The Cherokee Files

U.S. POLICY IN SOUTH KOREA IN 1979 AND 1980

The “Cherokee Files” archives are my collection of declassified documents on US policy in South Korea in 1979 and 1980. They were obtained between 1991 and 2006 from the Department of State, the Department of Defense, the National Security Council, and the Central Intelligence Agency. They focus on the US response to the assassination of Park Chung Hee, Chun Doo Hwan’s rolling coup, the Gwangju Uprising, and U.S. actions and policies during that time. These were first released in 1994 in the New York Journal of Commerce and Seoul’s Sisa Journal.  Many of them are available here for the first time in the USA. All the original, hard-copy files are permanently stored, as I received them, at the 5.18 Archives in Gwangju City, South Korea (pictured). My great thanks to Lee Jae-Eui, the author of Kwangju Diary, for his assistance in interpreting and understanding the documents on the 1980 uprising.

My FOIA documents on display at the Gwangju 5.18 Archives. Photo courtesy of Roy Hong, November 2, 2022.

Origins: In 1989, the National Assembly of a newly democratic South Korea launched the first public investigation into the 1980 Gwangju Uprising. As part of its probe, the assembly asked the U.S. government to allow the testimony of two of the key US figures in American decision-making at the time, Ambassador William Gleysteen and General John Wickham, the U.S. and U.N. Commander in Korea (these two men, with CIA Station Chief William Brewster, made up the “country team” that managed American policy in the period from Park’s 1979 assassination to Chun’s 1980 takeover)  The administration of George H.W. Bush refused the National Assembly’s request for the testimony, and instead ordered the National Security Council to write a “White Paper” on US policy in Korea in 1979 and 1980. When that paper (attached in this section) came out, I doubted many of its conclusions, and went through the document taking note of every meeting and policy paper mentioned by the authors. I used that information to craft my FOIA request and, once I obtained them, interviewed many of the individuals identified as key players. From that research, I wrote my stories for the JOC and Sisa, which published them in February 1994.

With a few exceptions, the documents described below are listed by box and file as they can be found in Gwangju’s 5.18 Archives.

Key U.S. documents on Gwangju and the Rise of Chun

This was my initial post for the online database of the 4,000 declassified US government documents obtained under FOIA on the US role in the Gwangju Uprising of 1980. The list includes many of the key documents first reported in my initial 1996 stories on the US role in South Korea in 1979 and 1980. These were obtained between 1996 and 2006, when a few of my original documents were fully declassified in 2006.

Smoking Guns: U.S. Intervention Exposed

These documents from the Cherokee Files help us understand the interventionary role played by the United States in the events in South Korea, from the Park assassination in October 1979 through the reluctant US acceptance of General Chun Doo Hwan as South Korea’s leader in the fall of 1980.

Gwangju Archives | Cherokee Files | 1979-1980

This file contains important State Department documents, mostly written Ambassador Gleysteen, about the events leading up to and preceding the October 26, 1979, assassination of Park Chung Hee, as well as the events surrounding coup within the military on December 12, 1979. They are significant because they show, in great detail, how the Carter administration and Ambassador Gleysteen carried out a campaign throughout these crucial months to preserve the basic structure of the South Korean government (which was favorable to American interests), persuade the military to loosen their grip on Korean society, and pressure the democratic opposition to moderate their demands for a quick return to full democracy.

Gwangju Archives | Aftermath | Arrests | Chun Visit

These documents are primarily US embassy reports on the military trials of over 175 people arrested by the martial law authorities after the Gwangju Uprising. “Most of the defendants are apparently clergymen, professors, and students.” (Oct. 24 cable). The documents also include reports of a Korean military incursion into the USIS Information Office in the Kwangju US Cultural Center, and the US government complaints about that. The troops apparently entered the USIS Library after a student from Chonnam University was arrested with materials about the Park assassination he obtained from the library.

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