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Exactly what happened at Kimpo was still being debated last week. While some of the Americans tried to lock arms with Kim in order to stay close to him, the security guards grabbed him, pushed him into an elevator and took him home. Three U.S. embassy officials who were at the airport for the arrival were kept away from the party. As Kim was being hustled out, a scuffle broke out involving the security men, the visiting Americans and some of Kim's South Korean supporters.
The Seoul government's position was that the security guards had used "minimum force" to move Kim. In fact, said Government Spokesman Choi Tae Soon, the only person who struck out at anyone in anger was Kim himself, who, according to Choi, tried to hit a security agent with his cane. Kim denied the accusation, charging that "the Korean government and nobody else is to blame for what happened."
Almost everybody agreed that there had been confusion over what was supposed to happen. Before the plane arrived, a South Korean official aboard apparently neglected to brief the Kim party on arrival procedures. A U.S. diplomat in Seoul said later that the South Koreans had "changed the plan several times, the last time being less than 30 minutes before Kim's plane arrived." The South Koreans are highly security conscious, all the more so since the 1983 incident in Rangoon, Burma, when several South Korean Cabinet ministers were killed by a bomb supposedly set by agents from Communist North Korea. Added to that was the guards' obvious animosity toward Kim. Explaining that Kim would not be passing through a VIP area at the airport, one agent told reporters bluntly, "Kim no VIP."
U.S. Ambassador Richard ("Dixie") Walker, a political appointee, defended his embassy's role in the event. He said that the mission had worked out arrival details with the Seoul government but that the arrangement "was not honored." The embassy, he said, had done "much more than it usually does to assist American citizens because we knew this was an event with potential for serious trouble."
Walker also expressed the view that some of the Americans had "provoked" the airport trouble in order to create "a media event." That triggered angry replies from the Americans involved in the incident. Said Derian: "Baloney." Said White: "We were attacked by a flying wedge of plainclothes goons." Added another member of the group, Frances ("Sissy") Farenthold, Texas attorney and onetime gubernatorial candidate: "We were being as careful as we could because the whole point was to get Kim safely back home." As for Ambassador Walker, she snapped, "He really couldn't have cared less what happened to us."
There was no indication that the South Koreans would apologize to the U.S. delegation, which, South Korean officials explained, had come to Seoul in a private capacity. "Do these Americans consider South Korea a colony?" asked one senior member of Chun's government. "This shows contempt for us."
The Reagan Administration was exasperated and embarrassed by the affair. Secretary of State George Shultz called it "a scuffle" that had stemmed from a misunderstanding over the security arrangements. President Reagan, in an interview, blamed the trouble on "bad judgment on both sides" and insisted that South Korea's democracy "is working."