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CONF IDENT IAL eal Nig Medicine

(Classification) Desp. No..580_ _
From_AMEMBASSY SEOUL —

"To

 

Memorandum of Conversation with Major General Chung Nae-hyok:

On the evening of June 14th, Major General Chung Nae-hyok, Minister of
Commerce and Industry, came home with me from the Chargé*s reception for an
impromptu supper. I had known General Chung previously in Washington while he
was visiting in 1958.

General Chung is another moderate brought in just after the dart of the coup,
he is not, as he emphasized, a core member. He has always been known for his
intelligence. He expressed himself as wanting greater press freedom immediately
and émphasized the return of; civilian government. He had been deputy to Maj.

Gen. Kim Ung-soo in G-4, admired him, and was extremley regretful“of* most arrests~
of military officers. He appeared to understand our fears regarding the totali-
tarian, repressive tendency of the government which I outlined to him at some
length. His chief comment of interest was: "Tf the coup had been led by senior
officers, arrests and tendencies of this sort would not have occurred. We who
joined later, wanted to keep unity and shake hands with these younger officers.

It is true that they did without our knowledge and we later excused, as being
done under heat of pressure, many unfortunate things. General Park Chong-hui
himself has tried to argue them into greater moderation, but some of the Lt. Cols.
are pretty strict.” Like Lt. Gen. Chang Do-young, Maj. Gen. Yoo and Lt. Gen.

Kim $dk-pdom, Minister Chung expressed hope for the long run and expected that
government would become more moderate and would come to broaden and court support
among the populace.

Comment: It seems increasingly clear that most senior officers constitute
a moderate element of some significance and strength around the present government ;
these men still listen to us even though the radius of their resulting action is
circumscribed. The essence of the difficulty seems to lie in the fact that such
men neither control nor exert much influence on the organs of suppression and
the policy which controls them. One course of action which is presently feasible
is to get at each of these men, one by one, letting them know what we know and
giving them arguments to use with the younger group in the present state councils.
The core group will continue to guard its function of suppression jealously. If
we can keep the senior officers with us -~ (I still think they are not far from
us), -- and use our purse-string power in a way which will not alienate them,
there may be some eventual hope that concerted pressure can get the young
Gauleiters to relax their grip. To do this in such a way as not to excite the
Lt. Cols. into still further precipitate action will be an extremely delicate
diplomatic operation.

USIS:GHenderson:iac

~ CONFIDENTIAL