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The U.S. response, it was decided, would have to demonstrate a readiness to repel any North Korean adventurism, but without any provocative overdramatization. All U.S. units in South Korea, including the Second Infantry Division and the 72 F-4 fighters of the 8,000-man Air Force detachment, were put on a "defense condition 3" level of alert, two notches below a red alert. The Pentagon sent the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk toward a South Korean port and rushed two Airborne Warning and Control planes to the area to monitor North Korean military movements. U.S. diplomats in Peking and Moscow urged the Chinese and Soviets to use their influence to restrain North Korea. Washington also warned North Korea that the U.S. would "react strongly in accordance with its treaty obligations to any external attempt to exploit the situation.''
The tough North Korean army—80,-000 stronger than South Korea's—is deployed behind the entire 151-mile Demilitarized Zone, just 30 miles north of Seoul.
For years there have been increasing fears that Kim II Sung, 67, North Korea's self-appointed ''great and beloved leader,'' might try once more to fulfill his lifelong dream of reuniting the peninsula by conquest. The crisis in the South seemed just the sort of opportunity that might tempt him to gamble on an American lack of resolve.
If North Korean divisions came pouring across the DMZ, the U.S. would almost automatically become involved in another Korean war. At worst, U.S. strategists envision a wider Korean conflict leading to a superpower confrontation between China and the Soviet Union.
Kim II Sung has played one off against the other, to keep from being dominated by either while drawing maximum support from both. If it looked as though U.S. forces were about to drive him back to the Yalu River, the Soviets might be tempted to venture a salvage action—which could provoke Chinese counterintervention.
The tense but orderly aftermath to Park's death appeared to present a solid front against any North Korean taste for adventure. In one sense Park's death could not have been more untimely: the country has been troubled by new outbreaks of unrest. South Korea's economic boom has brought not only prosperity, but also a fresh appetite for long-denied political freedoms. Last month the new tensions between Park's authoritarianism and the hunger for reform erupted in an open revolt by Park's political opposition and an explosion of student riots.
Always impatient with parliamentary processes, Park appeared to regard them at best as a necessary nuisance. He provoked the recent troubles with a highhanded abuse of the virtually absolute powers he held under the 1972 constitution. He had conducted a repressive vendetta against Kim Young Sam, head of the opposition New Democratic Party. Kim incurred Park's wrath by defying a 1975 decree against criticizing the government. The opposition leader publicly called Park's regime "basically dictatorial" and urged the U.S. to "pressure" Park into granting long-denied human rights. Park ordered his tame majority in the 231 -member National Assembly to expel Kim. Overnight, the 69 other opposition members angrily resigned from the assembly in protest.