A History of Korea (95 page)

In the 1980s the new industrialized and urbanized social life was also characterized by the decline of patriarchal and generational authority. The rapidly changing environments, harsh working conditions, and political repression left people alienated from their traditional ways of life. And as South Korean
society became more democratic in the late 1980s, the trends against authoritarianism and traditionalism gathered further momentum. By the late 1980s the rapid democratization of politics and society brought about a more egalitarian, Western-style social life, replacing the prior militaristic, authoritarian lifestyle. This was most remarkable in the urban life led by a majority of South Koreans.

In the 1980s the
minjung
movement actively developed in South Korean society. The term
minjung,
though difficult to define, may be translated as “common people,” usually meaning the masses, as opposed to the ruling elite. In other words, although its meaning is vaguely understood, minjung represent a majority of people who are presumably exploited by the numerically smaller ruling elite, particularly the urban proletariat. In the 1970s and 1980s national elites consisted of the military elite, top government officials, and big businesses, and were viewed as serving foreign capitalists, especially Americans. Therefore min-jung were antagonistic to military dictatorship, chaeb
ŏ
l, and foreign powers.

As opportunities for education and employment expanded in the mid-1960s, most university graduates started their new, modern working lives in the cities, seeking material and social success. But a few were committed to radical politics and took the role of critical intellectuals. Though these intellectual dissidents initiated the minjung movement in the 1970s, it did not take off at the time, and they directed their energies instead to resisting Park Chung-hee’s autocratic rule.

In the mid-1980s, however, the minjung movement began in earnest. Newly emerged radical student activists and dissident intellectuals, who identified with the Third World, were imbued with Western radical thought, including Marxism, liberation theology, and dependency theory. By the mid-1980s neo-Marxian interpretations dominated much of the student debates concerning South Korean society and South Korean–U.S. relations.

The minjung movement primarily aimed to improve the life of working people, and so student activists and dissident intellectuals tried to align themselves with labor, hoping to politicize them. Since the 1970s some Christian clergy and lay leaders, especially those from the Urban Industrial Mission (
UIM
), played a pivotal role in the labor movement, raising such issues as low wages, harsh working conditions, and violations of basic labor laws. In the 1980s the “alliance” between the minjung movement and labor took the form of student activists becoming workers themselves.
¹⁶

Although strikes were illegal until late 1987, strikes and sit-ins had occurred, and the student-turned-workers played an important role in the strikes staged by organized labor. South Korea saw an explosion of labor disputes from 1987 through 1989, with more than 3,000 strikes throughout the country during the summer and fall of 1987. In 1988 labor-related laws were amended to make it easier to establish labor unions, and student activists helped workers organize unions and demand improvement in wages and working conditions.

Beyond establishing “labor-intellectual solidarity,” student activists tried to realize minjung democracy in which all citizens made decisions on national affairs. They urged radical redistribution of national wealth to benefit poorer classes. They also called for major changes in South Korea’s political and economic relationships with the United States and Japan. Their demands represented Marxist revolutionary thought and the ideas of radical Western thinkers such as Herbert Marcuse and the Latin American dependency theorists; to a certain degree, they also were a reflection of North Korean communist ideology. These views were not shared by a majority of South Koreans who saw them as too radical, and so their proponents did not gain wide popular support and were isolated from the mainstream of society.

Since the early 1990s the minjung activists split into two groups: the radicals and moderates. The radicals generally remained in the movement, resorting to violence to dramatize their cause and thus became alienated from the general public. Many moderates, on the other hand, entered the established political world, making a career of politics in both conservative and progressive parties.

By the end of the 1970s South Korean–U.S. relations had become considerably strained mainly because South Korea doubted the U.S. commitment to defending the country. Although the United States reaffirmed its commitment to defend South Korea in the event of North Korean aggression, in pursuance of the
ROK
–U.S. Mutual Defense Treaty, the removal of the U.S. Army’s 7th Infantry Division by the end of 1973 led South Koreans to question whether U.S. policy toward South Korea would actually be helpful in the future international or domestic political environment.

In the early 1970s a significant change occurred in U.S.–China relations and in the course of the Vietnam War that deeply affected relations between
South Korea and the United States and between the two Koreas. U.S. President Nixon went to China in 1972, intending to make the most of the Sino-Soviet split then well under way. His visit afforded the United States an opportunity to reduce its security obligations to South Korea. Shocked by a possible U.S.-Chinese détente, the two Koreas attempted to resolve their differences by themselves. The U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam also caused South Koreans uneasiness about the
ROK
–U.S. alliance. In April 1975, on the eve of the fall of South Vietnam, Kim Il-sung visited China to seek support for an armed invasion of South Korea. Kim’s action stunned many South Koreans. The Gerald Ford administration reaffirmed the U.S. determination to remain in South Korea.

At around the same time an influence-peddling scandal known as “Korea-gate” was revealed, in which agents employed by the South Korean government illegally developed lobbying activities to win U.S. congressional support for a strong U.S. posture in South Korea. The scheme backfired and severely strained bilateral relations between the two nations. The scandal reflected Seoul’s increasing doubts about the U.S. commitment to the security of South Korea.

Under these circumstances President Park strove to make South Korea militarily independent of the United States. As part of achieving self-reliance, the Park government embarked on a nuclear weapons development program. In June 1975 he declared that South Korea would develop its own nuclear weapons if the U.S. nuclear umbrella was withdrawn. The United States strongly opposed South Korea’s emergence as a nuclear power, fearing that South Korea’s nuclear armament would inevitably cause a nuclear arms race between the two Koreas and also further stimulate Japan’s nuclear weapons development, breaking the balance of power in Northeast Asia. Under heavy U.S. pressure, on 29 January 1977, Park stated that he would not develop nuclear weapons.

ROK
–U.S. relations were further strained when the Carter administration, inaugurated in January 1977, considered the withdrawal of American ground forces from South Korea. Moreover, Jimmy Carter placed the human rights issue in South Korea on the agenda for South Korean–U.S. ties. Carter’s suggestion might be viewed as a natural consequence of the Nixon Doctrine as well as an indication of South Korea’s enhanced capability to defend itself. Carter drew immediate criticism in the United States and particularly in South Korea, and his withdrawal plan was seen by many Koreans as an indication that the United States was no longer willing to defend their country against North Korea. The
Carter administration focused on great attention on human rights abuses in South Korea under the Park presidency, and it believed that improvements in human rights would make South Korea internally stronger and more secure, and, to the outside world, provide moral legitimacy to Park’s regime. Carter’s human rights concerns remained a major irritant in
ROK
–U.S. relations during the second half of the 1970s.
¹⁷

In the context of soured relations between South Korea and the United States, the Carter administration, in early 1979, reassessed its commitment to withdraw U.S. ground troops from South Korea. In February 1979 Carter announced that further pullout of ground troops would be suspended, and his decision was finally confirmed by a statement issued on 20 July 1979. This provided a major opportunity for fence mending between the two allies, and after Park’s assassination on 26 October 1979, the United States reaffirmed its security commitment to South Korea and warned North Korea against any rash action to exploit the unsettled situation.

After President Park was assassinated on 26 October 1979, another military strongman, Major General Chun Doo-hwan, emerged as the new authoritarian ruler. As the political crisis in South Korea intensified in the spring of 1980, the United States increasingly saw Chun and another period of military-backed rule as the only alternative for South Korea. After inaugurating the Fifth Republic in October 1980, Chun began his seven-year term as president in late February 1981. A change of political power also occurred in the United States with the 1980 election of President Ronald Reagan, a conservative Republican who won a landslide victory over the more liberal Jimmy Carter. Reagan had committed himself to a determined anticommunist foreign policy and declared that, in the fight against communism, the United States would stand shoulder to shoulder with its allies, whether they were entirely democratic or not. The Reagan administration was a profound gift to the Chun Doo-hwan regime in South Korea, as the new U.S. administration provided Chun unlimited support. As part of establishing strong security ties between the two allies, the Reagan administration ended all talks of U.S. ground troop withdrawal in 1981 and was tolerant of South Korea’s human rights abuses. As pointed out previously, in exchange for Chun Doo-hwan’s commutation of Kim Dae-jung’s death sentence to life imprisonment, Chun gained the honor, in February 1981, of being the first foreign head of state to visit Reagan. As a further sign
of closer relations, President Reagan visited South Korea in November 1983 and reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to South Korean security. During his stay in South Korea, Reagan visited U.S. troops in the
DMZ
and applauded the Chun regime for achieving political stability, economic growth, and a strong security posture.

Critical events such as the tragic downing of the South Korean airliner by a Soviet fighter-interceptor on 1 September 1983 and the “Rangoon bombing,” an unsuccessful North Korean attempt to assassinate Chun Doo-hwan, on 9 October 1983 drew strong U.S. support for South Korea and severe U.S. condemnations of the Soviet Union and North Korea. South Korea heartily welcomed Reagan’s reelection in the 1984 presidential election. During the South Korean political crisis in the mid-1980s, the United States always sided with the Chun Doo-hwan government. Clearly the United States was more concerned with South Korea’s national security and less with its democracy. During the direct presidential election campaign late in 1987 after the June Resistance, the United States betrayed a preference for Roh Tae-woo, Chun’s handpicked successor, as shown by Roh’s visit to the United States in September 1987.

The George H. W. Bush administration also supported South Korea and reaffirmed the U.S. treaty commitment to the country. The United States also approved South Korea’s nordpolitik—its efforts to improve relations with communist countries. Moreover, the United States displayed its friendship with South Korea when it firmly rejected North Korea’s demand for bilateral talks, without South Korea’s participation, to replace the armistice agreement with a permanent peace treaty.
¹⁸

In short, in the 1980s, official relations between South Korea and the United States could be characterized as “honeymoon ties.” The bilateral relationship was based on an intimate friendship between the two governments. Beneath this intimacy, however, anti-Americanism rapidly and increasingly pervaded South Korean society.

One of the most dramatic developments in the history of South Korean–U.S. relations was the rise of anti-Americanism in South Korea in the early 1980s. Before the 1980s, the South Korean view of the United States was generally based on “illusions” and “myths” about a virtuous United States and its support for South Korea. The idea of the United States as
Miguk,
the beautiful or virtuous nation, dominated the Korean perception as a “faith.” The United States
was more than a friend; it was
the
friend, and the world knew no more enthusiastic allies. From the early 1980s, however, many South Koreans perceived the United States not as a savior but as a selfish bully. These feelings were deep enough that South Korean anti-Americanism could not be dismissed as merely dissent by a small fringe element. Not all South Koreans were anti-American or unappreciative of what Americans had done for their country, but anti-U.S. sentiment was common among a significant number of young Koreans, especially university students and young people of university age. This antagonism toward America also permeated the South Korean military, businesses, and the government bureaucracy. South Koreans increasingly were voicing their criticism of the United States over various aspects of South Korean–U.S. relations. The question of how to build a new relationship between the
ROK
and the United States was an issue that needed to be settled.

Anti-Americanism was initially the domain of radical students protesting U.S. imperialism and U.S. support for the South Korean dictatorship by means of demonstrations and firebombs. Although some protests of this kind still surface occasionally, anti-Americanism has become more mainstream, fueled by middle-class anger at the perceived failure of the United States to reward and respect South Korean accomplishments.