Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952–1954, Korea, Volume XV, Part 1

FE files, lot 55 D 338

The Ambassador in Japan (Murphy) to the Ambassador in Korea (Muccio)¹

secret
personal

Tokyo, June 20, 1952.

Dear John: General Clark is away for a few days on an inspection trip to Hokkaido, etc. This morning General Hickey asked to see me and showed me your telegrams to General Clark of June 16² and June 18³ and after discussion with him I said that I would write you personally to explain that General Clark, from what he has told me and from what Hickey tells me, objected to going to Pusan and intervening at this stage because he is convinced that you should be able to handle this as a political matter for which you are best qualified. He believes that as there is no apparent danger of disturbance of military lines of communication or to the ROK troop situation, it would be premature and inadvisable for Clark to inject himself into the Pusan picture.

I gather that he has indicated to Van Fleet that the latter should be available if there is no alternative and it appears urgently necessary. Here again I know before departure Clark indicated that he thought that Van Fleet should be injected into Pusan politics only when urgently necessary.

The other point that was made is that in your telegrams you continually speak about an eventual compromise but have never outlined what your opinion of a satisfactory and favorable compromise would be. According to Hickey it would seem that your Embassy from the beginning took the side of the Assembly and never gave Rhee any support on the issues. Hickey expressed the opinion that the Assembly could not be 100% right and Rhee 100% wrong on the initial issues.

Would it be possible for you to outline for strictly US consideration, of course, what basically a fair and practicable compromise could be and then using that as a target try to figure out ways and means of putting pressure where pressure may be made to achieve that target? Merely to generalize about a compromise would not seem to advance matters far.

I know that you will understand that I am writing to you personally and with no desire to inject myself into a matter which is so primarily your responsibility but if I can be helpful in any way, please do not hesitate to tell me. I realize what an unenviable situation you have on your hands.

All the best,

Yours ever,

Robert Murphy

1. Murphy sent a copy of this letter to Allison with the explanation in a covering letter that he was writing to Muccio at the insistence of FEC. The source text was Allison’s copy.
2. DIP 342 from Pusan, p. 338.
3. Presumably telegram 1395 from Pusan, which was repeated to Clark, p. 341.