Yet the election laid bare an uncomfortable truth. Korea was on the verge of de facto division between its northern and southern halves. The election should have been held across the whole country. However, Kim Il-sung refused to allow the UN to run the elections in the northern half of the Korean Peninsula. He was backed by the Soviet Union, whose forces helped make sure that no UN election monitor could step above the thirty-eighth parallel.⁴ As a result, Koreans in the northern half were not able to cast their ballot. The legislative National Assembly set up after the election had unoccupied seats for the northern representatives to take once a vote was held in north Korea.⁵ They were to remain empty.

The election showed that Korea remained at the mercy of whales. Elections in the southern part only took place because the United States guaranteed that they would happen. But many south Koreans were unhappy with their country’s dependence on foreign powers. Independence leaders Kim Ku and Kim Kyu-sik led a group of prominent politicians who refused to participate in the election.⁶ They correctly assumed that this would make it very difficult for the two Koreas to unify. They wanted the Soviet Union and the United States to leave their occupation zones and allow Koreans to rule themselves. They shared the concerns of their fellow citizens in Jeju Island and elsewhere across the country, who opposed foreign occupation.

Ultimately, however, elections were held. Rhee Syngman’s National Association for the Rapid Realization of Korean Independence won the election, claiming just over 26 per cent of the vote and fifty-five out of 200 seats in the National Assembly.⁷ Rhee quickly became the most influential figure in the new National Assembly. A devout Protestant equipped with a PhD from Princeton University, Rhee had been the Korean independence movement’s most prominent figure in the United States. He had been living there almost uninterruptedly since 1904. He had represented the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea in several international meetings, including the San Francisco Conference that approved the UN Charter. He had also been the president of the Provisional Government between 1919 and 1925. Rhee had met several US presidents and countless American and European political and military leaders.⁸ Arguably, he was the only Korean independence figure widely known in the West. He was Washington’s preferred choice to lead south Korea; perhaps the only one.

Rhee immediately pressed for the creation of a separate state in the south. On 17 July, the National Assembly promulgated the first Constitution of the Republic of Korea.⁹ This marked a new first in Korean history: constitutionalism had arrived in the country, if only in its southern half. But in the whirlwind of events that took over the country post-independence, this landmark moment went by with barely a shrug of most people’s shoulders. Much more consequential was the 20 July presidential election, in which members of the National Assembly voted to elect Rhee as south Korea’s new president. Rhee received 180 out of the 196 votes cast.¹⁰ His grip over the National Assembly and south Korea at large was becoming evident. Shortly after, he became the first president of a new country.

Barely discussed, the constitution included a crucial clause that would put an end to centuries of Korean history. The clause transferred land to farmers. In 1945, around 70 per cent of southern Korean farmers remained tenants. They paid rent of up to 60 per cent of their crop.¹¹ The yangban still possessed most of the land and dominated political, cultural and, obviously, economic life in the countryside. That is, the lives of well over three-quarters of southern Koreans. The 1948 constitution paved the way for the Land Reform Law of 1950, which radically changed this state of affairs.¹² This would become the most popular measure enacted by the South Korean government. But in 1948, south Koreans did not know this. And many disliked the direction their half of the country was taking.

On 15 August 1948, the Republic of Korea was founded. A picture of the occasion shows a massive Taegukgi, the flag first adopted by the Joseon dynasty in 1883. The flag hangs in front of the National Assembly. Dressed in a plain hanbok, Rhee stands in front of the flag. Next to him is General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in (occupied) Japan. This was the last day of USAMGIK, Washington’s military government in south Korea. Rhee and MacArthur look at the huge crowds gathering in front of them. These are the new citizens of the Republic of Korea. It is official: South Korea is now an independent country, separate from the north. But the crowds do not cheer and laugh, as they did exactly three years earlier when Japanese Emperor Hirohito had announced the surrender of Japan and Korea had regained its independence. They witness history, yes. But they do not celebrate it.

South Korea was thus born out of pain, rather than joy. Well over half of South Koreans, now with a capital S, had never experienced self-rule. But now that it had come, they started to realize that they may end up being the masters of only one half of the Korean Peninsula. Indeed, North Korea would be founded less than a month later. On 9 September, Kim Il-sung would become the first Supreme Leader of North Korea.¹³ Another independence hero, he would go on to rule North Korea until his death in 1994. He would attempt to re-unify Korea by force less than two years later. But South Koreans do not this know yet. All they know, or dream of, is that their country will soon be one again.

The country was also born with huge domestic divisions over its future. Conservative and nationalist, the Rhee government introduced a National Security Law to punish anti-national activities in September. Three months later, the government passed the law.¹⁴ In this way, Seoul could suppress communism, any activity that could be construed as pro-North Korean and more generally any type of opposition to the government. It was becoming clear that Rhee was no democrat at heart. With the acquiescence of the United States—more interested in halting the spread of communism than promoting democracy—authoritarianism slowly started to creep into the new country.

Left-leaning South Koreans, many of them sympathetic to communist ideas and supported by the North, fought back. Jeju Island’s ‘4.3 Uprising’ had not been quelled. Demonstrations now broke out across the country. Repression by police forces and soldiers ensued. The rebels did not back down. As a case in point, the Yeosu–Suncheon rebellion erupted in October. Up to 2,000 left-leaning soldiers stationed in Yeosu, Suncheon and other towns nearby in the South Jeolla Province launched an uprising. They refused to be sent to Jeju Island to participate in the repression of their fellow South Koreans. The Republic of Korea Armed Forces—formed in August 1948—moved in. The South Korean army had suppressed the rebellion by early November and executed those suspected of leading or supporting the uprising. Civilians were not spared.¹⁵ Tensions, however, continued throughout 1949. In a particularly grim incident, the police rounded up and executed 300 villagers in a single day in Bukchon, a town on Jeju Island.¹⁶ This was one of many cases of violence against civilians throughout this period.

Violence and repression did not put an end to domestic left–right divisions, which to this date mar South Korean politics. An undeclared guerrilla war lasting almost until the outbreak of the Korean War continued. It even survived the first few months of the war in some pockets of the country. Unrest was particularly violent in the southern provinces, in a pattern that would repeat itself throughout South Korean history. But the Rhee government was close to being firmly in control of the country by mid-1949. So much so that the last remaining US forces withdrew from South Korea in late June.¹⁷ US politicians wanted out of the Korean Peninsula, and fast. Their country’s forces, however, would be back one year later.

Slightly over 11,000 kilometres away, the speech and vote were met with dismay. In Seoul, the Rhee government was making plans to take over the north. By force if necessary. Domestic violence was mostly under control. Left-leaning guerrillas continued their fight against the government. But the South Korean army was on its way to achieving almost full control of the situation, which it did by the spring. By then, up to 30,000 political prisoners were in jail. Some 305,000 were enrolled in the Bodo (National Guidance) League, a re-education movement.²⁰ Rhee had control over the National Assembly. Kim Ku, who could have spearheaded an opposition movement, had been assassinated the year before.²¹ Kim Kyu-sik, another potential opposition leader, had retired from politics. Considering the connections he still maintained in Washington, Rhee could have expected support from the US government in his plans to take over the north. Acheson and US Congress had put an end to such hopes.

And then war broke out. On 25 June 1950, at dawn, the (North) Korean People’s Army launched an attack across the thirty-eighth parallel. Just like Rhee, Kim Il-sung wanted to be the leader that reunified Korea. And he did not hesitate to strike the South as soon as he felt his army was ready. Under-equipped and exhausted from almost two years of inter-Korean border skirmishes, South Korean troops were no match for their opponents from the north. In fact, North Korean soldiers had been training and fighting along with their Chinese counterparts in 1948–9, during the last two years of the Chinese civil war. The North Korean military was also well equipped. The Soviet Union had provided tanks, artillery and other material assistance that the United States had denied to South Korea. Within two days, North Korean forces had reached Seoul.²² The Rhee government had to flee further south.

The early seeds of what ended up becoming a brutal three-year conflict were planted on the same day of the North Korean surprise attack. With the Soviet Union boycotting the UN Security Council, the council was able to pass a resolution condemning North Korea’s move.²³ Two days later, it authorized member states to provide military assistance to South Korea.²⁴ The United States wasted no time, and its B-29 bombers launched a strike on Pyongyang on 29 June. Two days later, the first American troops landed in South Korea.²⁵ Up to fifteen other countries would end up sending soldiers as well. US President Harry Truman had determined that the Soviet Union was unlikely to send its troops to the Korean Peninsula even if the United States did, so there was no threat of the Korean War leading to direct hostilities between the two superpowers.²⁶ The need to protect Japan from the potential threat of a communist, unified Korea, the early stages of the Cold War and the threat that China posed to Taiwan (then Formosa) were crucial factors behind Washington’s decision to intervene in the Korean War. In short, South Korea was saved not for its own sake—or at least not only. It was saved because of great power politics. A shrimp among whales, indeed.

Notwithstanding US intervention, the North Korean troops continued to march south. Tens of thousands of communist sympathizers scattered across mountains and villages joined them. Countless South Korean soldiers defected to the northern army or simply refused to fight for a government they did not believe in. Often portrayed as a ‘simple’ confrontation between North and South, the reality was more nuanced. Many would flee North Korea during the war because they feared life under a communist regime. But also, many in South Korea joined the advancing troops from the north because Kim Il-sung offered them more hope than Rhee. In a matter of weeks, South Korea was essentially reduced to the Busan (then Pusan) Perimeter.²⁷ In their retreat, the South Korean army rounded up and killed thousands of real and alleged communist sympathizers. North Korean troops matched or surpassed their brutality, killing scores of local politicians, businesspeople and anybody who could vaguely be considered anti-communist.²⁸ After decades of fighting Japanese oppression, Koreans were now fighting each other almost as viciously. In quite a few cases, they were settling long-standing family or neighbour feuds. In many cases, ideology had little to do with it.

Stretching roughly 240 kilometres from the Korea Strait to the East Sea (Sea of Japan), the Busan Perimeter was the area were South Korean and UN forces were to make their final stand until the United States and other countries sent more reinforcements. On 4 August, the Battle of the Busan Perimeter began. Two weeks later, the Rhee government was forced to move inside the perimeter. The joint South Korean and UN army was holding strong. UN forces—above all the United States—were sending bombers, battleships an...