ROKA Intelligence Services

["Young Kim" <y_s_k@worldnet.att.net>]

Hi, folks:

Below is installment #166 of Chosun Ilbo's "Spit on My Grave" - a bio of
Park Jung Hee.

BTW, The Spit on My Grave includes detailed history of the Korean War from
the natives' POV.
It is available in English at http://www.chosun.com/g__.html    Well worth a
read.

I believe Chosun Ilbo is looking for sponsors for the English version.


ysk

----
(166) War And Love/ An Invited Invasion


5 War And Love

An Invited Invasion

At combat-intelligence, Park Chung-hee was able to watch the second failure
of the US
intelligence apparatus, a failure that resulted in huge loss of life. The
Americans had first
mistaken North Korean intentions, disregarding South Korean intelligence and
now secondly,
the Chinese invasion. The major sufferers of these blunders were the South
Korean army and
South Korean people, the destiny of a country with no independent defence
and a 'free-ride'
national security policy. It is possible that due to this Park concluded
that the US mistake
was really MacArthur's way of justifying an attack on the Chinese mainland.
His view on
the origins of the war were complex.

In 1963, as chairman of the Supreme National Reconstruction Council, Park
said that the US
was responsible for dividing the nation in his book 'The Country, Revolution
And I' stating
that the division of Germany and Vietnam was due to war loss and civil war,
but in the case
of Korea it was convenience for the US and Soviet Union. He said that Korea
suffered under
Japan while its provisional government had fought with the allies against
the Japanese, and
that US involvement in the Korean War was directly related to world peace
and the US
defence policy in the pacific area, not simply the defence of Korea. If
South Korea had
collapsed during the Korean War, Japan would have been in danger, Russian
submarines
would have threatened Okinawa and the US pacific defence line would have
been relocated to
mainland America. He extended this logic to say that the US should not force
western style
democracy on Korea which did not fit its situation, citing the American role
in the Korean
War. In short Park refused to acknowledge the theory that the US saved Korea
to simply
defend freedom. He did not deny thanks to the Americans but resisted their
interference in
domestic politics using the equation "US = savior".

There is a viewpoint that South Korea was a victim of a disaster produced by
a small plot
by Kim Il-sung being enmeshed in a larger plot by MacArthur. Ryo Hagihara,
who had been
Pyongyang correspondent for the Japanese communist 'Akahada' newspaper and
later after
being disillusioned by Kim Il-sung, researched for two and a half years 1.6
million pages of
documents captured by the US and wrote a book entitled, 'The Korean War -
MacArthur
and Kim Il-sung's Plots'. In the book, which destroys the North's contention
that South
Korea started the war, the author states,

'The plot secretly carried out by Kim Il-sung prior to the Korean War was
detected by
MacArthur's far eastern army in full detail, one year prior to
implementation, and was used
by MacArthur as part of a global strategy. It can be said that the Korean
War was a joint
product of Kim Il-sung and MacArthur. The Russians who lauded Kim Il-sung,
who had
only a company commander's experience, as a military genius and strategist,
the Chinese who
encouraged armed unification, Kim Il-sung's blind acts and America's
intervention changed a
peaceful Korea into hell.'

MacArthur's far east command opened a liaison office in Seoul, the KLO and
this intelligence
gathering operation sent enormous numbers of agents into the North Korean
government and
industries. They sent back 1,195 items of intelligence right up to June 24,
1950. This indicates
that at least a hundred agents were working in North Korea for MacArthur.
Their reports on
war preparations included the progress of ethnic Koreans in the Chinese army
entering North
Korea en masse, the structure and composition of North Korean divisions, the
location of
combat airfields and Kim Il-sung's secret address. On March 15, 1950 an
agent code-named
SAN93 sent a copy of part of Kim Il-sung's speech before three hundred and
sixty battalion
commanders. It was virtually a declaration of war.

'In 1945, North Korea concentrated on defence, but this year we will start
an heroic struggle
to unify the fatherland. To attain this objective we will create numerous
incidents on the 38th
parallel to attract the South Korean puppet army's attention and after that
is done our
guerrillas will attack their rear. This is the only way to unify the
fatherland.'

All of these reports were forwarded to major-general Willoughby, MacArthur's
intelligence
chief. Willoughby confessed in an article in 'Cosmopolitan' magazine in
1951, that MacArthur
was aware of North Korean war plans but had reported to Washington that the
possibility of
invasion in spring or summer did not exist.

Yeon Jong of the 'Canon' unit, based on Paekryongdo correctly grasped the
movements of
the Chinese army and felt betrayed by the UN withdrawal after the Chinese
intervened. On
meeting Willoughby in the US after the war, he asked,

"Did you send the information we gathered at the cost of our lives to
MacArthur?"

"Of course. I sent the information to MacArthur and the state department,
but we still
suffered losses. I couldn't report directly to Collins by-passing
MacArthur."

Yeon Jong later wrote in his memoirs that the reason MacArthur intentionally
disregarded the
intelligence reports was because he wished to attack Chinese Manchuria.

'From a strategic viewpoint, he must have judged that China's control of
Manchuria was not
benefitting the free world. MacArthur may have wanted to go into Manchuria
and would
have used the Chinese intervention as an excuse. MacArthur, who was called a
political
soldier was finally defeated by the politicians as soldiers merely think
about winning whereas
politicians follow public opinion.'

The theory that South Korea invaded the North and the claims from leftists
that the South
guided the North into a pre-emptive attack are anachronistic. Theories by
right wingers such
as Yeon Jong and Chung Il-kwon tend to follow the idea that the Americans
allowed the
North to invade South Korea. This view explains the misjudgments made by
MacArthur on
the North's surprise attack and later the Chinese involvement, and gives
credence to the idea
that the US sought a legal means of military intervention to prevent Soviet
and Chinese
expansion in the region. If this was the case, then Kim Il-sung was blindly
dragged into a
war with little idea of the real consequences on a global scale.


(The photograph shows Yeon Jong, right, a member of the Canon intelligence
gathering
group.)

(By Cho Gab-je, mongol@chosun.com; Lee Dong-wook, done@chosun.com)