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.

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.