| This study documents the Johnson Administration's internationalizing the Vietnam War by inviting South Korea into the conflict. South Korea, a diplomatically isolated, economically undeveloped and militarily threatened client of the U.S. had to be transformed into a combat-sharing partner in America's containment strategy in Southeast Asia. This required America's pervasive intervention. Therefore, the U.S. initiated the rapprochement between South Korea and Japan, the latter being the colonizer of the former, underwrote economic development, and further militarized South Korea. Also, the U.S. had to finance South Korea's force dispatch to South Vietnam, including cash compensations to individual soldiers. These interventions enabled South Korea to maintain nearly 10 percent of its military forces, or 50,000 soldiers, in South Vietnam. Altogether, 300,000 South Korean soldiers experienced the war.; The U.S.-Korean alliance, however, contained structural problems. The material rewards from South Korea's participation in the Vietnam War so pervasively affected South Korean society, its future was tied to the continuation and intensification of the war. America's inability to extricate itself from the conflict in South Vietnam translated into more opportunities for South Korea. Also, as America's dependence on its military contributions to the war effort increased, South Korea sought realignment of the hierarchical relationship that had existed between the two countries. South Korea demanded to be treated as an ally, rather than as a client assisting patron in a war. Korea's demands included accepting South Korea's input in the long-term direction of the war. When the U.S. refused, the alliance not only stopped expanding, but it lost all the trappings of an international anti-Communist crusade which was the way the allies had characterized it. This study demonstrates that a weak client can be mobilized to become a major partner in patron's military effort. However, unless the client can transcend its subservient position, that partnership would degenerate. |
