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South Korea South Korean and United States Cooperation
In 1968 the United States and South Korea held their first
annual Security Consultative Meeting. This meeting provided highlevel defense experts from the two countries with an official
forum for reassessing the nature of the North Korean threat to
South Korea, for agreeing on an overall defense strategy for
South Korea, and for outlining the roles of both countries in
deterring a North Korean invasion.
During the 1989 Security Consultative Meeting in Washington
(the meetings were held in alternate years in Seoul and
Washington), the two nations agreed that the Moscow-assisted
modernization of P'yongyang's air force and army indicated that
the military situation in Northeast Asia remained tense and
unpredictable. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's Korean policy,
focused on promoting unofficial contacts with Seoul though
Moscow, continued to bolster P'yongyang's military establishment.
South Korean and United States leaders who attended the 1989
Security Consultative Meeting considered it unlikely that the
Soviet Union would initiate a military conflict targeting South
Korea. They believed, however, that increasing Soviet military
support for North Korea made it highly probable that the Soviet
Union would continue to assist North Korea if war broke out. For
this reason, United States secretary of defense Richard B. Cheney
and South Korean minister of national defense Yi Sang-hun agreed
to strengthen strategic planning through existing organizations,
such as the CFC.
Data as of June 1990
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