The assassination of Park Chung Hee on the night of October 26, 1979, came as a deep shock to Washington and U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers in Seoul. For years, they’d been
10/28/1979 – Ambassador Gleysteen’s memo, “Initial reflections on Post-Park Chung Hee Situation in Korea,” describes the many groups in South Korea competing for US support in the aftermath of the Park assassination. It also shows how far removed Gleysteen and his diplomats were from the reality of a country that had suffered under a harsh military dictatorship for 18 years. “A modestly liberalized Yushin structure would be welcomed by a major of Koreans, but I am not optimistic that it can be realized now,” he wrote. He also wrote: “We must avoid early pressures for any dramatic steps of liberalization.” And he admits that in the past, the US exerted enormous pressure on South Korea. “We should keep in mind that the Korea of 1979 is not the Korea of the early ‘60s when we were able to bully the early Park regime into constitutional reforms.”
