The American Foreign Policy Toward the Korean Peninsula in the Immediate Aftermath of President Park Chung-Hee's Assassination
Authors:   Asia-Europe Perspective Association, Shin Hyun-Ick 
Published: June 2018

President Park Chung-hee's assassination on Oct. 26, 1979 shocked the entire world, as well as Korea. This was all the more so because South Korea was considered a developing country that had made remarkable achievements under Park's leadership and under the aegis of the United States, despite it being one of the last few nations under the Cold War system.
Faced with a crisis on the Korean Peninsula due to threats from North Korea, the United States pledged to defend U.S. interests in Korea. And it was determined to cope with the crisis on the peninsula also from the standpoint of defending its interests in Japan. The United States did not let its guard down against the possibility of a power struggle among various South Korean factions, while confirming its economic and military interests in Korea.
Showing a very sensitive response to rumors about its involvement in Park's assassination on the one hand, the United States saw his death as an opportunity for South Korea to achieve democratization on the other. Then U.S. Ambassador to South Korea William Glysteen dismissed the rumors, calling them “nonsense.” As he implied, there is no open or explicit evidence that substantiated the rumors. But based on what Kim Jae-kyu, Park's assassin, had said and how he had behaved and on various publications and papers published in the United States earlier, speculation was rife that leaders in Washington may had aided and abetted Kim's action consciously or unconsciously.
At the time, Glysteen said that such rumors had been created due to some ambiguous circumstances in which Park was assassinated, some hypothetical American media stories about the U.S.'s involvement based on such ambiguous circumstances, and state-run media's reckless incrimination of the United States in some communist bloc countries. As a superpower, the United States, however, was not so naive as to appear obviously that it had anything to do with the incident.
And Kim seems to have interpreted in his own way what he had heard in the United States. He may have possibly seen what U.S. leaders had told him concerning their understanding of the political situation in South Korea as an indirect “go-ahead” for him to put his determination into action. But this hypothetical needs more intensive studies in the future.
After Park's death, the United States took a few things into consideration as far as South Korea was concerned: whether the next leader would be capable of managing the government, whether the next power group would be pro-U.S., and how to minimize political expenses here. These were variables the United States thought seriously of to defend its interests in Korea as an outside force. The United States then apparently believed it might have to use those variables when it had to exert some influence in South Korea's domestic affairs. Under these circumstances, South Korea's opposition parties were naturally left out as they ran counter to the U.S.'s principle of realism called “maximization of efficiency.” As far as the ruling party in South Korea was concerned at that time, no figures, even Kim Jong-pil or Chung Il-kwon, emerged as powerful candidates for leadership, which means that the United States had to try hard to find one.
At the time, the United States saw the South Korean situation following Park's assassination from a security point of view. It paid attention to a peculiar social structure in South Korea under which people were united against threats from North Korea and a solid bureaucracy existed. This led the United States to take a “wait-and-see,” noninterference attitude toward South Korea. In fact, the United States adopted such a policy because it was reluctant to bear or pay expenses for its involvement. After all, the United States took a “wait-and-see” attitude after Park's death.