UAlbany Professor’s Book Details Secret Weapons Program that Helped Build Modern Korea
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Loading... - Joon-Sup Tokgo
- 03 Apr 2023
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Peter Kwon, assistant professor of Korean Studies at the University at Albany (right), interviews Lee Kyongsuh (left), a legendary scientist who was in charge of South Korea's precision missile development in the 1970s. (Photo provided)
Peter Kwon was at the Presidential Archives in South Korea in 2012 conducting field research for a dissertation he planned to write on Korean regional social movements when he stumbled upon a trove of recently declassified government documents.
The documents held details about the history of Korea’s defense industry that Kwon, then a PhD candidate at Harvard University and a visiting researcher at the Academy of Korean Studies, had never seen or heard of before. And they were eye-popping — details of secret weapons operations taking place against the wishes of the United States and other allies throughout the 1970s.
“The U.S. was opposed to South Korea's militarization and development of new weapons because it could escalate tensions between North and South Korea and trigger an arms race in East Asia," said Kwon, who joined the University at Albany as an assistant professor of Korean Studies in 2018. “And South Korea not only tried to develop the conventional weapons, but the nuclear missile also, which was banned by the United States.”
It was then Kwon decided to change the topic of his dissertation. He was riveted and wound up spending the next decade visiting Korea on a regular basis to read up on newly declassified materials and to interview generations of older Koreans who worked on these weapons programs. Read More…
