The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History Read online

  Even with the defector’s information, it took the accident of the steam rising in tall grass to locate the precise location of the first tunnel. In February 1975, a second tunnel was pinpointed after extensive drilling and lowering a specially developed camera into a tiny borehole. At the time of its discovery, the tunnel ran three-fourths of a mile into the South Korean side of the DMZ. Aerial photography eventually identified its starting point at the base of a mountain more than a half mile into North Korean territory.

  Tunnel number two, as it was called, was an extraordinary engineering feat, bigger and longer than the first one, constructed through solid granite more than fifty yards belowground using modern drilling machinery imported from abroad. Several months after it was found, I made my way down the steep-sloped intercept passage to inspect this impressive construction, accompanied by an American explosive ordnance team and South Korean troops. The floor and ceiling were uneven, but my six-foot frame was able to stand erect at most points along the two hundred yards where I was permitted to go. I could stretch both arms toward the sides of the chamber without touching them. The US Command estimated that the dark, dank chamber could accommodate about eight thousand troops and put through another ten thousand men per hour with light artillery and other supporting weapons. Its intended discharge point would have been well behind South Korean forward defense lines.

  Outside the tunnel, I saw South Korean soldiers digging new lines of trenches and bunkers at the approaches to the DMZ to protect themselves against North Korean troops who might pour out of underground structures. Most surprising was that, despite the discovery of two tunnels, formal US and ROK protests, and much publicity, sounds of digging continued to be detected under the surface of the DMZ. All indications were that Kim Il Sung had authorized the digging, and nobody else could give an order to stop.

  The US Command and the ROK military responded to the underground challenge with increasingly sophisticated and largely secret efforts to locate more tunnels. Eventually, a total of 245 standard and experimental seismic listening devices were placed along the DMZ to record underground activity at suspect sites. The Pentagon tried everything—even hiring psychics to find more tunnels. Without their help, eventually two more fully developed tunnels were discovered, in 1978 and 1990.

  How much danger the tunnels posed to South Korea, once the first ones were detected, is questionable. US and ROK forces quickly adjusted their defense lines to take into account possible incursions from underground. There is no doubt, though, that the intercepted tunnels served Seoul and Washington as tangible evidence of North Korea’s aggressive intentions. According to Nathanial Thayer, the CIA national intelligence officer for East Asia in the mid-1970s, “Anytime anyone wanted more money for CIA, I would go up to see [House Speaker] Tip O’Neill. The argument was, if [North Koreans] are not aggressive, why are they building these tunnels?” The money was always forthcoming.

  CHALLENGE FROM THE NORTH

  As the underground war suggests, the struggle for military supremacy did not stop or even slow because of the North-South contacts of 1971–1972; on the contrary, the fluidity and uncertainty that gave rise to the dialogue also gave rise to an intensified arms race on the divided peninsula. Instead of a turn toward peace, the two Koreas were competing to build and import more and deadlier weapons of war. A retrospective US military analysis of North Korea’s development identified 1972–1977 as a time of “remarkable North Korean Army growth,” surpassing any other period since the Korean War. In parallel fashion, it was also a period of remarkable growth in South Korean military power.

  Divided against each other at the DMZ and backed by rival world powers, both Korean states had become heavily militarized following the mutual devastation of the 1950–1953 war. In May 1961, Major General Park Chung Hee seized power in Seoul at the head of a military group. Four months later, Kim Il Sung finally cemented his undisputed authority over rival factions at the Fourth Workers Party Congress, buttressed by his military comrades-in-arms from his years as a guerrilla fighter. The militarized ruling group in the North promulgated the slogan “Arms on the one hand and hammer and sickle on the other.” Kim also formulated a policy known as the Four Great Military Lines: to arm the entire populace, to fortify the entire country, to train each soldier to become cadre, and to modernize military weapons and equipment.

  Tracking North Korean military activity is immensely difficult for any outsider, as virtually all aspects have been and remain closely guarded secrets in Pyongyang. North Korea has never published realistic information on its military forces, procurement, or operations. Fiercely independent and worried about the intentions of its communist allies, North Korea shared remarkably little information even with Moscow and Beijing after the 1950s. A retired Chinese officer who served twelve years as a Chinese military attaché in Pyongyang told me that North Korean officials would not disclose even to their close allies the size or organizational structure of their army. On infrequent visits to North Korea units in the field, he said, “we were just like sightseers” and were given no detailed information.

  For all these reasons, former CIA director Robert Gates described North Korea as “without parallel the toughest intelligence target in the world.” Donald Gregg, a career intelligence officer who served as CIA station chief in South Korea in the early 1970s and as US ambassador to Seoul in 1989–1993, said, “North Korea is the longest-running intelligence failure in the world.”

  Aside from the rare defector with operational details, the best source of information about the North Korean military has been aerial photographs and electronic intercepts provided by US reconnaissance satellites. However, in these expensive operations, Korea only intermittently had a high priority. As US forces withdrew from Vietnam in 1972 and détente seemed to be breaking out between Seoul and Pyongyang, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) reduced American military intelligence resources devoted to the Korean peninsula by more than 50 percent. Given all this, estimates of North Korea’s military buildup at the time—and especially of the motivations behind it—must be treated with caution.

  What is clear from a variety of sources is that in the 1970s, Pyongyang was very active militarily. In May 1972, Kim Il Sung himself told Harrison Salisbury and John Lee of the New York Times that due to the hostile attitude of the United States, “we frankly tell you, we are always making preparations for war. We do not conceal this matter.” In the early 1970s, as it sought to restore relations with Pyongyang, Beijing renewed military assistance to North Korea even as China moved toward rapprochement with the United States. Military supplies from the Soviet Union were still at a high level, although beginning a slow decline, as Pyongyang found it harder to pay and as US-Soviet détente flourished. In addition to the supplies from its allies, the North by the end of the decade was producing large quantities of its own field artillery pieces, rocket launchers, armored personnel carriers, main battle tanks, and surface-to-air missiles.

  By 1974, according to the US Command’s intelligence estimate at that time, the North Korean army had grown to 408,000 troops, the fourth largest among the world’s communist armies, and was “an efficient, well trained, highly disciplined force which is undergoing continual modernization.” Of its twenty-three infantry divisions, fourteen were lined up from east to west, close to the DMZ. Moreover, North Korea was developing a formidable air force of Chinese and Soviet bombers and fighters and a small but highly versatile navy.

  In mid-1973, concerned by the buildup in the North, the US Army assigned to Korea one of its ablest and most flamboyant combat leaders, Lieutenant General James F. Hollingsworth, who had extensive battle experience in World War II and Vietnam. Given command of the ROK–US I Corps forces charged with defense of Seoul, Hollingsworth was visited at his new command post one night by a worried President Park, who asked, “Are you going to do the same thing here you did in Vietnam?” Hollingsworth’s response: “I’m here to fight and die to save your country. That’s what I’m goin
g to do.”

  The existing war plan was an essentially defensive document calling for American and South Korean forces, in case of attack, to pull back in phases to the Han River, which bisects the capital city. But in 1974 Hollingsworth, telling his ROK subordinate commanders, “I’m going to turn you into an offensive army,” began moving the bulk of his artillery as far forward as possible, near the southern edge of the DMZ, where it was in position to strike well into North Korean territory. Two brigades of the US Second Division were targeted to seize Kaesong, the most important city in the southern part of North Korea, in case of attack from the North. Hollingsworth’s forward-defense concept envisioned a massive use of US and ROK firepower, including around-the-clock B-52 strikes, to stop a North Korean advance north of Seoul and deliver a powerful offensive punch to win the war within nine days.

  Donald Gregg, CIA station chief in Seoul at the time, recalls Hollingsworth standing on the southern shore of the Imjin River, just a mile south of the DMZ, and declaring with bravado, “We’ll kill every son of a bitch north of the forward edge of the battle area, and we won’t retreat one inch.” Privately, said Gregg, Hollingsworth wasn’t sure he had enough firepower to do the job, but his offense-minded battle plan helped to calm the jittery South Koreans, as it was intended to do. Park, an enthusiastic supporter, supplied millions of dollars in construction funds for new roads, ammunition bunkers, and other facilities near the DMZ.

  North Korea did not have to learn about Hollingsworth’s new strategy from spies. In a press conference widely reported in Seoul, the colorful general announced his “violent, short war concept” before the plan had the approval of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or other military elements in Washington. There were unpublicized objections from the staff of the White House National Security Council on the grounds that the nine-day war plan involved “almost immediate U.S. air interdiction, and possible use of nuclear weapons,” for which there was no prior authorization. Hollingsworth got away with it because of the strong backing of the South Koreans and Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger.

  North Korea responded in kind to the augmentation and repositioning of US and ROK forces and Hollingsworth’s aggressive plans to use them in case of war. Just as the growth spurt in North Korean forces stimulated the United States and South Korea to increased efforts, so the changes in firepower and strategy south of the DMZ helped stimulate large increases in North Korean forces and their repositioning closer to the dividing line with the South. With the failure of the initial efforts at productive North-South dialogue, the arms race could not be restrained by the two regimes themselves, nor did the outside powers have sufficient will or consensus to call a halt. The buildups, therefore, continued strongly.

  The crucial military question in the mid-1970s was whether North Korea’s allies in Beijing and Moscow would give military backing to a new attempt to unite the peninsula by force. The US Command’s 1974 intelligence estimate pointed out that although Pyongyang was “capable of initiating offensive action,” it was unlikely to do so in the short run without Chinese and Soviet assistance. In the view of the US Command, “these countries would not likely support adventurism on the part of NK’s leader, Kim Il Sung. They probably would, however, assist NK against any invasion mounted by the ROK.”

  These assumptions were tested in the spring of 1975 as the massive US effort in Indochina was collapsing in the face of communist guns. On April 18, the day after the Chinese-backed Khmer Rouge took over the Cambodian capital and as the final battle for Saigon was getting under way, Kim Il Sung was received in Beijing with elaborate ceremony at the start of an eight-day state visit. Speaking at a welcoming banquet, the North Korean leader celebrated the communist victories in Indochina and forecast the collapse of the US-backed regime in Seoul and the worldwide victory of Marxism-Leninism.

  “If revolution takes place in South Korea we, as one and the same nation, will not just look at it with folded arms but will strongly support the South Korean people,” Kim declared. Then, in a takeoff on Karl Marx’s famous dictum that in revolution, the working class has nothing to lose but its chains, Kim added, “If the enemy ignites war recklessly, we shall resolutely answer it with war and completely destroy the aggressors. In this war we will only lose the Military Demarcation Line and will gain the country’s unification.”

  Untangling what Kim said from what he meant and what he expected in terms of support from the Chinese is still not at all clear. Kim arrived in Beijing just as China’s leader, Mao Tse-tung, was about to begin an internal political struggle with a group who opposed the newly rehabilitated Deng Xiaoping. For this, among other reasons, Mao would not have been interested in the situation flaring up in Korea, and Kim would almost certainly have been astute enough to realize that this was not a good time to expect support. Moreover, North Korean officials reportedly told East European diplomats around that time that Pyongyang was not happy with Vietnam’s victory because it meant the US military would be free to shift its focus and resources back to Korea.

  By contrast, another view is that Kim took heart from events in Vietnam and sought to capitalize on the moment to press his own priorities but was rebuffed by Beijing. According to a Chinese source with intimate knowledge of Korean affairs, Kim told Chinese leaders it would be “no problem” to liberate South Korea, but Premier Zhou Enlai and his colleagues opposed any such idea. Without addressing Kim’s ideas specifically, according to this source, Chinese leaders stressed the need for stability on the Korean peninsula, and “Kim was clever enough to understand” without having to lose face. About the same time, according to a former Soviet diplomat who was working on Korean issues at the time, Moscow made it explicitly clear to Kim that “we only support peaceful means for solution of the [South Korean] problem.” Significantly, Kim did not stop in Moscow during an extensive trip to Eastern Europe and North Africa immediately following his Beijing visit. In a sign of discord between Kim and his senior communist sponsor, the North Korean leader even flew many hundreds of miles out of his way to avoid passing through Soviet airspace.*

  ECHOES OF SAIGON

  Even more than flirtation with China, Park was shocked and alarmed by the US failure in Vietnam. The prospects and plight of South Vietnam, the US-backed anticommunist half of another divided country, bore an uncomfortable resemblance to the situation in South Korea. At the American behest, Park’s government sent two divisions of Korean troops to fight in Vietnam, and they had remained until 1973, when the slow withdrawal of American forces was nearly complete. Although Korea was well paid for its efforts through procurement and construction contracts, to the point that revenues from the Vietnam War made up as much as 40 percent of its foreign exchange earnings, Park considered his troop commitment to be a self-sacrificing contribution to the anticommunist cause and a payback to Washington for saving the South in the Korean War. In Park’s view, the American pullout from Vietnam and especially the betrayal of South Vietnam in the Paris negotiations with communist North Vietnam raised agonizing doubts about the reliability of the United States.

  As South Vietnam was collapsing that April, Ambassador Richard Sneider in Seoul appealed to Washington for an urgent review of American policies in view of “declining ROK confidence in [the] U.S. commitment,” accompanied by a “risk of North Korean provocation to test both U.S. intentions and ROK capabilities.” Sneider, a cerebral State Department officer who had studied communist political operations during the Korean War, wrote in a secret cable that “Korea is not repeat not yet in a crisis era” but that this could come. To head it off, he recommended a long list of potential confidence-building measures, ranging from more weapons and economic support for the Seoul government to contingency planning for special US air and naval deployments to Korea in case of a serious threat of a North Korean attack.

  The broader and longer-term problem, Sneider wrote, was the need for a fundamental shift in the US relationship with a Korea that, “while still dependent on us, is no longer [a]
client state.” Sneider recommended immediate initiation of a major review of Korea policy in Washington.

  Two months later, in June 1975, Sneider fired off a more extensive rendition of his views to a US capital that was still preoccupied with the aftermath of the failure in Vietnam. Sneider wrote in a remarkable twelve-page cable:

  Our present policy toward Korea is ill-defined and based on an outdated view of Korea as a client state. It does not provide a long-term conceptual approach to Korea, geared to its prospective middle power status. It leaves the ROKG [ROK government] uncertain what to expect from us and forces us to react to ROKG on an ad hoc basis. We have not for example made clear to the Koreans what the prospects are for a continued, long-term U.S. military presence. Nor have we clarified what the ROKG can expect from us in the way of military technology, although we discourage President Park’s efforts to develop his own sophisticated weapons. These uncertainties lead President Park into preparations for what he sees as our eventual withdrawal, preparations which include internal repression and plans for the development of nuclear weapons. They also induce optimism on the part of North Korea about our withdrawal and doubts in Japan about our credibility and about the future of Korea.

  Sneider saw two main alternatives to the existing policy: disengagement or the establishment of a new basis for durable partnership.

  Back in Washington, now assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Philip Habib was on the receiving end of Sneider’s cables. Habib had observed at the time of Park’s martial-law takeover in October 1972 that the process of US disengagement from Korea had “already begun” and “should be accelerated.” However, in the wake of the debacle in Vietnam, Sneider made the case that “disengagement, whether gradual or otherwise, is now far too risky as long as the North Korean posture remains militant; it would escalate the possibility of conflict and risks a breakdown of Japanese confidence in our treaty commitment.” Perhaps as a gesture to Habib’s views, Sneider added, “Under different circumstances, a gradual disengagement could be worth serious consideration.”