Office of the Historian

44. Memorandum From James C. Thomson of the National Security Council Staff and the President’s Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (Bundy) to President Johnson1

Washington, May 14, 1965, 5:25 p.m.

SUBJECT

  • Development Loan Commitment to Korea

The attached paper from State requests your approval for the inclusion of a specific $150-million Development Loan commitment, over the next few years, in your joint communique with President Park next Tuesday.2

This item will be one part of a generalized assistance package designed to reassure the Koreans of our continued support despite the imminent conclusion of a Japan-Korea settlement. The sum in question is no more than we would normally plan to provide over the next three years. Furthermore, the communique will of course stipulate that the provision of such funds will be “subject to applicable legislation and appropriations.”

[Page 91]

Although it is unusual to cite a specific figure in connection with such a visit, both Embassy Seoul and the various Washington agencies are strongly convinced that Park has urgent need of such a quantified commitment in order to cope successfully with the acute fears of his opponents and of large sections of the Korean people that we are on the verge of abandoning their country to Japanese control.

In these circumstances, it would seem appropriate to make this exception to our general custom of avoiding such figures in a State Visit communique.

JCT Jr.
McG. B.
  1. Source: Johnson Library, National Security File, Country File, Korea, Park Visit Briefing Book. Secret.↩
  2. Attached but not printed. Tuesday was May 18. The President approved the proposal and added a handwritten notation: “Also asking Horning, McPherson, Busby et al. if they can’t make some imaginative, substantive contribution for the communique.” Horace Busby, Jr., and Donald F. Horning were Special Assistants to the President and Harry C. McPherson, Jr., was Special Council to the President.↩