Korea

The Korean War (see p. 117) left North and South deeply hostile to eachother and condemned to decades of misrule. The military inferiority of the South was mitigated by American reinforcement – a UN force commanded by an American general remained in the country – and a vastly better economic performance. The UN voted annually in favour of the reunification of the country by way of free elections but these resolutions were without effect. So were talks between North and South from the early 1970s onwards. In North Korea Marshal Kim Il Sung held uninterrupted sway. Opposition dared not show its head. In South Korea Syngman Rhee’s ruthless rule, buttressed by a defence treaty of 1953 with the United States, ended in 1960 when he was forced to resign and flee to Hawaii, where he died in 1965 at the age of 90. A military coup in 1961 carried General Park Chung Hee to power, which he held for nearly 20 unlovely years. They were marked by considerable economic success and continuous, if ineffectual, protest against harshness and corruption. In 1963 Park and his principal colleagues transformed themselves into civilians and Park was elected president. He sent a contingent to fight with the Americans in Vietnam. In 1971 one of two United States divisions was removed. Martial law was reintroduced in 1972 with such extreme disregard for human rights that President Carter announced that the remaining American division would also be withdrawn – a decision reversed by Reagan when it appeared that North Korea’s large armed forces were being made even larger. In 1979 Park was assassinated by the chief of his intelligence services. The new president Choi Kyu Hwa bade fair to inject a measure of democracy but was quickly rendered powerless by a group of officers led by General Chon Doo Hwan. Demonstrations which turned into a revolt in Kwangju in 1980 were isolated and brutally repressed (perhaps 2,000 were killed) and after nine months as a civilian façade for military rule Choi resigned his office to Chon, who was invited by Reagan to Washington. In 1983 a bomb, almost certainly placed by North Koreans, killed 21 people in Rangoon, including four South Korean cabinet ministers. Chon, the main target, escaped. This outrage disrupted talks on unification. They were, however, resumed in 1984-85. The results were meagre: a few dozen visits in either direction to see relatives but no reduction in frontier fortifications or military exercises. The choice of Seoul for the 1988 Olympic Games induced North Korea to ask for some participation.