| The contemporary features of the Republic of Korea were forged in its most formative years in the anvil of war, financed by Americans, in the jungles of Vietnam. Per capita, a comparable number of South Koreans as Americans fought in the Vietnam War. 326,000 Korean soldiers and 100,000 Korean civilians were dispatched to Vietnam from 1964 to 1973. 16,300 Korean soldiers were killed or wounded.; Park Chung Hee was eager to send Korean troops to Southeast Asia in the 1960s, as his predecessor Syngman Rhee had been in the 1950s. Park was determined to exploit the opportunity provided by the Vietnam War to build a military-industrial complex in South Korea capable of successfully challenging the North. At a critical moment in Korean development, South Koreans were deployed in exchange for billions of dollars in grants, loans, subsidies, technology transfers, and preferential markets. Park saw the Vietnam War was the key to achieving an assertive, unified Korea and escaping from American and Japanese dependency.; South Korea ultimately emerged from the war as a "rich nation with a strong army," an aspiration promoted by Korean leaders for a century. But a decade of unsurpassed economic growth was not the only legacy of Korean participation in the Vietnam War. The consequences were far further reaching. Other legacies include political authoritarianism, a hardening of the North-South division, and a peninsular arms race in both conventional and nuclear weapons. The destabilization of global security and the establishment of dictatorship in Korea, was ultimately a result of how Americans prosecuted the Vietnam War and not a consequence of war's outcome.; There has been no comprehensive study, in any language, of Korean participation in the Vietnam War. Therefore the bulk of the research for this dissertation has been drawn from formerly controlled and recently declassified primary sources from both the United States and South Korea. The story of Korean participation in the Vietnam War is complex and has been too long neglected. It is my hope that both Americans and Koreans may find this study relevant to their own understanding of the present world. |
