Making a Small American Army : Founding of the ROK Military Forces, 1945-1948

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This paper deals with the founding process of the ROK Army from the perspective of Americanization in military, meaning the ROK Army's introduction to the U.S. Army's models including training, tactics, professionalism, and military culture. The military founding in South Korea, the Bamboo Plan, began as a Cold War project. Soon after the Japanese surrender in August 1945, American troops hurried into the Korean Peninsula and a small number of American officers worked for creation of this indigenous troop while taking charge of organizing, recruiting, training, feeding, and even teaching English to Koreans. The Bamboo Plan, however, encountered many difficulties between American advisors and Korean advisee from the start such as language barriers and racial prejudices. Furthermore, the U.S. government was generally indifferent toward this military force, leading to a lack of the material support that would have made an inherently difficult relationship easier.
The difficulties, nevertheless, were overcome by the US-ROK joint efforts to make their co-project successful. The joint efforts were possible in spite of the different expectations on the ROK Army, because they firmly shared the common interests to block the Communists' expansion in East Asia and to secure the ROK in particular. While defending the ROK firmly, Americans and Koreans in uniform have succeeded to continue to uphold their special relationship, or the so-called US-ROK partnership cemented in blood. This special partnership became the cornerstone of the ROK military' s mission, a bulwark of liberal democracy, during the entire Cold War era.

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