"If God asked me what my wish is, I will say, without hesitation, it is the independence of Korea. If God asked me what my second wish is, I will say again, it is our independence, and if God asked me what my third wish is, I will say louder that it is our independence."

Kim Gu

A Sissy in Girls' Classes

On February 1. 1941, I started my formal education that ended in 1962. The children began schooling at seven in those days, but my father decided that I should get a head start, one year ahead of my peers. He had donated large sums of money to the school over the years and had two sons already attending the school, The Japanese principal was more than willing to bend the regulations and let me in, provided that I participated in a new voluntary experimental program, the first coeducational class in Korea. 

Although elementary schools were coeducational and boys and girls went to the same school, classes were strictly segregated by gender. The only thing shared by the kids was the school building. Everything else was strictly segregated by boys and girls. There were boys rooms and girls rooms, of course, and there were boys' classrooms and girls; classrooms separated by teachers' offices. Roaming in girls' domain was verboten, punishable by at least 5 slaps on the face.

The school had tried to integrate classes before, but the old-fashioned Kapsan parents of boys were dead against it. The majority of the parents didn't want their sons studying in the same room with girls, because they believed that the "slow" girls would hold back the "smart" boys. Apparently, girls' parents did not mind their daughters sitting by boys. My father offered to help out and volunteered his spoiled brat as a guinea pig for the noble experiment. He applied his gentle persuasion and bribes to the other boys' parents and managed to sign up 12 boys for the new revolutionary mixed class of 40 girls in Kapsan. We were called sissy boys and had to endure endless teasing by the "normal" boys who were lucky to stay in "all-boys" classes. To make things worse, our female classmates, who were in the majority, bossed us around in front of the normal boys!

After suffering through days of insults, five of the 12 boys dropped out and we were reduced to seven sissies. I told my father that I would rather die than spent another day with the girls. But my father would not listen and carried me bodily to my classroom, screaming and kicking. I was turned over to the Japanese principal, who promised my father that after he was done with me, his son would be dying to come to school on his own  This Japanese had been a real samurai and beheaded over 100 enemies, my father said, and indeed, he looked like a real samurai I had seen in Japanese movies. I was scared of him and he knew how to handle a brat.  He made me to place my hands on his table and struck them with a broken leg of a chair - clunk! and I thought my fingers were chopped off, but I did not dare to let out scream.  Another clunk and I knew this old Japanese samurai meant business. I was ready to surrender. Since that moment on, I became less defiant and more docile, like a wild horse  broken in.  

That was the last time I told my father about not wanting to be in that class with those nasty girls. The boys sat in one row by the window, while the girls sat in their own rows.  Even though the class was integrated, we were segregated inside the classroom. Some of the girls were rather aggressive and, reaching across the invisible line of segregation between our rows, they would pinch me and then break out in giggles to their little hearts content. I was the youngest and the weakest of the boys and made an easy target for those Amazonian old maids. But I learn to live with it, and even liked the girls' attention. 

One of the major events in Kapsan was the arrival of a Japanese propaganda team. The team visited remote towns such as Kapsan and brought a little bit of culture. The team consisted of two to three people traveling in a truck. They showed samurai motion pictures using the truck's electric power since there was no electricity in Kapsan at the time. The team normally included a magician who walked on broken glasses and swallowed huge knives.

The Pearl Harbor

As we were enjoying such diversions in remote Kapsan, American military officials warned MacArthur of an impending invasion by the Japanese, but the egocentric American hero blithely ignored the report. That December 7, 1941, the Japanese warplanes raided Pearl Harbor and destroyed the American Pacific Fleet. Our school principal read aloud Emperor Hirohito's War Declaration to the student assembly. The emperor wrote in the ancient Japanese court language and used a bunch of funny words that we could not understand. For example, he said Jin for I, omo wu for think and so on. His words sounded strained and terse. The Japanese believed that the Emperor was a God and they tried very hard to make him have the aura of deity. The poor guy had to speak in ancient verses, wore funny clothes and lived in an old house. We were not sure what this war meant for us.  We were too young and innocent to see the evils of war.

At that time, all Korean men were required to wear Japanese civil defense uniforms and "sentobo", a Japanese cap worn by the soldiers and officers alike. My brother told me that the origin of this Japanese cap was Korean. Many years before, the story went, a delegation of Japanese nobles came to see our king. Somehow, the Japanese made the king lose his temper and the king kicked one of the Japanese. The king's socks flew off and landed on the poor Japanese man's head, who thought that the king wanted him to wear it like a hat. Even our clothing was regimented. All women were required to wear a baggy pant - called "mon pey". All school kids wore dark uniforms and a school cap.

The day after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese forces attacked MacArthur's army in the Philippines. US war planes and war ships were destroyed in another Japanese surprise attacks. The Pearl Harbor attack was music to the war-weary Chinese, because it opened Uncle Sam's purse wider to Chiang Kai Sek. The Americans agreed to give Chiang a half billion dollars in cash and virtually unlimited supplies of war materiel. Gen. Joseph “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell was appointed Commander of the American Forces in China, Burma and India. His mission was to shore up Chiang's troops and to force Chiang to spend more time fighting the Japanese than Mao’s bandits.  But Stilwell found Chiang's army a loose confederation of feudal warlords of dubious loyalty and capability. Gen. Claire Chennault's Flying Tigers, later to become a CIA asset, CAT, began to chip away the Japanese mastery of the China skies.

For much of Asia, the war news was unbelievably good. Tens of thousands of Yankees had been killed; the American Pacific Fleet gone; the entire Hawaiian Islands chain was reportedly smoldering. The Japanese had new war heroes; the Nine Military Heroes, Gu-Gun-Sin, who sneaked into Honolulu and sank American battleships in midget submarines. I learned after World War II that none of them actually made it. In fact, two of the "heroes" were captured alive after beaching their sub and the rest simply perished due to mechanical problems, without sinking a single ship. Their spirits were enshrined in our school Shinto. Every morning, we gathered in the schoolyard, rain or shine, and bowed, on the principal's sai-geh-rei command, to the Emperor first and then to the Shrine, after which we did calisthenics and listened to the Japanese principal's sermon of the day, which included latest news from the fronts. 

More exciting news reached Kapsan: on December 10, 1941, a Japanese sub sank the Prince of Wales and the Repulse, the crown jewels of the British Navy. By the end of 1941, Japan occupied most of the Southeast Asia. Each student received a rubber ball and a rice cake, compliments of the Emperor. The War had not affected us at all so far. Everything was going very well for Japan and the war would end soon in Japanese victory, so said our principal. Every time a local man was killed in action, we would go through a Yasukuni ceremony. The dead man's ashes came in a small cardboard or wooden box painted white. The box was handed over to the grieving family while the school kids sang the Japanese anthem. Even now, I remember that this anthem was more like a funeral dirge that put you in a sad crying mood, even without any box of ashes. A piece of paper with the dead guy's name was placed inside our school Shinto shrine.

Funny memories of this period remain with me. My eldest brother, Kim Ung Sik, was the top student of our school. He was president of the student body and the favorite of the Japanese teachers. Ung Sik spoke perfect Japanese, no Korean accent at all, and easily passed for a Japanese. He was often invited to the living quarters of the Japanese army officers, which was actually the school custodian's office converted into a living quarter. Getting invited to a Japanese to his room was an unheard of event, since the Japanese did not socialize with the Koreans, including my father, the richest man in town.

The Japanese officers spent much time on lice eradication campaigns, actually, all of us did. They would sit right next to a wood-burning stove and took off their clothes. They picked up lice fat with Japanese blood and dropped them on the red-hot top of the stove. The poor lice literally popped open and evaporated! After the lice hunting was over, the officers would place frozen rice cakes on the same spot and feasted on lice-infested cakes. My brother was forced to eat the cakes and almost puked afterwards.

My Father Arrested

On January 15, 1942, two Koreans, working for the Japanese police, came to our house to arrest my father. My father knew both men well and engaged in lengthy friendly chitchats with them as if they were his close friends. When the socializing was over, they led my father away in handcuffs. He was accused of secretly providing funds and dynamites to Kim Il Sung's guerrillas. My father obtained dynamite from the Japanese to build irrigation canals. The police claimed that some of the explosives were diverted to the guerrillas. Apparently, a captured guerrilla fingered my father after getting the famous Japanese water torture. My father saw no point in suffering through Japanese tortures and freely, willingly admitted to his crimes.

My mother wailed as if her husband was already dead and my two brothers, my sister and I also cried without really knowing what was happening. My father was crying, too. This was the first time I saw him cry in front of us. The police officers gave my mother instructions on how to get to the Hamhung prison and what, warm clothing and dry foods, to send. These Japanese collaborators were very deferential to my mother, saying that they were just doing their job and that they were very sorry. Of course, there was no trial or self-defense. If a cop said you were guilty, you WERE guilty - that's all. If you denied, they would torture you until you changed your mind.

My father had three wives, which was legal at the time. Under the Japanese law, you were allowed up to three wives, if the first wife consented. My mother was a widow when she married my father and my father always pined about marrying a virgin. For some reason or another, he married another widow with two kids. After bedding down two widows, he was more eager than ever to bed down a virgin. 

Figure 12. My father and his favorite son Kim Sung Sik in Seoul, circa 1940.

A young winsome woman from Hamhung was hired to teach at my school. My father promptly hired her to tutor my sick brother Sung Sik. He had her accompany them on long travels for Sung Sik’s medical treatment. One thing led to another, he married this young woman some 25 years junior to him. Father bought her a house in Hamhung and commuted between Hamhung and Kapsan. Her living in Hamhung was fortuitous for my mother because it saved her from making the long hazardous trips to Hamhung from Kapsan. She commanded the young woman to care for my father in prison at Hamhung.

My world turned upside down. My father's arrest was the biggest news to hit the town since Kim Il Sung's raid of the police station a few years earlier. There were all sorts of gossips going around on my father's arrest: one rumor had it that his third wife was a girl friend of a Japanese cop, another that he had three wives illegally (not true - it was legal to have up to 3 wives provided the first wife consented); yet a third rumor claimed that he was a communist. The truth of the matter is that he had helped one too many communists. Even though he was not a card carrying communist, he was sympathetic to their cause. His library was full of books on communism, which by itself was punishable by law.

My mother was in charge of the family finances now that my father was gone. Being the first wife, she was responsible for taking care of her children as well as my father's second and third wives and their children. This new job was way over her head. She enlisted our male relatives. My cousin Kim Jung Sik and his wife were brought from Chongjin to manage our farm.

My uncle Park and his son Chong Sik helped out with minor chores. Uncle Park was an alcoholic, illiterate and superstitious farmer - typical of the peasants in Kapsan: hard drinking, hard working and short-lived peasants. Uncle Park lost most of his fingers to frostbite. During one of his drinking binges, he lay down and went to sleep on frozen Huhchung River. The next morning, the police had to cut him out of the ice, but somehow, he survived.

The Soviets Eye Korea

Thus we were too preoccupied with our own troubles to be aware of the events that would have other repercussions on Koreans. On February 16, 1942, in Siberia, Kim Chong Suk, the second wife of Kim Il Sung, gave birth to their first son, Kim Jong Il. She joined Kim Il Sung's army in 1935 at the age of 16. She worked as a cook, seamstress, spy, food gatherer, fighter and close comrade of Kim Il Sung. She was captured by the Japanese in 1937 but was released a year later. She would die in bed in September 1949.

On August 3, 1942, Ho Yong Sik, Chief-of-Staff, 3rd Army, chief of the Korean resistance in Manchuria, was killed. Kim Chaek was sent back to Manchuria and reorganized the shattered resistance network. That August 16, Kim Tu Bong formed the Korean Independence League in Yanan that was to become the New Democratic Party, of which my father was a member, and the Yanan group after the Party's merger with the Korean Workers Party in 1947. Kim Tu Bong, alias Kim Paik Yon, was born on March 16, 1886 in South Kyonsang Province. He had fled to Shanghai in 1919 and later participated in the March 1st (Samil) Movement. He held a number of high positions including Kim Il Sung University presidency. He would be purged in 1958.

As we struggled to cope with hardships, we could not know the significance when, on January 4, 1943, the Soviets dispatched Soviet-trained Korean and Chinese guerrillas into Manchuria. Most of these were partisans who fled to Siberia early in 1940. Their missions ended in one disaster after another. The Soviets had three training camps in Siberia: The Okeanskaya Field School near Vladivostok, the Voroshilov Camp near Nikolayevsk, and the 88th Special Independent Guerrilla Brigade of the Soviet Army in a wooded area near Khabarovsk. The Soviets planned to use these units as vanguards of their planned attack on Manchuria and Korea.

Kapsan native, Park Kil Song, a major in the Soviet Army, entered Manchuria in August 1943 from Siberia leading a detachment of Soviet-trained partisans. Park was arrested soon after and spilled on the Soviet training programs in Siberia. Han Hung Son and Kim Chun Sop, both Soviet captains, were also arrested and executed.

From Teheran in 1943, American President Roosevelt told Stalin – “Koreans are not yet capable of exercising and maintaining independent government and...they should be placed under a forty-year tutelage." Stalin kept quiet. The US, USSR, Great Britain and China issued a joint statement: "Mindful of the enslavement of the Korean people, the aforementioned Great Powers are determined that Korea shall, in due course, be free and independent.”

Cholera in Kapsan

I had more immediate things to occupy my attention. On June 7, 1943, Cholera epidemic hit Kapsan. My younger brother, Su Sik, and I came down with the disease. The day before, my cousin, Kim Jung Sik, butchered a yearling cow to feed our clan. The Japanese had forbidden killing livestock for food and so the butchering was done in our yard in the dark of the night.

Being of a curious mind, I stayed up late to watch the poor cute animal clubbed dead and then butchered. The sweet smell of the animal’s steaming guts sickened me and I kept on vomiting through the night. Morning came but my vomiting continued and bright red blood began to come out of my mouth. My mother figured it was serious and called in the family doctor. He took one look at me and pronounced the verdict. My sickness had nothing to do with the grisly butchering. I had cholera! He told my worried mother that there was not much he could do and added that many children and old folks in the area were dropping dead from it.

Mother and grandmother did not get along, and my grandma said God was punishing us for the baby cow my mother had butchered the day before for the meat. Grandma announced that the animal was a reincarnation of a distant relative. I remained unconscious for five days delirious with fever. My brother Su Sik died but I survived on account of a special home remedy concocted by my grandma; my own feces boiled with toads (and God knows what else!) However revolting this may sound, Koreans of old had long believed that to be the concoction of last resort.

On June 14, 1943, my brother's little body was placed in a pine coffin made by Uncle Park. My relatives and neighbors gathered in our house and did the time-honored thing for my dead brother by wailing and eating. The body began to decompose in the summer heat. Uncle Park placed the coffin on his ox cart and headed to our family burial ground. My mother packed up all of Su Sik's belongings and asked my uncle to bury them with Su Sik's body. A few days later, my mother learned that my uncle sold Su Sik's belongings instead of burying them. She was sad but nOt overly mad at him. She knew how poor Uncle Park was and forgave him.

The Japanese grabbed whatever food was raised by our farmers for her soldiers, and food was scarce for the Korean civilians. We managed to survive by finding new sources of food and new ways of preparing foods. Homemade bean curds were popular. Japanese extracted oil from soybeans and the residual were given to pigs and Koreans. The stuff was steamed for a couple of hours until it turned white and floated to the surface; it was then scooped into a wooden box and pressed into brick-size cakes. Bean cakes of tofu now so popular in the West were tasteless but contained precious proteins and substitute for meats.

Bean cakes were eaten "as is" or cooked in many ways - steamed, fried, made into soups, even dried. My favorite was a fish cake - a bean-curd cake was placed in boiling water into which live minnows were added. The poor fish burrowed into the bean curd trying to escape the hot water and were cooked inside it pudding-like. Soybeans were also grown into noodle-like bean sprouts, an excellent way to stretch what you had. Beans were placed in a wooden box with a porous base and watered daily for a week or two until the box became a mini-soy bean field. Bean sprouts were eaten raw or cooked in countless ways. Bean sprout soups were popular with poor people.

Some genius found that certain tree roots were edible when ground into a sort of Polynesian poi. We went into mountains and dug up these roots. They were cleaned and pounded into whitish powders that could be made into noodles or breads. Buddhist priests were vegetarians and lived off the land. They were consulted for a list of edible plants and instructions on how to take out poison from certain edible plants.

All sorts of animals were eaten as well. Field mice were hunted down relentlessly and eaten. Mice's nests were sources of juicy baby mice. Sparrows were caught in nets strung over grain fields. Every body of water, ponds, streams and rivers, was searched for fish, crayfish, fresh water clams, snails and eels. Mountains were scoured for any form of animal that was still around, including snakes, bears, tigers, wolves, foxes, and whatever else crawled, crept or flew.

Japan’s Sinking Sun

By September 1944, things were not going well for Japan. There were more ashes of war dead coming to our little town. We had only a handful of young male teachers left, the rest of them having joined the Imperial Army. For the first time, a picture of dead Japanese soldiers appeared in the news. Our principal said that our soldiers were making the ultimate sacrifice and we owed our life to them. We even sang a song that said: hei-dai-san-no o-ga-ge (we owe it all to the soldiers). We were told we should to do more to help the war effort. Young school kids were forced to plant rice, to gather wild grapes (needed for radar we were told), pick hops (beer for Japanese troops), and sell vegetables to raise cash.

Another sign of the war going bad for Japan was our new town dog warden. His job was to kill any dog found anywhere. The Japanese claimed that dogs would go crazy and kill people during bomb raids. Also, dogs ate dead human bodies. The Japanese expected American bombers over Kapsan at any time. The only thing in Kapsan that could be considered a military target was the Japanese-owned hops plantation. There was nothing else worth bombing here. We were forced to kill our dogs and feast on dog meat. Some people tried to hide their dogs but the dog warden would somehow find them sooner or later. He carried a large pole with a sharp metal hook. He would sink the hook into a dog's neck and drag the poor animal to death. The Japanese collector would sell dead dogs, this was how he got paid for his service.

Things were going from bad to worse for my mother. Her farm business could not keep up with cash outflows of Japanese war contributions, my father's two other wives and their kids, our relatives who helped with the business, school tuition, books and clothing. In addition, there was an acute shortage of farm labor (since able-bodies were working for the Japanese). She managed by selling off my father's toys such as cameras, binoculars, horses, books, furniture and Western clothes.

Mother tried to keep us fed and alive by doing the best she knew how. She gathered edible plants and firewood herself; occasionally stole pumpkins from Chinese farmers; borrowed money from her poor relatives. On several occasions, my teacher sent me home because I did not have the money for tuition or for a school project to raise money for the Japanese war effort. I would come home crying my heart out and hating my mother for not having the money. She would manage to raise the yens and sent me back to school.

Rumors reaching Kapsan were mixed, and those coming from up in China were not encouraging. On November 17, 1944, from Chunking, Gen. Joseph Stilwell, chief of the US military in China, asked Roosevelt's permission to equip the Communist troops to fight Japan. Upon learning this, Chiang Kai Sek went into a rage and forced Roosevelt to sack Gen. Stilwell. Stilwell said in his autobiography: “The basic trouble with Chiang is just his plain dumb ignorance. One of the worst disservices done to the American people is the overselling of Chiang Kai Sek. We've made a hero out of him and he believes all the crap he's read in our press about him and he thinks he hasn't got anything to learn. Actually, he has little power - far less than people at home suppose. He couldn't get his generals to obey him if he ordered one; they don't want to move. They are making money now - hoarding food for speculation, selling our supplies on the black market, lending money; by God, they are not soldiers, they're speculators...each general has settled down on his own little dunghill and doesn't want to disturb the peace”.

On January 10, 1945, I made it to the fifth grade. My father was released from prison on sick leave. He was suffering from berry-berry caused by lack of fresh vegetables (Vitamin C) in his prison diet. His legs were swollen like a balloon. He stayed with his third wife in Hamhung. He would come home to my mother in Kapsan when he regained his strength. For now, his youngest and the best-looking spouse were caring him for. I guessed that was a human nature. It was a long way from Hamhung to Kapsan, especially in January, with thick ice everywhere.

I still remember January 20, 1945 when American B29 bombers appeared over the Kapsan sky for the first time. They flew so high that we could not hear their engines. The con-tails were the only sign of their presence in the sky. The Japanese principal assures us that Japan was winning the war. He said that so many Americans were being killed that they would stop coming soon. He said that the Japanese strategy was to draw the Americans on Manchuria and then kill them off. Two Japanese Army officers taught we how to use sharpened sticks to kill the Americans. These two guys were fine samples of the Yamato's 'mind over body' training. They ran around half-naked outdoors in sub-freezing weather.

In Kapsan, wed didn’t attach any special significance to February 23, 1945 when Iwo Jima fell. But the end was near. In later years, I could feel a chill as I read words issued in February 1945 from Yalta by US military officials, MacArthur in particular, who desperately wanted Stalin to declare war on Japan. MacArthur claims: “Russia's aims: that they would want all of Manchuria, Korea, and possibly part of North China. This seizure of territory is inevitable; but the United States must insist that Russia pay her way by invading Manchuria at the earliest possible date after the defeat of Germany...The Russians want a warm water port, which would be Port Arthur... It would be impracticable to deny them such a port because of their great military power.”

Korea Split Along the 38^th Parallel

Stalin named his price. His wish list included splitting Korea at the 38^th Parallel, Sakhalin's southern half, the Kurile islands, preeminence in Manchuria, Port Arthur, and free use of the Chinese railroads. Stalin promised to enter the war in two or three months after the German surrender. The division of Korea was not entirely original. Similar proposals for Russian sphere of influence in the North, and a Japanese sphere in the South, had been called for during the last years of the tottering dynasty nearly a half-century ago.

In remember that on March 3, 1945, all Japanese teachers, except the old principal, were gone to fight the Americans. Able-bodied Koreans were either in hiding or being pressed into Japanese war efforts. High school kids were encouraged to become Kamikaze pilots. Every time some poor soul got drafted into the Imperial Army, we were herded into a send-off- ceremony. We waved the Rising Sun and sang “Ban-da-no-sagu-ra-ka,,,” and other patriotic songs. The relatives wailed as if their kin were already dead.

In East Germany on July 26, 1945, President Truman took over Roosevelt's seat at Potsdam’s Big Power Conference. The US military recommended dividing Korea along the 38th parallel, roughly in half. But Truman did not bring this up with Stalin. They had more important items to discuss. Korea was among the least concerns.

The first A-bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, and over 80,000 Japanese civilians were killed in one blast. Study and research over decades gives insight into less apparent activities that would grip the lives of Kapsan’s people and all Koreans.

On August 7, 1945, Gen. Donavan, the head of the US Office of Special Services OSS, met Kim Gu at Sheyang, China. They agreed to mount joint US-Korea covert operations in Korea. Donavan agreed to equip Kim Gu's troops with special weapons, radios and airdrops. An American submarine was to land the operatives on Korea.  Gen. Lee Bom Suk commanded these special forces, the second brigade of Kim Gu's Independence Army.

On August 8, 1945, Joseph Stalin declared war on Japan. Three Red Army groups, over one and half million men, 5,500 tanks and self-propelled guns, invaded Manchuria and reached the Korean border in less than two weeks. The once mighty Kwangtung Army disintegrated. Soviet marines occupied Port Arthur in Manchuria. The Chinese 8th Route Army under Lin Piao took over villages and small towns, while Chiang's KMT (Kuo Ming Tang) troops took over large cities in Manchuria from the Soviets in accordance with a secret agreement made between Stalin and Chiang Kai Sek behind Mao's back. Chiang's troops, aided by US soldiers, provided safe havens to Japanese civilians. Stalin's troops carted off Japanese POW's to Siberia. The Chinese peasants dealt harshly with Japanese civilians caught outside the safe havens.

Tens of thousands Japanese refugees were crossing the Yalu River at Hyesan and passing through our town, Kapsan. They were desperately trying to reach Chungjin and Hungnam. From there, they hoped to charter fishing boats to Japan. The refugees spread rumors of unbelievable horrors going on in Manchuria. Chinese mobs were killing Japanese civilians by the thousands. Some said that the mobs were eating Japanese babies alive! Stalin's troops were killing Japanese POW's and gang-raping women and children. The old military order of East Asia had collapsed the world had gone mad.

Figure 13. Kim Gu and the OSS chief Gen. Donavan at the Kwnag-bok Army 2nd detachment HQ in China. Yung Han Sum, Minister of Information (right of Kim Gu), Ji Chung Chun, Commander of Kwang-bok Army (partially hidden by Kim Gu), and Lee Bum Suk, 2nd Detachment commander (behind Donavan). Courtesy: Kim Gu Collection.

On August 9, 1945, the second A-bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. The Japanese authorities in Korea began to transfer power to Korean leaders. Gen. Abe, the Governor General of Korea, wanted to leave behind an independent, united Korea. 

By August 10, 1945, the Soviet troops led by Kim Il Sung's advance guards landed at North Korea’s Ung-gi and two days later at Chungjin and Hungnam. Japan offered to surrender: “The Japanese Government is ready to accept the terms enumerated in the joint Declaration which was issued at Potsdam on 26 July, 1945...with the understanding that this Declaration does not comprise any demand which prejudices the right of His Majesty as sovereign”.

The Allies replied: “The ultimate form of the government of Japan shall, in accordance with the Potsdam Declaration, be established by the freely expressed will of the Japanese people.”

On the other side of the world from Kapsan, along America’s Potomac River, yet more policy was being etched which still troubles the world today. During the night of the August 10th and early hours of August 11, Col. Charles H. Bonesteel, Chief of the Policy Section, US Army Operations Division, and Lt. Col. Dean Rusk, later to become assistant secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs 1947-1960; Secretary of State 1961-1969 and the main architect of the Vietnam War, formulated General Order No. 1. James Bymes, US Secretary of State in 1945, instructed the young colonels to draw up a line "as far north as possible". The colonels were unable to find a detailed map of Korea and ended up using a small wall map of the Far East. Lt. Col. Rusk's fingers found the 38th parallel on the tiny map.

Thus, a young desk-bound junior officer determined the fate of the Korean people. To the surprise of the US military, Stalin accepted the 38th Parallel. Maybe the Russians had not forgotten the old sphere pf influence recognized by foreign powers during the waning days of the Yi Dynasty, and how Western vessels had taken battle stations to defend the neutrality of doomed Tsarist vessels in Inchon against the Japanese. Perhaps, also, they recalled how Teddy Roosevelt had turned his back to America’s 1881 mutual defense treaty with the old Korean Kingdom soon thereafter, knowingly giving the savage Japanese a free hand in Korea. Stalin ordered all Russian units already in what is now South Korea to turn around and pull back North of the 38^th Parallel.

For information on World War II, see:

1)  The Rise and Fall of Imperial Japan 1894-1945 - S.L. Mayer, Military Press, NY, 1976; contains information on Japanese war activities from 1850 - 1945.

2) The Modern World - Esmond Wright, The Hamlyn Publishing Group, Ltd., New Jersey, 1979

For information on Kim Gu, see: http://www.kimsoft.com/2000/kimgu.htm Who was Kim Gu?  by Lee Wha Rang