Sec. of State Clinton's Historic Koreagate Scandal Connection

In 1977, The Power Peddlers: How Lobbyists Mold America's Foreign Policy by Russell Howe and Sara Trott noted that "`T.S,' as Park is known to his friends has generated one of his Stateside fortunes and a part of his lobby power by acting as the Korean Government's official broker for American rice supplies" which "means that rice-producing states like California, Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana have to sell to Korea through him."

The same book also observed that "Back in 1970, [Edwin W.] Edwards and fellow Louisiana Congressman Otto Passman had arrived in Seoul with Park and stayed as his guests at the luxurious Chosun Hotel," "in the Fall of 1972, Park was back in the bayou country, staying at Governor Edwards' mansion and even helping Edwards' former congressional aide John Breauz get elected to Edwards' old House seat," and "Governor Edwards says he was first introduced to Park by then Congressman David Pryor...of rice-growing Arkansas."

[Former] U.S. Senator David Pryor preceded [Bill] Clinton [Secretary of State Clinton's husband] as Arkansas governor in the 1970s. Pryor's chief of staff while Arkansas governor was [former] Arkansas Electric Cooperative Coperation President Carl Whillock. In The Clintons Of Arkansas: An Introduction by Those Who Know Them best, Pryor's former chief of staff recalled that after [Secretary of State Clinton's husband, Bill] Clinton decided he wanted to run for congress in 1974, "I climbed upstairs and got a card file with the names of people from throughout the congressional district who had helped [former Arkansas Congressional representative] Jim Trimble" and "I volunteered to travel with Bill a few days to introduce him to influential Democrats in northern Arkansas."

Pryor's former chief of staff also recalled that his brother-in-law, Rudy Moore Jr., "managed Bill's first campaign for governor in 1978" and became Clinton's chief of staff when [Secretary of State Clinton's husband, Bill] Clinton was first elected governor. In the 1992 presidential campaign, [former] U.S. Senator Pryor also worked as a Clinton campaign advisor.

Coincidentally, in recent years, former U.S. Senator Pryor has been both the first dean of the University of Arkansas's Clinton School of Public Service branch, which is located on the grounds of the Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock, and a member of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting [CPB] board of directors; and former U.S. Senator Pryor's son now sits in the U.S. Senate as the representative of the Arkansas Establishment and the Arkansas rice producers that apparently still sell some of their rice on the South Korean foreign market.

(Downtown 8/4/93)