Korea-U.S.

“Why is the history of Korea-U.S. relations important?”

This text, which looks like the ideas of the current Korean government, is a telegraph that the U.S. ambassador to Korea sent to the U.S. State Department in August, 1966. The Korea-U.S. relationship is a long-term problem to be solved for the U.S. government as well.

This book, which begins with the question, “Why is the history of Korea-U.S. relations important?” is weighed as significant because problems such as the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement, restoration of wartime operational control, the removal of U.S. military bases in Korea and North Korea’s nuclear issue, which are the majority of recent issues in Korean society today, can be concluded as “issues concerned with Korea’s relationship with the U.S.”

To start off with, this book emphasizes that the current conflicts that the Korea-U.S. relationship is undergoing is a not recent development. The writer explains that the psychological reason that Koreans obscurely regard the U.S. as a close friendly nation is because after the ROK-U.S. Mutual Defense Agreement, the U.S. was the key to survival by protecting us from North Korea, which was receiving support from giant communist nations, the USSR and China.

However from 1945 to the 1980s, the writer argues that the Korea-U.S. relationship was marked with many complications and conflicts. The writer explains in detail the history of the Korea-U.S. conflicts, such as the Rhee Seung-man government which bothered the U.S. by maintaining the need to reunify the country by marching into the North, Park Jung-hee and the U.S. after the coup d’etat, the U.S. plan to eliminate Kim Jong Il, and the attempt to develop a nuclear weapon in the 1970s. The only period which Korea and the U.S. had a smooth relationship with no conflict was around 1965, when the dispatch of Korean soldiers to Vietnam was in full order, and in the early 1980s, right after the new military government came into power.

In conclusion, this book explains in an organized manner why the relationship between Korea and the U.S., which can be considered more of a ‘blood alliance’ than just an alliance, cannot help continuously facing conflicts. The top-two reasons that the writer selected was the U.S. attitude in attempting to put political pressure on Korea and create a new political power, and the Korean government’s inexperience, considering the government’s safety ahead of the nation as a whole.

In particular, to differentiate the book with other Korea-U.S. relation studies, which show the process of U.S. policies being introduced into Korea, the writer emphasized the policies that the Korean government came up with to deal with the U.S. government policies. The Busan political upheaval in 1952, the upturning of transfer of power to the elected government in 1963, the dispatch of Korean soldiers to Vietnam and the security crisis in 1964 and Korea gate in the mid-1970s, are detailed examples that the writer uses to make his argument, that we must learn from the past and not make the same mistakes, more persuasive.

zozo@donga.com