[KS] Kwangju (well, ok, Gwangju)

[H.H. Underwood]

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>
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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