Hahm Pyong-choon

Hahm Pyong-choon was a legal scholar and the son of former vice president Hahm Tae-young. He studied at Northwestern and Harvard, returned to teach at Yonsei University, and undertook research at Yale in the 1960s. In 1970 he entered the presidential office as a political adviser. He became ambassador in Washington in 1973. ¹

At an October 1975 meeting with Deputy Secretary of State Robert Ingersoll, Hahm defended Seoul's proposed purchase of a French nuclear reprocessing facility. He argued that Korea needed training and technology, proposed additional safeguards or a multinational arrangement, and objected that Japan was allowed capabilities being denied to Korea. American officials rejected those arguments because the plant could produce weapons material and threatened wider nuclear cooperation. Their cable also recorded Hahm's tentative suggestion that Seoul might have to cancel, while warning that he appeared to be speaking without instructions. ²

After leaving Washington, Hahm again worked as a presidential diplomatic adviser, at the foreign policy research institute and at Yonsei. Appointed presidential chief of staff in June 1982, he accompanied Chun Doo-hwan on the overseas journey during which he was killed in the bombing at Rangoon's Aung San mausoleum on October 9, 1983. ¹