Eye on Korea An Insider Account of Korean-American Relations PDF
Preview Eye on Korea An Insider Account of Korean-American Relations
E Y E O N K O R E A Joseph G. Dawson III, General Editor Robert Doughty Brian Linn Craig Symonds Robert Wooster ✩ T E X A S A & M U N I V E R S I T Y ✩ M I L I T A R Y H I S T O R Y S E R I E S 88 James V. Young Edited and with an Introduction by William Stueck Eye on Korea AN INSIDER ACCOUNT OF KOREAN-AMERICAN RELATIONS T E X A S A & M U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S • C O L L E G E S T A T I O N Copyright © by James V. Young Manufactured in the United States of America All rights reserved First edition The paper used in this book meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, .-. Binding materials have been chosen for durability. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Young, James V., – Eye on Korea : an insider account of Korean-American relations/ James V. Young ; edited and with an introduction by William Stueck. p. cm.—(Texas A&M University military history series ; ) Includes index. --- (cloth : alk. paper) . Korea (South)—History. . Korea (South)—Military relations— United States. . United States—Military relations—Korea (South) . Young, James V., – I. Stueck, William Whitney, – II. Title. III. Series. .. .''—dc CONTENTS List of Illustrations Author’s Preface Editor’s Introduction Preparation Into the Fray The Rise of the Troop-Withdrawal Issue To Korea Again The Park Assassination and Its Aftermath The / Incident Aftermath of / Prelude to Kwangju Kwangju and Its Aftermath Return to the United States My Fourth Tour in Korea Begins Duty with Ambassador Gregg Journey to North Korea Doing Business with North Korea Final Reflections Notes Index ILLUSTRATIONS James Young as second lieutenant in South Korea, Young in South Vietnam, American and South Vietnamese officers, Young’s official embassy photograph, U.S. presidential motorcade, Seoul, Presidents Jimmy Carter and Park Chung Hee South Korean soldier at the Demilitarized Zone, General John Wickham and Ambassador William Gleysteen Colonel Ahiro Hagino, Japanese military attaché in Seoul, – ROK soldiers and tank on campus, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Armitage, Ambassador Richard L. “Dixie” Walker, Major General Kim Jin Young, Kim Jin Young and James Young at military attaché’s residence, Yongsan At a formal function in Seoul Ambassador James Lilley and South Korean National Assembly members, Aboard USS Kitty Hawk with Ambassador James Lilley, Third North Korean Tunnel With ROK Minister of Defense Lee Sang Hoon in the United States, Dining with Lt. Gen. Yong Young Il, Colonel Young’s retirement and award ceremony, North Korean Hall of Deputies, Enjoying retirement in Virginia, Maps Map . Korea Map . Central Seoul, December , AUTHOR’S PREFACE This story almost was never written. Following my retirement from the U.S. Army in , I began a second career as an international business devel- opment consultant and had intended to work equally hard at improving my golf game. Business often took me back to Korea, however, and invariably into frequent contact with old friends in the army and U.S. State Department, and especially with my many Korean friends and associates from days gone by. Inevitably the talk would turn to our previous experiences in Korea, our affection for and interest in the country and the Korean people, and my own somewhat unique career and perspective as the U.S. Army’s first fully trained and experienced Korea specialist. Friends often urged me to write a short review of my thirty years of experience in Korea, including the historic events in which I personally participated. After some thought and consid- erable procrastination, in I agreed to undertake this project for the Korean magazine Wolgan Chosen. I wrote primarily out of a sense of history. Much had been written and published in Korea about such incidents as the assassination of Pres. Park Chung Hee in October, , Chun Doo Hwan’s seizure of control of the army the following December and the subsequent imposition of martial law, and the tragic events at Kwangju of May, , but almost all of the pub- lished record was from the Korean perspective. In fact, when this memoir was published in Korea during , there was no accurate account by any responsible American officer or individual who actually participated in these events. Since then, Ambassador William H. Gleysteen Jr. and Gen. John A. Wickham have published in the United States their recollections of experi- ences in Korea during the late s and early s.1 Yet these men served at the very top of the U.S. country team in Korea, and they did so over a short period of time. Neither was a Korea specialist. The recounting for an Ameri- can audience of my lengthy experiences at the lower and middle levels—in Korea and in the United States—still seems useful for two reasons: first, my perspective on the events of – are sometimes different than those of Gleysteen and Wickham; second, the transitional nature of the current viii • ’ Korean-American relationship and the linkage of that process to events of the last two generations merits reflection and comment by one who was in- volved over the long haul. With the assistance of William Stueck, a historian at the University of Georgia, I have adapted my story into this English-language edition. The adaptation has involved some additions to and subtractions from the origi- nal as well as some reordering of materials and some updating of analysis to take into account events of the last several years. Professor Stueck also has added an editor’s introduction and citations to place my narrative in the context of what others have written and the archival documentation now available. Yet the basic story remains the same. Because this is a re- cent history, many of the participants are still living. Some have been con- tacted and interviewed for this book, but most have not. It is based primarily on my own memory—I did not keep a diary or take more than rudimen- tary notes, for it was previously never my intention to write of my experi- ences. Also, unless the individuals have given specific permission or are so well known as to be “public” people, I have not used their names in order to protect their identity. This is particularly appropriate when discussing the activities of certain Koreans who were cooperating and providing informa- tion on the activities of the Korean military during the period between the assassination of President Park and the rise to power of Chun Doo Hwan. Often these brave and patriotic individuals were cooperating at risk to their careers and personal safety, and their efforts to help Americans understand the true situation as it developed were invaluable. Few are still on active duty in the Korean military; most are engaged in business activities or living quiet lives in retirement. Regardless of their present circumstances, they are de- serving of privacy. ’ • ix E D I T O R ’ S I N T R O D U C T I O N Historians are ever on the lookout for new sources. Most of them come in the form of written documents from the period of events described and are tucked away in government archives, private libraries, or even people’s at- tics. For the historian of the recent past, the sources are sometimes oral or, if written, exist in the form of memoirs covering the experiences of an indi- vidual going years, even decades, into the past. In the case of the document presented between these covers, I was fortu- nate enough to meet the author in at the annual conference on Korea sponsored by the Richard L. Walker Institute for International Studies at the University of South Carolina. I was beginning research for a history of U.S.- Korean relations and was particularly interested in the American role in South Korea’s democratization. Colonel Young, I discovered, had been sta- tioned in Seoul in – and again in , both key periods in the Re- public of Korea’s circuitous path toward an open political system. I came to look forward to our yearly meetings, where I could pick his brain both for knowledge and wisdom about America’s relationship with Korea. Eventually I discovered that Young had published an account of his ex- periences in serialized form in a Korean magazine. Although encouraged by Ambassador Walker and others to adapt his story for an American audi- ence, Young procrastinated, uncertain that he wanted to put the time and effort into the project. It became my goal to bring that procrastination to an end. Finally in May, , while once more enjoying Ambassador Walker’s hospitality and listening to Young reminisce about his Korean experiences, I worked up the courage to ask him if I could assist in preparing for publica- tion an English-language edition. He agreed and provided a manuscript for my examination. The manuscript did not disappoint. Written in a direct, unpretentious style, it offered frequent displays of the sharp wit and intellect that I had come to enjoy in him through personal contact. It also told the fascinating story of Young’s Korean odyssey, from his first assignment on the peninsula as a junior officer in the early s through his retirement from the U.S. Army in and his trip a year later to North Korea as a member of an unofficial
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