The Carter Administration’s Policy Towards South Korea ——A Case Study On Security,human Rights And Trilateral Talks Policy

The Carter administration is widely regarded by the academia as a period of high tensions between the United States and South Korea during the Cold War.The main reasons for this tension were three initiatives in Carter Administration’s South Korean policy on security,human rights and diplomacy.However,due to the limitation of the original historical data and the research perspective,the academic circles neither had insufficient research on those policies,nor did they assess the Carter administration’s overall policies deeply.Therefore,based on the declassified archives of the Carter Administration,the US Congress and the two Koreas,this study aims to explore the following three questions: first,the Carter Administration’s policy decision-making on withdrawal US troops from the ROK,intervention of the Korean political democratization process and the proposal of the US-ROK-DPRK trilateral talks;second,the reasons for the adjustments,suspensions and failures of these three initiatives;finally,the status and characteristics of the Carter’s Korean policies.This study is divided into five chapters:The first chapter is the background chapter of the whole study.It discussed the mainly changes in the US policy toward South Korea after the World War II.This article believed that after the WWII,the US policy toward South Korea experienced three important changes: the first was from establishing a neutral and united country in the Korean peninsula to preventing the expansion of Soviet forces from the north of Korea peninsula and supporting establishment of the Republic of Korea.The second was after Korean War,due to fearing expansion of Asain Communist camp,the United States decided to undertake defense obligations for the ROK.The third was that during the 1970 s,the U.S.has increased its emphasis on the détente around the countries of the Korean peninsula.The Carter Administration’s policy on ROK basically continued this détente adjustment.The second chapter mainly examined the Carter Administration’s policy to withdraw US troops from South Korea.This paper argued that the withdrawal policy was a decision in advance by President Carter.The main reason for its adjustment in the mid 1978 was the U.S.Congress postponed approval of the compensation assistance for the withdrawal plan.On January 1979,the leak of intelligence research on North Korea’s military force had a direct impact on Carter’s policy of suspending troop withdrawals.The Carter’s withdrawal policy has obvious internal orientations.The fundamental reason for the adjustment and suspension of it result from the basic interests of the United States in maintaining status quo and stability on the Korean Peninsula.The third chapter analyzed the Carter government’s human rights policy toward South Korea.This study argued that the Carter government’s human rights policy to the South Korea mainly focused on the question of political democratization.Assassination of Park Chung-hee is a turning point in Carter’s human rights policy.Before this,the United States adopted a “quiet diplomacy but with limited time” strategy.However,after the death of Park Chung-hee and increasingly tense in the international situation,the US policy priorities has gradually shifted to maintain stability and order in South Korea.The transformation in Carter’s human rights policy and its limited influence on the democratization process in South Korea reflected the restrictions of US president’s private wishes when compared with the international situation and the long-term interests of the United States.The fourth chapter mainly discussed the trilateral talks and the reasons for its failure.After taked the office as President,Carter made a proposal for hold a conference among the United States,South and North Korea.The proposal was frustrated twice in 1977-1978 due to opposition from South Korea.By 1979,because of North Korea’s refusal,it was failed thirdly.This study aruged that the underlying cause of this failure was the recommendations of the trilateral talks themselves lacked substantial attractiveness for each side.The US-ROK-DPRK talks is a main diplomatic efforts of Carter administration which aim to easing tension on the Korean Peninsula.However,its failures reflected the limited impacts of the Northeast Asian détente in the 1970 s on the Cold War alliance system in Korean peninsula.By synthesizing the above three policies,the fifth chapter made some comments on the Carter government’s policy toward South Korea.This study concluded that from the perspective of the historical evolution of US policy toward South Korea,Carter Administrations’ s South Korean policy was transitional.The three intiatives were all gathered in the early stage of the Carter Administration,namely 1977-1979,they showed an inheritance of the former two Republican government’s détente plans.When the international situation became tense again,Carter suspended these adjustments and his policy toward South Korea turned to emphasizing on stability.From the perspective of motivation for Carter’s policy decision-making,its Korean policy had obvious internal orientation.When operating the three policies,the Carter administration particularly emphasized the separation of policies on the security,human rights and trilateral talks.This is an important reason for its failures.In the conclusion,this study believed that the three changes made by the Carter government were a continuation of the Nixon-Ford government’s idea that adjusted the Korean policy to adapt to the new situation in Northeast Asia in the détente era.These changes reflected that in the 1970 s,U.S.paid more attention on the South Korea’s political democracy,economic development and the defense self-reliance.However,these changes had not shack the basic objectives of the United States policy on the Korean Peninsula,namely maintaining the divided status quo in the Korean Peninsula stabilized and perpetuated.The same was true for the Carter Administration’s South Korean initiatives.It not only affected the prospects and effects for successful policy implementations,but also led to the disillusionment of the Korean people on American democracy and induced widespread anti-American in the 1980 s.