A Troubled Peace

A Troubled Peace

A Troubled Peace

U.S. Policy and the Two Koreas

CHAE - JINLEE

© 2006 The Johns Hopkins University Press

All rights reserved. Published 2006

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

2  4  6  8  9  7  5  3  1

The Johns Hopkins University Press

2715 North Charles Street

Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4363

www.press.jhu.edu

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lee, Chae-Jin, 1936–

A troubled peace: U.S. policy and the two Koreas / Chae-Jin Lee.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-8018-8330-X (hardcover : alk. paper)—ISBN 0-8018-8331-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. United States—Foreign relations—Korea. 2. Korea—Foreign relations—United States. 3. United States—Foreign relations—Korea (North). 4. Korea (North)—Foreign relations—United States. 5. United States—Foreign relations—Korea (South). 6. Korea (South)—Foreign relations—United States. I. Title.

E183.8.K6L38 2006

327.730519—dc22         2005021650

A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

To Jack L. Stark and Yoo Chong Ha

Contents

Acknowledgments

List of Abbreviations

Note on Korean, Chinese, and Japanese Terms

1 Introduction

2 The United States Faces Korea

First Encounters

Japanese Ascendancy in Korea

National Division

The Korean War

The Containment System

3 The Dynamics of Structural Adjustment: From Nixon to Carter

The Guam Doctrine

Nixon’s China Policy

Ford’s Interregnum

Carter’s Military Policy

The Koreagate Investigations

Political Crisis in South Korea

4 The Passing of the Cold War: The Reagan and Bush Years

Reagan’s Anti-Communist Policy

The Beijing Talks

Roh’s Northern Diplomacy

Economic Relations

5 From Containment to Engagement: Clinton’s Policy

Engagement Policy

The Four-Party Talks

The Perry Process

A Missed Opportunity

6 In Search of Hegemonic Diplomacy: Bush’s Policy

Bush’s New Doctrines

The Axis of Evil

The HEU Program

Multilateral Diplomacy

The Six-Party Talks

A Strained Alliance

The Yongsan Garrison

South Korean Troops in Iraq

7 Prospects

Continuity and Change

Inter-Korean Relations

The United States and Korea after Unification

Appendix: Tables

Notes

Index

Acknowledgments

There is an old saying in Asia suggesting that when we drink water from a well, we should think of those who dug it long ago. As I reflect upon my forty years in academia, I cannot help but remember those who dug the well of knowledge from which I gained enormous benefits. As a student at Seoul National University, I was fortunate to have been educated by two towering pioneers: Min Byung Tae, an eminent scholar of political philosophy, and Lee Yong Hee, a doyen of contemporary international studies in Korea. They inspired me to pursue graduate work in the United States. At the University of California at Los Angeles, H. Arthur Steiner, an outstanding specialist of international relations and comparative governments, taught me how to sustain rigor, discipline, and reason in academic life. Other mentors—William P. Gerberding and Hans Baerwald—trained me in the fields of U.S. foreign policy and Asian politics, respectively. I remain deeply indebted to them. As a product of two very different educational systems and cultural traditions, I have aspired to be an intellectual and professional bridge between the United States and Korea. My longstanding aspiration is reflected in this book.

Over the years I have relied upon a large number of government officials, college professors, military officers, policy analysts, and personal friends both in the United States and in Korea. I would like to express my appreciation to Michael Armacost, Raymond Burghardt, Robert Carlin, Richard Christensen, Robert Gallucci, the late William Gleysteen Jr., Ronald Hays, Thomas Hubbard, Arnold Kanter, Charles Kartman, Anthony Lake, David Lambertson, Ronald Lehman, James Lilley, William Perry, C. Kenneth Quinones, Stanley Roth, Susan Shirk, and the late Richard Walker for sharing their experiences and thoughts with me. I cherish the friendship and support of the late George Beckmann, Victor D. Cha, Donald Clark, Bruce Cumings, John Duncan, Carter J. Eckert, Richard Ellings, Ward Elliott, G. Cameron Hurst III, Young Whan Kihl, Hong Nack Kim, Ilpyong Kim, Samuel S. Kim, Young C. Kim, Byung Chul Koh, Chong-Sik Lee, Hong Yung Lee, Kwang Soo Lee, Manwoo Lee, Norman Levin, Patrick Morgan, Michael Munk, Marcus Noland, James Palais, Han Shik Park, Kyung Ae Park, Arthur Rosenbaum, Robert A. Scalapino, Scott Snyder, David Steinberg, and Dae-Sook Suh. They all enriched my professional growth and broadened my intellectual horizons. In particular, I owe a special debt of gratitude to Han-Kyo Kim for reading this entire manuscript and for giving me thoughtful comments and suggestions and to Martin Schneider for copyediting the manuscript with extreme care and appropriate suggestions.

In South Korea, I wish to thank Choi Ho Jung, Chung Chong Wook, Han Seung Soo, Han Sung Joo, Jeong Se Hyun, Kang Young Hoon, Kim Kyung Won, Lee Hong Koo, Lee Jong Sok, Lee Sang Ock, Lee Tae Sik, Lim Dong Won, Oh Jae Hee, Park Jae Kyu, Park Kun, Park Tong Jin, Ro Jai Bong, SaKong Il, Wi Sung Lak, and Yang Sung Chul for talking to me about their experiences in the development of U.S.–South Korean relations. Among those scholars who were particularly helpful to my research in Seoul are the late Baek Kwang Il, Chang Daljoong, Choi Dae Seok, Choi Sang Yong, Gong Sung Jin, Ha Yong Chool, Hahn Bae Ho, Lee Daewoo, Lew Young Ick, Kim Dalchoong, Ohn Chang Il, Park Doo Bok, and Rhee Sang Woo. It was useful to talk to a number of North Korean officials, including Chun Gum Chol, Chung Jun Gi, Han Song Ryol, the late Ho Jong Suk, Hwang Chang Yop, Kim Jong Su, and Pak Yong Su. In addition, I was enlightened by discussions with distinguished individuals from Japan (Kato Takatoshi, Kuriyama Takakazu, Okonogi Masao, the late Sato Hideo, and Sunobe Ryozo), China (the late Han Xu, Huang Hua, Ji Chaozhu, Tao Bingwei, and Wang Jisi), and Russia (Oleg A. Grinevsky and Alexander Panov).

I am grateful to Mary Anderson and Carol Reed for able administrative service; Therese Mahoney for meticulous editorial assistance; Kay Mead for typing documents well; Adriana Andrews, Michael Albertson, Thomas J. Devine, Susan Freese, Kathy Gumbleton, Stephanie Hsieh, Margaret Kaiser, Annie Lee, Julia Rindlaub, Jimmy Shang, and Karen Takishita for dedicated research assistance; Mija Kang, Chae Deuk Lee, Chae Ju Lee, Natalie C. Lee, and Theodore J. Lee for continuing moral support.

I acknowledge with appreciation financial assistance from the U.S. Education Department’s Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Fellowship Program, the Korea Foundation, and the Keck Center for International and Strategic Studies and the Office of President Pamela Gann at Claremont McKenna College. My affiliation with the Center for International Studies at Seoul National University during the fall semester of 2002 was very helpful, as was the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security and the National Institute of Korean History in Seoul. The Office of Information Programs and Services, U.S. Department of State, was cooperative in releasing confidential diplomatic documents to me under the Freedom of Information Act.

This book is dedicated to Jack L. Stark, who has generously supported my professional and administrative activities at Claremont McKenna College, and to Yoo Chong Ha, who has encouraged my scholarly pursuits over the course of our remarkably close and devoted friendship of five decades.

I must make it clear that none of the persons or organizations mentioned here should be held responsible for any part of my interpretations and judgment or for any omissions I may have made.

Abbreviations

Note on Korean, Chinese, and Japanese Terms

For all Korean, Chinese, and Japanese personal names, I follow the custom of putting the family name first except for Syngman Rhee and other names that have traditionally appeared in English with the family names last.

I generally use the McCune-Reischauer system for the romanization of Korean materials cited in the notes and for Korean names from the narrative sections preceding 1945, but without diacritical marks.

With some exceptions I spell contemporary Korean names as they are commonly used in South Korea and North Korea, respectively.

The Wade-Giles system is used for Chinese names cited prior to 1945, but the pinyin system is used for Chinese names and materials since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China.

For Japanese names and materials I adopt the Hepburn system but without diacritical marks.

Map by Christopher Brest

A Troubled Peace

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

Ever since the end of World War II, the United States has played a key role in the management of Korean affairs. With the defeat of Japan in 1945, the United States terminated Japan’s thirty-five years of colonial rule over Korea and, together with the Soviet Union, divided the peninsula along the 38th Parallel, occupying South Korea and North Korea, respectively. After prolonged negotiations failed to impose a multinational trusteeship in Korea, mainly because of emerging global conflicts between the United States and the Soviet Union and the irreconcilable cleavages among the diverse Korean groups, the United States referred the Korean question to the United Nations and sponsored the establishment of the Republic of Korea (South Korea) under President Syngman Rhee in August 1948. Soon thereafter, the Soviet Union supported a rival regime, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), under Premier Kim Il Sung. Not unexpectedly, the two opposing Korean governments developed a hostile relationship that mirrored the animosity between their respective superpower patrons.

During the Korean War (1950–53), the United States led the U.N.-mandated efforts to rescue South Korea after North Korea launched a civil war and in so doing engaged the People’s Republic of China in a bloody and costly military confrontation. After the armistice agreement in 1953 left Korea again fractured across the demilitarized zone (DMZ), the United States promptly embraced South Korea as one of its client states in the Asia-Pacific region, concluded a mutual defense treaty with South Korea as an essential link in its regional containment system, and continued to play a vital role in guaranteeing peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula. At the same time the United States also pursued military containment, diplomatic isolation, and economic sanctions toward North Korea.

As South Korea recovered from its earlier war-torn and poverty-stricken circumstances, achieved rapid economic growth, and assumed an assertive diplomatic posture toward the end of the 1960s under President Park Chung Hee’s authoritarian rule, President Richard M. Nixon, a classical realist, promulgated the Guam Doctrine, initiated a process for structural changes in the U.S.–South Korean relationship, and decided to withdraw one of the two U.S. infantry divisions from South Korea. When Nixon began to pursue a policy of détente toward China and the Soviet Union, however, the unfolding inter-bloc accommodation generated tensions and disagreements in intra-bloc relations. The evolving relations between the United States and South Korea were no exception to this general trend. So President Park Chung Hee’s overwhelming sense of abandonment and suspicion toward the United States led him to implement several countermeasures—to increase self-reliant military power, to seek inter-Korean dialogue and cooperation, and to strengthen his domestic power base. President Park’s response was understandable in view of the close relationship between the United States and South Korea. In discussing the misperceptions and paranoia that can arise in an intimate and friendly bilateral alliance, Richard E. Neustadt in Alliance Politics aptly observes, Misperceptions evidently make for crisis in proportion to the intimacy of relations. Hazards are proportionate to the degree of friendship. Indifference and hostility may not breed paranoia; friendship does…. Close acquaintance was more burdensome than beneficial, more conducive to misreading than accurate perception.¹ After an uncertain interlude under President Gerald Ford, the Carter administration continued to adopt the basic framework of Nixon’s Guam Doctrine and sought a further readjustment in the U.S.–South Korean military relationship. Guided by his liberal orientation, however, President Jimmy Carter attached a high priority to human rights and political democracy in foreign affairs, and he became very uneasy when confronted with the increasingly repressive domestic policies of Presidents Park and Chun Doo Hwan. Mutual distrust, acrimonious communications, and an erosion of confidence plagued U.S.–South Korean relations in what would prove the most difficult period in the history of U.S.–South Korean relations. Despite the asymmetrical nature of the aggregate structural power between the United States and South Korea and the indispensability of the U.S. commitment for South Korea’s national security, the junior alliance partner (South Korea) defiantly assumed a nationalistic posture, at times even resisting its senior partner’s advice and pressure. Examining the dynamics of such asymmetrical interactions, I. William Zartman suggests that the aggregate power position of a state cannot be directly translated into relevant and available power in any particular situation. Powerful states may turn out to be weak in a given confrontation with seemingly weaker states.² Indeed, South Korea adroitly manipulated the weakness of the United States to maximize its own national interests. Moreover, in his seminal work, After Hegemony, Robert O. Keohane points out: Cooperation takes place only in situations in which actors perceive that their policies are actually or potentially in conflict, not where there is harmony. Cooperation should not be viewed as the absence of conflict, but rather as a reaction to conflict or potential conflict. Without the specter of conflict, there is no need to cooperate.³ These general suggestions by Zartman and Keohane shed light on the complex and seemingly contradictory mix of cooperation and conflict found in the relations between the United States and South Korea, especially during the Nixon and Carter presidencies.

However, President Ronald Reagan, an unabashed anti-Communist warrior, changed Carter’s liberal foreign policy, accepted the legitimacy of President Chun’s authoritarian regime, and strengthened the military alliance and diplomatic cooperation with South Korea, mainly for the sake of the U.S.-led containment system. He tended to deemphasize the importance of human rights and political liberalization in his foreign policy but nevertheless played a positive role in saving the life of the leading political dissident (and future president) Kim Dae Jung in 1981 and in encouraging a peaceful transfer of power in South Korea in 1987 and 1988. Reagan presided over the unmistakable transformation of the U.S.–South Korean relationship from a hierarchical and unequal alliance into the interdependent partnership that emerged toward the end of the 1980s.

This transformation was most pronounced in their changing economic relationship: while the United States suffered from an appreciable decline in economic performance relative to Japan and the European Economic Community, South Korea registered phenomenal economic growth and foreign trade in the 1980s, thanks in part to the accessible U.S. market. The South Koreans not only graduated from U.S. economic assistance programs, they also increased their gross national product (GNP) at an average annual rate of 10% from the early 1960s through the 1980s, and per capita GNP grew from $88 in 1961 to $4,040 in 1988. The United States now even had more trade with South Korea than with many of its traditional European trading partners: South Korea became the seventh-largest trading partner for the United States and the second-largest market for U.S. agricultural products. The volume of annual trade between the United States and South Korea rose to $34 billion by the end of the Reagan presidency.

In view of the passing of the global cold war, President George H. W. Bush, a moderate pragmatist, recognized the distinct possibility of peaceful Korean unification on the German model. He also supported President Roh Tae Woo’s ambitious northern diplomacy toward the Soviet Union, China, and East European countries and endorsed the peaceful purpose of dialogue between the two Korean governments, as demonstrated by the Agreement on Reconciliation, Nonaggression, Exchanges and Cooperation and by the Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, which came into effect in February 1992. The relaxation of regional and global conflicts brightened the prospects for inter-Korean accommodation. In an attempt to improve its relations with North Korea, the Bush administration cautiously experimented with bilateral negotiations at the Beijing Talks.

In addition to continuing Bush’s conciliatory approach toward North Korea, President William J. Clinton initiated a number of liberal measures to modify America’s traditional policy of military containment, diplomatic isolation, and economic sanctions toward North Korea. He sought constructive engagement between Washington and Pyongyang despite South Korean President Kim Young Sam’s lingering cold war ambivalence and zero-sum mentality. Unlike his predecessors, who had primarily dealt with a bilateral relationship between Washington and Seoul, Clinton faced the hitherto uncharted challenge of managing a complicated triangular relationship with South Korea and North Korea along with concomitant cooperation with other major powers—China, Japan, and Russia. While sustaining the time-honored framework of close military, diplomatic, and economic linkages with South Korea, the Clinton administration at the same time commenced a difficult but important new diplomatic dialogue with North Korea to discuss such issues as nuclear proliferation, confidence-building measures, and a peace mechanism on the Korean Peninsula. Marginalized by the rapid progress of bilateral negotiations between the United States and North Korea, the strong-willed and independent-minded South Korean president Kim Young Sam voiced his displeasure with Clinton’s North Korea policy but eventually acceded to its functional utility. A number of Republican hardliners in the U.S. Congress, however, accused Clinton of engaging in a policy of appeasement toward Pyongyang and of succumbing to North Korean blackmail and extortions.

As graphically illustrated by the Geneva Agreed Framework on nuclear issues signed in October 1994, the Four-Party Talks for Korean peace (1997–99), and the U.S.-DPRK Joint Communiqué issued in October 2000, the Clinton administration was committed to exploring the possibility of reducing mutual hostilities with North Korea and of normalizing diplomatic and economic relations. In addition, the United States enthusiastically applauded President Kim Dae Jung’s celebrated sunshine policy toward North Korea and welcomed the inter-Korean summit meeting in Pyongyang in June 2000. Mutual trust, personal rapport, and close policy cooperation between Clinton and Kim ushered in the best period in U.S.–South Korean relations. On Kim’s recommendation, President Clinton, too, planned to hold a summit meeting with Chairman Kim Jong Il and dispatched Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright to Pyongyang to make arrangements. A combination of unforeseeable circumstances both internal and external, however, forced him to abandon this plan toward the end of his presidency. Influenced by the Kantian school of liberalism, Clinton heralded the concept of democratic peace as one of the principal guidelines of his foreign policy, but there was no evidence that he applied it consistently in his administration’s dealings with North Korea.

The George W. Bush administration attempted to change President Clinton’s liberal engagement policy toward North Korea, adopting a hegemonic posture toward Kim Jong Il and articulating a set of new concepts—such as the axis of evil and the doctrine of preemptive attack—to confront the irresponsible and aggressive behavior of rogue states, especially after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. With Reagan as a precursor, Bush took the Wilsonian notion of American moral exceptionalism one step further, assuming the self-righteous mission of imposing its universal application by force, if necessary. He declared that America has unique power and unmatched influence, and we will use them in the service of democracy, spreading peace across the world and across the years. One of his critics, Joseph S. Nye Jr., warns in The Paradox of American Power, however, that the danger posed by the outright champions of hegemony is that their foreign policy is all accelerator and no brakes. Their focus on unipolarity and hegemony exaggerates the degree to which the United States is able to get the outcomes it wants in a changing world.⁴ This sober warning is reminiscent of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s dictum: The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master, unless he transforms strength into right, and obedience into duty.⁵

Although President Bush still recognized the political necessity for official contacts and negotiations with North Korea, he was morally indignant when it came to Kim Jong Il’s dictatorial and inhumane rule and became profoundly skeptical of the wisdom of President Kim Dae Jung’s sunshine policy toward North Korea. In a highly personalized fashion, Bush despised Kim Jong Il—much as he did with Saddam Hussein—and distrusted Kim Dae Jung in any case. Reacting to the Bush administration’s hardline neoconservative policy, North Korea vigorously confronted the United States in 2002 and 2003: it expelled the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors from the nuclear facilities at Yongbyon, nullified the Geneva Agreed Framework, withdrew from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), and started to reprocess spent nuclear fuel rods for the extraction of weapons-grade plutonium. The United States in turn terminated delivery of heavy fuel oil to North Korea and suspended the multinational project for constructing light-water nuclear reactors in North Korea. It was incongruous that President Bush emphasized a multilateral approach for dealing with North Korea—he stressed the importance of focusing on the Six-Party Talks to resolve Kim Jong Il’s nuclear programs by diplomatic means—but against Saddam Hussein he adopted a unilateralist approach. In view of deteriorating U.S.–North Korean relations, South Korea, together with China, attempted to mediate between Washington and Pyongyang—but the outcome was not always satisfactory.

The Bush administration struggled with cognitive dissonance and policy cleavages when dealing with the liberal, populist, and nationalistic president Roh Moo Hyun as the two governments conferred on relations with North Korea and other important issues, such as the reduction and realignment of U.S. forces in South Korea, the growth of anti-American sentiment among young South Koreans, and the participation of South Korean troops in postwar reconstruction efforts in Iraq. President Bush managed to patch together a semblance of alliance cohesion with South Korea in regard to multilateral talks: the Three-Party Talks (April) and the Six-Party Talks (August) on North Korean nuclear issues in 2003 and the subsequent rounds of the Six-Party Talks (February and June) in 2004. The United States utilized the Trilateral Coordination and Oversight Group (TCOG) to harmonize its positions on North Korea with those of South Korea and Japan, solicited active assistance from China and Russia in achieving North Korea’s nuclear disarmament, and took advantage of several international and regional organizations, including the United Nations, the IAEA, the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), and the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), a new multinational forum to stop North Korea’s illegal proliferation activities. Meanwhile, the relationship between the United States and North Korea, rife with mutual misperceptions, deteriorated into open hostility. The Iraq War and the disputes over North Korea’s clandestine program for highly enriched uranium were major sources of tension between Washington and Pyongyang. More important, the United States faced very serious strains in its alliance system with South Korea. There emerged the possibility that the United States might unwisely alienate South Korea while simultaneously antagonizing North Korea. The future of U.S. policy toward the Korean Peninsula was, to put it mildly, in a state of flux.

In order to elucidate the changing nature of U.S.–Korean relations, this study examines the manner in which the United States has historically formulated its goals for Korea, publicly and privately articulated those goals, and selected the methods and instruments with which to implement them. In so doing, the study lays bare the historical patterns of continuity and change in U.S.–Korean relations and seeks to illuminate the underlying philosophical approaches driving those patterns. In his book What Is Political Philosophy? Leo Strauss explored the motivations for political continuity and change: All political action aims at either preservation or change. When desiring to preserve, we wish to prevent a change to the worse; when desiring to change, we wish to bring about something better. All political action is then guided by some thought of better or worse. But thought of better or worse implies thought of the good.⁶ Even though it is not my intention to offer a normative judgment about the history of U.S. foreign policy in general, I will discuss whether the United States has maintained a judicious balance between continuity and change in its actions with respect to the Korean Peninsula and how U.S. actions have made its relations with Korea better or worse than before. Other important questions include: What factors have influenced change in U.S. policy toward Korea over six decades? How has the United States been able to narrow the gap between the goals and means of its policy toward Korea? How have the United States, South Korea, and North Korea perceived each other? How have they sought to present themselves to each other? What issues have continued to be salient over time? What issues have faded from view? How have the United States as the superpower and the two smaller Korean states managed or mismanaged their asymmetrical relations? What lessons should we learn from the successes and failures of U.S. policy? What scenarios can we envision for a better U.S. policy toward Korea?

In an effort to examine these and other relevant questions, I focus especially on (1) changing domestic conditions in the United States, South Korea, and North Korea with emphasis on political leadership, theoretical orientations, decision-making processes, and state capabilities; (2) the shifting balance and relationship between South Korea and North Korea; (3) the effects of the hexagonal linkages among the United States, the Soviet Union (Russia), China, Japan, South Korea, and North Korea; and (4) the transformation of regional and global systems, with emphasis on bipolarity, multipolarity, and hegemony. Throughout this study I draw on a few organizing concepts and ideas such as liberalism, realism, containment, deterrence, engagement, preemption, isolation, appeasement, and misperception. This study focuses primarily on diplomatic and military relations, but other factors such as economic interactions and cultural milieu are also addressed.

In this study, I refer often to contrasting styles of presidential leadership—such as those of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Kim Young Sam and Kim Dae Jung—and competing theoretical paradigms—such as realism and liberalism, national interests and moral prescriptions, unilateralism and multilateralism. I do not, however, propose absolute and rigid dichotomies, but rather suggest appreciable differences of degree, tendency, and priority. As Henry Kissinger suggested, excessive realism produces stagnation; excessive idealism leads to crusades and eventual disillusionment.⁷

As a general guideline, I do not entertain any ideologically inspired or preconceived notions about the successes or failures of U.S. policy toward Korea. Nor do I have any particular personal or political hidden agenda in this study. My credo is to be reasonable, eclectic, and evenhanded. Yet I am fully cognizant of Harold J. Laski’s wise admonition that we are all so much the prisoners of our experience that we are, usually unconsciously, coerced by it into identifying our personal insights with inescapable truth.⁸ I consciously attempt to minimize whatever personal emotions I may have and to avoid the unsubstantiated view, the flimsy argument, the idle tangent. This study emphasizes the importance of primary documents and empirical evidence as the main basis of analytical interpretations and substantive judgments. Even though a majority of the documents and materials used in this study are from U.S. sources—including declassified archival documents—I make every effort to examine and draw upon South Korean and North Korean documents in an attempt to discern Korean points of view and to offer balanced and objective narrative and interpretations, as far as possible. For this purpose I have read a variety of memoirs and other recollections written in Korean by South Korean policymakers, and I have interviewed a large number of past and present South Korean leaders (prime ministers; ministers of foreign affairs, national defense, national unification, and finance; ambassadors to the United States and the United Nations; senior secretaries to the president for foreign affairs and national security; members of the National Assembly; and military officers). I have also spoken to a few North Korean officials, including cabinet ministers, party secretaries, ambassadors to the United Nations, and other diplomats despite the obvious obstacles to candid discussions. In addition, I have interviewed a wide range of U.S. officials (cabinet secretaries, national security advisers, ambassadors, military commanders, members of the Departments of State and Defense, and members of the U.S. Congress) and a limited number of Japanese, Chinese, and Russian leaders. I hope that this study will present a new and comprehensive perspective on the dynamic transformation of U.S. policy toward the Korean Peninsula during the past six decades, especially since Korea may dominate the headlines over the next few years.

CHAPTER TWO

The United States Faces Korea

Geographically and culturally worlds apart, the United States and the Korean Peninsula in the early nineteenth century had little in common. Yet they were about to enter a turbulent period of conflict and cooperation that would last for more than a century and a half. As early as the 1830s, the United States government believed that one of the advantages of opening Japan to the West would be the possibility of trade with Korea. The Korean ruling elite during the Choson Dynasty (1392–1910), however, was ill prepared to deal with the West. They were unable to foresee the emerging collision between their Sino-centric worldview, with its hierarchical and insular East Asian traditions, and the Western concept of equal, independent, and competitive nation states. Not until the outbreak of the Opium War (1840–42) did they begin to recognize the impact that the influx of European and American influences would have on their familiar international order.¹ Even after they received a belated and vague report about the war from Korean tributary missions to China, they failed to comprehend the ominous implications of China’s loss in the war and of the Treaty of Nanking (1842), in which China agreed to cede Hong Kong to England and to open five ports to British trade. Nor were the Koreans fully aware of Commodore Matthew C. Perry’s visit to Japan in 1853 and of the Treaty of Kanagawa that Perry signed with Japan in 1854. Moreover, they did not fully understand the causes and consequences of the Anglo-French War with China (1856–60), except for the shocking news that foreign forces had occupied Peking and that the Chinese Emperor had fled to Jehol north of the Great Wall.

Meanwhile, a small number of Korean scholars and officials began to piece together a general introduction to Europe and America from books imported from China in the middle of the nineteenth century. These sources painted a benign picture of America: they said that the United States had fought for political independence from autocratic British rule, had become a rich but just country, and refrained from bullying small states. From 1853 to 1866 shipwrecked foreigners, among them American sailors and fishermen, washed up in the coastal areas of Korea. Startled local Korean leaders referred to them as strange barbarians but nonetheless kindly provided them with food, clothing, and shelter and safely returned them, mostly via China. In particular, Koreans rescued the crew of an American whaling ship, the Two Brothers, in July 1855 and an American schooner, the Surprise, in June 1866 and handed them over to the Chinese authorities. This was a time when U.S. maritime activities intensified in the Asia-Pacific region. As Hahm Pyong Choon suggests, Koreans routinely responded to these isolated incidents of foreigners in distress with humanitarian assistance.²

FIRST ENCOUNTERS

However, the first major confrontation between the United States and Korea was violent and tragic for both countries. The ambitious Taewongun (grand prince, 1821–98), who governed the Choson Dynasty as a regent for his young son, King Kojong (r. 1864–1907), enforced a rigid policy of seclusion from Western powers and Catholic influence. An American merchant ship, the General Sherman, challenged that policy by sailing down the Taedong River toward Pyongyang in 1866.³ The marauding crewmen—Americans, English, Chinese, and Malays—not only killed, wounded, and kidnapped Koreans, they also demanded grain, gold, silver, and ginseng as conditions for their withdrawal. Furious Korean soldiers and residents set fire to their ship and killed all twenty-four crewmen on board. Koreans suffered thirteen casualties.⁴ This incident was followed by violent and destructive disturbances on the Han River near Seoul and at Kangwha Island near Inchon inflicted by the French Navy.

Hearing the news about the General Sherman, the American legation in Peking sent an urgent diplomatic inquiry through the Chinese Tsungli Yamen (Office for General Management), which was in charge of foreign affairs. The Choson government replied that "a strange British [sic] ship illegally approached Pyongyang, engaged in arrogant activities, ran aground, and perished by fire." Because an Anglican missionary, Robert J. Thomas, who served as an interpreter and guide for the General Sherman, had presented himself as British, the Choson government identified the ship as British too. To further the investigations, the United States dispatched the warship Wachusett, under Commander Robert W. Shufeldt, to the mouth of the Taedong River in January 1867 and another warship, Shenandoah, commanded by Captain John C. Febiger in April 1868. The two missions did not produce conclusive results but did demonstrate the power of the American navy along the west coast of Korea.

Three years later, in 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant, a Civil War hero, ordered a detachment of five U.S. warships to Kanghwa Island to learn the fate of the General Sherman, to seek a shipwreck convention with Korea, and to force Korea to open its ports for trade. After haphazard attempts at communications and negotiations failed, armed clashes that lasted for forty-eight hours inflicted heavy casualties on both American marines and Korean defenders. The U.S. warships retreated to a station in Chinese waters.⁵ The angry king declared his opposition to making peace with the likes of dogs and sheep, and the Taewongun erected stone monuments in Seoul and elsewhere in Korea with the stern admonition: Western barbarians invade our land. If we do not fight, we must then appease them. To urge appeasement is to betray our nation.⁶ His strict anti-Western guidelines were clearly and widely distributed. As the Taewongun’s ten-year rule on behalf of his young son drew to a close in 1873, however, the Choson government began to reconsider its extreme isolationist and exclusionist policy.

In spite of the two unfortunate skirmishes in 1866 and 1871, King Kojong was eventually persuaded by a moderate and cosmopolitan reformist, Kim Hong-jip, and other like-minded officials to accept the United States as a basically benevolent and friendly nation and to use it as an effective counterweight against other countries with imperialist designs on Korea. The Korean court accepted the recommendations included in A Treatise on Korea Policy, which Chinese Counselor Huang Tsunhsien wrote for Kim Hong-jip during the latter’s visit to Tokyo in 1880.⁷ Influenced by the vision of Li Hung-chang, the powerful viceroy of Chihli (a northern Chinese province), Huang argued that in order to counteract Russia’s aggressive intentions, Korea should be intimate with China, unite with Japan, and ally with the United States. Among other things, he explained that the United States was a strong, prosperous, just, and generous Christian country with no territorial ambitions abroad and that an alliance with the United States would help Korea avert calamities.

As a result of the initial negotiations that Li Hung-chang conducted with Commodore Robert W. Shufeldt in Tientsin on the basis of a draft prepared by China, Shufeldt and two Korean commissioners plenipotentiary (Sin Hon and Kim Hong-jip) signed a Treaty of Peace, Amity, Commerce and Navigation between Corea and the United States at Chemulpo (now Inchon) on May 22, 1882. Article One stated: There shall be perpetual peace and friendship between the President of the United States and the King of Chosen and the citizens and subjects of their respective Governments. If other Powers deal unjustly or oppressively with either Government, the other will exert good offices, on being informed of the case, to bring about an amicable arrangement, thus showing their friendly feelings.⁸

The Korean king had unrealistically high hopes about the good offices that the United States would assume on his behalf. The treaty specified exchanging diplomatic and consular representatives, opening ports for American residence and commerce, administering tariff issues, protecting merchants and merchant vessels, assisting wrecked ships, and dealing with criminal justice procedures. Most important, it granted extraterritorial privileges to U.S. citizens either on shore or in any merchant vessel. Aside from the unequal Treaty of Kanghwa concluded between Korea and Japan in February 1876, the United States became the first Western country to establish a formal diplomatic and commercial relationship with Korea. This treaty served as a model for subsequent treaties Korea would sign with other Western powers: Britain and Germany in 1883, Italy and Russia in 1884, France in 1886, and Austria-Hungary in 1889.⁹

King Kojong sent a royal envoy, Min Yong-ik, to the United States in 1883; he was the first Korean visitor to America. His eight-man delegation met President Chester A. Arthur in New York and toured a number of American cities.¹⁰ On his return home after a ten-month journey in 1884, Min told the first U.S. minister to Korea, Lucius H. Foote, who had arrived in Seoul in May 1883: I was born in the dark, I went out into the light, and now I have returned into the dark again; I cannot yet see my way clearly but I hope to soon.¹¹ He submitted a glowing report on the United States to King Kojong. Impressed by the goodwill of the United States, the king sought to appoint Americans as directors of foreign affairs, directors of the customs service, heads of the palace guards, military trainers, and, of course, English teachers. He came to befriend Americans as sympathetic and reliable advisers and assistants. He hoped that the United States would play an assertive role in protecting Korean interests when power struggles arose among Japan, China, Russia, and Britain. Yet he grossly overestimated the extent of America’s willingness and ability to provide its good offices in the name of counterbalancing the other major powers. The succeeding American administrations had neither the military capability nor the political will to render such assistance to Korea. In a telegram to the American chargé d’affaires in Seoul on August 19, 1885, for example, Secretary of State Thomas F. Bayard cautioned that the United States can take no action which might even in appearance seem to favor or oppose the policy of either China or Japan, without impairing the position of friendly impartiality towards all which it is the duty and pleasure of this nation to maintain.¹² The first Korean minister to the United States, Pak Chong-yang, arrived in Washington to open the Korean legation in 1888.

On the eve of the Sino-Japanese War (1894–95), the U.S. minister in Seoul joined his British, French, and Russian counterparts in proposing that Chinese and Japanese troops simultaneously withdraw from Korea. The United States also offered its good offices toward Japan in stating that the President will be painfully disappointed should Japan visit upon her feeble and defenceless neighbor the horrors of an unjust war.¹³ Once the war over the Korean question began, however, the United States cautiously assumed a neutral position and scrupulously adhered to its policy of noninterference in Korea’s internal affairs. It was in no position to counter the Japanese victory over China or the ascendancy of Japanese influence in Korea. The war led to a sudden increase in reports on Korea in U.S. media; according to John Chay, the New York Times Index listed 235 articles on Korea in 1894 and 195 in 1895. U.S. media reports were colored by a pro-Japanese and anti-Chinese perspective and portrayed Korea as uncivilized, weak, and poor.¹⁴ The Treaty of Peace signed by Chinese Viceroy Li Hung-chang and Japanese Prime Minister Ito Hirobumi at Shimonoseki on April 17, 1895, stipulated: China recognizes indefinitely the full and complete independence and autonomy of Corea, and in consequence, the payment of tribute and the performance of ceremonies and formalities by Corea to China in derogation of such independence and autonomy, shall wholly cease for the future.¹⁵ The treaty in effect terminated China’s traditional suzerainty over Korea, and the recognition of Korea’s independent status provided the legal door for Japan’s growing influence. Yet Russia promptly maneuvered to replace China as a rival to Japan over Korea.

After witnessing the sad state of affairs in Korea in the 1890s, Isabella Bird Bishop, a British author, reported in Korea and Her Neighbours: This feeblest of independent kingdoms, rudely shaken out of her sleep of centuries, half frightened and wholly dazed, finds herself confronted with an array of powerful, ambitious, aggressive, and not always overscrupulous powers, bent, it may be, on overreaching her and each other, forcing her into new paths, ringing with rude hands the knell of time-honored custom, clamoring for concessions, and bewildering her with reforms, suggestions, and panaceas, of which she sees neither the meaning nor the necessity.¹⁶

When the U.S. minister to Korea took steps sympathetic to the Korean king after the murder of the queen by Japanese soldiers in 1895, Secretary of State Richard Olney reprimanded him, saying that intervention in political concerns of Korea is not among your functions and ordering him to confine himself strictly to the protection of American citizens and interests.¹⁷ At that time only a small number of American citizens were engaged in commercial, missionary, medical, and educational activities in Korea. With the assistance of the U.S. legation in Seoul in 1895, an American businessman obtained from the Korean government timber and mining rights in Pyongan Province. In subsequent years, U.S. businesses were successful in securing a variety of concessions—pearl-fishing rights and contracts to construct the Inchon-Seoul railroad, streetcar lines, an electric plant, and the waterworks in Seoul.¹⁸

As the conflicts between Japan and Russia over Korea escalated in the late 1890s and early 1900s, the Choson government continued to appeal for assistance and protection from the United States. In a message to Minister Horace N. Allen in November 1897, Secretary of State John Sherman instructed: It behooves the United States and their representatives, as absolutely neutral parties, to say or do nothing that can in any way be construed as taking sides with or against any of the interested powers. Any such partiality would not only be in itself improper, but might have the undesirable and unfortunate effect of leading the Koreans themselves to regard the United States as their natural and only ally for any and all such purposes of domestic policy as Korea’s rulers may adopt.¹⁹ Hence the United States rejected the Korean government’s request that it take initiatives to organize an international agreement guaranteeing the independence, integrity, and neutrality of Korea. At this time the U.S. leaders faithfully observed George Washington’s admonition that the great rule of diplomatic conduct was to extend commercial relations but to have few political entanglements abroad.

The United States did not remain completely inactive in the rest of Asia, however. As an extension of its war against Spain over Cuba, U.S. naval units directed by Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt defeated the Spanish fleet near Manila in 1898 and colonized the Philippines. In his assertive Open Door notes issued to the major international powers in 1899 and 1900, Secretary of State John Hay demanded and secured an equal opportunity for American trade with China. The United States also joined Japan, Britain, Russia, Germany, France, Italy, and Austria-Hungary in a joint expedition to rescue diplomatic and missionary establishments from the antiforeign Boxer rebels in Peking, Tientsin, and other northern Chinese cities in 1900 and received a large portion of the indemnity funds from the Chinese government.²⁰ To provide labor for its sugar plantations in Hawaii, the United States began to allow a small number of Korean workers to immigrate in January 1903; the number of Korean immigrants in Hawaii was to reach about 7,500 by 1905, when the door was closed after the Japanese protectorate was established over Korea. And the United States continued to enjoy the benefits of the Pax Britannica globally and to abide by the Monroe Doctrine in the Western Hemisphere.

The first twenty-three years of diplomatic relations between the United States and Korea (1882–1905) were fraught with asymmetrical interests, mutual misperceptions, and eventually profound disillusionment on the part of the Koreans. Disoriented by the sudden collapse of the Sino-centric international order, King Kojong, a weak and vulnerable ruler, sought protection in vain, first from Japan and then from Russia before he at last accepted the United States as the only country he could admire and trust. At this time, however, the United States was reluctant to become entangled in the intractable power struggles over Korea because it had no vital military and diplomatic interests there at that time. Even in the fields of economics and commerce, Korea was not as important to America’s overall objectives as China and Japan were. The United States, harboring no territorial or imperialist ambitions in Korea, offered friendly support to the Korean government, but only as long as it involved no unnecessary risks or sacrifices.

With its emphasis on diplomatic passivity and military abstinence, the early U.S. approach toward Korea amounted to a minimalist policy. This was a pragmatic choice in view of Washington’s reluctance to commit its limited resources in defense of Korea. Although the United States had surpassed Britain as the largest manufacturing nation in the world by 1900, its military and naval power remained weak and underdeveloped. Guided by the realist perspective of President Theodore Roosevelt, the United States, acting in its own national interests, did not fulfill misplaced Korean expectations but instead accommodated the growing power of the Japanese Empire. Unlike their Japanese and Chinese counterparts, such as Ito Hirobumi and Li Hung-chang, the inexperienced, inept, and factious leaders in Korea were ill-equipped to discern the true intentions and limited capabilities of the United States and to adjust their policies to the changing international reality in a timely and appropriate manner. They felt spurned and abandoned by Washington