18
this day that the U.S. played some role in the decision by South Korean authorities to use
force against the protestors; the evidence does not support that belief.)
The reason why any U.S. involvement in the incident might seem logical centers on the
command arrangements between U.S. and South Korean forces. The U.S. retained
control over the deployment of South Korean regular army troops as part of the alliance
commitment against North Korea, through an arrangement called the Combined Forces
Command (CFC) established in 1978. Earlier, a somewhat similar arrangement had
given the South Korean government less say in the disposition of its troops. This new
arrangement had been instituted to assuage South Korean government complaints about
the inequality of the military command relationship with the United States
35
—in other
words, to show more respect. Those regular troops, which formed part of the common
defense against potential North Korean aggression, could not legally be moved out of
their battle-ready locations without U.S. permission.
There had always been an understanding between the allies that the South Korean
government—a military regime—might need to ask for this permission in order to use
military troops to help the police restore order and put down rioting. Domestic instability
in South Korea had been seen by both members of the alliance as a potential spark for a
North Korean invasion, and it was hence part of the jointly considered threat equation—
but the preservation of domestic stability had been designated as the sole responsibility of
35
John A. Wickham, Jr., Korea on the Brink: A Memoir of Political Intrigue and Military Crisis
(Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 2000), p. 22. Wickham was the general who headed the United Nations
Command in Korea, the Combined Forces Command, United States Forces Korea, and the Eighth United
States Army at the time of the Kwangju incident.
Convention