[KS] Kwangju (well, ok, Gwangju)
H.H. Underwood
fulbright.smtp at gmail.com
Mon Nov 28 16:55:24 EST 2011
As part of my long alternate life as a Navy Reservist, I happened to be
on two weeks of active duty with the US Navy in Seoul at the time of the
Kwangju incident in 1980. We had a Navy briefing (somewhat of a joke,
since the U.S. Navy had almost no presence or significance in Korea),
and the Chief of Staff (a Navy captain) told us "this time they did it
right," meaning the Korean military had gone through the formality of
getting U.S. "permission" to move troops (not the paratroopers, which
were not under the Combined Forces Command, but the regular troops who
took over after them, who were). The Chief of Staff's comment was in
memory of the military coup of December 12, 1979, when the Koreans had
moved troops that should have been under CFC operational command without
permission. It was understood in 1980 among the U.S. military that
unless a North Korean attack were imminent, there were no legitimate
grounds for the CFC commander to refuse to give permission - it was part
of the very delicate "sovereignty" issue whereby Korean troops on Korean
soil were under the operational "control" of a foreign general, with
strict limits and conditions to make it acceptable to both sides.
So, I agree with Don Kirk that the US military had no motives at all,
except that I had understood that Wickham had no real alternative to
"rubberstamping" the request, since his criteria for dealing with such
requests were all with reference to the threat from the North and he had
no formal or legal provision for considering domestic issues in the
South. Perhaps he SHOULD have known more of what was going on and
SHOULD have defied his military orders and broken the US-Korea security
agreements, but he would probably have been relieved of his command.
Certainly he could have consulted with his bosses in Washington, but
they might not have known any better. Maybe he did.
Since then, of course, the Kwangju Incident has taken on a variety of
other meanings, as the discussion thread indicates.
H.H.Underwood
Message: 2
Date: Mon, 28 Nov 2011 04:00:47 -0800 (PST)
From: don kirk <kirkdon at yahoo.com>
To: "J.Scott Burgeson" <jsburgeson at yahoo.com>, Korean Studies
Discussion List <koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws>
Subject: Re: [KS] U.S. involvement in the Gwangju Uprising
Message-ID:
<1322481647.92951.YahooMailClassic at web39410.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
I was in Seoul and Kwangju during that whole period. The U.S. was caught
by surprise by the whole thing -- there was no "insistence" on
suppressing anything. At the same time, General Wickham made the mistake
of rubber-stamping, at the request of the ROK military, the transfer of
Roh Moo-hyun's 20th division from duty under U.S. command near the DMZ
to ROK command in or around Gwangju. Wickham had no idea the ROK would
then dispatch special forces to Kwangju to suppress the revolt.
Obviously the U.S. command, under Wickham, was too close to the ROK
command, out of touch with political and social forces and had no clear
comprehension of the significance of what it was doing, much less the
takeover of Kwangju and mass protest in Seoul, which I witnessed. Later,
Wickham was unhappy to learn that Chun Doo-hwan (in power but not yet
president) used the authorization of transfer to say the U.S. was on his
side.
Don Kirk
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