Abstract
Most studies on the decision by the Republic of Korea (ROK) to send troops into combat in the Vietnam War share an assumption that the ROK did not actually want to dispatch them. However, some historical sources show that since the armistice agreement of the Korean War the ROK had tried to send troops to defeat the communists, and it was rather the United States that had dissuaded the ROK from doing so—until the United States was faced with unexpected difficulty in the ground warfare in 1965. By reviewing existing data and unearthing new documents, this paper clarifies why the ROK had tried to send the combat troops for a long period of time. According to research findings, it was not just to obtain more military and economic compensation from the United States. It was rather to gain more reliable security assurances for the ROK’s own survival. At the time, the ROK was dissatisfied with the deficient bilateral alliance with the United States and had pursued institutionalization of a new regional collective security regime to replace SEATO (Southeast Asia Treaty Organization). The ROK expected the dispatch to create an opportunity to initiate such a regime. These attempts could be seen as commendable. However, the attempts ended in failure, even though the ROK actually dispatched them, because the attempts required a change of the firmly established San Francisco System.
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