Introduction
The Nixon Doctrine and Nixon's repeated efforts to reconcile East and West were among the most important factors that encouraged the first inter-governmental talks between South Korea (Republic of Korea, ROK) and North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea, DPRK) in 1972. In the face of a new American foreign policy at that time, the South Korean leadership under President Park Chunghee started to consider a change in its hard-line, confrontational policy towards Pyongyang.Footnote 1 This article is based on documents in South Korea's National Archives, the American presidential archives, and an interview with a former Korean Central Intelligent Agency (KCIA) official Mr Gang Indeok. It will discuss the impact and implications of the reconciliation between China and the United States on South Korea's policy towards its conflict with North Korea as well as its effect on its internal politics in 1972. It will explain how and why South Korea initiated the first official contact with North Korea, despite its mistrust and hatred towards that country. In addition, it will discuss the limitations of the new American policy towards South Korea's approach to the DPRK. This article provides a case study of Cold War relations between major and minor states, and shows how elites in those minor states tried to minimize the impact of accepting their patron's demands so as not to damage their political interests.
In the aftermath of the Korean War, the United States played a key role in South Korea's national security and economic development. Along with the presence of American forces on South Korean soil to act as a deterrent against communism, Washington engaged in economic reconstruction and helped Seoul to modernize the country and defend itself against North Korea.Footnote 2 American influence on South Korea's policy towards North Korea intensified after the change of leadership in Seoul at the beginning of the 1960s. Led by corrupt and incompetent policymakers, South Korea was in total disarray after the war. The nationalistic Rhee government was a difficult partner for the United States. It rejected the Americans’ determination to seek a truce in the Korean War and refused its proposal for rapprochement with Japan. As a result, American support for South Korea was limited until 1961. The resignation of Rhee Syngman in 1960, following demonstrations against a rigged election, led to the introduction of a form of parliamentary government.Footnote 3 On 16 May 1961, Park Chunghee staged a coup and seized power. Park and a group of military officers secured the capital and took control of both the government and the media on the same day.Footnote 4
In the beginning, Park was coldly received by Washington because of his undemocratic temperament. In addition, the Americans were suspicious of Park due to his supposed pro-communist past. However, he seemed to understand what needed to be done, for example, his military government, called the Revolutionary Committee, pledged its anti-communist stance and sought close ties with the United States.Footnote 5 Furthermore, unlike Rhee Syngman, who had always been hostile towards Japan, Park actively worked on improving relations in accordance with Washington's desire to ease the tensions between South Korea and Japan, its two main allies in East Asia. Park finally resumed diplomatic relations with Japan in 1965. In addition, in 1964, Park dispatched Korean forces to Vietnam to support American forces there. In turn, American support for South Korea increased, creating a stable environment that allowed Park to develop the South Korean economy in the 1960s.Footnote 6 Coupled with his tight control of South Korean domestic politics, Park was able to establish his long-term rule on the basis of South Korea's partnership with the United States.
However, the war in Vietnam empowered the anti-war movement and antipathy grew towards Washington's seemingly excessive aid for its Asian allies. This idea led the new Nixon administration to question the strategic value of South Korea. Nixon was reluctant to maintain the same level of American support for Park that his predecessor, Lyndon B. Johnson, had promised in return for Park's support for the American campaign in Indochina. In this context, the most contested issues in ROK-US bilateral relations were South Korea's approach towards communism and the presence of American troops in South Korea.
In March 1969, with the outbreak of the Sino-Soviet border conflict, the long-established tensions between Beijing and Moscow peaked. For Nixon, whose first priority was to reduce tensions in Asia, the split between the two leading communist powers offered a great opportunity. The president and his staff generally agreed that they had to improve the country's relationship with People's Republic of China (PRC) without antagonizing the Soviet Union.Footnote 7 South Korea was worried about Nixon's new conciliatory policy towards the PRC because of Chinese hostility towards the allies of the United States in East Asia. At the same time, Washington was pressuring South Korea to join the trend for détente.
In this context, the decision to withdraw American troops from South Korea during the early Nixon era led Park to reconsider his approach to Pyongyang. After the end of the Korean War, the South Korean government had maintained a fiercely anti-communist stance that was openly hostile towards the DPRK. This policy was based not on South Korean military strength, but rather the presence of large numbers of American forces on the peninsula. However, American setbacks in Southeast Asia in the late 1960s initiated a discussion on reducing the number of American forces in South Korea. As a result of lengthy negotiations in 1969–70, Washington withdrew 20,000 out of the 63,000 troops present in South Korea.Footnote 8 Washington was not satisfied with this result: it wanted Seoul to make an effort to ease tensions in East Asia. At this time, Park Chunghee's regime was not even considering opening any negotiations with Pyongyang. The Nixon administration pressured Park to talk with Kim Ilsung by revealing that American forces would be further reduced. Moreover, on 15 July 1971, Park was astonished to learn that Nixon planned to visit China in 1972. Clearly, Seoul could no longer ignore the implications of reconciliation between Washington and Beijing—which was, after all, Pyongyang's chief ally.
Faced with the dangerous possibility of Nixon marginalizing South Korea in the interests of Sino-American relations, and in order to prevent the total withdrawal of American troops from the ROK, as well as to halt or at least slow down the trend towards détente in East Asia, the South Korean government made an important decision and started talks with North Korea, thereby contributing to Nixon's new policy in late 1971.Footnote 9 However, their two-decades-old mutual hostility ensured that neither of the two Koreas regarded their talks as a platform for mutual peace. Rather, they only reconfirmed their mutual mistrust. In that sense, South Korea's new Northern Policy did not lead to a fundamental change in inter-Korean relations. In fact, the South Korean government attempted to take a political interest by acting like a sincere partner in Nixon's grand strategy of détente, while quietly rejecting it. During the Cold War it was possible for a small state such as South Korea to feign acceptance of the superpower international order, all the while actually attempting to resist it. This article will contribute to Cold War studies by making this argument.
While this article explores the international relations between South Korea and the United States so as to gain insight into inter-Korean relations, this does not mean that it ignores the influence of South Korean domestic politics on relations between the two Koreas. As many scholars have argued, it was clear the South Korean leadership under Park Chunghee considered a peaceful approach towards Pyongyang so as to maintain their political power and public support. These scholars particularly highlight the fact that domestic tension between Park and his political rivals, including potential rivals, pushed his government to launch a new approach towards Pyongyang.Footnote 10
Since many South Korean politicians opposed and challenged Park's despotic rule and the normalization of relations with Japan in 1965, the significance and influence of the tensions between Park and his rivals is worth examining. A specific example is Kim Daejung, later South Korean president from 1998 to 2002, who, as an opposition politician in the 1970s, advocated a more positive approach towards North Korea. Indeed, popular support for his democratic and peaceful approach made him a serious threat to Park. Kim's autobiography and memoirs describe his proposals for new Northern Policy initiatives and his fierce competition with Park in the 1971 presidential election, which reflects much of the dynamics of the South Korean political scene at the time. Kim argued that Park copied his ideas by initiating peace talks with North Korea after the election.Footnote 11 Clearly, domestic political competition also contributed to the opening of the first dialogue between the two Koreas in the early 1970s.
However, it is also worth noting that Nixon supported Kim Daejung in his competition with Park. The White House approved of his liberal view on North Korea and his flexible foreign policy perspectives. The American president invited him to Washington before the South Korean presidential election in 1971,Footnote 12 an action that irritated Park and boosted Kim's popularity. The South Korean president could not ignore the influence of Washington on his political power and he therefore introduced Kim's liberal ideas into his own policy towards North Korea.Footnote 13 As Han Honggu, a Korean historian, argues, under Park's rule South Korea's domestic political discussions were deeply influenced by the progress of the Cold War and American policy.Footnote 14
In the late 1960s the Park government still considered that the war in Indochina was generally under the control of the Americans.Footnote 15 However, the pressure placed by the American struggle on Lyndon B. Johnson's office and the newly inaugurated Nixon administration was formidable: the Tet Offensive of February 1968 completely destroyed confidence in Johnson's leadership. General William Westmoreland, the commander of American forces in Vietnam, had asked Washington to dispatch more troops, but Johnson refused the request and then announced that he would not run for re-election.Footnote 16 The new Republican government had to end the war in Indochina as soon as possible and redesign its Cold War strategy around superpower relations and the management of American allies. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger quickly and seriously responded to the American setback in Indochina and decided to take every possible measure to recover American hegemony even if this meant destabilizing some American allies. In this sense, for Seoul the departure of Johnson and emergence of the Nixon administration was not simply a change of leadership. In the early 1970s the United States’ new East Asian policy pushed Seoul to engage with Pyongyang, and was far more influential than domestic developments in South Korea.
This story of inter-Korean relations not only contributes to the study of Korean history, but also to the general Cold War discussion regarding patrons and clients, big and small states, and the ability of even these minor states to inhibit cooperation with the superpowers. In the broadest context, the topic of this research relates to Cold War client states that turned out to be deeply invested in the hostility between the superpowers because the foundations of their own regimes were made legitimate by anti-communism, anti-imperialism, or rivalry with another state that threatened its own legitimacy and/or survival. Hence, a client state feared any sort of reconciliation between its rival(s) and its Cold War patron. In his seminal work, The Cold War: A New History, John Lewis Gaddis discusses the limits of détente. The superpowers could not end the Cold War during the détente era mainly because of the mistrust and misunderstanding between them; moreover, the strategic position of client states worsened the miscommunication and animosity between their Cold War patrons.Footnote 17
There are a number of similar examples to the relationship between the Republic of Korea and the United States. The earliest would be the case of the East Germans and Soviets. While Stalin was highly reluctant to directly confront the United States and its European allies, East German leaders wanted Moscow to show that it was resolved to stop the East German exodus to West Berlin.Footnote 18 Hope Harrison argues that the East Germans pushed a reluctant USSR into building the Berlin Wall, thereby increasing East–West tensions.Footnote 19 North Vietnam also revealed its antipathy towards China's rapprochement with the United States in the early 1970s. Coupled with Beijing's lukewarm support for the revolution in Indochina, China's reconciliation with the United States pushed Hanoi further away from Moscow.Footnote 20 In the late 1970s and early 1980s, North Korea refused to follow China's economic reform and reconciliation with the West in order to maintain its ideological legitimacy.Footnote 21 The most dramatic example of patron–client dissension regards the Republic of China (ROC) during the Nixon era. Taipei resisted the expulsion of the ROC from the United Nations in 1972 as a result of Sino-US rapprochement. Although it could have deeply undermined its national legitimacy, it was more important to show its antipathy towards the United States’ approach to mainland China.Footnote 22 Like these studies, this research will explain how and why the minor Cold War powers sometimes rejected the idea of reconciliation between the communists and capitalists.
In theoretical terms, this research subscribes to international relations scholarship on alliance, especially one in an asymmetric form. James Morrow argues that the ROK-US alliance is an asymmetric relationship that joins together a major and a minor power.Footnote 23 The bi-polar world order during the Cold War era was dominated by the two superpowers, the United States and the former Soviet Union. In such a world, relations between major and minor powers were often constructed in a hierarchical order.Footnote 24 In this sense, ROK-US relations might be considered an example of a hierarchical international order. Under this asymmetric alliance, Seoul allowed Washington to take responsibility for South Korea's national security, which limited its autonomy to some extent. For as long as South Korea received protection from the United States, Washington played a role in orienting Seoul's policies. The problem with this unusual form of alliance is the level of protection provided by the major power.Footnote 25 South Korea rejected the further development of inter-Korean relations beyond symbolic talks because it felt that, following the logic of the Nixon Doctrine and ‘Koreanization’,Footnote 26 Washington was not undertaking to fully guarantee the safety of Seoul.Footnote 27
The Nixon Doctrine and South Korea
On 25 July 1969, the Nixon administration eventually announced its official policy—known as the Nixon Doctrine—towards its allies in East Asia thus triggering a discussion on South Korea's policy towards communism. Nixon stated that the United States expected Asian nations to become increasingly self-sufficient in terms of their defence capabilities.Footnote 28 Park visited San Francisco for talks in August 1969 not long after Nixon's announcement. During the meeting, Nixon made his best efforts not to trigger Park's sense of insecurity. Yet the core of his idea was clear: ‘Washington is well aware of the North Korean threat. However, South Korea must be defended by South Koreans themselves.’Footnote 29 After listening carefully to Nixon, Park revealed the real aim of his visit:
Now I could grasp the core of the new American [doctrine], the so called Nixon Doctrine, and it is true that many Asian people have relied too much on America since WW II. I think that it is [more] reasonable that these people are independent. Yet some of them worry about the [new] policy since it could mean that the US abandons Asia.Footnote 30
The American president may well have considered that Park was referring to South Korea as one of those countries worried about America's policy. Park wanted Nixon's guarantee that he would keep American forces in South Korea and that Seoul would be an exception to the Nixon Doctrine. Nixon was also aware that if South Korean forces were to be withdrawn from Vietnam, that would place a greater burden on US forces there. He knew that if he did not placate the stubborn South Korean leader, then this could soon become a reality. For this reason, Nixon tried to appease Park by assuring him that ‘The US will not withdraw its forces from Korea.’Footnote 31
Upon returning to Korea, Park quelled the South Korean public's fear of the Nixon Doctrine by confirming in his homecoming interview that, ‘There is no change in US policy towards Korea.’Footnote 32 However, it took only about a month before he realized that Nixon's promise had been an empty one. In June 1969, a month before the Nixon Doctrine was formally announced, Secretary of Defence Melvin R. Laird confided to the House Appropriation Committee that the administration was intent on reducing America's military commitment to South Korea. When these comments were revealed in early October 1969, Park felt betrayed.Footnote 33
On 24 November 1969, Nixon officially launched a withdrawal plan, even as Washington continued to deny that this plan was in progress. The intention may have been to minimize South Korean resistance until the plan was well under way. When the South Korean ambassador telephoned Assistant Secretary Green regarding Secretary Laird's comments on troop withdrawals and spoke also to Deputy Assistant Secretary Brown on 21 January, the US Department of Defense assured him that the White House would always consult the South Korean government on matters with that degree of importance and it would certainly do so before taking any step to reduce the numbers US armed forces in South Korea.Footnote 34
On 20 March 1970, Nixon signed National Security Decision Memorandum 48, which ordered the withdrawal of one army division from South Korea. The Nixon administration proceeded to draft a preliminary plan for the withdrawal of 20,000 American soldiers from Korea by the end of the fiscal year, 1971, and directed the American ambassador to Seoul to consult with Park as soon as possible about the practical arrangements.Footnote 35 On 27 March, Porter met Park and officially informed him of the withdrawal plan. Subsequent reports document that Park appearing to be frightened at this news and expressed ‘profound shock’.Footnote 36 We must consider that Park might have exaggerated his reaction in order to delay the rollout of the plan. Annoyed by Park's overreaction, Nixon drafted a response that emphasized America's continued commitment to South Korean in the event of armed aggression from the DPRK. Significantly, Nixon reiterated that he was authorizing the withdrawal of some, not all, American forces. In addition, he promised further military aid for the modernization of South Korea's armed forces between 1971 and 1975.Footnote 37
One of the reasons why the South Korean leader wanted to keep American forces in Korea was the United States’ conciliatory policy towards the PRC. In March 1969, the long-term conflict between Beijing and Moscow peaked with the Sino-Soviet border conflict. For Nixon, whose first priority was to reduce tensions in Asia, the split between the two leading communist powers offered a great opportunity. The president and his staff generally agreed that they had to improve the relationship between the United States and China without antagonizing the Soviet Union.Footnote 38 As such, Kissinger proposed modifying the existing travel and trade restrictions on China.Footnote 39
However, Beijing did not respond directly to Washington's gesture. As Nixon and Kissinger expected, China was still cautious about its relationship with the United States. During his meeting with North Korean elites, Chinese premier Zhou Enlai made a critical remark about the Okinawa Reversion in the Taiwanese Clause approved at the meeting between Nixon and Sato, the Japanese prime minister,Footnote 40 but, as South Korean sources observed, did not make any negative comments about the United States. On the other hand, he aggressively condemned the Japanese government, accusing Japan of insulting the ‘one China’ policy of the Chinese people.Footnote 41
South Korea worried about Nixon's new conciliatory policy towards China because of Chinese hostility towards American allies in East Asia, South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. According to ROK Ministry of Foreign Affairs analysis, the three American allies in East Asia perceived this aggressive Chinese attitude towards them as their most serious threat.Footnote 42 Without American commitment to their security, China could damage the balance of power in the region. This international challenge further compelled Park to maintain his hard-line opposition to the withdrawal of American forces from South Korea. Yet despite his efforts, Washington did not change its plan.
In 1971 the American government decided on the timing of the troop reduction. Park eventually decided to ask for unreasonable amounts of military aid to try to further delay or discourage this strategy.Footnote 43 The American government decided to accede to Park's request on condition that he agreed to the withdrawal of American troops. On 24 August, Washington dispatched Vice-President Spiro Agnew to Seoul with official ‘authority’ to discuss the programme and the amount of aid with Park.Footnote 44 This presented Parks’ regime with a final chance to delay or cancel the plan for withdrawal even though it was expected that the United States intended to conclude these negotiations at this meeting. In his second meeting with the American vice-president, Park said that he had no objection to the withdrawal of 20,000 of the total of 63,000 soldiers on condition that South Korean military equipment was modernized, its national defence capability strengthened, and there would be no further reductions of the remaining American forces until the modernization programme was complete.Footnote 45 Agnew rejected Park's proposal, reiterating the American position that, ‘The US will implement the plan as scheduled. Yet there will be no additional reduction of US forces in South Korea unless a serious problem occurs and the USA will not additionally reduce the US army presence in South Korea until long after the 1971 election at least.’Footnote 46
Almost immediately after Agnew's departure from Seoul, the Park administration received clear signals that the United States would not keep its promises. According to Kim Jeongryeom, Park's chief presidential secretary, only days after the talks, Agnew revoked his promise to the Koreans at a press conference in Taiwan at which he stated: ‘When the modernization of South Korean forces is completed, perhaps within five years, the US army in South Korea will completely withdraw from South Korea.’Footnote 47 His comment, which completely contradicted what he had said during the talks, perplexed Seoul. Clearly, the Nixon Doctrine was continuing to undermine the foundation of Park's foreign and military policy.
Under the circumstances, Kim Daejung, of the opposition party, pressured the Blue House about its anti-communist policy. Unlike Park, he directly supported Nixon's idea and advocated reconciliation with Pyongyang, without any preconditions. Kim was eventually nominated as presidential candidate for the New Democratic Party in September 1970 and immediately launched his election campaign. During his nationwide tour, he promised voters a major shift in the country's foreign policies, including its attitude to North Korea. Much to the dismay of Park's administration, Kim's campaign was met with great enthusiasm by the electorate. From the beginning of Kim's presidential campaign in September 1970, Nixon paid close attention to the performance of this young and charismatic candidate, and invited Kim to Washington in January 1971.Footnote 48 According to American sources, and judging from the response of the Park regime, as well as Kim's memoirs, it seems clear that Nixon favoured Kim to be his new partner in Korea. However, as officials in Washington were pessimistic about Kim's chances, Nixon was not prepared to meet Kim or support him publicly since this would have alienated Park who was likely to stay in office.Footnote 49
According to CIA reports to Nixon, despite the widespread favourable reaction to Kim's opening campaign speeches, his prospects for victory in April 1971 appeared ‘marginal at best’.Footnote 50 The reason is clear: Kim's party, the NDP, was poorly organized due to uneasy coalition arrangements between liberals and conservatives. Moreover, the party was short of funds. In addition, Park's economic development policies during his rule had been successful.Footnote 51 The election outcome did not come as a surprise to most observers. Park was re-elected as president with 6.3 million votes.
Despite his defeat in the election, Kim Daejung taught Park an important lesson both during and after the election campaign. In international political terms, the 1971 election reconfirmed American influence on South Korean politics. But Park realized that Nixon's preference for Kim had shifted many votes away from him to his rival and that this alliance could be a potential threat to his next term. There was also no doubt that American troops in Korea and American support in general were still essential for South Korea, both in security and economic terms. In short, Park had to reconsider his relationship with Nixon and accept his policy agenda in order to keep the remaining American troops on Korean soil and continue to receive aid from the United States. He now had to make a realistic decision for both his and South Korea's future.
Regarding the issue of the withdrawal of American troops, the détente between Washington and Beijing heightened the level of South Korea's insecurity. On 15 July 1971, Nixon announced that he planned to visit China in February 1972. Park was very nervous about the upcoming talks between the two, and worried whether or not China would insist on the complete withdrawal of American forces from Korea.Footnote 52 In order to keep American forces in South Korea and win Nixon's support for his regime, Park announced an important decision which demonstrated the changes in his foreign policy just a few months after the election. Park proposed a conference between the two Korean states to be organized through the Korean National Red Cross and held on 12 August 1971. This approach was underpinned by a mood of détente encouraged by the rapprochement between the United States and China.
It was Park who officially proposed inter-Korean talks. However, this does not mean that he took the initiative for improving the inter-Korean relationship, as Park proudly claimed. Like Seoul, Pyongyang was also under pressure to adapt itself to the new international political realities established by Washington and Beijing. For the Chinese, Kim Ilsung's regime was an important client that could play a decisive role in its conflict with Moscow. China often discussed sensitive political issues with North Korea and did not ignore its interests. In short, the impact of the rapprochement was less serious for North Korea than it was for South Korea. China had managed to improve its relationship with the United States without antagonizing North Korea. According to Don Oberdorfer, Kim Ilsung was in Beijing when Henry Kissinger visited China in July 1971 and the Chinese government reported every detail of the Zhou-Kissinger meeting to its North Korean guest.Footnote 53 Moreover, Beijing appreciated Kim Ilsung's consideration over its compromise with the United States and provided considerable military aid to Pyongyang.Footnote 54 In this sense, Kim Ilsung was willing to support China. Even before Kissinger's secret visit to China, Pyongyang had been requesting ‘direct talks’ with Seoul.Footnote 55 During his speech honouring Prince Norodom Sihanouk, the Cambodian head of state, on 6 August 1971, Kim mentioned that he would like to engage in talks with South Korea.Footnote 56 Kim Ilsung expected that more Chinese aid would result from Sino-American talks, even as Park was struggling to hold onto American support.Footnote 57
Park did not overlook this North Korean movement and Sino-American reconciliation. The mood in East Asia encouraged Washington to withdraw its forces from South Korea, and the inter-Korean talks may have provided the decisive justification for the withdrawal. The South Korean government considered the American forces stationed in South Korea to be the most powerful deterrent against the North Korean threat.Footnote 58 Therefore, if the United States pulled out of South Korea, North Korea had the potential to become the more dominant country in the bilateral contest. For this reason, the South responded with caution to North Korea's approach.Footnote 59
For the first inter-Korean dialogue Park did not propose direct talks between the two regimes in order to block any sensitive political discussions. By selecting the Red Cross to organize the talks, Park could show his willingness to accommodate détente in the region without engaging seriously with Pyongyang. Clearly, the South Korean president was not prepared to talk to the DRPK premier. The South Korean ‘Red Cross’ delegate was Jeong Hongjin, in reality the deputy director of the International Affairs Bureau of the South Korean Central Intelligence Agency. North Korea followed the same approach. Its delegate was Kim Deokhyeon, a senior official in the Workers’ Party Organization and Guidance Department, North Korea's control mechanism.Footnote 60 On 20 August, the two Red Cross representatives met in the Joint Security Area in the middle of the Panmunjeom site. As both sides had totally different motives for the meeting, the historical talks did not make any progress towards developing relations between the two brother countries.
From the start of this meeting between the two Koreas, the South Korean representative immediately backed the continued presence of American forces in South Korea. It is noteworthy that South Korea had also dispatched Ham Byeongchun, the president's special assistant for political affairs, to Washington to highlight the need for a continued American military presence in South Korea during these talks. One interesting point is that Ham did not exaggerate the threat from China as other South Korean elites had done previously. Rather, he stated that China would not want the United States to withdraw its forces from South Korea because of the potential threat posed by Japan.Footnote 61 He appeared to attempt to prevent the discussion of this issue between Washington and Beijing. (In fact, Zhou Enlai had requested the withdrawal of American forces from Korea during his initial meeting with Kissinger in July.Footnote 62) Nevertheless, Washington clearly understood what the South Korean official meant. Despite his skirting around the subject, Ham's agenda was clear, ‘Do not withdraw your forces from our land!’ In addition, Park continued to press Nixon about American military support for South Korea through the American embassy in Seoul.Footnote 63 Despite these efforts, the United States did not make any changes to its military plan for South Korea.
Park finally changed his mind and opted for a more progressive strategy. On 20 November, after nine rounds of fruitless meetings, the South Korean delegate suddenly proposed direct high-level talks to his North Korean counterpart.Footnote 64 This marked a significant departure from South Korea's former approach and came as a surprise, making it difficult to assess its real intent. Park might have considered that the Red Cross meetings were not enough to persuade Nixon to trust him. As American archival documents indicate, Seoul was extremely sensitive to Nixon's visit to China and the South Korean leader was afraid that China and the United States might discuss American military support for South Korea.Footnote 65 For this reason, Park aimed to impress Nixon ahead of his visit to Beijing.
The White House had not yet made any changes to its Korean policy so it was pleased with South Korea's support for Sino-US relations and encouraged the Blue House to have closer contact with Pyongyang. In Nixon's letter to Park dated 29 November 1971, the president praised Park's effort and promised that his talks with China would not affect South Korea-US relations.Footnote 66 However, it was apparent that he was not entirely satisfied with the Red Cross talks, which had not produced any political agreement between the two Koreas. He pushed Park to develop the talks further and to enter into a more meaningful exchange with Kim Ilsung.Footnote 67 Although by this time, Park had already proposed inter-governmental talks, it seems that the South Korean government did not actually change its policy until Nixon's letter was sent to Park. It is not hard to imagine the bitter smile on Park's face upon discovering he had anticipated Nixon's position.
Before entering into these talks, the South Korean elites decided to tighten their control over the country. Park was well aware of the side effects of liberal strategy. The inter-Korean dialogue had originally been suggested by Kim Daejung and had improved his position in the next round of presidential elections. Moreover, Park's military background and his hostile attitude towards the North made him look wrong-footed in this time of détente. As Park had styled himself as the ‘only one who can match Kim Ilsung’, ironically, the hostility between two Koreas was essential to his rule. Therefore, Park felt he had to remind the South Korean public of North Korea's ‘real’ face before starting talks.
The first inter-Korean governmental talks
Even while promoting direct talks with the North Korean government in 1972, President Park Chunghee did not forget his anti-communism policy. At the start of his third term, Park re-emphasized the North Korean threat. On 11 January 1972, during a beginning-of-year press conference, he said, ‘Thanks to our first and second five-year economic development plan, we became superior to the North Korean puppet regime in terms of economy, culture, and other fields except military.’Footnote 68 He praised his own achievements and reminded the South Korean public that he was still the best leader to save South Korea from the ‘evil’ North Korean communists. He continuously emphasized North Korean military power: ‘I cannot but accept that North Korea is stronger than us. For the last decade, the North Korean puppet regime only focused on military forces and is far stronger than us at present.’Footnote 69 He added that he had been obliged to declare a state of emergency the year before because of this North Korean threat, and boasted that he had instructed Nixon not to mention the Korean issue during his visit to China, which Nixon had promised to do.Footnote 70
His words did not reflect reality. While the talks with Pyongyang were ongoing, North Korea had refrained from violent provocation towards South Korea.Footnote 71 To no one's surprise, Park firmly controlled the flow of information and revealed only what he wanted South Korean citizens to know. Even worse, Nixon's personal letter assuring him that no agreements would be made in Beijing regarding Korea did not indicate that Nixon was seriously worried about a North Korean threat.Footnote 72 Further, according to Philip Habib, American ambassador to Korea from September 1971, Nixon rejected Park's invitation to visit Seoul on his way to Beijing in February 1972. If Nixon had shared Park's concerns about the communist threat, he would surely have accepted the invitation to discuss the goal and nature of his visit with his counterpart in Seoul before going to China. In lieu of a visit, he sent a letter responding to the points raised by the South Korean president.Footnote 73 The White House advised Habib of the following:
We are aware of [the] South Korean government need for some public demonstration of our concern for protection of Korea's interests, as well as Park's problem of ‘face’. Accordingly, in delivering a letter to President Park one may say that we will understand if he desires to let the press know that he has received a personal letter of assurance from the President stating that no agreements will be made in Beijing regarding Korea.Footnote 74
South Korea was afraid of being abandoned by its major superpower ally. The United States, in turn, had concerns around entrapment by the former. Park tried to focus public attention on the North Korean threat and to prevent his rivals from making inter-Korean contacts. Park's speech could have misled the South Korean public into believing that the American president seriously considered that there was a communist threat to South Korea. But this appeared exaggerated, according to the letter cited above. As Wu Seungji argues, Park worried about the trend towards détente in the East Asian and Pacific region because reconciliation between the United States and the PRC had the potential to undermine anti-communism in South Korea—the foundation of national security and his own political power.Footnote 75 As such, the South Korean leader never regarded détente as a road to real peace and he consistently emphasized what he regarded as the real face of the North Korean communists. For these reasons, he did not publicize his diplomatic efforts in the inter-governmental talks between the two Koreas.
The South Korean leader was annoyed with Nixon, who, he believed, was destabilizing the foundations of South Korea's national security. He criticized Nixon's visit to China, at the same time continuing to follow Nixon's policy. On 22 February 1972, one day after the American president's arrival in China, during a dinner with the Blue House correspondents, Park bitterly said, ‘Ninety per cent of the purpose of Nixon's visit to China was his re-election. Nixon's low posture diplomacy toward China is not a desirable thing. How long can we trust the USA?’Footnote 76 However, despite Park's antagonism towards Sino-American reconciliation, nothing changed. Nixon's historic arrival in Beijing on 21 February made the front page of South Korean newspapers on the same day. South Korean journalists were excited by the extraordinary news. A number of buoyant expressions, such as ‘historic occasion’, ‘historic handshakes’, and ‘peaceful exchange’, were plastered all over the front pages.Footnote 77
Nonetheless, the Park regime did not cease its condemnation of North Korea. On 15 March (about three weeks after a Panmunjeom meeting between delegates of the two Koreas)—on the same day as Nixon's arrival to ChinaFootnote 78—South Korea's foreign minister Kim Yongsig presented a statement listing North Korea's violations of the armistice agreement:
Since 1953 when the armistice was signed, the North Korean Communists have violated the provisions of the agreement as many as 10,921 times.Footnote 79 Recently they are again creating a grave problem in this area by committing most serious and clear violations of the agreement under the cover of the mood of international détente. It has been revealed that, during the past several months, they have clandestinely built in the demilitarized zone 225 guard posts and brought in field artilleries, armed regulars. This is not only the most serious violation of the armistice agreement but also a grave threat to peace (…).Footnote 80
This hostile statement seemed likely to undermine Seoul's talks with Pyongyang at that time. However, evidently Park did not really want to stop talks with North Korea, since Jeong Hongjin, the South Korean Red Cross delegate, secretly entered North Korea to discuss the Korea Central Intelligence Agency director's visit to North Korea on 28 March. Despite the criticism of North Korean aggression two weeks earlier, Jung talked with North Korean officials about upcoming inter-governmental talks in Pyongyang without any serious problems.Footnote 81
These efforts clearly illustrate Park's secret promotion of détente in the Korean Peninsula while maintaining his Cold War rhetoric in the public domain. Shin Jongdae explains that South Korea's approach towards North Korea had two different purposes: to establish national security and to meet the demands of the people of the South for a peaceful reunification.Footnote 82 To accomplish this, first Park had to accept the United States’ policy in order to keep American aid. Had he refused to join the trend for détente, his relationship with Nixon would have deteriorated drastically. Park might have believed that Nixon would cut American aid to the South Korean armed forces or withdraw all American forces from South Korea unless he made a friendly overture towards the communists. Additionally, South Korea needed more time to modernize its military forces.Footnote 83 Therefore, for security reasons, he had to follow Nixon's policy.
Secondly, to some extent, he needed to meet the Korean people's desire for reunification. Park could not ignore the influence of nationalism and public demands for democracy on his popularity. He had established the legitimacy of his regime based on anti-communism and economic development, barely mentioning the issue of peace between the two Koreas. This was demanded both by democratic activists and the national unification dreamed of by many South Korean people who had left North Korea before and during the Korean War.Footnote 84 However, Pyongyang did not stop its military provocation of South Korea. In 1969, military conflicts between the two Koreas proved how ineffective Park's Northern Policy was. In addition, his hard-line stance required tougher and lengthier military service for young South Korean citizens.Footnote 85 Coupled with his confrontational stance, Park's long-term authoritarian rule had considerably damaged his popularity by 1969. Facing public demands for peace and democracy, the South Korean government established a Ministry of National Unification, which conducted a nationwide poll on the issue in that year. It also sponsored an international conference on the subject. In August 1970, Park declared that South Korea would be willing to invite North Korea to the UN to discuss unification if the North would cease its military provocation.Footnote 86
On the other hand, the radical change in Park's Northern Policy also had the potential to damage his authoritarian regime. Clearly, it could not legitimize itself without a having a programme to combat the communist threat. Thus far, the military background and anti-communist spirit of Park's regime had appealed to the South Korean electorate, who generally were conservative as a result of the Korean War.Footnote 87 Yet his background and ideological stance became insignificant after détente began to dominate the Korean Peninsula. Through a continuous emphasis on North Korean aggression, the regime tried to prove why Park was still essential for the fatherland. In addition, to the KCIA and high-ranking officials, the hard-line approach was not an option, but a requirement. Under the banner of anti-communism, they committed numerous political crimes, through illegal access to personal information acquired by kidnapping and torture of those who challenged them.Footnote 88 Needless to say, Kim Daejung would have eliminated these people had he had won the presidential election. As it was believed that no one could challenge Kim Daejung except Park himself,Footnote 89 the regime had to make use of every justification to extend Park's tenure. In other words, they already intended to use the first exchanges between the two Korean governments to back their domestic policies.Footnote 90 The aggressive approach of the Blue House during the inter-Korean negotiations, and the KCIA's initiative in the process, confirmed the regime's fear about a post-Park period.Footnote 91
With those sensitivities in mind, the South Korean representatives visited Pyongyang in early May. The man in charge of this exchange was Lee Hurak, director of the KCIA.Footnote 92 The most secretive organization of the Park administration, the KCIA controlled information about inter-Korean affairs during the talks, and managed the negotiations with the North Korean government. In this context, it was natural for Park to choose Lee Hurak to deputize for him during the inter-Korean talks in Pyongyang. Before entering North Korea, the KCIA director met Park on 2 May and said that he had contacted the CIA in Seoul and would bring potassium cyanide to the North (in order to commit suicide for the ultimate exit). Shortly after that, the two Koreas opened a hotline between Seoul and Pyongyang.Footnote 93 To this day, the South Korean government has not declassified the documents about Lee's visit to Pyongyang, but American resources provide some information on this historic meeting, corroborating the dual concerns of the Park regime discussed previously. According to the American record, the KCIA director requested American support for South Korea before his visit to the enemy camp:
Yi [Lee] said he thought his government would welcome strong U.S. Government support should his visit become known publicly, either through a communiqué or through leaks. US support would help counter-domestic criticism in South Korea, as well as improve Seoul's position in dealing with Pyongyang.Footnote 94
It seems clear enough that Washington had no reason to oppose inter-Korean détente, and the reason why Lee requested ‘US support’ from the White House was not because Washington was obstructing such a dialogue.Footnote 95 It was rather, if it was anything of importance, a statement of Seoul's perception of a quid pro quo: indirectly demanding some political concessions from the Americans for its erstwhile service to the cause of East Asian détente. In concrete terms, what Park wanted, and attempted to achieve, was to prevent any further discussion on the withdrawal of American troops from South Korea as this would undermine the South Korean position when dealing with the North.
On 2 May, Lee and his aides entered North Korea. According to his briefing to Habib on 10 May, which took place immediately after his return, the KCIA director first had two meetings and a dinner with Kim Ilsung's younger brother and the first vice-premier of North Korea, Kim Yeongju.Footnote 96 Two days later, the historic meeting between the North Korean leader and the director of the southern KCIA began, with much mutual praise. The second most powerful figure in the South praised Kim's achievements, while the North Korean premier responded with expressions of admiration for President Park and KCIA Director Lee—who, Lee recollected, called him ‘a very bold person’ and ‘a hero’ who came to the opposite camp on his own.Footnote 97
A record of this remarkable conversation was made by Lee's aide and was not disclosed for 17 years. As the KCIA director reported the details of his talk with the North Korean premier to Habib, the United States knew about the content and substance of the two Korean summits even before Lee officially disclosed his records. Thanks to both South Korean and American resources, we can compare and double-check Lee's so-called ‘secret’ record with his report to the American ambassador, allowing us an insight into the Americans’ view on the first inter-governmental exchanges in Korea, and the Park regime's real reasons for the meeting in Pyongyang. The following is an extract from the talks between Kim and Lee in Pyongyang:
Lee: President Park Chunghee and I believe unification should be achieved by ourselves without interference of the four powers [the United States, China, Japan, the Soviet Union] … We are never frontmen of the United States or Japan. We believe we should resolve our issues by ourselves…
Kim: Our position is to oppose reliance on external forces on the issue of unification.
This is where I agree with Park Chunghee…
Lee: I'd like to tell you that President Park is a person who detests foreign interference most […]
Kim: Big powers and imperialism prefer to divide a nation into several nations.Footnote 98
Both sides seemingly shared an antipathy to their respective superpower patrons. Similarly to other client states in the Cold War, they were reluctant to serve as scapegoats for superpower politics. Ironically, the two Koreas, arch enemies as they were, worked together to reduce the emerging pressure from their own patrons. The conversation, it seems, developed into a discussion about a unified Korea.
Excited about this historical meeting with the North Korean leader, the director of the KCIA returned to Seoul and reported back, first to Park and then to the American ambassador, on 10 May.Footnote 99 Lee evaluated his trip positively but said that he and the North Korean premier had neither reached any important conclusions nor settled any problems. Certainly, Lee did not mention his and Kim's bitter criticism of the four powers (including of the United States) to Habib.Footnote 100 Instead, Lee said that he and Kim Ilsung had discussed ‘American and Japanese roles in Korea’. After this meeting, Habib sent his report to Washington in which he said that Lee's secret trip to Pyongyang was successful.Footnote 101 To sum up: although there were minor differences between Lee's record and his report to the American ambassador—such as the deliberate omissions of critical comments about the United States—the KCIA director reported almost everything that he had learned from Pyongyang. Considering that the South Korean government did not consult with the American government properly on many other important problems, perhaps most prominently on the issue of the Vietnam War, this is very significant. Simply put, Park seems to have learned how to work with Nixon. It is possible that he regarded the whole situation as a necessary means to call and secure Nixon's attention to the South by promoting détente in East Asia in secret, without causing domestic agitation.
However, Park did not consider that Lee's negotiation with Kim had been successful. In fact, it seems that he regretted his decision to dispatch him on this mission. For the South Korean president, his KCIA director—who had excitedly boasted of his successful meeting with Kim—looked silly and naive, and unaware that he had been outwitted by Kim Ilsung. During his meeting with the North Korean leader, Lee Hurak had accepted the three principles for Korean national reunification as ‘independence, peace, and national unity’, without consulting the Blue House.Footnote 102 Of these three principles, ‘peace’ was the only one that Park had directly proposed to North Korea in 1971. In other words, Lee's actions were unauthorized and, in fact, went further down the road of progress than Park had intended. Park had not sought any real or deep result from the inter-Korean talks, and certainly not any that would impact on South Korean politics. The result of the first high-level contact between the two Koreas was thus disappointing to Park and criticism of Lee's carelessness and his thinly veiled ambitions to secure the next presidency came to dominate the regime's assessment of the talks. Among these critics, it was Park's long-term aide Kim Seongjin who indicated that Lee had volunteered for this dangerous mission because of his ambitions to run for office in the next elections.Footnote 103
Surprisingly, even inside the KCIA, there were critics. According to Gang Indeok, who had accompanied Lee to North Korea:
The most serious problem of these three principles was ‘independence’, which was mentioned even before ‘peace’. What does this mean? Without any doubt, the North wanted to drive out American forces from the south. Without ‘peace’ in the Korean Peninsula, ‘independence’ would be beneficial to North Korea, [who were] stronger than South Korea in military terms.Footnote 104
Park generally agreed with these criticisms.Footnote 105 He also believed that Kim Ilsung wanted Nixon to withdraw American troops from Korea and utilized his peace propaganda to convey this message. Gang tried to revise the joint communiqué agreed upon between Lee and Kim Ilsung:
Peace must have been placed first. If peace is guaranteed, then the US forces could withdraw to its own country. However, the order of principles, Korean national reunification, independence, and peace, was already agreed, and it was impossible to revise it. Even in Park's written instruction to Lee for his meeting with North Korean elites, ‘The reunification of our nation must be realized in “peaceful” manner through political dialogues’ was suggested only.Footnote 106
The South Korean leadership had no intention of excluding Washington from the Korean problem and was deeply disappointed with the agreement that had been reached. Although Park did not reject the North Korean idea of independence or national reunification, so as to keep up détente between the two Koreas, he had no intention of agreeing to anything that rationalized the retreat of American forces from his territory.Footnote 107 Lee remained Park's deputy for the high-level negotiations with Pyongyang, but his authority was clearly limited.Footnote 108 Going forward, Lee followed the South Korean president's direction and adopted a very cautious approach towards the North Korean officials.
This significant rift between Park and Lee has not been discussed in many famous works, most likely because their authors were unaware of the conflict within the South Korean government, particularly regarding the sensitive inter-Korean agenda. Those works directly or indirectly indicate that Park was willing to accept North Korean terms because he had delegated his authority to his KCIA director. As we have seen, this is not true. This split was only revealed by high-ranking officials from Park's regime about three decades later in the 2000s.Footnote 109 Gang's testimony and more recently published books on South Korea reject the previous interpretation that the first inter-Korean contact was successful and went smoothly.
While waiting for the North Korean delegates’ visit to Seoul, Park received Nixon's letter. As Park had hoped, the American president appeared highly impressed by the meeting. He praised Park's efforts to reduce the Cold War tensions in the East Asian and Pacific regions and promised to support such actions. In his letter, Nixon also mentioned his visit to Moscow during which, he explained, he would affirm the United States’ strong ties with South Korea, as he had done before visiting Beijing.Footnote 110 It thus seemed that Park had achieved his first goal—gaining the security of Nixon's support—of his new Northern Policy.
However, the South Korean leader could not yet relax. While encouraging Park to talk to Kim Ilsung, Nixon mentioned his intention to further reduce American troops in South Korea.Footnote 111 This shows the clear gap between American intentions and the South Korean president's desires. Park considered that the détente in East Asia would not last long. His simple logic was that North Korea would invade the South as soon as the last American troops had returned to the United States. Nixon, however, believed that the South was safe as long as Washington had a good relationship with Pyongyang's two patrons, Moscow and Beijing. Since the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) between Washington and Moscow had ended successfully on 26 May 1972, the American president was confident in his foreign policy.Footnote 112 In his letter to Park, he reminded him that everything was going well, although he did not mention SALT specifically.Footnote 113
Up to this point, Nixon had made no effort to reassure his counterpart in Seoul. As discussed, he had rejected Park's invitation to visit Seoul in February before his trip to Beijing. Moreover, Nixon's deceptive manner during the negotiations over the reduction of American forces in 1969–70 had also shaken Park's trust in Washington.Footnote 114 Consequently, Nixon's comments on the further withdrawal of American armed forces only had the effect of deepening Park's distrust of his erstwhile superpower patron. As a result, the South Korean leader became even more cautious in his subsequent negotiations with Kim Ilsung.
On 31 May, North Korean delegates secretly visited the Blue House and met Park. The head of the delegation was Park Seongcheol, the second vice-premier of North Korea. Information on this meeting has been revealed by two different sources: the first, again, is Lee Hurak's report to Habib, and the second is the testimony of the South Korean politicians who attended the meeting. Lee's report contains details of meetings, including the minutes, of this inter-Korean meeting. Conversely, testimony from the South Korean politicians focused on the general atmosphere of the meeting and Park's assessment of the North Korean delegates. Although Lee's record of this meeting, which was kept by the American government, is our most important source, to some extent his report seems biased so as to highlight his achievements. The two sources show a clear discrepancy in their description of Lee's role. Due to his holiday, immediately after the inter-Korean dialogue on 31 May, Lee's report to the American embassy was delayed until 13 June.Footnote 115
Lee's June report sounded similar to the one he wrote in May in that he emphasized his role in the negotiations. He reported that he thought that the most important result of the June meeting was the establishment of an ‘agreed coordinating committee’, which he did not describe further. He added that even though the North Koreans officially proposed its establishment, it was a result of his own initiative in suggesting a means of coordinating inter-Korean relations during his earlier visit to the North.Footnote 116 However, according to other officials attending the meeting, these initiatives were not mentioned at all.Footnote 117 As discussed above, it is likely that the role of the KCIA director was limited after his previous talks with Kim Ilsung.
Nonetheless, Lee's assessment of the North Korean delegates generally coincide with other records. Park and Lee called the North Korean representatives ‘robots’ who were firmly controlled by Kim Ilsung. Park Seongcheol, the second North Korean vice-premier, apparently just read out what was written in his notebook and refused to deliver his own ideas to the South Korean president. Moreover, when Park proposed a cocktail to the North Koreans, he refused it, saying this was ‘Because I recently took medicine…’.Footnote 118 The KCIA director concluded that Park Seongcheol had even less authority than Kim Yeongju, the first vice-premier and Kim Ilsung's younger brother. Lee also considered issuing a joint communiqué after the next meeting as Habib had urged him to make the facts of these meetings and their developments public as soon as possible, since the director's visit to Pyongyang had already leaked out, which was not desirable.Footnote 119 However, Seoul was cautious about not revealing its secret meeting with Pyongyang.Footnote 120
Meanwhile, in the North, Kim Ilsung intended to publicize the secret talks as he believed that the inter-Korean contact would cause agitation or, at least, encourage the liberal voices in the South, as well as an American retreat from South Korean soil. It came as a surprise to South Korean elites when Kim thus proposed to Washington a four-phase troop reduction for the Korean Peninsula during an interview with Selig Harrison of The Washington Post.Footnote 121 His aim was simple: to reduce the number of UN and American forces in South Korea. He did not adopt an aggressive tone, instead trying to persuade Washington, seemingly in line with the zeitgeist of détente in Korea. Washington interpreted this surprising demarche as placing pressure on Park, who had not wanted to publicize the inter-Korean talks.Footnote 122
What is more surprising, perhaps, is that the South Korean media did not expose this shocking news at the time. Instead, the headlines were about a South Korean-American security consultation meeting and its results, even as the South Korean government prepared to announce its joint communiqué with the North. Ironically, the South Korean press highlighted that the security meeting had concluded that the North Korean peace propaganda was fake and dangerous.Footnote 123 The reason why the South Korean press did not report Kim Ilsung's interview with Harrison is not clear, although it is possible that the South Korean government and/or KCIA censored and banned the news just after The Washington Post ran Harrison's interview with Kim. Although this argument is plausible, the problem with it is that the Blue House issued a joint communiqué with North Korea about a week later. The true intention of and reasons why the South Korean media did not cover the news is unclear at this time. However, it is possible that once the joint communiqué had been announced the South Korean elites kept silent for a while in order to buy time to discuss it further. In any event, the agreements between South and North Korea were not revealed beyond the South Korean government inner circles. Even Kim Daejung had not expected that the two Koreas would make such an advance in their relationship. In this situation, the Park regime considered that it was safer to censor Kim Ilsung's interview.Footnote 124
The announcement of the joint communiqué
On 4 July 1972, the Park regime finally announced the joint communiqué with North Korea. The three principles—independence, peace, and national unity—had already been agreed during the Kim-Lee meeting in early May. In addition, the two Koreas agreed to refrain from criticizing one another, not to use military force against each other, and to promote more exchanges between Seoul and Pyongyang. Park did not think that Kim Ilsung could, or would, keep to all of these agreements. To be sure, he did not trust his counterpart in Pyongyang at all and therefore did not take this series of contacts seriously. According to Park's long-time aide Kim Seongjin, Park said to him, ‘I have no intention at all [of meeting Kim Ilsung]. Why should I meet that fellow?’Footnote 125 Nonetheless, these agreements were of use to the South Korean president. Gang Indeok, in charge of inter-Korean talks (at the government working level), recalled that ‘some parts of the communiqué were not satisfactory, but both sides considered that this joint communiqué could be useful, [so we signed it]’. It seems South Korea was indeed afraid of the North Korean military force, which was overwhelmingly superior to that of the South, at least according to KCIA reports. Park thus needed to take a tactically peaceful approach in order to gain time to modernize the South Korean armed forces.Footnote 126 Moreover, as highlighted previously, the main priority of South Korea's Northern Policy was to keep American forces in Korea, and this made it imperative for the Blue House to support Nixon's policy. Therefore, despite its hostility towards Pyongyang, Seoul had a clear motivation to change its policy.
Park was not satisfied as he did not think that the joint communiqué itself would guarantee South Korea's security—if Pyongyang changed its strategy towards Seoul again, the communiqué would be meaningless. This is why he continued to emphasize the communist threat during his negotiations with Kim Ilsung,Footnote 127 and why the first inter-Korean exchange could not make any further advances in improving the diplomatic relationship between the two Koreas. Both camps wanted to win the proverbial battle rather than compromise or conclude a peace agreement, and hence they could not narrow the gap through this series of talks. The South Korean government aimed to simultaneously appease the United States’ desire for détente and keep American forces in its territory, while the North Korean government wanted to ease Nixon's mind and drive out American troops from South Korea. Without a doubt, the talks, or the so-called battle itself, rested on America's decision about its troops in South Korea.
The victory went to the South in the end. Ironically enough, it was Pyongyang's sudden change in its attitude towards the United States that frustrated its ambitions. On 4 July, the North Korean leadership stated that ‘since the North and South had announced a joint communiqué, American imperialists should not interfere in our national affairs and [should] withdraw its invasion forces without delay’.Footnote 128 Kim Ilsung's threat turned out to be counter-productive. Park regime's did not accept this statement and the White House reconsidered its withdrawal of American troops due to the North Korean leadership's seemingly aggressive attitude.Footnote 129 Furthermore, since Washington had already held talks with Beijing and Moscow, it did not need to engage with these North Korean threats.Footnote 130 After Park launched the conservative Yusin reform in October 1972, which emphasized the communist threat during the negotiations, the American leadership had to reconsider its policy toward Seoul.Footnote 131 Henry Kissinger and the East Asian specialists in Washington advised Nixon to change his policy on South Korea in order to prevent further unexpected actions from Park, which could undermine American relations with the communists. American concern about its relations with Seoul led the White House to halt the withdrawal of American troops from South Korea.Footnote 132
The new South Korean policy towards the North in the early 1970s was self-evidently limited: it did not produce any practical peace arrangements despite the lengthy agreements in the joint communiqué of July 1972. Although the two sides agreed that they would cooperate with each other for the reunification of Korea and stop threatening each other, in reality ‘reunification’ was not the goal of policy of either camp. Neither side was willing to accept each other's ideology and were thus intractably and diametrically opposed. The gap between the two camps was, if anything, highlighted by the major topic of their talks—the presence of American forces in the South. Therefore, once it became clear that there would be no change in the deployment of American forces, détente could not be sustained. The military conflicts between the two Koreas resumed in 1973 and, indeed, worsened—particularly after Mun Segwang tried to kill Park in 1974.Footnote 133
Conclusion
The inter-Korean dialogues of 1972 have gone down in history as the first official negotiations about the future of the two Koreas in Korean history. However, it is clear that the new American policy, itself the result of the problems the United States was experiencing in Vietnam, was the major driving force of Korean dialogue in 1972. Simply put, the historical talks between the two Koreas were the by-product of America's new Cold War strategy rather than the result of any local initiative. In terms of a global Cold War, dominated by the United States and the two communist giants, this first diplomatic contact of the Koreas was a part of larger movement in Sino-US and Soviet-US negotiations. The prevalent mood of détente between the United States and the communist superpowers created an impetus for Seoul to revise its policy towards North Korea, and vice versa. In the end, the most important topic of these talks was the stationing of American troops in Korea. As South Korean and American documents indicate, Seoul did its best to ensure Washington's military intervention in its own territory because North Korea was far stronger than the South. It thus remains that it was the decision of the United States on the deployment of its forces in South Korea that both started and ended the inter-Korean talks—as John Lewis Gaddis argues, détente froze the Cold War, rather than ended it,Footnote 134 which is borne out by the actions of the South Korean leadership.
The first inter-Korean negotiations are an interesting case study that show the introduction of America's post-Vietnam War policy in the East Asian region and also demonstrates how its client states adapted themselves to it. However, the relative influence of a client on its patron is another important and interesting avenue of study. Clearly, the South Korean government did not do exactly what Washington wanted: the South Korean elites did not have an interest in the core of the Nixon Doctrine but rather in how they could benefit from it or minimize its impact without hurting their relations with Washington. Park acted as Washington's agent in East Asia because of American pressure on him. However, once he secured what he wanted from the White House—that is, the withdrawal of the threat of removing American troops from South Korea—he refused to further advance détente between the South and the North. As with many other Cold War clients, the South Korean elites utilized America's Cold War for their own interests.Footnote 135 Nixon wanted Park to achieve a peace settlement with North Korea so that American forces in South Korea would no longer be necessary. This was not realized and Washington continued to play an enormous role in aiding and supporting South Korea's security and Park's rule.
