4 SOCIAL SCIENTIST f of episodes in a well-defined pattern of global gunboat diplomacy".4 The USA had broken the seclusion policy of Japan through the "black-ships" of Commodore Perry in 1853 and imposed crushing trade agreements upon China (1844, 1858) and was now forcing Korea "open" to gain access to its rich natural resources like gold, to extract monopoly rights in respect of electricity, the railways, the waterways and the street cars, and to obtain trade concessions. Its plan was to use Korea as a strategic springboard for more effective armed intervention in the Far East and for facilitation of the spread of Christian missionary activity.5 The Treaty marked the concluding phase of the circuit of unequal treaties through which the U S A "opened" the countries of East Asia to the West. Commodore Shuefeldt boastfully claimed that by concluding the Treaty he had accomplished "the feat of bringing the last of the exclusive countries within the pale of Western civilization"6 just as his senior, Commodore Perry, had accomplished a similar feat vis-a-vis Japan in 1853. By 1882 the U SA concluded a Treat with Korea on the lines of the Treat of Kanghwa, which Japan had imposed on Korea in 1876, and tbe treaties that the USA itself had concluded with China. The weak, faction-ridden royal court of Korea was just not capable of resisting the U S A any longer. Besides China, to which Korea historically tended to look for protection and support, prevailed upon the Korean court to yield to the US pressures to "open" Korea, in the vain hope that the U S influence on Korea would act as a deterrent on an expansionist Japan.7 In the light of this historial background, Reagan's argument that the Treaty "marked a new chapter in the history of Northeastern Asia" seems to conceal the imperialist advance of the US A in East Asia and the disastrous consequences it had for Korea. Reagan also claimed that the Treaty marked "the auspicious beginning of an enduring partnership" and that the Americans were proud of the role they had played in the past one hundred years of Korean history (1882-1982). It is fallacious and motivated to argue that U S-Korean official relations have had an uninterrupted or continuous history. or a history characterised by "enduring partnership". Such an argument conveniently overlooks the blank periods in the relations between Korea and the U S A as two sovereign, independent entities. It also overlooks the period when the U S A formally imposed its military government in Korea (U S Army Military Government in Korea) between September 1945 and August 1948. It implies that the "Republic of Korea", a progeny of the U S military government in Korea that came into being on August 15, 1948 and to which the U S A was the first to give de jure recognition in January 1, 1949, is the only historically and politically legitimate successor to the Kingdom of Choson, with which the USA had concluded the treaty of 1882. In other words, the implications of the argument are that (i) the Republic of Korea's ante-state history goes back to the last dynasty of the Kingdom