responding to reports from Washington that a House committee wanted to hold congressional hea rings on the Korea situation. "I am sure that public hearings on the Korean situation would cause consternation, if not alarm, among many Koreans, and not just the Korean government," Mr. Gleysteen wrote in his cable.

Mr. Gleysteen told Mr. Vance that, in earlier briefings for Congress, he had said "there was no complicity" in the assassination. But he added that "even if we were to say this at public hearings, I fear the hearings would deepen suspicion that we had bee n a party to Park's death. This allegation a communist canard and I hope we will go out of our way to avoid giving it any publicity."

Two weeks later, on Nov. 21, 1979, Richard C. Holbrooke, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, reported back to Mr. Gleysteen that he had persuaded Rep. Lester Wolf, a Democrat who chaired a key House committee on East Asian aff airs, to "postpone indefinitely" the hearing. "I stated that a hearing, even it is closed, would create serious problems for our Korea policy at a delicate moment," Mr. Holbrooke wrote. "Wolf said he accepted our argument."

Those cables are part of a collection of over 2,000 U.S. diplomatic and military cables obtained by this reporter under the Freedom of Information Act. They underscore the elaborate secrecy that enveloped U.S. policy in Korea in the days after President P ark's assassination, which deeply shocked an administration reeling from the Iranian hostage crisis and growing tensions with the Soviet Union.

Ten days after the assassination, however, Mr. Vance set up a secret policy-making group to monitor the situation in Korea. Departing from the standard secrecy in such situations, Mr. Vance established a special communication link code named "Cherokee." "In order to assure candid high-level exchange of information and recommendations on evolving ROK political situation and how USG can best encourage positive outcome, we are establishing a privacy series with this message," Mr. Vance wrote in his cable, w hich is dated Nov. 6, 1979.

Direct distribution of the privacy cables, which Mr. Vance dubbed Cherokee, will "include only" the Secretary of State, Deputy Secretary Christopher and Assistant Secretary Holbrooke, who was instructed to hand-carry the cables to the National Security Co uncil and, "as necessary, inform other key officials," according to the Vance cable. In an interview, Mr. Gleysteen said the special secrecy was necessary to deal with the complex military, economic and political issues at stake in Korea.

But the secrecy also allowed the Carter administration to shield its policy from Congress and the general public in the United States and South Korea. As director of the KCIA, Mr. Kim had worked closely with his counterparts at the U.S. CIA. And as Presi dent Park became increasingly isolated in the waning days of his regime, Mr. Kim was seen by the Carter administration as one of the few voices of reason and moderation inside the Park group.

Kim Jae Kyu "was a man I admired very much," said Donald J. Gregg, who was the CIA Station Chief in Seoul from 1973 to 1975 and later served as U.S. ambassador to Seoul under President Bush. "I was absolutely astounded when I heard what happened." During his days as station chief, Mr. Gregg said, he worked closely with Mr. Kim and liked to play golf with him. At the time, Mr. Gregg said, the KCIA director was "trying to help change the KCIA from the polemical agency it was under Lee Hu-Rak to a more prof essional organization." Mr. Kim, he said, "seemed to be quite a moderate, he was very open."

Mr. Gleysteen said Kim Jae Kyu became the primary contact with the Park group in the fall of 1979 as tensions built up in Seoul in the aftermath of the Y.H. Incident and the expulsion of Kim Young Sam from the National Assembly. During those days, Mr. Gle ysteen said in an interview, Kim Jae Kyu often met with the CIA Station Chief. In general, Mr. Gleysteen said, the U.S. Embassy viewed Mr. Kim as "relatively liberal." "He seemed to understand the need for moderation," he said, noting that Mr. Kim played a "key role" in the negotiations leading up to the 1979 summit meeting of President Park and President Jimmy Carter. In his meetings with U.S. officials, however, Mr. Kim strongly defended President Park's strong-arm tactics. Many of his conversations were described in the secret diplomatic cables obtained by this reporter under the Freedom of Information Act.

On March 17, 1979, Kim Jae Kyu met with Mr. Holbrooke while the U.S. diplomat was visiting Seoul. The discussion was recorded in a confidential cable to Washington by Mr. Gleysteen, who attended the meeting. Responding to statements from Mr. Holbrooke th at South Korea was "strong enough to survive" without the restrictions on political freedom imposed by Emergency Measure 9 and other Park laws, Mr. Kim replied it was "impossible at this stage to predict when this could take place and that it would depend upon the circumstances and the conditions the country would face."

"Kim added that he saw the threat not just from the North but from a home-grown subversive element which threatened the security of the nation," Mr. Gleysteen wrote. "He was convinced that the answer to this was not to put people in prison but to employ t he laws in an intelligent and moderate way. He stated that he could promise that the government would continue its efforts to provide the utmost in political rights to the people commensurate to maintaining domestic tranquillity and national security."

Mr. Gleysteen and other officials frequently met with Mr. Kim to convey U.S. disapproval of President Park's policies. "During a conversation today...I spoke in quite blunt terms with KCIA Director Kim Jae Kyu about the special importance of human rights issues (and) the way Americans and many other view the Carter/Park summit meetings, Mr. Gleysteen wrote in a June 20, 1979, confidential cable. "Kim clearly understood what I was saying."

Those conversations, Mr. Gleysteen said in an interview, later became the gist of rumors that U.S. officials had encouraged Mr. Kim to take action against President Park. During President Park's funeral, Mr. Gleysteen recalled, he had an unpleasant public encounter with a U.S. congressman who accused him of "having blood on my hands" for encouraging President Park's assassination. The confrontation was witnessed by Mr. Va nce and other high-ranking officials, Mr. Gleysteen said.

That argument was one of the reasons he encouraged the administration to block the Wolf hearings. "There were gaping minds ready to believe anything in Korea," he said. On November 19, 1979, Mr. Gleysteen sent a secret cable to Washington about the Kim Jae Kyu problem. "Suspicion of U.S. complicity in the death of President Park persists in Korea, especially on the left and right flanks of the political scene and may complicate our lives for some time," he said. "Some dissidents and church groups belie ve, in some cases approvingly, that we were part of Kim Jae Kyu's conspiracy, at least to the point of having given a signal." The speculation had been reported by U.S. and Korean newspapers, but "the most malicious were Pyongyang, Moscow and Beijing prop agandists," he said.

In the cable, Mr. Gleysteen said he had never encouraged Kim Jae Kyu. "I have checked with (former ambassador) Dick Sneider and can state flatly that neither of us ever signaled to Kim Jae Kyu or any other Korean that we thought the Park government's days were numbered or that we would condone Park's removal from office," he wrote. "I would never have been so reckless as to touch on the tricky subject of President Park's prospective tenure."

Mr. Gregg was another official accused of encouraging President Park's removal. In a 1976 speech to a group of students at the University of Texas, he reportedly warned that President Park would not live out his presidency if he ran for another six-year t erm and left it open whether the CIA would support a move against him.

In an interview, Mr. Gregg said he was concerned that President Park had stayed in office too long but added "I wouldn't have said anything about a coup." "I did have very strong feelings that Park was wearing out his welcome," Mr. Gregg said. If Mr. Par k hadn't run for that last term, "I'm convinced he would be Korea's greatest living hero today," Mr. Gregg said.

One of the people most suspicions about Mr. Gleysteen's relationship with Kim Jae Kyu was Chun Doo Hwan. His suspicions were expressed in his first meeting with Mr. Gleysteen after the December 12 Incident. That meeting took place on December 14 and were recorded in a top secret cable to Washington on December 15. In the cable, Mr. Gleysteen said he met with Gen. Chun "to express our great concern over the events of December 12/13 and their serious implications in terms of the future of ROK military uni ty, political and economic stability, democratic developments and the North Korean threat."

"I said the actions had set a dangerous precedent within the ROK military, run great risks in light of the North Korean threat and raised further questions internally about the ability of the Choi government to sustain progress towards orderly political l iberalization and externally about the prospects for stability. I went out of my way to stress that the ROK had to maintain a civilian government and could not afford to lose the support of the U.S. military and businessmen who were deeply disturbed by wh at had happened. Chun listened closely to my warning concerning the implications of the events."

Mr. Chun's reply, however, was blocked out by the State Department censors. At the end of the cable, Chun warned that he "finds himself" concerned about a certain issue. Mr. Gleysteen's reply makes it clear that that issue was the possible U.S. role in t he Park assassination. "I used this opportunity to again bluntly and forcefully dent any involvement on our part in the events of October 26 or any attempt to soften the justice due to an assassin," Mr. Gleysteen replied to Mr. Chun.

From the moment of the assassination, it is clear from the Cherokee cables that Mr. Gleysteen and other U.S. officials viewed the military as a key factor in South Korean developments. Two days after the assassination, Mr. Gleysteen wrote a top-secret ca ble to Washington reflecting on the post-Park situation.

"It is hazardous to make far-reaching judgments at this point, but I think the ROK structure will hold together short of chaos, in part because of the unifying affect of the North Korean threat and the existence of bureaucratic structures which now provid e considerable continuity," he wrote. "A modestly liberalized Yushin structure would be welcomed by a majority of Korean, but I am not optimistic that it can be realized now." "We are faced with a new situation in Korea whose hallmark will be uncertainty," he wrote. "The key players are still the previous establishment forces -- above all, the military who, even if we can encourage them toward more liberal directions, have not changed their spots and comfort in working within an authoritarian political structure."

In dealing with the new leaders, he said, "we should avoid critical public comment or punishing actions unless and until the new regime has blotted its copybook, and we should keep in mind that the new authorities of Korea do now enjoy the same economic c ushion that helped President Park so decisively during recent years." "We must avoid conveying the impression that we would be happy with a military takeover, but we must also work with the military who will be a very influential factor...While we intend to continue to press for liberal treatment for political activists, we must avoid early pressures for any dramatic steps of liberalization." "Finally, we should keep in mind that the Korea of 1979 is not the Korea of the early '60s, when we were able to bully the early Park regime into constitutional reforms," he concluded. "We could face an extremely unhealthy anti-American reaction should we press too hard and too crassly to bring about structural change."

On November 29, Mr. Gleysteen sent a secret cable giving his assessment one month after the assassination. "The basically conservative military will continue to wield almost all raw power, at a minimum retaining a veto power over any development and perh aps dragging out the process of liberalization -- although they have not so far," he wrote. "It is unlikely that the ROK either be ripped apart by chaotic disorder or blessed with an easy transition to representative government."

"Thoughtful Koreans," he said, "have been quick to grasp the central issue facing them: how to liberalize the political structure fast enough to satisfy popular expectations but steadily enough to avoid the danger of over-reaching themselves or scaring mi litary elements into a military take-over." "Although warning signs are beginning to appear...the military have displayed considerable statesmanship in playing a stabilizing role and going out of their way to give the appearance of deferring to civilian leadership; martial law has been conducted with skill and a fairly light touch."

"Yet, there have also been ample reminders that this society of garlic and pepper eating combatants has not changed its basic nature," he continued. "Dissident elements and some of the political opposition, grooved over decades into extremist patterns by confrontation with authority, have rejected the acting government's proposed scenario for reform and reiterated their extremist demands for immediate dismantlement of the Yushin system."

The Carter administration's desire to be accommodating with the military was expressed in its first reports of the December 12 incident. "An incipient coup d'etat is in progress in Seoul, Korea, but various negotiations are now underway and lines of retr eat have not been closed off," Mr. Christopher said in a secret message to the White House, the Secretary of Defense and the CIA after receiving information about the mutiny from Mr. Gleysteen. "

Ambassador Gleysteen has been in touch with President Choi and is also endeavoring to get a message to the incipient coup forces through other channels such as the KCIA director," Mr. Christopher said. "He is stressing that the USG would view very gravely any falling out within the ROK military...The ambassador and General Wickham feel that there is some real chance that a classic coup can be avoided and that the present situation will be resolved."

"On the basis of Amb. Gleysteen's recommendation, we are being cautious at this juncture in how we publicly characterize the situation and are avoiding an implication of a coup d'etat. This is in order to contribute to the search for a face-saving solutio n in Seoul which may permit handling the entire question as an internal military matter," Mr. Christopher added. He said a State Department comment earlier in the day that characterized Mr. Chun's move as a "major military power struggle" was unfortunate and unauthorized. That conclusion came directly from Mr. Gleysteen.

In his first cable to Washington on the incident recounting his "groggy conclusions at this early stage," he said: "We have been through a coup in all but name. The flabby facade of civilian constitutional government remains but almost all signs point to a carefully planned takeover of the military power positions by a group of 'young Turk' officers. Major General Chun Doo Hwan, advantaged by his powers of security and investigation, seems the most important figure of a group of men who were very close to President Park and generally associated with security...The organizing group planned its actions for at least ten days and drew support throughout the armed forces among younger officers."

Mr. Gleysteen said the Chun group had "totally ignored the Combined Forces Command's responsibilities, either ignoring the impact on the U.S. or coolly calculating that it would not make any difference. By their actions, they have also run a serious risk vis-à-vis North Korea without giving it much thought." Over the next few days, Mr. Gleysteen said he and Gen. Wickham would "would convey to the new military group our concern over the danger of insubordination, particularly in light of the North Korean t hreat." "At the same time," he added, "I do not think we should treat the new military hierarchy as so bad that that we decide to risk seriously alienating them."

The next day, Mr. Gleysteen had re-evaluated some of his initial conclusions. "In part because of my grogginess," he wrote, "I failed to emphasize we should be careful in how we characterize the December 12 Incident, especially in any public or semi-publi c discussions. I myself carelessly described it as a "coup in all but name" Whatever the precise pattern of events, they did not amount to a classical coup because the existing government structure was technically left in place. Moreover, we are beginning to get explanations, very defensive in tone, which assert that there was no planning and that the incident was not intended as a coup. I am skeptical of these explanations, but I think our interests (are) best served if we avoid labels until we have a be tter grasp of the facts."

Two weeks later, on December 31, Mr. Gleysteen provided a "second look" at the December 12 Incident in a secret cable to Washington. "If the new leaders handle themselves with moderation, there may be no violent repercussions, " he said. "Nevertheless, I remain uneasy, because a serious new element of instability has been introduced into the Korean situation and very dangerous precedents have been established within the ROK army." 

H. Kwangju Incident

According to newly declassified U.S. government documents, the Korean military operations in 1980 involved tracking down a "battalion-size" group of armed dissidents who fled into the mountains near Kwangju in the days after the rebellion. The insurgents, the DIA's Korean sources emphasized, were not communist-inspired and appeared to reflect genuine grievances expressed by the people of Cholla.

Two years later, the Korean Army - in a move carefully documented and analyzed by American intelligence - sent the 11th Special Warfare Command brigade to provide riot control in the "politically volatile Cholla Namdo province," secret U.S. Defense Intell igence Agency reports from June and July of 1982 show.

The Special Forces were deployed to the Kwangju area from their previous location near the DMZ because the Korean Army had a "perceived need to have a brigade located in the hotbed of dissent in the ROK-South Cholla Province," the DIA said. The U.S. intel ligence officer who wrote the memo said his Korean source "was emphatic that ROK (Army) sees a possible internal security role for the 11th."

The DIA cables are part of a collection of over 2,000 U.S. diplomatic and military cables on Korea obtained by this reporter under the Freedom of Information Act. This article, the third of a series, will concentrate on the military intelligence and State Department reports dealing specifically with the suppression of the Kwangju Uprising.

The very fact that the DIA was reporting on secret military missions by the Korean Special Forces underscores the unusually close ties between the U.S. and South Korean militaries. At the same time, the cables show that U.S. military officials understood the behavior of the Special Forces in Kwangju had created serious divisions within the Korean military and damaged the Army's reputation within Korean society. U.S. intelligence officers were also aware that Mr. Chun's actions made him deeply unpopular a nd had the potential to spark long-term unrest in South Korea.

In contrast, the State Department's cables to Washington about Kwangju provide only the sketchiest details about the domestic ramifications of the Kwangju Incident. Many of the cables sent by the U.S. embassy and State Department officials focused on wha t was perceived as chaos and instability in Kwangju. Others contain extremely distorted information and a few outright fabrications - such as wild tales of executions - that may have convinced U.S. officials that the situation in Kwangju was far more dang erous than it was to local residents.

Why this occurred is not clear. But the State Department portrait of a lawless city undoubtedly contributed to the decision made by the Carter administration on May 22, 1980, to allow Chun Doo Hwan to end the standoff in Kwangju with military force.

H1. DIA Kwangju Reports

On May 19, the DIA reported to the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington that "about 30,000 students are rioting in the streets in Kwangju" and "have apparently been joined by an undetermined number of others (workers, etc.)...ROK military is using gas, APC s and helicopters with loudspeakers in an attempt to disperse the crowds, but without apparent effect. " The situation, the DIA reported, "appears extremely serious."

The next day, the DIA reported that the riots involved "at least 10,000 hard-core demonstrators" and as many as 90,000 to 100,000 on-lookers, "the bulk of whom were sympathetic to the marchers." The troops, which the DIA reported included three battalions of Special Forces, were "not pulling punches," according to the DIA informants. "

On May 21, the DIA reported, the ROK Army was "ordering officers from the Cholla provinces to Kwangju for riot control duty," apparently on the rationale that Cholla officers will "have more success in quelling demonstrators than others due to their provi ncial ties, knowledge and accents." The orders, the DIA source added, "were meeting with some limited resistance but were for the most part being grudgingly obeyed."

In another May 21 cable, a DIA officer speculated that "ROK Army officers in the Seoul area had not been told the 'whole truth'" about Kwangju. Apparently aware of the role in Kwangju in Korean history, he said his Korean sources had "compared situation a t some length to Tonghak rebellion (circa 1886)."

In addition, the officer noted that at least three independent sources "had reported a growing anti-American flavor to recent events." He added that the "U.S. decision to release ROK OPCON forces for riot control duty in Kwangju had greatly increased this anti-American mood."

After the May 27 assault by the 20th Division, the DIA reports continued to emphasize potential discord within the Korean officers corps. By the 27th, some Korean officers were criticizing President Choi Kyu Ha and questioning the official government line on the Kwangju Uprising, according to a DIA cable sent a few hours after the 20th division entered the city.

According to the DIA's Korean source, "the government's attack comes just hours after the president (Choi) had visited the Kwangju area and called for a dialogue between dissidents and government mediators. He admitted it would be unfair to say there was not some provocation to support the government's actions; however, the situation was one in which moderation if given a chance may have prevailed." "The government's action in this case, where the president called for a peaceful solution but permitted wi thin hours the strongest type of government action to occur, represents a type of breach of credibility," the Korean source told the DIA. "These actions will serve as evidence to others who will resist the ROK Army and Chun Doo Hwan that the Choi governme nt cannot be trusted."

The Korean source added that "as much as the government wants to play the activist element off as 'rebels,' they are truly representatives of the people of Cholla Namdo." It was clear to this anonymous U.S. military intelligence officer that the Kwangju I ncident had created a serious morale problem within the Korean military that had long-term implications for the United States.

On May 29, the DIA officer sent a lengthy, detailed cable to the Pentagon describing basic training within the ROK Army. "I have never met a ROK soldier who did not know his job and his mission and who did not have access to the equipment necessary to acc omplish that mission," he wrote. However, he noted that while Korean training and equipment provided "tangible" signs of military excellence, "it is probably in the intangible category that the ROK army has its most serious limitations." Specifically, h e said the "apparent breakdown in discipline among Special Forces troops in Kwangju may be the catalyst for a disturbing syndrome. Since its modern beginning, the ROK Army has always enjoyed a place of respect within Korean society at large. The Kwangju I ncident and the imposition of total martial law may well have changed this image."

In an unusually strong statement, the officer said: "this observer believes the effect will be far reaching, significant and eventually detrimental to Army morale and discipline. A soldier without the full and unqualified support of the citizens he defend s is simply less effective than one with such support." <;p> Then, on June 2, a DIA officer cabled the Pentagon, saying he had learned that a "battalion-size element of armed dissident had escaped into the mountainous area near Kwangju." However, in a "subsequent meeting," the DIA's Korean source "indicated the num ber of young, armed dissidents who fled into the mountains was greater than previously reported...In the Cholla Namdo area it appeared close to 2,000 had secured arms and made their way into the wilds." The DIA asked his Korean source if communist infilt ration was a factor in the uprising. The source "said it could not be ruled out. However, the motivation to go into the hills was not communist-inspired. He did not expect these elements to become a communist pawn."

The Korean source also told the DIA that he feared widespread rebellion if the "people's demands for an end to martial law and the development of a reasonable democratic government" are not realized quickly. If military rule persists, the source said, "th is 2,000-man force will engage in guerrilla warfare against what they term is the 'military dictatorship of South Korea.'"

The Chun group, according to the source, would probably face intense opposition because Mr. Chun himself had very little public support. "He said although some compare Chun's position now with that of President Park in 1961, he noted there is one big diff erence - President Park had some popular support outside the military and Chun has none."

H2. State Department Reports

Mr. Gleysteen speculated that the fighting in Kwangju might be due to regional differences. "It is probable that regionalism in playing significant role in the intensity of the riot in Kwangju," he wrote on May 21. "Police and troops responded with specia l degree of severity, partly because of the spirit of the challenge, but possibly because that was how they felt they should treat Cholla people."

In another report May 21, Mr. Gleysteen indicated that the situation had become desperate. "The massive insurrection in Kwangju is still out of control and poses an alarming situation for the ROK military who have not faced a similar internal threat for a t least two decades," he wrote. Mr. Gleysteen said "almost all elements of the population seem to be engaged in a violent, provincial free-for-all reflecting deep-seated historical (and) provincial antagonisms...The December 12 generals obviously feel thr eatened by the whole affair."

The potential for armed insurrection in Cholla was first reported by Mr. Gleysteen on May 24. In a situation report, he wrote that "some Kwangju diehards have reportedly taken to the hills - an old Cholla tradition but one which in modern times has not p roduced self-sustaining resistance movements."

Back in Washington, the State Department group monitoring the crisis in South Korea was alarmed by the information coming out of Kwangju. "The situation in Kwangju has taken a rather grim turn," Secretary of State Edmund Muskie wrote in a secret May 25 c able to Richard C. Holbrooke, the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, who was in Geneva at the time.

According to Mr. Muskie's informants, "the moderate citizens committee has lost control of the situation and the radicals appear to be in charge. People's courts have been set up and some executions have taken place. Student demonstrators have been largel y replaced by unidentified armed radicals who are talking of setting up a revolutionary government."

Within two days, however, Mr. Muskie had to retract some of his earlier statements. In a May 26 cable to Mr. Holbrooke, he wrote that "the situation in Kwangju remains quiet but tense. An earlier report that the insurgents had set up people's courts and h ad carried out executions had not been fully confirmed and should be treated with caution."

In contrast to the DIA official, Mr. Muskie wrote approvingly of President Choi Kyu Ha's visit to Kwangju, when he called for a dialogue with the dissidents. But Mr. Muskie also noted that Gen. Chun is "under great pressure (from an unspecified source) to end the stalemate and move against the city. Subsequently, JCS Chairman Lew informed U.S. Commander Gen. Wickham that the ROK Army will move into Kwangju under cover of darkness at midnight Monday (May 27)."

A month later, the Carter administration established a new policy line on Korea that emphasized the important security role played by the Korean military and downplayed any differences within the Korean officers corps as suggested by the DIA. The policy was laid out on June 21 by Deputy Secretary of State Warren Christopher in a secret cable to Mr. Holbrooke, who was traveling in Asia and about to come to Seoul.

The cable provided instructions to Mr. Holbrooke and Mr. Gleysteen on conveying "U.S. policy concerns to Korean Leaders" and was coordinated and cleared with the Defense Department and the NSC. "Having concluded that General Chun Doo Hwan and his colleag ues have successfully established military control of the Korean government and that the Army is presently united behind the measures being taken, we have determined that we must at the present stage focus our influence on moderating the regime's unaccept able behavior and moving it toward constitutional government, a reduction of military involvement in politics and administration, implementation of sensible economic policies and restraint in dealing with political opponents," Mr. Christopher wrote. "Simu ltaneously, we seek to avoid over-identification with the present Korean regime and its excesses and indicate that we are waiting to see whether its actions will warrant a fully normal US-ROK relationship."

Mr. Christopher instructed Mr. Holbrooke t