Overview
From the end of the Korean War to 1990, South Korea had evolved from a country dependent on other nations for its national security to a strong and growing nation, increasingly capable of meeting its own defense needs. Civilian industries maintained military assembly lines as a separate, and generally small, part of their corporate activities.
By deploying main forces such as mechanized and self-propelled artillery units, attack weapons and equipment in the forward area, the North has a combat posture that would allow it to launch surprise attacks at any time. Under such circumstances, Pyongyang may launch provocations against the South as a way of resolving the sense of crisis or dissatisfaction within its system, or to gain international attention. Conflicts deriving from food shortages or from decision-making processes could also result in an emergency within the North Korean regime.
Korean participation in the Vietnam War provided an opportunity for the modernization of ROK armed forces. In 1966 when combat divisions were actively deployed in Vietnam after the initial expedition in 1965, ROK force improvement, though limited, was initiated through the US Brown Memorandum which promised to support a ROK force modernization plan. This memorandum, howevert did not clearly specify any effect, characteristics or time limit. As a result, the memorandum led only to modest improvements such as provision of old-model tanks and M-16 rifles to the ROK forces in Vietnam. In the meantime, a series of North Korean provocations occurred, with a North Korean guerrilla attempt to infiltrate the Blue House on January 21, 1968, and two days later the hijacking of the USS Pueblo, an American reconnaissance ship, on the East Sea. In April 1969, a US EC-121 reconnaissance aircraft was also shot down.
In response to these events and upon ROK request, the US government decided to hold cabinet-level annual conferences on security issues with the ROK government. Korea was promised military assistance of one hundred million dollars as well as the construction of an M-16 manufacturing facility. President Park Chung Hee, however, decided to proceed further to realize the goal of a self-reliant defense posture in preparation for the future possibility of a national crisis. The need for self-reliant defense was all the more strengthened by the international environment at that time. In March 1971, the Seventh Division of the US Forces in Korea (USFK) withdrew from the peninsula following the Nixon Doctrine of July 1969, which championed the importance of all nations becoming self-reliant in regards to their defense.
The US government declared a $1,596 million aid program during 1971-1975 to support the Five-Year Modernization Plan of ROK forces. This was agreed as compensation for participation in the Vietnam War as well as for the decrease in the size of the USFK. This program, however, did not reach all its initial goals as the aid period was delayed to 1977. Nevertheless, it did result in upgrading a part of ROK forces' equipment for the first time since the truce of the Korean War. The equipment used by ROK troops in Vietnam also contributed to the partial modernization of ROK forces.
On April 19, 1973, President Park Chung Hee gave an instruction during an inspection of the 1973 Ulchi Exercise, to establish independent military strategies for self-reliant defense and to develop a force improvement plan. In response, the Joint Chiefs of Staff drew up Joint Basic Military Strategies in July 1973, delivered the Guidelines for Military Equipment Modernization Program to each service and integrated plans of the three services. The result was the Eight-Year National Defense Plan (1974-1981), the first self-reliant force improvement plan for the ROK, which was subsequently approved by the president on February 25, 1974.
In order to respond more quickly to the North's provocations, the ROK military tracks and surveys not only its major military trends, but also its non-military trends. Also, the ROK military is reflecting detailed military countermeasures to be taken immediately in various plans and is developing them against predicted provocations from the North. In order to survey the activities of North Korean aircraft, a monitor control and reporting center (MCRC) operation system is run 24 hours a day. If North Korean military activities seem suspicious, the movement must be thoroughly tracked and surveyed until it becomes clear; if necessary, the ROK military can receive support from US military intelligence satellites.
Historically, operational control of South Korea's tactical armed forces has made the United States commander vulnerable to the politics of association. United States commanders have rigidly avoided commentary on South Korean party politics, confining public statements to purely military matters on such issues as arms buildups and threats from North Korea. However, in the complex politics of the Korean Peninsula, the United States commander's military opinions often have been publicly manipulated as support for Seoul's authoritarianism.
In May 1961 and December 1979, the command structure was breached by South Korean troops participating in military coups. A more complex set of circumstances occurred in May 1980, when troops were withdrawn from the CFC under existing procedures and dispatched to Kwangju to respond to the student uprising. Confusion in the South Korean public over the particular circumstances of the incident, the United States position, and the limits of the CFC's control led many South Koreans to believe that the United States fully supported the violent suppression of the uprising. The lack of an accurate historical record for nearly ten years generated widespread misunderstanding, and it has been credited with the rise of anti-Americanism in South Korea, a movement which continues.
Only after President Chun stepped down at the end of 1987, and the opposition in the National Assembly grew stronger, did the United States begin answering the questions concerning United States involvement in Kwangju. On June 19, 1989, Washington issued the "United States Government Statement on Events in Kwangju, Republic of Korea, in May 1980," in response to formal requests from the National Assembly. The statement addressed a series of questions related to the rise to power of then Lieutenant General Chun Doo Hwan. The statement noted no prior knowledge of the assassination of President Park Chung Hee, nor warning of the December 12, 1979, íncident, in which a group of South Korean army officers led by Major General Chun seized control of the military. It was revealed that Washington repeatedly protested to the government and the military leadership about the misuse of forces under the Combined Forces Command. The report also stated that South Korean authorities gave the United States two hours advanced warning of the extension of martial law on May 18, 1980, and no prior warning of the military's intention to arrest political leaders or to close both the National Assembly and the universities.
The statement clearly noted that none of the South Korean forces deployed at Kwangju were, during that time, under either the operational control of the CFC or the control of any United States authorities. Additionally, the United States had neither prior knowledge of the deployment of special forces to Kwangju nor responsibility for their actions there. The report addressed the use of the Twentieth Division, CFC, and clarified that the CFC agreement allowed both the United States and South Korea to assert control over its forces at any time without the consent of the other. According to the statement, the United States was informed in advance of intentions to use elements of the Twentieth Division to reenter Kwangju, that United States officials, after cautioning against the use of military force to solve a political crisis, accepted that it would be preferable to use the Twentieth Division rather than Special Forces units (but the latter were also involved). The report further documented that the United States repeatedly protested public distortions of Washington's actions and policy by Seoul and the South Korean press, namely allegations that the United States knew either of the December 12 incident in advance or of the extension of martial law, or that Washington approved of the Special Forces actions in Kwangju.
While the report rebutted most of the myths of American culpability for events in 1979 and 1980, the ten-year delay in issuing the report did little to resolve the misgivings held by many South Koreans, who still persisted in believing that the United States was in some way a party to the military takeover in May 1980, and the harsh suppression of the Kwangju demonstrations that followed.
During the 1989 Security Consultative Meeting in Washington (the meetings were held in alternate years in Seoul and Washington), the two nations agreed that the Moscow-assisted modernization of P'yongyang's air force and army indicated that the military situation in Northeast Asia remained tense and unpredictable. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's Korean policy, focused on promoting unofficial contacts with Seoul though Moscow, continued to bolster P'yongyang's military establishment.
South Korean and United States leaders who attended the 1989 Security Consultative Meeting considered it unlikely that the Soviet Union would initiate a military conflict targeting South Korea. They believed, however, that increasing Soviet military support for North Korea made it highly probable that the Soviet Union would continue to assist North Korea if war broke out. For this reason, United States secretary of defense Richard B. Cheney and South Korean minister of national defense Yi Sang-hun agreed to strengthen strategic planning through existing organizations, such as the CFC.
In 1987, Roh Tae-woo, a former general, was elected president, but additional democratic advances during his tenure resulted in the 1992 election of a long-time pro-democracy activist, Kim Young-sam. Kim became Korea's first civilian elected president in 32 years. Until 1993 and the advent of the Kim Young Sam administration (1993-1998), military governments had dominated South Korean politics. The move towards democratic civilian rule coupled with the gradual rise of a "post-military society" had a marked influence on South Korean attitudes to military and security issues.
For almost 20 years after the 1950-53 Korean War, relations between North and South Korea were minimal and very strained. Official contact did not occur until 1971, beginning with Red Cross contacts and family reunification projects in 1985. In the early 1990s, relations between the two countries improved with the 1991 South-North Basic Agreement, which acknowledged that reunification was the goal of both governments, and the 1992 Joint Declaration of Denuclearization. However, divergent positions on the process of reunification and North Korean weapons programs, compounded by South Korea's tumultuous domestic politics and the 1994 death of North Korean leader Kim Il-sung, contributed to a cycle of warming and cooling of relations.
The 1997 presidential election and peaceful transition of power marked another step forward in Korea's democratization when Kim Dae-jung, a life-long democracy and human rights activist, was elected from a major opposition party. In 1998 Korea experienced its worst economic crisis since the Korean War. A wildly fluctuating exchange rate, plummeting property values, and a temporaryparalysis of the financial system are among the key features of this period. The financial crisis made importing extremely risky for everyone, and credit impossible for many.
Relations between North and South improved following the 1997 election of Kim Dae-jung. His "Sunshine Policy" of engagement with the DPRK set the stage for the historic June 2000 inter-Korean summit between President Kim and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. President Kim was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000 for the policy, but the prize was somewhat tarnished by revelations of a $500 million dollar "payoff" to North Korea that immediately preceded the summit. The sunshine policy was created to thaw the relations between the ROK and DPRK by supplying aid and maintaining a spirit of open cooperation.
The transition to an open, democratic system was further consolidated in 2002, when human rights lawyer, Roh Moo-hyun, won the presidential election on a "participatory government" platform. The Roh administration espoused three key values: ‘equality’ in domestic affairs ‘Korean solidarity’ in policies toward North Korea and ‘autonomy’ in foreign policy. Under ‘equality’ it placed equal distribution above economic growth. In North Korea policies, ‘Korean reconciliation’ dominated all other policies. In foreign policy, ‘autonomy’ fueled xenophobic sentiments and anti-Americanism among the younger generation.
The previous Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations, which advocated a "sunshine" policy of engaging the North, often downplayed threats posed by the North Korean military. South Korea maintained its sunshine policy toward North Korea up until the Lee Myung-bak administration of Korea’s conservative Grand National Party.
South Koreans voted for a new president in December 2007. Former business executive and Mayor of Seoul Lee Myung-bak's 5-year term began with his inauguration on February 25, 2008. President Lee Myung-bak articulated a policy of continued engagement and cooperation with North Korea, but has noted that any such engagement should occur in parallel with further progress toward complete denuclearization. The new, conservative South Korean government warned that it would speak out against human rights abuses in the Communist North and that it would not expand economic ties unless the North abandoned its nuclear weapons programs. Lee Myung-bak pledged to better ties with major trading partner Japan after his predecessor Roh Moo-hyun tried to score points at home by fanning the flames of lingering anti-Japan sentiment.
