Office of the Historian, Release of Foreign Relations, 1969-1976, Volume XIX, Part 1, Korea, 1969-1972

The Department of State released today Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume XIX, Part 1, Korea, 1969–1972. (Part 2 of the volume on U.S. bilateral relations with Japan, 1969–1972 will be published at a later date.) During the first Nixon administration, Washington confronted an array of difficult foreign policy questions concerning the Korean peninsula. The preponderance of documents published in this volume concern security issues. As in earlier years, U.S. policymakers continued to deal with North Korean provocations between 1969 and 1972, the most serious being the North Korean Air Force’s destruction of a U.S. surveillance (EC–121) airplane over the Sea of Japan in April 1969. The U.S. military presence in South Korea also surfaced as an important topic. During Nixon’s first term, the United States reduced its forces in Korea from 63,000 to 43,000 soldiers. Although President Park was unable to prevent the U.S. drawdown, he did extract aid with which to modernize the South Korean military. Other records in this publication relate to the deployment of South Korean combat forces in Vietnam....