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Can Democracy Work?
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13261 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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10 / 1987 |
3,354 Words |
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Selig S. Harrison
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South Koreans are caught in a tug of war between the pulls of tradition and modernization. Deep-rooted historical memories of monarchical despotism, reinforced by Confucian values of obedience to authority, have facilitated the establishment of military rule since 1961. At the same time, rapid economic growth and mass education have broadened the base of political consciousness, generating increasingly powerful pressures for democratization.
The United States is unavoidably embroiled in this tug-of-war because it has had a peculiarly intimate relationship with the South Korean armed forces ever since the Korean War.
To back up the 1954 mutual defense treaty between Seoul and Washington, American air and ground forces, equipped with tactical nuclear weapons, are deployed in forward positions in the South. The 1954 treaty provides for an American-Korean Combined Forces Command headed by an American four-star general. This treaty gives the American commander-in-chief operational control not only over American forces in Korea (numbering 40,500 men in 1987) but also over South Korean forces (598,000). Thus, the United States has been closely linked in South Korean eyes with 26 years of military rule, first under Park Chung-Hee, who was assassinated in 1979, and then under Park's military intelligence chief, incumbent President Chun Doo-Hwan.
No evidence has surfaced to support the widespread South Korean belief that the United States directly connived in the Park and Chun coups. However, American military spokesmen, drowning out State Department professions of support for democracy, have consistently rationalized or justified military rule. Gen. John Wickham, then the American commander of the Combined Forces, said that he did not know of Chun's redeployment of Korean frontline units to Seoul in time to stop him from staging his 1980 coup. But Koreans who suspect American complicity in the coup cite Wickham's statement soon after that Koreans are "lemming-like" and "need a strong leader."
South Korean critics blame the United States for permitting Chun's use of Korean forces in suppressing the Kwangju uprising in May 1980, in which 800 or more were killed. In reality, an unpublished 1978 agreement removed American operational control from those South Korean forces "not directly concerned on a daily basis with the nation's forward defense." Wickham did not have operational control over the Korean Special Forces units that committed the most serious atrocities at Kwangju. Still, American spokesmen have acknowledged that the United States did approve the use of the other Korean forces involved.
The American Role
As sentiment against military rule has grown, so has anti-Americanism, focusing on Kwangju as a symbol of perceived U.S. support for military repression. For this reason, anxious to avoid "another Kwangju," the United States intervened decisively to prevent the use of Korean forces in suppressing the popular upheaval that shook South Korea in June 1987. President Reagan's letter to Chun on June 19 and the State Department's public appeal to military commanders on June 22 played a major role in preventing the imposition of martial law.
Some Reagan administration officials have also claimed credit for the dramatic political
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