A History of Korea (87 page)

Another important factor cementing
ROK
–U.S. ties in the mid-1960s was the Vietnam War. By 1965 the United States had built up its military forces in Vietnam, and in order to show that the United States had broad international support in waging war in Vietnam, President Lyndon B. Johnson sought to recruit other foreign forces to the U.S. cause. In this U.S. campaign, the president could find only one ally—South Korea—willing to send large combat troops to Vietnam.President Park wanted to send
ROK
forces to South Vietnam for a number of reasons. If South Vietnam was to fall to communism, he was certain that this would pose a grave threat to the security of Southeast Asia and South Korea itself. Moreover, he wanted to prevent the United States from pulling its forces out of South Korea to send to South Vietnam. Another reason is that, at the time, a significant number of Koreans saw the dispatch of
ROK
troops as a way to repay the United States for the sacrifices it had made on behalf of South Korea during the Korean War. Still another reason was that the troop dispatch would bring enormous economic benefits to South Korea. This was brought out when, on 4 March 1966, South Korea and the United States had entered into a secret agreement, known as the Brown Memorandum, whereby the United States would provide all the financing for South Korean forces in Vietnam and also send new military equipment to South Korea worth billions of dollars.

During 1965 and 1973 South Korea sent more than 47,000 troops, two infantry divisions, to Vietnam. Because the tour of duty in Vietnam was one year, the total number of soldiers sent to Vietnam in that period amounted to 312,853. This was the largest contingent of foreign troops sent to Vietnam, second only to U.S. forces. The United States provided offset payments, including soldiers’ salaries, for South Koreans in Vietnam, who gained invaluable combat experience and also became proficient in the use of advanced U.S. weaponry.

The vast sums of money earned by South Korean soldiers and businesses from the war in Vietnam had a significant effect on South Korea’s economic development, as it supplied urgently needed capital to promote the country’s industrial development. South Korea shed a great deal of blood and made many sacrifices to lay the foundation for economic prosperity. Some 4,600 soldiers were killed and 17,000 seriously wounded in that faraway country.

President Park’s every effort to lay the groundwork for his country’s future economic growth was motivated by the belief that a flourishing economy would legitimize his dictatorship. Since 1965 South Korea’s economic growth was primarily a product of the blood, sweat, tears, and self-sacrifice of South Koreans themselves, but the United States also made a great contribution. It provided research and academic facilities for South Korean talent, and many of South Korea’s most influential economists and planners studied and were trained at U.S. universities and employed by U.S. firms and agencies before returning to their country. The U.S.-led Vietnam War also provided South Koreans with financing and experience. The hard currency South Korea obtained by participating in the war was a key financial source for industrial investment. The United States further aided South Korea’s economic improvement just by providing a market for South Korea’s industrial and consumer products.

By the early 1970s significant changes that occurred not only in South Korea but also in East Asia had important, sometimes troubling, impacts on South Korean–U.S. relations. After his reelection for a third term in April 1971, Park Chung-hee proceeded to tighten his control over his country. On 6 December 1971 Park declared a state of national emergency, justifying his action as necessary for national security.
¹⁵
This step fit conveniently into the so-called Nixon Doctrine, which resulted in the subsequent reduction of U.S. forces in South Korea.

On 15 July 1969 U.S. President Richard M. Nixon, at a news conference on Guam, explained what the press would call the “Nixon Doctrine.” Prompted by the great economic costs of the ongoing Vietnam War, along with opposition
from war-weary Americans, the doctrine marked a step back from the Truman Doctrine of 1947. Nixon declared that the United States had a stake in Asian affairs, and when requested by Asian allies who were under threat, would furnish military and economic aid but that the manpower would come from the allies

With the Nixon Doctrine in place, on 27 March 1971 the United States announced the withdrawal from South Korea of the U.S. Army’s 7th Infantry Division, which had been stationed there since 1950, decreasing the U.S. military presence from some 60,000 to approximately 40,000. Although necessitated by U.S. needs to cope with changing economic and diplomatic circumstances, the withdrawal was a shock to many South Koreans who viewed the U.S. military presence as an indispensable defense against possible North Korean aggression. Many South Koreans considered it a breach of faith on the part of the United States. Taking advantage of this unease among South Koreans, Park further strengthened his grip on power.

In the 1960s South Korea and the United States were faithfully supportive of their defense and economic alliance. Solemnized by the mutual defense treaty, the U.S. commitment to
ROK
security as a whole did not waver, although the broad foreign policy and strategic justifications for this commitment shifted from time to time.

Following the Korean War, North Korea was faced with massive postwar political and economic challenges. Kim Il-sung’s position had been weakened by his failure to achieve his war aims, and he now faced challenges from factions that had been brought together in the Korean Workers Party (
KWP
). Kim was able to keep his seat only through ruthless purges of rival factions.

The strongest foreign influence on the structure of North Korea’s leadership was the Chinese Communist Party model. Like Mao Zedong, Kim Il-sung was very much a mass-based communist party leader. Since the late 1940s some 12 to 14 percent of the North Korean population was enrolled in the
KWP
, compared to 1 to 3 percent for communist parties in most countries, making it a mass, rather than an elite, party. The vast majority of
KWP
members, poor peasants and manual workers with no previous political experience, were enrolled because of their class background, not their grasp of ideology. Party membership offered them status, privileges, and a rudimentary form of political participation.
Because they owed their new status in North Korean society to Kim Il-sung, they were a powerful support base for Kim within the party.

In the course of the war, the Korean Workers Party lost up to half its prewar membership through battlefield casualties, desertion, and expulsion. But Kim Il-sung quickly reinstated old members and enrolled new ones, greatly increasing the party membership. By 1953, with his authority in the
KWP
consolidated by the support and loyalty of newly enrolled members, Kim Il-sung had become the central figure of a personality cult.

Immediately after the war major purges gradually eliminated the leaders of Kim Il-sung’s rival factions within the Korean Workers Party. The major political casualties here were domestic South Korean communists led by Pak H
ŏ
n-y
ŏ
ng, as they were blamed for not rising up in protest in South Korea. The evaporation of their geographical support base in South Korea dealt a mortal blow to them. In early 1953 many leading southern communists, among them Pak H
ŏ
n-y
ŏ
ng, were publicly denounced, and in August of that year Pak was arrested, tried, and convicted of high treason in show trials. Accused by Kim Il-sung of being a “hireling of U.S. imperialism,” Pak was executed in December 1955, a scapegoat for Kim Il-sung’s failure to unify the Korean peninsula by force. Two other leading cadres were also purged at this time: Mu Ch
ŏ
ng, the Yan’an faction’s leading military official who was removed from office in late 1950 on charges of failing to defend Pyongyang that fall and died soon afterward; and H
ŏ
Ka-i, the Soviet Korean leader whom Kim Il-sung charged with mismanaging the
KWP
and who allegedly committed suicide on 2 July 1953.

The Korean War caused the near total destruction of North Korea’s economic and industrial bases. Sustained
U.N.
bombing had razed its capital of Pyongyang and demoralized the war-weary population. Agricultural and industrial production fell far below prewar levels. After the armistice, then, North Korea urgently needed to repair its infrastructure. While barely subsisting on massive Soviet bloc aid, North Korea sorely needed relief and rehabilitation.

The
KWP
leadership was divided on the issue of postwar recovery and how best to direct national development. Kim Il-sung and his “Kapsan faction,” following the model of Stalinism, sought heavy industrialization and the restoration of North Korea’s war-making capacity. Kim’s faction also rejected full integration into the socialist international division of labor and instead maintained the focus of national self-reliance. Kim’s program included the complete nationalization of all industry and the collectivization of all agriculture. In contrast, bureaucratic-technocratic elements led by the Soviet Koreans opposed
resurrection of a war economy and advocated more gradualist, moderate policies with priority given to agriculture and light industry. They also preferred less self-reliant and more moderate degrees of nationalization and collectivization. This policy debate was closely related to a power struggle within the North Korean leadership and reflected a far more profound ideological struggle—the “red versus expertise,” or “ideology versus technology,” conflict. A similar debate had occurred in other communist states at the same time in their development, for instance, Mao Zedong versus Liu Shaoqi in China in the early 1960s.

By the time of the April 1955 Korean Workers Party plenum, Kim Il-sung had garnered enough support to announce the acceleration of socialism and to castigate openly Soviet Korean influence within the party. In December 1955 he severely criticized the leading Soviet Korean cadre and leading economic planner, Pak Ch’ang-ok, who was seen as H
ŏ
Ka-i’s successor to lead the Soviet Korean faction. In January 1956 Kim Il-sung removed him as chairman of the State Economic Planning Commission. By 1962 Soviet Koreans had been driven from significant positions, and Kim Il-sung’s increasing independence from the de-Stalinized Soviet Union after 1956 made it difficult for the patron state to aid its supporters in North Korea.

The Third Congress of the Korean Workers Party, convened in April 1956, witnessed little sign of intraparty struggle. In June and July Kim visited the Soviet Union, East Germany, Romania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Albania, Poland, and Mongolia, accompanied by 30 compatriots, in an attempt to garner economic and political support. In Kim’s absence, his opponents, emboldened by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s recent de-Stalinization move, maneuvered to oust him from power. They criticized Kim for his increasingly dictatorial rule and for encouraging a personality cult, and pressed for relaxation of economic and social control. But by then Kim’s opponents were already too weak to defeat him, and when he returned to North Korea, he overwhelmed his opponents in the subsequent showdown at the crucial party plenum of the
KWP
in August, expelling from the party those who had led the opposition against him. Between 1956 and 1958 the Yan’an faction, headed by several of North Korea’s most senior independence leaders, was swept from power. Ch’oe Ch’ang-ik, a vice premier, was banished to work in the mines. By 1958 Kim and his associates had eliminated the last significant source of opposition and was in total control of the
KWP
and their country.
¹⁶
In North Korea serious power struggles took place only during the first decade of the regime. Later, conflicts within the North Korean leadership arose, but they were relatively
minor and occurred only within Kim’s Kapsan faction. No further challenges were raised to Kim’s prestige and power.

The Soviet Union intervened in the August 1956 political crisis more deeply than China did. Indeed, Soviet Deputy Prime Minister Anastas Mikoyan personally intervened. Following a bitter verbal exchange with North Korea, the Soviet Union recalled its ambassador from Pyongyang. In retaliation, North Korea drastically reduced its coverage of Soviet news events as an overt sign of North Korean alienation from the Soviet Union. Previously North Korean media coverage was filled with adulation of the Soviet Union and its institutions. By removing any mention of his Red Army career from North Korea’s official history, Kim Il-sung sought to portray himself as an anti-revisionist leader in the international communist movement. Kim also criticized the peaceful coexistence line of the post-Stalin leadership in the Soviet Union. In December 1957 North Korea and the Soviet Union came to agree that dual Soviet–DPRK citizenship for Soviet Koreans would be abolished. Soviet Koreans in North Korea were forced to return to the Soviet Union if they wanted to retain Soviet citizenship. This measure ultimately eliminated the power of the Soviet Korean faction within the North Korean power structure. Kim Il-sung’s stance departed from that of the Soviet Union, and North Korea declared its political independence from its communist patron.

By 1958 Kim Il-sung had established complete dominance over the Korean Workers Party and the North Korean state, and he embarked on a new phase of the North Korean “revolution.” Regardless of right or wrong, Kim’s policy gradually became state policy, and North Korea gave overriding priority to rapid heavy industrialization and the buildup of its war-making capacity. As light industry and agriculture were considered of lesser importance, North Koreans were afflicted with chronic shortages of basic consumer goods.