The Korea Liaison Office (KLO) was an American military intelligence unit composed primarily of South Koreans.
The KLO conducted a wide array of intelligence gathering and clandestine operations, including training and sending spies to North Korea.
[3] Around the late 1940s, the United States determined that South Korea was sufficiently stable, and began to withdraw the occupational XXIV Corps.
By January 25, 1949, the Corps left the peninsula and was replaced by the 5th Regimental Combat Team and the Korean Military Advisory Group (KMAG).
It sent over the transcripts of secret speeches that Kim Il Sung delivered to his officers, as well as the movements of troops and conditions of infrastructure in the North.
[citation needed] After the Chinese People's Volunteer Army joined the war in October 1950, UN Forces began a chaotic retreat south.
[citation needed] On December 20, the Army activated the 442nd Counterintelligence Corps detachment, which assumed operational control over the KLO and division-level TLOs.
[14] In January 1951, FECOM tasked Colonel John H. McGee of the Eighth Army with reorienting the KLO towards more tactical instead of intelligence operations.
The two organizations also established bases on islands along the west coast of Korea, where they would launch "Salamander operations": the use of boats to deploy and retrieve agents.
They also continued Aviary operations, although they adopted the tactic of deploying agents close to enemy lines, and having them disguised as North Korean soldiers.
[16] On December 10, 1951, a new theater-level organization for intelligence operations was created: the Combined Command for Reconnaissance Activities, Korea (CCRAK).
[17] However, according to military historian John Patrick Finnegan, their agents in the North produced limited results, and nothing indicates that they ever supplied significant intelligence on enemy plans.
[18] The U.S.'s inability to predict both the North's invasion and the Chinese entrance into the Korean War has remained a subject of academic analysis for decades.
He also notes that, unlike in the European theater of World War II, Koreans had little experience with modern intelligence operations, and received extremely little training before deployment.
[9] In 2004, veterans of the KLO petitioned the U.S. government for compensation, but their request was rejected on the grounds that they were not legally considered members of the U.S. Armed Forces.