The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History (28 page)

With Chun relying on Washington for political and military backing, US policy makers were in a delicate position. It was clear that a large proportion of Koreans strongly favored a transition to a more democratic regime, but American officials were leery of undermining Chun and thereby destabilizing the country with unpredictable results. With North Korea still a threat and more than forty thousand American troops at risk, stability in Seoul was a central—at times an overriding—U.S. objective. Adding to the reluctance to intervene was the recognition that Koreans were highly sensitive about the American role in their political affairs.

In February 1987, the State Department put its toe in the water with a New York speech by Assistant Secretary of State Gaston Sigur. In a calculated attempt to affect the political transition in Seoul, Sigur announced US backing for creation of “a new political framework” through constitutional and legislative reform. He specifically advocated the “civilianizing” of the country’s military-dominated politics. Sigur, considered a conservative
in the Washington political spectrum, was also a committed advocate of democratic reforms in Asia. Surprisingly, he made this important policy speech without prior clearance from his superiors. Shultz initially termed the speech “outrageous” when he learned of its clear-cut prescriptions, but later backed it strongly, telling Chun in Seoul that spring that “every sentence, every word, every comma is the policy of our government.”

In mid-April, despite Sigur’s call for “accommodation, compromise and consensus,” Chun suddenly banned all further consideration of constitutional revision until after the 1988 Olympics. If permitted to stand, this ban meant that the next president, to be chosen before the end of the year, would be elected by an electoral college that Chun could easily control. In practical terms: Chun could dictate selection of his successor. Washington had only brief advance notice of Chun’s decision, but did not object forcefully. Opposition protest, however, was immediate and vociferous.

On June 2, Chun summoned the Central Executive Committee of the ruling Democratic Justice Party to dinner at the Blue House and announced that he had chosen his longtime associate and friend Roh Tae Woo as the party’s presidential candidate. Roh had retired from the army as a four-star general when Chun became president and then held a succession of civilian jobs, including minister of home affairs, president of the Seoul Olympics Organizing Committee, and ruling-party chairman. Civilian or not, he was seen by much of the public as “the bald man with a wig,” meaning Chun in disguise—just another general who would continue dictatorial rule with support of the army.

Within hours of Roh’s formal nomination on June 10 by the ruling-party convention, massive, violent protests erupted across the country, spreading to more than thirty cities. Pitched battles, the largest since the 1960 student revolution that had toppled President Syngman Rhee, broke out between demonstrators and police, more than seven hundred of whom were injured in the first two days. Tens of thousands of protesters were arrested. Citizens suffered in clouds of tear gas as the demonstrations paralyzed the central districts of Seoul as well as other cities that had rarely experienced such mayhem. Yet usually conservative, middle-class Koreans displayed widespread sympathy and support for the protests as never before.

Coming on the heels of the Philippine revolution and before the Seoul Olympics, the Korean crisis attracted extensive international attention. In the last two weeks of June, it was the single largest story in the American press, even surpassing the ongoing hearings on the Iran-Contra political scandal. An outpouring of resolutions, bills, hearings, speeches, and press conferences about the Korean crisis came to the fore in Congress. The Reagan administration, already under siege due to the Iran-Contra scandal, was under heavy domestic pressure to take a stand.

A principal concern in Washington was that Chun might use military force to suppress the demonstrations. Another concern was the possibility of a coup imposing a new era of military rule, although this was considered less likely in view of Chun’s control of his former army colleagues and Roh’s standing with them. Even before the eruption of the extensive protests on June 10, administration officials were considering how American influence might head off a potential disaster.

As in earlier crises, Washington saw its central role as protecting the South from external threat. A message sent via Beijing warned North Korea not to take advantage of the trouble in the South. Fortunately, Pyongyang limited itself to rhetoric about events, and was cautious even in that.

One idea discussed at high levels in Washington was to send a presidential emissary to take the administration’s views directly to Chun, much as Reagan’s friend Senator Paul Laxalt had gone to see Marcos at a crucial point in the Manila developments. ROK ambassador in Washington Kim Kyung Won strongly advised against this plan on the grounds that it would put Chun on the defensive publicly and complicate the situation.

Officials then developed the idea of a personal letter from Reagan to Chun calling for restraint—but how to do this without seeming to interfere in Korea’s domestic affairs was a problem. Ambassador Kim recalled that in April, during an official visit to Washington, the ROK defense minister had carried a letter from Chun to Reagan. It was decided that Reagan’s intervention in the turbulent Korean scene would take the form of a belated reply to the forgotten letter.

Composed in Washington and sent to California for the president’s signature, the missive was couched in sympathetic, gentle, and inoffensive language, which Reagan preferred when dealing with allies. Saying that he was writing “as a friend,” the letter seemed to endorse ideas that Chun had already expressed. Yet it was unmistakably a call for political rather than military solutions:

I believe that political stability based on sound democratic institutions is critical to insuring the long-term security of your country, and you have often expressed the same sentiments. . . .Therefore, I applaud your commitment to a peaceful transfer of Presidential power next year as a crucial—and, as you say, unprecedented and historic—step in strengthening that institution of democratic government. . . .

The release of political prisoners, and further steps along the lines you have recently taken toward effectively dealing with police officials who abuse their authority, would send to the world a dramatic signal of your intent to break free of what you correctly
term “the old politics.” A free press and balanced coverage by television and radio are essential to realizing your commitment to fair elections. Dialogue, compromise, and negotiation are effective ways to solve problems and maintain national unity. Let me assure you that we will support all significant steps in these directions.

Finally, Reagan held out a personal sweetener—the promise of a visit to the United States by Chun after leaving office peacefully in 1988.
*

The US Embassy in Seoul received word on Wednesday night, June 17, that a letter from Reagan calling for restraint would soon be on its way and asked for an appointment with Chun for Ambassador James Lilley to present it in person. The Korean government stalled—or in the word of the American political counselor Harry Dunlop “stonewalled”—on making an appointment as dozens of Korean cities became war zones. In the capital, thousands of protesters virtually took over many central streets. They overran a unit of eighty policemen, beat some of them badly, and burned their shields, masks, and tear-gas rifles in bonfires. In Pusan hundreds of police officers were injured as fifteen thousand protesters battled with rocks and firebombs against tear-gas assaults. Protesters in Taegu, the hometown of Chun and Roh, set several police posts on fire, overturned a fire truck, and turned its water cannon on riot police.

The usually decisive Chun was worried and frustrated. He had been telling aides for days that putting down the protests under the guns and bullets of martial law would damage the nation domestically and internationally and would constitute “a sad chapter in history,” yet if the police lost control, he would be forced to take that step. By Friday morning, Chun seemed to have made up his mind to use the army. Meeting at 10:00
A.M.
with his defense minister, uniformed service chiefs, and the director of the intelligence agency, he ordered deployment, by 4:00
A.M.
the next day, of battle-ready troops on a variety of campuses and cities. The US Command was to be notified, as required, about those forces that would be withdrawn from the front lines. Student demonstrators were to be arrested. Under the emergency decree he was preparing, Chun told the meeting, he could dissolve political parties and open military courts to deal with dissenters. Another meeting with the military leaders was scheduled for 5:00
P.M.

The Blue House, meanwhile, finally acceded to the insistent American demands that Lilley deliver Reagan’s letter. At 2:00
P.M.
Lilley, an Asia
expert who had been born in China and spent a career in the CIA before becoming an ambassador, presented Chun with the letter. Aware that the situation was extremely serious, Lilley had met beforehand with the US military commander in Korea, General William J. Livesey, and obtained his verbal agreement that use of military force was undesirable in the political crisis. Armed with this assurance, Lilley went beyond the gentle language of the Reagan letter to warn that intervention by the military would stretch the alliance in dangerous fashion and court a repeat of the damaging events of the 1980 Kwangju uprising. “This is the American position. The [US military] command is with me. I speak for all of the United States,” Lilley declared. Chun, who by that stage of his presidency often monopolized meetings with visitors, listened intently. He did not say what he would do, but he left Lilley with the belief that the presentation had made a serious impression. About an hour after Lilley left the Blue House, aides to Chun were told that the mobilization order had been suspended. Chun had put his sword back into the scabbard and turned to a political solution.

How much of a role the United States played in staying Chun’s hand is difficult to determine. At the time and in retrospect, while acknowledging Washington’s supporting role, American officials gave principal credit to Koreans. This view was given considerable credence by former general Chung Ho Yong, one of the inner circle of the Chun-Roh group of military leaders and commander of the special forces at the time of the Kwangju incident. Chung had resigned as minister of home affairs the month before the June crisis. According to Chung, he was visited by younger generals and colonels alarmed by the extensive preparations that had been made to use force against the demonstrations. These military men—like the rest of society—thought the demonstrators had a just cause and that a crackdown would be a disaster. Chung took their concerns to Roh, telling him that the use of the military would have grave consequences for society and Roh’s own political future. According to Chung, Roh saw the president within hours and strongly recommended against using military force. Roh recalled in an interview for this book that at that “very difficult moment,” he had taken his opposition directly to the president. Of crucial importance, he said, was that “the military themselves felt the army should not be mobilized,” which was a significant sign of the growing maturity of the ROK armed forces. Another Korean official close to the situation said Reagan’s letter added to the impact of advice from a senior aide to Chun that if he put tanks and troops into the streets, the military commanders might develop a mind of their own about using their power, much as Chun had challenged his own seniors and gained control of Seoul in December 1979.

After June 19, emphasis shifted from the streets to a negotiating track. On June 21, the National Assembly members of the ruling party held an unusual daylong caucus, at which the issue of compliance with the opposition demand for direct presidential elections was seriously discussed for the first time. On June 22, Chun announced a plan to meet opposition leader Kim Young Sam to seek a political solution to the crisis. Surprisingly, the two men had never met. The meeting took place on June 24, but ended without agreement.

On June 25, Assistant Secretary of State Gaston Sigur, who had peeled off from a Shultz trip in Australia shortly after the presentation of the Reagan letter, met Chun to observe the political situation firsthand and to reiterate that military force should not be used. Sigur found a distraught and nervous Chun. Though not confiding his views about settlement of the crisis, Chun made it clear he would not seek to stay in office. “Don’t you think I know what my people think about me? They don’t want me in here anymore. And I don’t want to stay under those circumstances,” Chun said. “Tell the president, don’t worry about that. I’m getting out. I’m not going to stay.” At a private dinner arranged by the foreign minister, a cabinet member who had been counted among the most militant Chun loyalists told Sigur, “There’s a fever going on and that fever is democracy. And we cannot turn it back.”

On June 29, Roh stunned Koreans by accepting the central opposition demand for direct election of the next president—a daring move in view of the unpopularity of the ruling party. In an eight-point program, Roh also advocated complete amnesty for Kim Dae Jung, freedom of expression for the tightly controlled press, and autonomy for the nation’s closely monitored colleges and universities. According to a key adviser, Roh came close to advocating an official apology for the Kwangju massacre but backed away at the last minute due to concern about the military reaction. Roh made his startling announcement in the form of recommendations to Chun, whose views were not immediately known but who endorsed Roh’s program two days later.