The Korean War at Sixty

New Approaches to the Study of the Korean War

Steven Casey

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780415699969
• eBook ISBN: 9781317977117
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

Korea used to be the 'forgotten war.' Now, however, experts widely view it as a pivotal moment in the history of the Cold War, while its legacy still scars contemporary East Asian politics.

The sixtieth anniversary of the Korean War is a fitting time both to assess the current state of historiography on the conflict and to showcase new research on its different dimensions. This book contains six essays by leading experts in the field. These essays explore all aspects of the war, from collective security and alliance relations, to home front politics and historical memory. They are also international in scope, focusing not just on the familiar Western belligerents but also on the actions of the two Koreas, China and the Soviet Union.

These stimulating essays shed new light on various aspects of the Korean War experience, as well as examining why the war remains so important to the politics of the region.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Journal of Strategic Studies.

'An Alliance Forged in Blood': The American Occupation of Korea, the Korean War, and the US–South Korean Alliance

WILLIAM STUECK* AND BORAM YI**

ABSTRACT The US occupation of Korea from 1945 to 1948 was not notable for its success. The volatile interaction between the occupiers and the occupied provided an important context for its relatively rapid conclusion and for Washington’s ineffective employment of deterrence in the lead-up to the June 1950 North Korean attack on South Korea. This essay describes the volatile interaction between Americans and Koreans on the peninsula and the circumstantial, psychological, and cultural factors behind it. The essay concludes by analyzing the psychological impact of the Korean War on the relationship and how this and later cultural changes have made possible an enduring alliance between the United States and the Republic of Korea.

Concluded in the immediate aftermath of the Korean War, the alliance of the United States with the Republic of Korea (ROK) is now over a half-century old. It has survived by a generation the end of the Cold War, the ROK rapprochement with Russia and China, and the ROK’s rise as a regional power. It has endured the tremors created by the emergence in Korea of a generation with no direct memory of the Korean War, the simultaneous tenure in office of ham-handed leaders George W. Bush and Roh Moo-hyun, and the evolution of US strategy in the post-9/11 world. Despite the continuing existence of detractors on both sides, it is tempting to view the alliance, if not its precise nature, as part of the natural order of things.¹

With this in mind, we believe it useful to reexamine the shaky nature of the relationship of the United States and Korea in the years between World War II and the Korean War. In particular we will examine the attitudes, perceptions, and behavior of the American occupiers of Korea from September 1945 to August 1948, the reaction of the native population and its leaders to the US course, and the impact of the interaction on US policy in the lead-up to the outbreak of war in June 1950. This examination reveals some of the cultural and psychological differences between the two peoples and makes it clear that the alliance between the United States and the ROK was anything but inevitable. We conclude with some observations about how events on the peninsula from 1950 to 1953 impacted the relationship and why the military alliance that emerged in its aftermath has endured.

The Strategic Perspective

The United States engaged in four military occupations after World War II and the one in Korea was both the shortest and the least successful. When the occupation ended during the second half of 1948, Korea was a divided land with hostile indigenous governments, the US-sponsored ROK in the south and the Soviet-sponsored Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in the north. Each of these governments claimed sovereignty over the entire peninsula and was headed by a man intent upon using whatever means were necessary to make his claim a reality. DPRK leader Kim Il-sung was in a much better position to do so, as his government was in firm control of territory above the 38th Parallel; in contrast, his rival to the south, Syngman Rhee, faced substantial and growing internal turmoil.

The DPRK’s advantage reflected the relatively more successful Soviet occupation of the north than that of the United States in the south, at least for the short term. The Soviet zone possessed only half the population of the American and, from the start, the Soviet occupiers exercised a firm hand, immediately displacing Japanese colonial personnel, who had ruled the peninsula since 1910, supporting antiJapanese natives, mostly exiles sympathetic to a revolutionary course, and then executing broad land reform. Uncooperative natives were either suppressed or pushed southward into the US zone.

In contrast, the poorly prepared Americans fumbled badly, at first retaining Japanese in positions of authority and then replacing them with Korean collaborators while retaining the colonial structure. Occupation authorities assisted in building an indigenous police force that replicated many practices of its despised Japanese predecessor and generated widespread animosity. The Americans also favored the political Right while encouraging political parties and free market activities, which facilitated neither cohesion nor material prosperity, and delayed extensive land reform until the spring of 1948, then redistributing only Japanese owned properties, a mere quarter of the total in the US zone. The ROK government that emerged in midAugust 1948 was dominated by the far Right and divided between an autocratic President Rhee and a Democratic Party of conservative landowners in the legislative branch, who believed the president should be a figurehead. In November, in the midst of stalemate between the executive and legislative branches in Seoul and expanding unrest in the countryside, US ambassador John J. Muccio wrote home that the new government was ‘incompetent’ and ‘without strong public support’.²

The United States was far from firmly committed to stay the course in Korea. During 1947 the Joint Chiefs of Staffhad concluded that the United States possessed no strategic interest in maintaining troops on the peninsula and Congress showed little inclination to expend major funds on Korea.³ The State Department succeeded in delaying a final withdrawal of US military units, but by the end of 1948 the number of American soldiers there was down to 8,000. Persistent pressure from the Pentagon, combined with some improvement in conditions below the 38th Parallel, led to their departure in June 1949. Although the United States left behind some military equipment and 500 military personnel to assist in training ROK armed forces, Washington declined to make a commitment to South Korea’s defense, as it was in the process of doing for Western Europe. What is more, Congress refused to move quickly to pass an economic aid program for the ROK. With the Communists in China marching toward victory in the civil war there, their northern armies manned in part by tens of thousands of ethnic Koreans well-positioned for redeployment in the DPRK, ROK prospects appeared anything but promising.⁴

How did the United States get to this discouraging point in Korea? The easy answer is that the situation grew out of a combination of the breakdown of US–Soviet relations in the aftermath of World War II, the bumbling of occupation authorities in South Korea, and a strategic reassessment of American interests in Korea in the midst of evolving conditions elsewhere, especially in Europe and the United States. That is, as Washington took on breathtaking and costly new peacetime responsibilities in Europe, Korea looked expendable, if grudgingly so given the confrontation there with the Soviet Union and its proximity to Japan. In the end the peninsula was not vital in terms of resources and Japan could be defended with air and naval power far more cheaply than with US troops on mainland Asia.

This explanation is essential to an understanding of events, but it ignores the context of direct American interaction with the Korean people from September 1945 onward. It is to this factor that we turn our focus.

Not a Pretty Picture: Americans and Koreans Getting to Know Each Other

US troops began arriving in large numbers in Korea on 8 September 1945, more than three weeks after the Japanese surrender. Over the next month and a half, the numbers rose to about 77,000, the peak for the occupation period.⁵

By the time American troops arrived, Koreans were deeply engaged in activity aimed at replacing the colonial regime and, they believed, establishing their independence. In mid-August Japanese Governor-General Abe Nobuyuki, anticipating his country’s surrender, aware that the Soviets had entered the peninsula after declaring war on 8 August, and fearing that Koreans would respond by attacking the more than 378,000 Japanese civilians and 163,000 Japanese military personnel residing in Korea, moved to engage a native elite in a transitional process that would ensure order.⁶ After a moderate nationalist rejected his overture, Abe approached Yo Un-hyong, a non-Communist Leftist whose demands for freedom of action were reluctantly accepted. Thus in Seoul Yo established the Committee for the Preparation of Korean Independence (CPKI) and began setting up a governmental framework for Korean self-rule. At the local level people’s committees sprouted up, often at the behest of the CPKI. These bodies frequently gained backing from native soldiers who had recently deserted the Imperial Japanese Army and armed youth groups (ch’iandae) and private armies that included thousands of prisoners – both political and criminal – freed by the CPKI.⁷

Yo sought to recruit people of all political stripes, but most conservatives refused to cooperate, resulting in a Leftist-dominated organization. Korea in those days, according to one authoritative account, was ‘a maelstrom of old and new classes, political groups, and ideologies’. Four in five natives farmed for a livelihood, overwhelmingly as tenants. Japanese-directed economic development had added to the mix ‘an assortment of capitalists, white-collar professionals, [and] factory wage workers’. Wartime mobilization had produced increasing, often forced, internal migration and a draconian system of assimilation that sought to root out all vestiges of Korean culture, including names and language. While open resistance was impossible, Koreans accommodated their Japanese masters to varying degrees, producing resentments within the native population that promised to surface with liberation. Broadly speaking, political groupings divided into Right and Left.

Most Koreans with property and education had engaged in some collaboration with the Japanese, and they stood on the Right in opposing far-reaching change, such as comprehensive land reform or other instruments for redistributing wealth. Joining them were less educated, less prosperous people who had served in the colonial regime, including in the notorious police force, which was nearly 40 percent Korean.

On the Left were a variety of groups – intellectuals, peasants, workers, and students – who lay in wait to rise up against the government. Groupings were far from static. On the Left the Communists were the best organized and possessed some connection to the Soviet Union through its Seoul consulate, but they were neither dominant nor initially unwilling to work with others.⁸

By early September Pak Hon-yong, the most prominent Communist in the south, exercised considerable influence in the CPKI and conservatives, anticipating the arrival of American troops, organized a countermovement. On the eve of US arrival, CPKI leaders called a meeting in Seoul of hundreds of sympathizers from the provinces and declared the formation of the Korean People’s Republic (KPR). Controlled by Leftists, the meeting nonetheless appointed to top positions several Rightists, including patriots residing abroad such as Syngman Rhee, the most influential fighter for Korean independence in the United States, and Kim Ku, head of the Korean Provisional Government (KPG) in Chungking. Unfortunately, such appointments occurred without the knowledge or approval of the appointees themselves and at a time when US relations with the Soviet Union were deteriorating.⁹

Leading American troops who entered Korea in September 1945 was Lieutenant General John R. Hodge, the tough, straight-talking, combat-hardened commander of t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the Contributors
• Introduction
• 1. 'An Alliance Forged in Blood': The American Occupation of Korea, the Korean War, and the US–South Korean Alliance
• 2. China and the Dispatch of the Soviet Air Force: The Formation of the Chinese–Soviet–Korean Alliance in the Early Stage of the Korean War
• 3. Branding an Aggressor: The Commonwealth, the United Nations and Chinese Intervention in the Korean War, November 1950–January 1951
• 4. Lost Chance or Lost Horizon? Strategic Opportunity and Escalation Risk in the Korean War, April–July 1951
• 5. Casualty Reporting and Domestic Support for War: The US Experience during the Korean War
• 6. POWs: The Hidden Reason for Forgetting Korea
• Index