This proposal was made to Lieutenant General Bruce C. Clarke, ranking U.S. officer in Korea at the time, who relayed it to the Department of State where it was promptly turned down. Korean forces were not sent, nor was there any further action.
Ten years later, in May 1964, Major General Norman B. Edwards, Chief, U.S. Joint Military Advisory Group, Korea, began preliminary planning to send a Korean Mobile Army Surgical Hospital to Vietnam. On 10 July 1964 the Korean Minister of National Defense, Kim Sung Eun, confirmed this planning in a letter to General Hamilton H. Howze, then Commander in Chief, United Nations Command, stating that the government of the Republic of Korea was prepared to send one reinforced Mobile Army Surgical Hospital and ten Taekwondo (karate) instructors to the Republic of Vietnam upon the request of that government. On 16 July 1964, General Howze wrote Minister Kim that in his capacity as chief of the United Nations Command he would concur in the release of such personnel as would be required to staff the mobile hospital and provide the Taekwondo instructors. He further noted that the U.S. Department of Defense would provide logistical support for the movement and continued operations of these deploying forces. The support was to be provided through Military Assistance Program channels in accordance with the applicable procedures of that program. Equipment, supplies, and services to be provided were to include organizational equipment listed in the mobile hospital table of distribution and allowances as approved by Headquarters, Provisional Military Assistance Advisory Group, Korea, beyond the capabilities of the Republic of Korea to provide, and subsistence and clothing for military personnel. Pay, travel, and per diem costs or other allowances for the personnel involved were not to be provided by the United States.
Following these discussions the Republic of Korea Survey (Liaison) Team, which included six Korean and five U.S. officers, departed on 19 August 1964 for Vietnam. After a series of meetings with officials of both the Vietnamese Ministry of Defense and the U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, working agreements were signed on 5 September 1964 at Saigon between the Korean and Vietnamese representatives. In essence, the agreements provided that the Republic of Vietnam would build and maintain the hospital and provide quarters; the Korean Army mobile hospital unit would operate the hospital; Korea would provide Taekwondo instructors, and the United States would support the thirty-four officers and ninety-six enlisted men of the hospital unit and the ten instructors through the Mil[itary]
