American Stephen Bradner, a former counter-intelligence agent who advised successive US commanders in South Korea, making him an important (if low-volume) voice on US military strategy toward North Korea, died January 17. He was 86.
Bradner, who was well known to many senior South Koreans in government and military circles, passed away in his home state of Rhode Island, where he lived after retiring in 2013. His extraordinary career in Korea spanned six decades.
That career began in 1954 shortly after the Korean War ended. After graduating from Yale, Bradner entered the US Army and was deployed to Korea with the Counter Intelligence Corps. Many North Korean troops were trapped or remained in the South at war’s end. These soldiers, together with local leftists, partisans and infiltrators, attempted to sabotage rebuilding efforts by the Seoul government. Bradner’s role involved questioning captured enemy soldiers, conducting local liaison missions with South Korean military counterparts and analyzing the North Korean power structure.
Given the alien language and culture, the poverty, and general air of drabness of 1950s Korea, most GIs could barely wait to leave. Not Bradner. He went home after completing his military service, but returned in 1957 to Daegu, Korea’s third city, to teach English literature and Western European history at Kyungpook National University.
In 1960, he was an eyewitness to the popular uprising against Syngman Rhee, the authoritarian and deeply corrupt South Korean president.
On 18 April of that year, Bradner shinned up a tree to see what was happening and spotted US military police patrolling in Seoul alongside South Korean military police (MPs). “I was worried that our MPs would be dragged into fighting against Korean student protesters for democracy if any violence broke out,” Bradner told this writer many years later. “So, I went to see the commander of the US intelligence unit on the US Army base in Seoul, and told him of my fears that something was about to happen.”
That officer not only listened to Bradner, but persuaded the military police commander to order his men to return to barracks. The next day, 19 April, was a milestone in Korean history. Thousands of university and high school students swarmed the streets of cities to protest against Rhee. Police opened fire. Bradner was a witness to the tragedy. As police bullets cracked past, he dashed to the British Embassy and heaved himself over its protective wall to escape the fusillade. But dozens of students were killed; many more were wounded. But there was no US military involvement – thanks in part, to Bradner’s counsel. The massacre led to the exile of the disgraced Rhee.
Advisor to senior general
Bradner returned to the US in 1961 to earn a Harvard master’s degree in Asian Studies. He returned to Korea in 1964 to begin a career of nearly 50 years as a civilian employee of the US government. Starting as an intelligence analyst for the US Army, Bradner worked his way up until in 1973 he became deputy special advisor to the US Army 4-star general in command of both UN Command and US Forces in Korea.
As Michael Breen, author of “The New Koreans” later recalled, “When I first met Steve back around 1986, I showed his business card to a politician friend who was running [then-opposition leader] Kim Dae-jung’s camp. He got quite excited, and put on a whispered voice, although there was no need to, and said, ‘He is the most powerful man in Korea!’”
The politician explained to Breen that if opposition politicians had maintained close contact with Bradner, and if then-US Commander General John Wickham had had better counsel during the tumultuous years of 1979-80 events might have turned out more favorably. As it was, General Chun Do-hwan deployed airborne units to crush pro-democracy protests in the city of Gwangju, killing some 200, then engineered a creeping coup that ended with him becoming president. The Gwangju Uprising remains a stain on Korea’s modern conscience, and – due to allegations of US involvement – ignited anti-American sentiment in South Korea.
In 1981, Bradner took over as special advisor from another legendary figure, James Hausman, who retired. Bradner was one of the officials behind US efforts to spare the life of Kim Dae-jung, who had been sentenced to death by a South Korean military court shortly after the Gwangju tragedy. (Kim was eventually elected South Korean president in 1997.)
By the time of his retirement, Bradner had served 14 US commanders in Korea, and risen to a high rank in the US Civil Service, equivalent to a 3-star general in the US Army. The position of special advisor was abolished after Bradner’s departure.
Having a front row seat on the stage of history obviously appealed to him. “I became curious how these things on the Korean peninsula would work out,” Bradner said in an interview with US military newspaper Stars and Stripes on May 25, 2013, the day of his retirement ceremony. “If I hadn’t enjoyed it, I wouldn’t have stayed. Koreans, by-and-large, are a likeable sort of people and they are moving through history at a rapid rate.”
Bradner impressed fellow expatriates for reasons other than professional expertise: He courted and married a noted local beauty, basketball athlete Park Shin-ja.
He was a favorite off-the-record resource for journalists. “I was always impressed by Steve’s accessibility and ability to give solid insights – even over pints at Seoul’s British Embassy Bar,” said Andrew Salmon, a reporter and Korean War history author. “The respect he was held in by ‘old Korea hands’ made clear that here was a man who knew his business, and the fact that he personally advised so many US commanders in Korea spoke volumes.”
‘North Korea like a religious cult-crime family’
Bradner consistently advocated a hard line toward North Korea. In a contribution to “Planning for a Peaceful Korea,” a book edited in 2001 by Henry Sokolski, Bradner wrote: “Kim’s regime was born and bred in absolute hostility to any political authority in the South. Simply, the South is held to be a US colony and Southern officials are viewed as nothing more than lackeys of their colonial masters.”
His characterization of the dynasty in Pyongyang remains quotable. “The regime operates like a combination religious cult-crime family gang,” Bradner wrote. “Resort to violence is common, as are summary executions. The regime’s leaders utilize gangland practices – counterfeiting, drug smuggling, extortion, kidnapping and assassination – as tools of state policy. And as one might expect, they show indifference to the welfare of ordinary citizens.”
To the end, Bradner remained pessimistic about the possibility for a peaceful resolution on the peninsula.
Stephen Bradner is survived by his wife, Shin-ja, two children, Andrew Bradner and Anne Geertman, and four grandchildren.
Hank Morris has been an American expatriate in Korea for nearly 40 years. He first came to Korea in the 1970s with the US Peace Corps. Since the early 1980s his primary career has been in banking, securities and asset management. He also writes for financial publications and is a frequent commentator on the Korean economy and its securities markets.
Doug Tucker lets take more inciting emotions and talk about facts. Here’s another one read and research more facts for yourself. google:
asia pacific journal: The Destruction and Reconstruction of North Korea, 1950 – 1960
Doug Tucker Bruce Cumings · A Murderous History of Korea
ignore the title and look at the facts presented and compare with what you know. Then come back to me.
Or if you are one of those US testosterone rich hillbillies with the intelligence level of a grade schooler, don’t bother.
Doug Tucker your half assed "american world hisotry" is selective and twisted as usual. Search wiki "division of korea" and look up some real facts, and go out your way to research and verify them before coming to me and spew your garbage world view honed in american propaganda and ignorance.
I’m saddened that Steve Bradner, to whom the term Best and Brightest definitely applied without irony, is gone. I had been working with him on his memoirs, wish we’d gotten much farther with the project before he left us. He was a superb if always anonymous source all through my reporting career in Korea, a crusty dissenter whenever wishful thinking about North Korea by leftist peaceniks and rabid anti-Americans (see the comment preceding mine) threatened to turn into the common wisdom. I appreciated that, even though I didn’t share his U.S. politics emphasizing love of Fox News. Condolences to Shin Ja and their offspring.
Americans so like to tell their stories from half way…but the real story (anyone can look up the full story of how korea become so divided, wiki is one source) is Americans hijacked Korean independence after WWII and is the sole party responsible for squeezing out any chance of a unified Korea. However bad Kim Dynasty is it ultimately began with USA actions. Not unlike what happened in Latin America and indonesia, America supported butcherous right wingers that began purging campaign in the south YEARS before Korean war broke out,and when it did its because the butcherous southern dictator carried out political killing campaign for years propped up by Americans and any hint of a unified korea political entity is squeezed out by Americans manipulation at UN. So yes, I’d say US bears the ultimate responsibility for paving the initial road for the formation of Kim dynasty and division of Koreas.
Which gets me thinking, what will ultimately come out of the ashes of Middle East Intervensions of the Americans?