Robinson (2007) LIBERATION, CIVIL WAR, AND DIVISION

IT WAS CLEAR by the spring of 1945 that the Japanese war effort was hopeless. Information came into the colony in bits and pieces from businessmen and students returning from Japan. The Korean nationalist government in exile in Nanking was beaming shortwave broadcasts to Korea on Allied radio from both China and the Soviet Union; a group of radio technicians working for JDOK, the colonial broadcasting network, were arrested for monitoring such broadcasts in April 1945. Intelligent consumers of war news had already fi gured out and the increasingly hysterical Japanese propaganda made it obvious that the end might be near. Nobody, however, expected the sudden surrender of the Japanese on August 15; indeed, Governor General Abe was informed by Tokyo on the plan to surrender only on August 11. It is not certain how many Koreans—in schools, government offi ces, Japanese businesses and manufacturing plants—heard the historic broadcast of Japan’s concession of defeat by Emperor Hirohito on the morning of August 15, but by noon the streets were full of celebrating Koreans. At long last Liberation had arrived. The once-formidable colonial state withered away in the next few weeks as it scrambled to fi nd some group to assume control of the country, protect the expatriated Japanese population, liquidate its assets, and prepare for the evacuation of Japanese citizens and government personnel from the peninsula. The colonial prisons emptied themselves of both common criminals and the more numerous political resisters on August 16, and exiled nationalist groups frantically searched for ways to return to the homeland where they would swell the ranks of pretenders to political leadership in the power vacuum that followed the Japanese defeat. The end of the war also meant the repatriation of millions of Koreans from Japan, Manchuria, northern Korea, China, and even from the custody of Allied forces in the South Pacifi c and Southeast Asia. This prodigious mass of humanity—everyone from elite exiled political leaders to common laborers and former peasants—returned to a land reeling from the effects of forty years of Japanese rule (Cumings, Origins of the Korean War, 1981). And in the restless uncertainty following Liberation was a three-week interregnum in the capital Seoul that found a nervous Governor General Abe waiting to surrender to some representative of the victorious Allied army, whose fi rst elements did not arrive until September 8. 100 This content downloaded from 128.112.225.4 on Thu, 16 Aug 2018 17:30:23 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/termsLiberation, Civil War, and Division 101 In hindsight it is easy to paint a foreboding picture of what was to come. For ordinary Koreans, however, Liberation brought joy and celebration in the streets. People could scarcely have imaged how events would unfold in the coming years. We now know that during fi ve years following Liberation, forces were set in motion that even now continue to adversely affect the lives of all Koreans. The joint American-Russian occupation and the almost simultaneous onset of the Cold War between them anticipated the ultimate division of the peninsula. Once again, foreign power intruded onto the peninsula would complicate or prevent Korean self-determination. In combination with fractious Korean nationalist politics, US-Soviet hostility would abet the emergence of contending Korean nation-states. Ultimately a catastrophic civil war between the North and South, compounded by Cold War politics, solidifi ed the geographic division, producing important consequences for the politics, economic development, and social life of all Koreans to the present day. The Colonial Legacy The Japanese colonial rule of Korea left a bitter legacy in the decades following their departure. Mobilization for total war had churned up the Korean population by sending millions away from their homes in all manner of service to the war effort: actual military service in the army and navy, factory labor in every sector of war production often concentrated in the most diffi cult and brutish jobs, labor service for the Japanese military, and, most heinously, service in prostitution camps for the far-fl ung Japanese military. It is hard to imagine the chaos as these millions made their way back to Korea. At least half of these mobilized workers were returning from extraordinary experiences abroad. Those who had not been sent out of the country began their journeys home from the factories and mines in the north to their villages and families in the densely populated south. Many returned to fi nd the land untilled, or occupied by different tenants. Enormous numbers collected in the cities to seek casual employment or just handouts at the soup kitchens organized to feed the homeless. This huge movement of people added to the political instability of the fi rst years after Liberation, particularly in the south. The cumulative effect of colonial rule, particularly in its last ten years, was to heighten class confl ict in Korea. In spite of the GGK’s attempt to relieve rural distress, tenancy rates approached 80 percent in some counties in the Cholla provinces of the southwest. Pushed off the land by spiraling indebtedness or unable to afford rising rents, peasants had already begun migrating to cities in search of work by 1937. The mobilization of labor during the war, particularly after 1941, accelerated this movement, but it also masked the potential for class confl ict as it emptied the countryside of its landless, unemployed peasants. Repatriated laborers returned to the countryside after 1945 with raised expectations that a new This content downloaded from 128.112.225.4 on Thu, 16 Aug 2018 17:30:23 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms102 Liberation, Civil War, and Division Korean government might solve the land problem. Indeed, in the immediate aftermath of Liberation there was a question as to what would become of the major Japanese landholdings, both public and private. Would these lands simply fall into the hands of the large Korean landowners? After all a majority of the landlord class was Korean. Or would they be distributed more broadly? Rumors of the possibility of a land reform circulated and added tension to the already strained relations between landlords and the peasants, who considered the large landlords profi teers and collaborators in the colonial regime. The cities were overcrowded with unemployed, rural migrants and returnees after 1945. They made up a lumpenproletariat available to all manner of demagogues. The prisons had disgorged political prisoners who were predominately leftists associated with illegal organizing, thought crimes, and other political agitation. Within weeks of Liberation, elements of the exiled nationalist movement in China, the Soviet Union, and the United States began to arrive; all were in search of supporters, and many began organizing their own paramilitary groups. Given contemporary South Korea’s staunch anti-Communism, it is hard to imagine socialism’s popularity in the 1940s Korea. But in the period after Liberation, the Repatriated Koreans disembark Japanese transport vessel, Pusan, Korea, October 1945. Source: US Army Signal Corps. This content downloaded from 128.112.225.4 on Thu, 16 Aug 2018 17:30:23 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/termsLiberation, Civil War, and Division 103 socialists drew tremendous support from the landless, intellectuals, and factory workers. After all, it was the left that had more experience with organizing workers and tenants, and they put it to use immediately. Japanese colonial rule also left a legacy of political factionalism. Having successfully split the nationalist movement with a divide-and-conquer strategy that had evolved with the Cultural Policy, no broad coalition of nationalists existed to assume leadership of the Korean people. The way was open for diverse factions of the nationalist movement representing the entire political spectrum. Elements of the old conservative nationalist government in exile returned from China. During the war they had reorganized a Korean Independence Party, and, with the support of the Chinese Nationalists, formed the small Korean Restoration Army. Kim Ku, a charismatic nationalist leader and a staunch anti-Communist, returned to trade on a reputation gained in terrorist attacks on Japanese offi cials and institutions in the 1930s. Syngman Rhee returned from the United States after a forty-year exile; unfamiliar with conditions on the ground, he nevertheless had name recognition and impeccable nationalist credentials. At the other end of the spectrum, arriving with the Soviet army in the north, was Kim Il Sung and his Manchurian guerrillas. Among Communists in Korea, Kim Il Sung was less known than the most prominent Communist, Pak Ho˘nyo˘ng, one of the original founders of the Korean Communist Party. After Liberation he became the head of a southern branch of the party. Moderate nationalist leaders also emerged. In P’yo˘ngyang, Cho Mansik was working with grassroots committees that sprung up during the vacuum of power after August 15. Another important fi gure, Yo˘ Unhyo˘ng (1885–1947), had already emerged as organizer of the Committee for the Preparation for Korean Independence (CPKI), a group formed in response to Governor General Abe’s request for help with peace and order after surrender. Yo˘ had been active in the independence movement abroad, spent time in jail in the late 1920s, and had continued his activism in Korea. He was considered a moderate leftist, having worked with groups on both sides of the ideological divide. The history of Korean nationalism is replete with patriots, martyrs, astounding acts of selfl essness, endurance of severe repression, and, in spite of Japanese repression, an enormous national cultural production. But no one leader or organization could claim credit for defeating the Japanese; Liberation had come as the incidental result of the Allied defeat of Japan. A desperate fi ght ensued, therefore, immediately after Liberation, among all who hoped to emerge at the head of the Korean nation. The next several years witnessed a violent struggle among the various factions and individual political leaders in Korea; it was a period of recrimination and assassination. Yo˘ Unhyo˘ng and Kim Ku both lost their lives to assassins’ bullets, and numerous leftist leaders disappeared in the brutal consolidation of Communist factions in the north. Compounding the problem of leadership was the wholesale delegitimation of Korea’s social and intellectual elite. Many writers, artists, educators, businessThis content downloaded from 128.112.225.4 on Thu, 16 Aug 2018 17:30:23 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms104 Liberation, Civil War, and Division men, and intellectuals—men who might have risen to positions of leadership in a post-colonial Korea—had been compromised by their cooperation with the Japanese during the war. The Japanese had cajoled, threatened, or otherwise compelled many to support the war effort by writing patriotic tracts or speaking at schools and factories where they enjoined their countrymen to make all efforts, including the ultimate sacrifi ce of their lives, for the imperial cause. Even those whose collaboration was less public, businessmen who profi ted from the war—large landowners, and middle-class elements who had worked for the GGK or in Japanese companies—were seen to have profi ted from or taken advantage of their ties to the Japanese. The specter of collaboration loomed over Korea for decades after the war. Besides the publicity of the anti-National trials after 1945, charges of collaboration were cultivated, by word of mouth, rumor, innuendo, and sheer malice between political or social enemies. Whether such charges were true or not, collaboration remained a card to be played in the often vicious political and social struggles that beset Korea from the years of the joint occupation well into the era of division after 1948.1 The Reoccupation of Korea The question of how to dispose of the Japanese empire had begun at the Cairo Conference in 1943. The conference established a principle of trusteeship for Japan’s colonial possessions, the ultimate independence of which would be granted in the now-famous diplomatic phrase “in due course.” The concept of trusteeship was reaffi rmed at subsequent meetings of the Allied leaders at Yalta and Potsdam in the winter and spring of 1945. The idea of Allied trusteeship projected American power into the Pacifi c in a leadership role and forced a complete reevaluation of what had been America’s low profi le in Northeast Asia since the Japanese had fi rst annexed Korea back in 1910. Manchuria and Korea, however, were of considerable strategic importance to the Soviet Union; it bordered Manchuria and Korea, the latter being perilously close to its only major Pacifi c ports. The USSR had also been more directly involved in the anti-Japanese struggles in Northeast Asia, further highlighting this asymmetry of interests. The brutality and high casualty rate of the Pacifi c Island campaigns left the United States dreadfully concerned about the potential cost of life that the ultimate invasion of the Japanese home islands would incur. American war planners were, therefore, anxious to involve the Soviet Union in a joint operation in which the United States was to invade the main islands and the USSR would handle the Japanese army on the Asian mainland. To that end the United States had invited the Russians into the postwar trusteeship by conceding their occupation of Manchuria and Korea at the Yalta conference. American worries were further confi rmed by the terrible loss of life in the battle of Okinawa between March and June 1945, the fi nal, decisive battle of the Pacifi c War before the atom bombing of Hiroshima This content downloaded from 128.112.225.4 on Thu, 16 Aug 2018 17:30:23 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/termsLiberation, Civil War, and Division 105 and Nagasaki in early August. After the Japanese signaled their intention to surrender on August 10, the American planners tried to limit Russian involvement in Korea to a joint occupation. They hastily proposed a North-South division of Korea along the 38th parallel of latitude, a line that put the Korean capital of Seoul and the bulk of the population under US control in the South. To the Americans’ surprise, the Soviets accepted this arrangement even though there was nothing to stop their complete occupation of the peninsula. Soviet troops had moved into Manchuria and arrived in northeastern Korea in early August. Using the stillintact railroads they could move freely around the peninsula. With the Russians already in Korea and appearing to acknowledge the 38th parallel as the line of division, the American command scrambled to fi nd a unit that could be sent to Korea on short notice. The closest troops were elements of the American Tenth Army still in Okinawa recovering from the recent battle. The Tenth Army’s 24th Corps, mobilized under the leadership of Gen. John Hodge, left Okinawa on September 5 and fi nally arrived off Inch’o˘n on September 8. Three weeks had passed since the surrender; Governor General Abe was relieved to surrender authority to US forces, but the Americans had to struggle to assert their control over the rapidly unfolding events in Seoul. Unlike the elaborate preparations that preceded the occupation of Japan, Hodge arrived in Korea with no translators, no area specialists, no background studies—fundamentally, no plan whatsoever. He assumed command over half of Korea, its largest cities, perhaps two-thirds of its population, the largest Japanese expatriate communities, and, as a consequence, the bulk of its political and economic problems. Hodge and his command had scrambled to get to Korea, spurred on by the State Department’s urging that the situation there might deteriorate at any moment. They were also painfully aware that Soviet elements had moved as far south as the capital of Seoul before voluntarily withdrawing. How long the Soviets would cooperate was anyone’s guess. General Hodge was greeted by a group of relieved Japanese offi cials. As for his early contacts with Koreans, he faced the full spectrum of potential leaders, conservatives and radicals alike; more important, he had to decide immediately what to do about a grassroots Korean People’s Republic that had emerged in the weeks before his arrival. In the days before surrender Abe began looking for a Korean leader who might be able to organize a group to guarantee the safety of Japanese citizens after the surrender. Ultimately a moderate leftist, Yo˘ Unhyo˘ng, agreed to accept the Japanese charge. He formed a broad coalition group, the Committee for the Preparation of Korean Independence (Choso˘n ko˘nguk chunbi wiwo˘nhoe) (CPKI), to begin planning for the maintenance of peace and order and for a future government. It began immediately to spread its organization throughout the country and soon branches of the CPKI sprang up and assumed control of local governments. On September 6, a representative group drawn from these branch committees met in Seoul and announced the formation of a Korean People’s Republic (KPR). Thereafter, the This content downloaded from 128.112.225.4 on Thu, 16 Aug 2018 17:30:23 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms106 Liberation, Civil War, and Division CPKI organs became “people’s committees” (inmin wiwo˘nhoe) that emerged at most local levels of government.2 Scholars still debate the true nature of the KPR, but at least in its beginning the leadership represented a rather broad spectrum of political views. Moderates like Yo˘ played important roles, but right-leaning nationalists were also represented. Syngman Rhee, a staunch anti-Communist, was chosen as its chairman. The KPR issued a broad twenty-seven-point program of political and social reform. Most important among its articles were a call for land reform, a redistribution of land owned by the Japanese and traitorous collaborators, nationalization of large industries, and a new labor laws that established regulations on child labor, maximum labor hours, and a minimum wage. It also sought a universal franchise for men and women and a denial of such rights to collaborators. The KPR platform refl ected long-standing demands of tenants and laborers from throughout the colonial period. Had it been instituted, it would have been quite revolutionary, given the conditions that faced Korea in 1945. The Russian Occupation of Northern Korea Sources for studying the Russian occupation strategies and policies are lost or still undisclosed in North Korea today, but enough is known to sketch the rough contours. The Russians, already in Korea at the surrender, decided to recognize the peoples’ committees formed under the CPKI. This gave them the advantage of staying in the background at the local level while directing events at the center. The initial leadership of the committees fell to resistance leaders emerging from jails after Liberation; the Russians did not have to worry about the people’s committees’ politics because the committees had already begun the decolonization process in the North. They removed Japanese and their Korean collaborators from offi ce, froze Japanese assets, and created the beginnings of a police force to keep public order. These early moves were popular, and the relatively broad political composition of the committees masked any show of direct Russian or Korean Communist leadership in the early weeks of the occupation. With Russians in control at the center, a broad program emerged in the peoples’ committees to deal with pressing economic and social demands of the people; as it turned out, however, the committees in the North followed a plan that differed dramatically from what was happening in the South. Most important, in the North a thorough land reform was carried out in February 1946. The new authorities conf i scated all Japanese-held land and that of 5,000 large Korean landlords and redistributed it to the tenants. Those landlords who were not considered direct collaborators were allowed to keep a small portion of land only if they promised to farm the land themselves. This was a revolution in Korean society because it attacked the very foundation of the inequitable distribution of wealth that had supported the ruling class in Korea for centuries. In some districts peasants took direct reprisals, This content downloaded from 128.112.225.4 on Thu, 16 Aug 2018 17:30:23 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/termsLiberation, Civil War, and Division 107 sometimes violently, against their landlords, but in the main, the land reform was accomplished quickly and peacefully. It certainly helped that a number of the largest landlords lived in the South and that many of the northern owners had already f l ed into the southern sector by the time of the reform. A program of general economic and social reform followed. The major industries in the North were nationalized, but small fi rms and factories continued to operate privately. New labor laws dictated an eight-hour workday, set a minimum wage, prohibited child labor, and regulated working conditions. Laws to promote gender equality and the rights of women were also an important feature of the program. These regulations prohibited concubinage, female infanticide, and prostitution. Clearly the presence of the Soviet army encouraged the initiatives established by the committees, and the infl uence of the Korean Communists was also important. But it must be noted that the ultimate shape and direction of the reforms followed remarkably close to the spirit of those advocated by the Korean People’s Republic, now defunct in the South. While rightist elements may have chafed under the leftward swing of the decolonization process and the reforms may have exceeded moderates’ wishes, the public greeted them favorably. The reforms in general and the land reform in particular solidifi ed mass support for the peoples’ committees that by mid-1946 had come more and more under Korean Communist direction. The United States Military Government in Korea The policies of the Americans in the South evolved in a very different direction, given the political and social proclivities of the conservative US military authority. Fatefully, one of General Hodge’s fi rst decisions was to not recognize the authority of the peoples’ committees in the South. Even before arriving, Hodge had been warned by the frightened Japanese to expect Communist subversion within the local provisional authority. By failing to recognize the people’s committee, Hodge was foregoing the legitimating infl uence of the local Korean effort to build a basis for a future Korean government. In place of the committees Hodge established the United States Army Military Government in Korea (USAMGIK) and staffed it by returning to their government posts Japanese and Korean offi cials who had already been dismissed by the people’s committees. USAMGIK had to abandon the use of Japanese offi cials almost immediately because of the public uproar that followed. Many Koreans, members of the people’s committees in particular, were outraged at what amounted to a rollback of the decolonization process. After all, establishing a military authority denied Koreans the very political independence they assumed was now theirs to organize. The process of ousting the people’s committees in the Korean countryside in the South was long and painful. It took a full year to eliminate them, and it was not without major violence. Hodge turned to conservative Koreans for supThis content downloaded from 128.112.225.4 on Thu, 16 Aug 2018 17:30:23 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms108 Liberation, Civil War, and Division port and found it in the form of the Korean Democratic Party (KDP). The KDP, hastily organized the week after the American arrival, consisted of socially prominent landlords and businessmen who considered with alarm the emergence of a political organization with the socialist-sounding name of people’s committees. Emboldened by the American presence in the South, the KDP intended to provide an alternative to the KPR and to protect their interests in the reorganization of governance that would follow. The two highest-ranking police offi cials appointed by USAMGIK, Cho P’yo˘ng’ok (1894–1960) (National Police) and Chang T’aeksang (Seoul Police)—among the most unpopular appointees made by the United States—were drawn from the conservative KDP; fully 80 percent of the forces they directed were composed of former members of the colonial police. In its fi rst year USAMGIK issued a series of social and economic reforms that fell short of Korean expectations and stood in sharp contrast to the reforms already underway in the North. Moreover, many of the new policies were slow to be realized. In spite of the decisive land reform in the North, USAMGIK delayed land reform until 1948, and then it was only a redistribution of Japanese-held land, leaving the holdings of large Korean landowners intact. The failure of land reform in the South was a major problem for USAMGIK, and it was a singular mistake for an occupying authority that was desperately in need of public support. USAMGIK issued new labor laws that limited the work week to sixty hours and provided for time-and-a-half pay for any hours over forty. A new child labor law banned employment of children under the age of fourteen. But the Americans were not enthusiastic to create laws that encouraged labor unions, groups they distrusted as hotbeds of Communist activity. In general the social and economic reform programs in the South failed to legitimize the American occupation government. Indeed, by September of 1946 ill will toward USAMGIK and dissatisfaction with the slow pace of reform boiled over into a general strike sparked by a demonstration of railroad workers in the southern port city of Pusan. The strike provoked massive demonstrations in other southern cities, and American occupation troops and Korean police spent the remainder of the fall fi ghting what amounted to a major insurrection. The Formation of Separate States Looking back over fi fty years, it is possible to see the sprouts of separate states, North and South, in the fi rst months of the joint occupation. The Soviet recognition of the people’s committees and then the Korean Communist usurpation of them, the land reform, and the early progressive reform program laid the ground work for the emergence of the Korean Communist Party in the North. General Hodge’s decision to abolish the people’s committees and establish a separate US military government supported by landed interests and businessmen presaged the creation of something very different in the South. Like two strong magnetic forces, This content downloaded from 128.112.225.4 on Thu, 16 Aug 2018 17:30:23 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/termsLiberation, Civil War, and Division 109 these original groups, each sponsored by antagonistic occupation forces, attracted to them like-minded politicians and activists. There were “push” forces operating as well. Land reform and nationalization of the economy in the North motivated the wealthy to migrate South; increasing repression of labor unions, tenant groups, and the southern Korean Communist Party in the South created a similar movement to the North. In the fi rst year of the occupation, however, both occupying powers labored under the theory that the occupation was temporary—bound as they were by the principle of granting full independence to Korea “in due course” that had been decided at the Allied meetings in Potsdam and Yalta in 1945. To that end the Soviets and Americans established a Joint Commission in December of 1945 to begin negotiations on how to establish a unifi ed provisional Korean government. The trusteeship principle, however, would have had to survive the growing animosity between the United States and the USSR that transformed after 1947 into the Cold War. Moreover, Korean domestic politics divided along a hard line between the Korean Communist Party and their allies in the North and Syngman Rhee and his supporters in the South. Other potential leaders such as Cho Mansik in the North and Kim Ku and Yo˘ Unhyo˘ng in the South were outmaneuvered. In such a climate, compromise within the Joint Commission seemed hopeless. The moderate middle, therefore, buffeted by the cynical maneuvering on the far right and left was left to hopelessly appeal to this already lame-duck commission to salvage a whole Korea. These issues were revisited at the December 1945 Moscow Conference, but the meetings barely created an agenda. The conference simply set meetings for the summer of 1946 that failed again, and by the spring of 1948 the Joint Commission was moribund. Events in the North and South, as well as the opening rift between the Soviets and Americans in global affairs, pushed the issue of a unifi ed Korea permanently into the background. Again in hindsight it is clear that neither the Soviets nor Americans were willing to compromise. This animosity heightened as the Soviet’s tightened their grip on Eastern Europe and as Truman moved toward a new policy of global containment of Communism that would become formal US policy by mid-1947. Although this oversimplifi es the position of the United States in Korea, where the State Department continued to honor the formal commitment to trusteeship into the fall of 1947, Hodge had never been committed to allowing an open coalition of Korean political groups to decide the future form of Korean governance. He continually subverted State Department orders to form a broad coalition committee to prepare for independence (Cumings, Origins of the Korean War, 1981). Although he personally considered Syngman Rhee to be an obdurate, narrowminded leader, he could fi nd no alternative who he believed could stand up to the left while unifying popular support . In the spring of 1947 all the ingredients for a separate southern Korean government were in place. Rhee became the head of the Representative Democratic This content downloaded from 128.112.225.4 on Thu, 16 Aug 2018 17:30:23 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms110 Liberation, Civil War, and Division Council, which gradually purged itself of moderate elements and became a true creature of the right. A national police force and the beginnings of what would become the Republic of Korea’s military were also in place. The National Police had already been busy for a year repressing insurrections, aiding in the suppression of labor disputes, and working in tandem with paramilitary youth corps formed by rightist parties.3 In January of 1947 USAMGIK moved closer to the creation of a separate government by establishing an Interim Korean Representative Assembly. With the Joint Commission at an impasse in the spring of 1947, the Americans asked the United Nations to form a commission, the United Nations Temporary Commission on Korea (UNTCOK), to supervise general elections that would legitimate an independent Korean government. The Russians refused entry of UNTCOK to the northern zone, but elections proceeded in the South in May 1948. The newly elected National Assembly passed a constitution, and the Republic of Korea (ROK) was formally inaugurated on August 15, 1948. On September 3, the Communists in control in the North responded in kind by declaring their own formal Korean state, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). Portrait of Syngman Rhee, circa 1957. Source: ROK Ministry of Communications. This content downloaded from 128.112.225.4 on Thu, 16 Aug 2018 17:30:23 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/termsLiberation, Civil War, and Division 111 The Road to Civil War Perhaps the Korean War began in the fall of 1948, with the formation of separate states in North and South Korea. As Bruce Cumings aptly puts it: “. . . civil wars do not start: they come. They originate in multiple causes, with blame enough to go around for everyone” (Korea’s Place, 1997, p. 238). Factors to blame would include the enervation and factionalism of the Korean nationalist movement, the Soviets and Americans for dividing the country after Liberation, Kim Il Sung and Syngman Rhee for sweeping away the moderate elements of Korean politics with the connivance of their superpower partners, the general instability of the country after forty years of Japanese control, and the demoralizing experience of the war mobilization. War could have started at any moment after the fall of 1948. The fact that it did not was simply that neither state felt prepared to gamble its future in its f i rst two years. The Republic of Korea, led by its new president, Syngman Rhee, faced a number of problems in its early years. Political instability had been chronic in the South since Liberation, but it evolved into open rebellion in the guise of guerrilla insurrections by the summer of 1948. Rhee faced little opposition within his own government, and the ROK constitution granted few powers to the newly elected National Assembly with which it might curb the power of the ROK presidency. Rhee could also use a National Security Law as the legal basis for deploying his growing military and National Police against his political enemies, both large and small. For example he intimidated the National Assembly at one point by arresting thirteen members, using a vague clause in the National Security Law that prohibited “disturbing the tranquility of the nation.” More dangerous for the new government was a series of rebellions and a guerrilla movement that tested the mettle of his new security forces. The insurrection on the southern island of Cheju, South Korea’s smallest province, began with demonstrations against the separate elections announced in South Korea in summer 1948. The demonstrations were suppressed, but insurgents fi ghting from mountain caves in the interior began a guerrilla war against the police. The ROK National Police and army suppressed the insurrection with great diffi culty and brutality. The National Police organized a village-by-village encirclement campaign to root out the estimated three to four thousand insurgents, who were known as the inmin’gun (people’s army). A year later the island was pacifi ed but at a terrible price. Estimates of casualties differ, but over 27,000 islanders died in the fi ghting, fully one-seventh of the entire population, and half of the island’s villages were destroyed. Years later an anthropologist studying shaman rituals and stories noted how the large numbers of deaths during the rebellion had produced an army of wandering ghosts that continued to plague the memory and mental health of the residents of this otherwise beautiful volcanic island (Kim Seung-nae, “Lamentations,”1989). This content downloaded from 128.112.225.4 on Thu, 16 Aug 2018 17:30:23 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms112 Liberation, Civil War, and Division The Cheju Rebellion was the indirect cause of another uprising that began in the southern port city of Yo˘su and spread in the adjacent Cholla provinces in the fall of 1948. The immediate source of the rebellion was the mutiny of several units within a contingent of troops awaiting transport to participate in the suppression campaigns on Cheju island. They simply refused to participate and began their own rebellion, which captured and controlled large areas in the southwest before the rebellion was suppressed. Their initial success was a direct result of the sympathy and material support of local residents. Although the rebellion was suppressed, it further estranged the poor in this region from the conservative ROK and the hated National Police. Later, during the fi rst phase of the Korean War, many in the southwest rose again to greet the North Korean People’s Army as liberators. Politics at the center of the ROK assumed patterns that would characterize South Korean political culture for the next forty years. The constitution vested enormous power in the presidency, and neither the courts or the legislative branch, the National Assembly, had the power to check presidential prerogatives. During the run-up to elections and the creation of the ROK, Rhee had, out of necessity, maintained an uneasy alliance with the KDP, the party of landed and business interests. His alliance with southern elites provided him a political base that he lacked upon his return to Korea. And for their part, Rhee’s wealthy supporters in the KDP needed Rhee’s infl uence and protection because of their collaborationist backgrounds. In the 1948 elections—elections marred by violence and the disruptive tactics of the left—no party could claim a majority. While Rhee was elected as president by a large majority in the National Assembly, his abuses of presidential power soon placed him in contention with the constitutionally weaker legislative body. The party system in Korea became a simple affair; there was the ruling party and several opposition parties too weak, even in coalition, to affect policy. Ultimately the KDP, part of Rhee’s initial base of support, coalesced with other smaller opposition parties to form the Democratic Nationalist Party (DNP), and it subsequently became a permanent opposition party. Not until the election of Kim Dae Jung in 1997 did a member of an opposition party ever accede to the presidency.4 To the extent that Rhee tolerated debate within the National Assembly, there was at least a semblance of open dissent, but a sustained democratic discourse would have to wait until the 1980s. By 1950 Rhee had established a pattern of authoritarian rule based on his alliance with conservative social and economic elites, his large and intrusive National Police apparatus, and fi nally, the support of the growing ROK military. Of course, the United States supported Rhee by providing military training and advice, economic assistance, and most importantly a legitimating context for Rhee’s militant anti-Communism. In its fi rst years the DPRK in the North began its social revolution in earnest without the civil unrest that drained the energy of the ROK in the South. Indeed, many features that would characterize North Korea’s economy and society had This content downloaded from 128.112.225.4 on Thu, 16 Aug 2018 17:30:23 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/termsLiberation, Civil War, and Division 113 already emerged, such as the early land reform (a prelude to the later formation of cooperatives following the Korean War) and the nationalization of industry. But in the fi rst years the DPRK focused on consolidating control of the Korean Workers Party, building an army, and constructing a police and internal security apparatus. The result was a thorough purge of “bourgeois” elements within the party and government and the beginnings of a mass indoctrination and reeducation of the population. Before 1948 the fi rst northern government, the People’s Interim Committee, under the leadership of Kim Il Sung, already had purged itself of its moderate membership. In particular Kim eased out the leader of the moderate Christian faction, Cho Mansik, while concurrently establishing what would become the mass party of the North, the Korean Workers Party. The northwest and P’yongyang in particular had been a Christian stronghold since the arrival of missionaries in the late nineteenth century. And Christians had been active in all aspects of social and economic life in this area, but as a group particularly hostile to the socialists, they became a target for elimination along with the petty bourgeois, landlords, and other “bad elements.” The small parties that provided window dressing for a coalition government in the North between 1945 and 1948 disappeared soon after the creation of the DPRK as the ranks of the Korean Workers Party swelled to become the state’s mass base. The Korean Workers Party maintained its base in the northern peasantry. Its original recruitment policy had simply been to open its doors to all ranks of society. Peasants and the poor found succor in the party and joined in mass numbers in its early years. Even the leadership had a large percentage of people from “poor peasant” backgrounds. The party, however, found ways to include educated groups within its ranks as it anticipated its need for leadership and expertise. The party was the central organizer, along with the police, of a massive effort to reeducate the public politically. Schools, factories, businesses, government offi ces, and villages all served as venues for reeducation. In the early years this education took the form of socializing peasants, workers, and bureaucrats into the protocols of the meetings themselves, diffi cult as it was to train people to simply show up. The DPRK created a formidable internal security apparatus in order to gather intelligence on its own population and provide the muscle for the enforcement of state directives. To that end it comprehensively organized, studied, and classif i ed the population of the North to an extent perhaps unprecedented in modern history. It developed the means to store information on all its citizens: names, addresses, class backgrounds, party affi liation, pre-Liberation activities, political attitudes, work records, and general ratings of political reliability. In order to indoctrinate people to the correct line from above, it strove to understand every minute nuance of thought within the population—all the better to shape political education toward changing these opinions. The police placed all people with suspect political opinions under surveillance; this included remaining Christian This content downloaded from 128.112.225.4 on Thu, 16 Aug 2018 17:30:23 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms114 Liberation, Civil War, and Division leaders, capitalists, former landlords, offi cials of the old colonial government, and people with relatives in the South. The training and expansion of an army was a priority. Kim Il Sung himself had emerged from guerrilla origins, and many among the select group that dominated the government were military men. The greatest advantage the North had in creating its army, however, was the signifi cant participation of Koreans in the then-raging Chinese Civil War. Return of experienced troops from that confl ict gave the North a tremendous advantage in building its military compared with the South. Korean units, including Kim Il Sung’s guerrillas, had worked with the Chinese Communists in north China and Manchuria all during World War II. And some Korean Communists were closely associated with the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Perhaps as many as 100,000 Koreans, both Manchurian Korean residents and North Koreans, fought with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in the civil war. In 1947 Kim Il Sung sent large units to Manchuria at a critical point in the war, thus earning Chinese gratitude that would be repaid a thousand times over during the Korean War. After 1948 Korean units began trickling back to the North and with the Chinese Communist victory over the Chinese Nationalists in 1949, larger units returned as a whole. By the spring of 1950, not only did North Korea have an army, but its army was also battle-trained and tested. With the addition of modern equipment and heavy armor, it would become a formidable force. The Korean War For much of the post-World War II period, if people in the West knew anything at all about Korea, it was in relation to the Korean War. But any understanding of the origins of the war remained obscure, not to mention any knowledge about the country in which it was fought. It was the fi rst of what became wars of stalemate or “limited wars” during the Cold War period—limited by necessity, given the catastrophic consequences of any broader confl ict between the world’s two nuclear powers. In fact, as far as we know the last serious discussion about using the atom bomb as adjunct to “conventional” warfare took place on the American side during the Korean War.5 Moreover, the Korean War began the refi nement of the euphemisms we now commonly use to obscure the reality of modern war and the effects of the terrible weapons developed in this the most warlike century in human history. The Korean War was a “police action” or a “confl ict” in American news accounts. The Korean War witnessed the fi rst extensive use of jet aircraft, mass use of napalm, and brought concepts like “wind chill, brainwashing, and surgical bombing” into our vocabulary. A total of 33,625 Americans, hundreds of thousands of Chinese and Korean (North and South) soldiers, and millions of civilians died in this brutal “police action.” 6 Yet if asked to compare the Vietnam and Korean wars, few Americans nowadays would have the slightest sense of just how big a war it was. This content downloaded from 128.112.225.4 on Thu, 16 Aug 2018 17:30:23 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/termsLiberation, Civil War, and Division 115 This memory gap is stranger still, considering that the general contours of East Asian security arrangements today are still predicated on the inconclusive truce that ended the confl ict in 1953 and drew a hard line between the two Koreas. The war began with a massive North Korean assault over the 38th parallel in the early dawn hours of June 25, 1950. For years a debate has raged as to who started the fi ghting. Some insist the invasion was premeditated and directed by the Soviet Union, another of Stalin’s maneuvers to expand the socialist world. Others point more accurately to a more supportive role played by the Soviets, with Kim Il Sung taking the lead after gaining the half-hearted blessings of the Chinese and the Soviets, as well as tanks and heavy guns, in the winter and spring of 1950. There is also a conspiracy theory that insists that Syngman Rhee provoked the North Korean attack under preparation in May 1950 in order to force the United States into a larger war that would end in the conquest of the North. Whatever the precipitating event, it emerged out of the very tense military standoff along the 38th parallel that had grown into a border war of position during most of the nine months preceding the invasion. Both sides had placed their troops in defensive positions along the border; both sides had initiated attacks to refi ne their military advantage along the artifi cial line of division. And both sides had contingency plans for a larger confl ict. Whatever the fi nal conclusion about who started the war after all the archives are opened, the fact remains that the North had gained Russian material support in the form of tanks, guns, and advice and grudging Chinese acquiescence by May 1950. Their preparations completed, they pushed ahead with an all-out attack (whether provoked or by design) on June 25. The North Korean blitzkrieg exposed the lack of preparedness and experience within the ROK military. In the months before the war, US analysts had considered the military balance of power on the peninsula to be in favor of the South, and the State Department worried Rhee might make good his threat to unilaterally invade the North and precipitate a broader confl ict. The swift and decisive Northern progress, and the collapse of the Southern army, proved this calculation terribly wrong. The combination of Soviet-supplied heavy armor and battle-experienced North Korean troops proved to be unstoppable in the fi rst weeks of the war. The North Koreans drove the ROK government and its military out of Seoul in two days. The fi rst weeks of the war recorded disaster after disaster for the ROK troops and the few American combat troops who had arrived on short notice to help. The decision to come to the aid of the ROK was the fi rst major test of the containment policy that became the lynchpin of American Cold War strategy to limit further spread of Communism throughout the world. The test came at a very bad time because the demobilizing US army had to scramble to fi nd troops to dispatch to Korea, and it was uncertain how the US decision to defend South Korea would play in domestic politics. The inexorable North Korean advance continued in mid-July as the North Korean army overran the key city of Taejo˘n, capturing US Maj. Gen. William F. This content downloaded from 128.112.225.4 on Thu, 16 Aug 2018 17:30:23 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms116 Liberation, Civil War, and Division Dean. Then the army forked, sending one group of troops southwest into the Cholla province while the other drove the main ROK and US forces southeast toward Korea’s largest port and second largest city, Pusan. At this point the United States successfully petitioned the United Nations for a mandate to defend South Korea and roll back the invasion. The Americans won the Security Council vote because the Soviet delegate surprisingly departed the session in protest. A Soviet veto would have blocked UN action on the Korean crisis. The United States, therefore, turned the defense of South Korea into a UN “police action” that was under the command of an American general and in which 95 percent of the non-Korean, “international” UN force were US troops. The ROK army was put under UN command. Ironically, this major action by the United Nations hinged on the inadvertent mistake of a Soviet diplomat; for the rest of the Cold War, Security Council actions were stalemated by mutual vetoes of the antagonistic superpowers. At the beginning of August the advance by the North Korean People’s Army halted after it had occupied virtually all of South Korea. The US and ROK forces faced a determined and well-led fi ghting force that worked in league with guerrilla forces in the South. At the decisive battle in Taejo˘n, 150 kilometers south of Seoul, the KPA worked with local peasants fi ghting on the fl anks and rear of the retreating ROK and American forces. After Taejo˘n the way was open to drive southeast toward Pusan. It was here that General MacArthur, leading the US First Marine Division, and ROK army, managed to organize a defense along a forty-to-fi ftymile arc known in military history as the Pusan perimeter. While the main KPA forces pushed southward along the Seoul–Pusan corridor, another North Korean army had already swept along the western coast, through the Cholla provinces, and then eastward along the south coast to threaten Pusan on its western front. From August until mid-September the North Koreans occupied South Korea and added a political front to their already effective conventional military and guerrilla conquest of the South. During their roughly fi fty-day occupation, the North Koreans attempted to replicate their northern revolution in the South, and many South Koreans joined them. Political cadres from the North began systematically to restore the disbanded people’s committees in order to undo what they believed had been a reimposition of colonialism under the US occupation. Bringing their own lists of peoples’ enemies, they began a purge of collaborators of all stripes. They emptied the ROK jails of political prisoners, unleashing a backlash of reprisals against the system that had incarcerated them. The North also immediately began a land reform in all occupied territories; while hastily accomplished and in the end temporary, this reform further undermined the social power structure in the South and added to the confusion and violence when the Northern forces retreated after mid-September. The North Koreans attracted new supporters to their cause, but the occupation was short-lived, and in the confusion of this roughly fi fty-day interval discipline was diffi cult to maintain and violence endemic. That mass killings and This content downloaded from 128.112.225.4 on Thu, 16 Aug 2018 17:30:23 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/termsLiberation, Civil War, and Division 117 arrests were frequent was not surprising because the retreating ROK troops and their American advisors had committed their own atrocities. In the retreat and confusion during June and July, the desperate ROK and US troops, harassed by guerrilla and peasant irregulars, had turned on entire villages. Survivors of these atrocities rallied around the advancing KPA, urging reprisals against captured ROK forces; some were emboldened to seek out class enemies themselves. More so than during any other part of the war, the internecine terror and violence of this phase has remained obscured in the accounts that focused instead on the forward movement of troops and the main battles.7 But for Koreans, the fateful decision of hundreds of thousands to support or not support the Northern troops remains woven into the fabric of postwar memory. This was especially so because the North Korean occupation and nascent revolution was temporary, and set off a new wave of violence when South Korean forces reoccupied the territory and began a new round of reprisals against all who might have rallied to the Northern cause. And for their part the North Koreans either killed or abducted to the North thousands of prominent South Korean politicians and intellectuals.8 To this day entries in South Korean biographical dictionaries bare witness to this phase of the war in the death-day notation for hundreds of entries: “Birth date–1950?,” “taken north (nambuk), or simply “dates unknown.” The US intervention under UN auspices shifted the course of the war with a massive counterattack in late September. General MacArthur’s now famous amphibious assault of the port city of Inch’o˘n on September 15 dropped an army to the rear of the North Koreans, effectively cutting their forces in two. The UN forces broke out of the Pusan perimeter to chase the collapsing North Korean army north. A month later the UN and ROK forces recaptured Seoul. With the enemy in seemingly full retreat, the idea of crossing the 38th parallel to roll back the North Koreans and perhaps reclaim the peninsula gained currency in Washington. MacArthur was eager to press the offensive and soon the UN forces drove northward, capturing P’yo˘ngyang, then proceeding toward the Yalu, in what became MacArthur’s famous “reconnaissance in force.” By late November forward units of the US Eighth Army reached the Yalu River in the northwest and ROK units captured the port city of Ch’o˘ngjin in the extreme northeast. We now know that US aerial reconnaissance had informed MacArthur that massive columns of Chinese troops had been seen moving into Korea over the preceding weeks. On November 27 reports of large-scale Chinese assaults in the rear of the US units heralded a disaster. MacArthur had allowed the Chinese to infi ltrate the rear of his overextended columns and confi dent projections of total victory turned to reports of a “strategic withdrawal.” In short, the Chinese and North Korean troops had cut up the forward elements of MacArthur’s army and were chasing the UN forces pell-mell southward. By December 6 they had recaptured P’yo˘ngyang and by the end of December had overrun Seoul for the second time in the war. This content downloaded from 128.112.225.4 on Thu, 16 Aug 2018 17:30:23 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms118 Liberation, Civil War, and Division Refugees fl eeing south of Seoul. Source: SRC Peter Ruplenas, 7th Signal Corps, US Army. Since the entry of the Chinese into the war was not a surprise to US army intelligence, why did MacArthur push to the Yalu in the face of certain danger? Scholars will debate the reasons, but it appears to boil down to MacArthur’s conservative politics and his desire to reopen the war with China in the hopes of destroying the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and thereby helping America’s erstwhile allies, the defeated Nationalists on Taiwan, to regain control on the mainland. The Chinese entry into the Korean War created a heated debate in Washington. Policymakers considered all manner of options, including the use of nuclear weapons. But cooler heads prevailed, and World War III was averted. Eventually the UN forces stopped and reversed the southward movement of the Chinese, recaptured Seoul, and drove the enemy northward to a line closely matching the current division between North and South Korea. For the next two and a half years, a bloody and, in retrospect, needless war of attrition ensued. This was the war chronicled in the popular antiwar fi lm M*A*S*H and the longrunning TV series of the same name. The war had stalemated along a line not much different from the status quo ante bellum, and the Soviets continued to avoid direct involvement. During the stalemate the debate about rolling back the line by using nuclear weapons continued. MacArthur clamored for permission to reopen a broader This content downloaded from 128.112.225.4 on Thu, 16 Aug 2018 17:30:23 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/termsLiberation, Civil War, and Division 119 campaign against China and his fl agrant insubordination forced President Truman to remove him from command. Beginning in the winter of 1951 and continuing after the start of truce negotiations in the summer, the United States mounted a dreadful campaign of bombing against North Korea. In two years the US Air Force destroyed every North Korean city, its industrial capacity, and its railroad infrastructure; it leveled the major dams and hydroelectric plants and napalmed villages suspected of harboring troops. By the end of their campaign, the US bombers could fi nd no meaningful targets at all and were reduced to bombing footbridges or jettisoning their ordnance into the sea in order to land safely upon return. The memory of this ghastly carnage remains at the heart of North Korean enmity and distrust of the United States to this day. The war of attrition on the front and the US bombing in the rear provided a depressing backdrop to the deadlocked truce talks. For months the talks foundered on various issues. The fi nal problem was how to repatriate the prisoners of war held by each side. The United States insisted on voluntary repatriation of prisoners, meaning that North Korean prisoners would be allowed to choose either to repatriate or to stay in the South. The North insisted that prisoners from both sides must be repatriated to their country of origin. When the truce was fi nally signed on July 27, 1953, the three years of fi ghting had solved nothing. The 1953 border was, with some modifi cations, the same as it was in June 1950. Seoul was in shambles, having been fought through on four occasions, and the North lay in ruins from the American bombing. The Legacy of the Korean War The war scarred Koreans for several generations. It tore the peninsula in two, dividing it with the heavily fortifi ed DMZ, a two-to-three-mile swath traversing the peninsula for 120 miles from southwest to northeast. The more serious scars, however, were psychological. Koreans have lived the last fi fty years in a state of war. Because of this the peninsula is one of the most militarized areas in the world today. The war tore families apart and sent several million refugees from North to South. The North Koreans’ brief occupation left a guerrilla insurgency that fertilized the seeds of distrust and discrimination against the region of South Korea where this movement was strongest, in the southwest Cholla provinces. The war polarized politics. In the South anti-Communism became the litmus test for all in politics, the major ideological justifi cation for authoritarianism from above, and the reason for the thirty-fi ve-year intrusion of the ROK military into government. The solidifi cation of two separate Korean states hunkered down behind their respective fortifi cations and minefi elds, ended any lingering hopes for creation of an independent, unifi ed Korean nation. And thereafter North and South Korea embarked on very different paths of nation-building. For its part, North Korea faced the tremendous task of rebuilding a smashed infrastructure and resuming This content downloaded from 128.112.225.4 on Thu, 16 Aug 2018 17:30:23 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms120 Liberation, Civil War, and Division the construction of its vision of a socialist society. The rapid rebound of the DPRK in the next ten years was a testament to its tenacious will, determined leadership, and ability to organize its population through a centralized mass party to work hard and cleave to the will of the state. North Korea rebuilt its capital, P’yongyang, as a showcase of a worker’s paradise. While doing so it began to burrow its defenses and strategic industries into Korea’s ubiquitous granite hills and mountains. As they dug, the state and party, if not the general population, developed a bunker mentality, vowing never again to be vulnerable to a threat of such bombing. Fifty years later the North remains captive to this mentality and paranoid about continuing threats from without. In its mind it remains in a death struggle with its implacable foe the United States, but now, burrowed into the earth, it is threatening the world with its own nuclear weapons. From 1953 until the mid-1970s, the country had climbed the mountain of rebuilding and had created a semifl ourishing socialist state and economy, but at that point its fortunes began to decline in direct proportion to its commitment to self-defense and autonomy above all else. Chapter Seven examines the development of North Korea’s unique brand of socialism, turned into a solipsistic elaboration of its Juche ideology that in turn is built around an extraordinarily elaborate personality cult of the leader. The South faced its own nightmare of poverty, a smashed economy, and the crushing demands of a population swollen by refugees and riven with political instability.9 Korea’s development until 1945 had been integrated within the Japanese yen bloc of Manchuria, Japan, and Korea. The end of the war had sundered its connections with Japan and China. The division between North and South shattered the natural economic division of labor on the peninsula itself. After the division, 80 percent of heavy industry, 76 percent of mining, and 92 percent of electricity-generating capacity lay in the North, while light manufacturing and agriculture dominated in the South. The North Koreans literally turned off the electricity in the South in 1948, but even before the Korean War the South had faced serious power shortages. Its agricultural production could not meet the food requirements of the population, and the country survived on bulk grain shipments from the United States into the 1960s. The South also inherited the remnants of a Communist insurgency. These were not auspicious beginnings for building a pluralist democracy. Chapter Six examines how the struggle to establish self-sustained economic development as well as a democratic society defi ned the political culture and social experience of the ROK in the coming decades.