Part 0: Pre-1945 Background to the Korean War
The story of Communism in Japanese-occupied Korea is... complicated, but laid the roots of the conflict- and influences South Korean politics and society to this day.
[Note: I have added this section is response to reader feedback. While this project is aimed at a general audience, I should note that some background knowledge on the history of modern East Asia, as well as Communism and the early history of the Soviet Union under Stalin, may be more helpful to the understanding of this section than the others. I should also note that in this section I relied less on research and more on conjecture and would REALLY welcome any feedback.
Part III, concerning the Chinese entry into the War, will be released by mid-November.]
OVERVIEW: Pre-1945 Divisions between northern and southern Korea, and between the Koreans
To state the obvious, before the Japanese occupation began in 1910, the Korean peninsula had been a united monarchy under the Joseon Dynasty for many centuries, and the line that would be drawn to divide the land and its people was an arbitrary and cruel fate to befall the nation and its people. That being said, there were many factors at play in the preceding years that would contribute to the later destiny of the peninsula.
To tell the entire fraught history of the occupation period is a task far beyond my ability and outside the scope of this project, but events during those years would obviously play a role in the carnage that unfolded in 1950.
Let us begin with geography.
The northern half of the peninsula is far more mountainous than the southern half. It thus experiences colder and harsher winters, and much of the terrain is remote and difficult to access. In contrast, the south is warmer and with much more flatland that has supported extensive rice agriculture since at least the beginning of the Common Era. Thus, the area is capable of supporting a larger population. In 1948 North Korea had about 9 million inhabitants, while in the South there were about 21 million. Interestingly, this is about the same ratio of population that exists today. In addition, the rugged and often inaccessible North offers better cover for bandits and political insurgents to operate. As we will see, the country’s geography has been a large factor in its political destiny.
When the Japanese arrived they were, like all colonialists, keen to develop the resources of the peninsula for their own interests. However, owing to the unique situation in East Asia, this played out along somewhat different lines than in most European colonies. To Europeans, developing industry in their colonies was an idea largely seen as anathema; simply put, the economic model of British India involved growing cotton, shipping it to Liverpool for processing and manufacture, and then selling the finished clothes back to the Indians. In contrast, Japan saw Korea as a vital bridge toward their expansionist interests in Manchuria and later the rest of China, and thus took an interest in industrializing the country, albeit to their own selfish ends. They focused mostly on the construction of railroads and development of industries that could supply their army in Manchuria. Thus the northern part of the peninsula saw significant industrial development; there are reports that some North Korean factories use Japanese machinery from the 1930s to this very day. To power these projects, the Japanese turned to northern Korea’s mountains for their abundant coal reserves, which they massively exploited. During the occupation, many Koreans living north of the 38th parallel thus directly experienced the harsh working conditions of the Second Industrial Revolution, usually in the employ of bosses who represented the occupation and exploitation of their country.
In contrast, in what was to become South Korea the economy remained more agricultural in character. While wealthy Japanese colonialists, along with more than a few Korean collaborators, consolidated peasants’ land holdings into large landed estates and to some extent promoted modern farming methods (all for the benefit of the mother country), it can be said that life for most rural peasants- a large majority of the population- in the South did not change as much as it did for industrial workers the North. Therefore, when we speak of the political inclinations of South Koreans during the occupation and afterward, to a large extent we are referring to the ideas and beliefs of a fairly small professional class who lived in the cities and towns.
UNEXPLORED: Communism in Korea before 1945
[NOTE: Before beginning this section, I think this aspect of history is “unexplored” in the sense that both textbook and popular accounts of the Korean War written in English rarely pause to consider the context of the country before the conflict. Although it is true that outside forces were largely to blame for what unfolded, that should not imply that the Koreans themselves did not have a domestic perspective on the brutal conflict about to befall them.]
The Korean Communist Party had been founded in 1918, but its initial attempts to pursue underground activities on a large scale were met with ruthless and effective repression by Japanese authorities. Its first few groups of leaders were captured and executed. By 1930, the party mostly consisted of armed bands that operated along Korea's border with Manchuria, conducting small-scale supply raids and ambush attacks. As Japan and the USSR drew closer to confrontation in the 1930s, the Soviets took a greater interest in the Korean Communists and began to funnel them weapons and supplies. By WWII, their insurgent activities in Manchuria could be described as something more than a nuisance to the Japanese, but never anywhere close to a major threat.
The appeal of Communist ideology to the industrial workers mentioned in the above section speaks for itself; an ideology that would improve their material conditions while allowing them to take revenge on their bosses was an easy sell. On the other hand, its failure to appeal to the masses of illiterate peasants was a common feature of 19th and 20th-century class conflicts the world over. While far outside the scope of this piece, there is a reason why Marx and the early Bolsheviks did not believe that rural peasants possessed revolutionary potential. In traditional, largely illiterate societies, the radical social upheavals that Communism promises, especially the public seizure of land and industrial resources, often offend the conservative sensibilities of ordinary people- not just wealthy elites.
When it came to Korea's minority class of urban, educated professionals, Communism appealed to many for several reasons which are worth discussing in detail.
1) The message of liberation was highly attractive. To the extent that the totalitarian nature of Communism was understood at the time (Stalin's Soviet Union in the 1930s did a remarkably good job covering up the ghastly brutality of his Red Utopia), it was often contrasted against the racist colonialism of Western powers. Educated Koreans knew enough about the world to understand that Western powers did not afford their Asian subject peoples the same rights as those in the home country. After the Japanese brutally crushed the March First Movement in 1919 with barely a word of protest from the Allies at Versailles (Japan had joined those Allies in WWI), Koreans learned all too well that Woodrow Wilson's advocacy of self-determination did not extend beyond Europe.
2) While- as stated above- the prospect of public seizure of land and industry was a scary prospect to the conservative sensibilities of many Koreans, the fact that in Korea most of it was owned by Japanese occupiers and collaborators made radical action more palatable, not least because it would afford patriots an opportunity to seek revenge on oppressors and traitors.
3) This point is complicated, but it is fair to say that after several attempts at large scale resistance were crushed by the Japanese in the first few years of the occupation, in the leadup to WWII many of the most successful Korean resistance groups operating in China were either Communist or closely aligned with them. These groups were successful in large part due to the material support and training they received from the Soviets, as well as the Chinese Communists (much later in the narrative, bonds formed with Mao’s fighters at this time would prove crucial). It was among these groups that a young Kim Il-Sung first made a name for himself. Even non-Communists had to acknowledge the fact that these groups were receiving support from someone, while no nation apart from Nationalist China had shown any interest in supporting the official Korean Government-in-Exile or the military forces it attempted to raise. And while its leaders quarreled in Shanghai, Communist insurgents seemed much more willing to fight- and die- for their country’s freedom.
As the Japanese cracked down ever harder on the insurgents, more and more guerillas crossed over the border to Russia, where they were trained to speak Russian, as well as to understand the concept of absolute obedience to Stalin. Like many other nationalities, Koreans in the USSR were subject to the infamous forced population transfers during the war years in which many died. Still, those who survived, now speaking both Korean and Russian, would prove an invaluable asset to the Red Army as it asserted control over North Korea in 1945.
BURIED and CONVOLUTED: the inextricable connection between Japanese collaboration and Anti-Communism
While history classes in Western countries- at least in my experience- spend a significant amount of time attempting to deconstruct and understand Nazi propaganda, very little time is devoted to understanding the ideological underpinnings of Imperial Japan. A cursory look at the subject will show that the Japanese justified their expansion with two narratives that were highly contradictory, at least to non-Japanese: the belief that the Yamato “master race” was destined to rule Asia, and that only Japan could free Asia from the exploitative grip of Western colonizers. Obviously the first was a very hard sell for most Koreans, while no Asian country showcased the hypocrisy of the second claim more than occupied Korea itself. Though little discussed today, there was however a third and very significant plank of Imperial Japanese propaganda: anti-communism.
Official Japanese propaganda made heavy use of anti-communist themes in both the home country and its colonies, portraying the Empire as a bulwark against a rising Red menace. To some extent Japan’s actions backed up this rhetoric; the Empire signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Nazi Germany in 1936 in an important step towards their eventual wartime alliance. In China, Imperial propaganda also emphasized the menacing brutality of the Communist forces it fought against, although- to greatly oversimplify an issue far outside the scope of this writing- the vast majority of its battles were fought against Nationalist Chinese forces who had only very reluctantly agreed to a truce with their Communist enemy in the name of fighting Japan. However, in a little-known undeclared conflict between the Japan and the USSR in 1939, the Japanese Army was heavily defeated in the Battle of Khalkin Gol, on the border between Manchuria and present-day Mongolia. With most of their land forces already bogged down in China, the Imperial Army was very pessimistic about its ability to open a new front against the Soviets. Thus, the fervently anti-communist Empire of Japan refused to join Hitler’s war against the Soviets in 1941, and the 2 parties maintained tense neutrality until the last weeks of the war. While propaganda would to a great extent shift towards Anti-American themes after Pearl Harbor, anti-Communism was never abandoned. And one reason may just have been that unlike master race-led imperialism, it found a somewhat receptive audience.
Before discussing how this played out in Korea, some obvious context is necessary. In occupied Korea, it was impossible for any citizen to rise to a prominent economic or social position without outwardly expressing a degree of loyalty to the regime. If one aspired to be a schoolteacher, bank manager, hospital doctor, or to amass a large land holding, remaining aloof to the occupation was not an option. We can assume those who served in trusted positions late in the occupation justified their activities with thoughts that ran the spectrum. On one end, some people lied through their teeth to gain an opportunity to defeat the regime from within. In the middle, many simply resigned themselves to the hopelessness of resistance and tried to build the best lives they could, perhaps with the idea that they could put their skills to use if Independence ever came. On the other end, others showed enthusiasm for the Imperial cause, either for the prospect of advancement or for profit. As conditions facing Korea grew more onerous in the lead-up to WWII, we can only imagine the strain under which those making the first two arguments found themselves. As for the obvious contradiction between showing loyalty and embracing Communism, it can be assumed that both committed Communists and sympathizers were some of the best at leading double lives.
For Korean professionals who prospered during the occupation, to say nothing of landowners, the prospect of Communist revolution was as frightening as it was attractive to their opponents. This undoubtedly helped in drawing many in the upper and middle classes to support or at least resign themselves to the occupation. Indeed, for many wealthy Koreans, it probably served as a good excuse to justify their privileged position. They could argue with some justification, at least from their own selfish perspective, that it was a less bad option. Though these issues are only tangentially related to the progress of the Korean War itself, two of the biggest controversies in modern South Korean historiography concern the continued prosperity of collaborators and their descendants for decades after the Korean War (arguably up to the present day) and the contrasting hardship faced by independence fighters who often lived in poverty and received little, if any, recognition for their heroism. I think the history of Communism in Korea offers a large part of the explanation. The impending division of Korea would soon draw most of the militant independence fighters to support the North, while also allowing Kim Il-Sung to use his resistance background as a massive propaganda asset. The Communist takeover of the North would also necessitate the removal and purge of these anti-Communist, Japanese friendly Koreans from high positions- most of them would indeed quickly flee South (as mentioned above, the Soviets had Russian-speaking Koreans on hand to replace them). Meanwhile, as is noted in Part I, while it is arguable if the US-backed authorities in the South could have done more to remove collaborators from positions of power and influence, suffice to say that they did nothing of the sort. While collaborators could cite their professional skills to justify keeping their status, another reason they were not punished was that the Americans and later President Rhee saw wealthy, committed anti-Communists as their most dependable allies in administering the country. Alas, it just so happened that most of these people had been more than token collaborators. As mentioned in Part I, the success of the Communist insurgency, its hostility to collaborators, and American leniency to towards them, best explain why in 1950 nearly every officer in the South Korean military had formerly served the Emperor.
To the former collaborators who would soon dominate the government, military, and economy of South Korea for decades to come, the story of Communist and Communist-backed freedom fighters heroically resisting Japanese rule was an awkward one indeed. But while obviously self-interested, they weren't entirely wrong in arguing that a majority of independence fighters became their enemies after 1945, or that the prospect of North Korean conquest of the peninsula could turn out to be worse than Japanese rule had been. For his part, recently deceased General Paik Sun-Yup (see Part I for more details), in response to harsh criticism by left-wing Koreans for his campaigns against Korean insurgents while serving in the Japanese-controlled Army of Manchukuo, defended his actions by reasoning that he was “fighting Communists.” As I mentioned in the addendum to Part I on Paik's legacy, this encapsulates the divide between left and right in South Korea on what it means to be a patriot. Conservatives see anti-Communism as the defining characteristic of Korean patriotism, while left-wingers emphasize struggle against the Japanese. Conservatives, in turn, argue that this view of history excuses- or even celebrates- the actions of many who would later serve North Korea. To that, left-wingers angrily argue that the focus on Communism is intended to whitewash the role that collaborators in their families played both during the occupation and in the repressive post-war dictatorships. And so on. This divide seems unlikely to be resolved anytime soon. As these issues pertain to the Korean War, I hope they help explain why many Koreans at the time held the views that they did when the fighting began.
Before concluding this section, I would like to note a few more things for context.
First, the longstanding controversy over Communist participation in colonial and wartime resistance movements is by no means unique to Korea. France provides an instructive example: by many estimates, French Communists formed the single largest and most active component of the anti-Nazi Maquis resistance forces. Also, besides fighting the Germans, at times these groups resorted to fighting each other over ideological differences. Both of these facts were largely glossed over for decades after the war, as was the fact that quite a few more French collaborated than the official histories dared admit. These awkward details of history, as damaging as they are to the neat and tidy official historical narrative, have only recently been confronted in the open. As long as Korea remains divided, such a reckoning will always have to be done in the shadow of the continued threat from Communist North Korea and everything it represents ideologically, and that does not bode well for any potential resolution.
Second, I have observed that left-leaning Koreans often find it fashionable to downplay the Korean War, blaming the Japanese for starting it by reasoning that act of conquering and occupying Korea, and subsequently waging war against China and the United States, is entirely to blame for the peninsula's subsequent division. I would put this in the category of arguments that are "so true, they're meaningless." While it is undeniable that Korea's fate, in hindsight, was ultimately bound to Japan's as early as the Meiji restoration of 1868, two can play the game of counterfactuals. Alternative histories in which those events did not happen, or happened differently, would most likely have seen Korea either occupied by a Western Power, dominated by one or more of them as with the case of Qing China, or swept up in the Bolshevik Revolution or Chinese Civil War. It is possible that some of those outcomes would have been kinder to the peninsula and its people than what transpired. It is also possible that they could have been worse. I think it’s impossible not to see the Korean War as defining and pivotal event in Korean history, as those counterfactuals pale in comparison of importance to a hypothetical outcome that very nearly happened: North Korean victory.