Chapter 6: 1945 – The New Masters
”We will have to discharge all officials appointed by the interpreters
of Military Government. After August 14, 1945 all pro-Japanese and national
traitors under the Japanese first went into hiding.. And later come out to buy
off the interpreters so that they would get positions in the provincial
governments, the district government and the police. We must clean out all these
people, and at the same time stop this spirit of dependence on foreign
countries.”
Kim Gu
On August 15, 1945, Japan
finally surrendered. A special student assembly was called and we listened to
the Emperor's voice for the first time: “Despite the best that has been done by everyone, the war situation
has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage,,. In order to avoid further
bloodshed, perhaps, even the total extinction of human civilization, we shall
have to endure the unendurable, to suffer the insufferable..”
Gen. Abe, the last Japanese Governor General of Korea, transferred his power to Yo Un Hyong, and Yo promptly formed the Committee for the Preparation of Korean Independence, CPKI, later to become the Korean People's Republic, KPR, the first and the last true government of the Koreans, by the Koreans and for the Koreans. Some American historians mistake this government of the Korean nationalists with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, DPRK, founded by Kim Il Sung in 1948 in North Korea.
Yo agreed to safeguard all Japanese nationals and their properties in Korea. Over 700,000 Japanese were stranded in South Korea and 200,000 in North Korea. The CPKI established "People's Committees" in all of the thirteen provinces of Korea, and the committees took control of local administrative and police functions from the Japanese authorities. The very first action of Yo's de facto government of Korea was to form a security force, chi-anh-dae (also called, bo-ahn-dae), to protect the Japanese and to secure public safety. Chi-ahn-dae was manned largely manned by college and high school students led by Korean veterans of various armed forces, Japanese, Chinese, Russian and Korean nationalist armed groups in China. Some 30,000 political prisoners were released from Japanese jails throughout Korea. They joined the CPKI and formed various local groups. More than 15,000 Koreans were released from the Japanese Army and labor camps, many of whom were forced into working for the Japanese.
Korean teachers took over schools and produced text books in Korean in no time at all. Koreans took over utilities, water, phone, street maintenance, fire stations, radio stations and public health facilities, and everything ran smoothly without a hitch. Literally overnight, the Korean people formed their own government and took over all governing functions from the Japanese, with the complete and full cooperation of the departing Japanese. Koreans from all walks of life and political ideology worked in harmony, side by side, for the good of Korea. In that brief time period, the Korean people proved that they were quite capable of governing their country, as long as foreign powers and their Korean lackeys left them alone.
Our Japanese principal, a kind man in his sixties, was crying his heart out. We felt sorry for the old man, for we really liked him and he took a good care of us. Even thought my father had told me that he used to be a fierce, head-chopping samurai, the principal was retired from the post-samurai era Japanese Army and had volunteered to care for the wretched Korean kids in Kapsan, the worst place to be for a well-to-do, retired Japanese army officer. Unlike other Japanese colonials, who considered Koreans inferiors, he cared for us and treated us as Japanese equals. Many of us wept with him in sympathy. There was not much we could do for him. All Japanese in Kapsan were loaded into trucks and sent to internment camps in Hamhung. They left all of their possessions behind in Kapsan. The newly formed Korean security forces of the People's Committee, chi-ahn-dae, provided armed protection for the departing Japanese. The convey sneaked out without any ceremony or fanfare.
Yo Un Hyong, the founding father of the Korean People's Republic, was an authentic patriot and a nationalist. He was born in 1885 in Yangpyong-gun, Kyonggi Province around Seoul, into a yangban family. One of his uncles was a Tonghak leader. He went to Paejac School, an American missionary school, and learned to speak English fluently. Yo went to China in 1914 to further his education and played an important role in the Samil Movement in 1919. He helped found the Korean Provisional Government in Shanghai. Yo's political ideology leaned toward Marxism. In 1921, Yo, Kim Kyu Sik, a rightist Christian, and other Koreans attended the Congress of the Toilers of the Far East in Moscow, where Yo met Lenin in person.
After his return to Shanghai, Yo served Chiang Kai Sek as a propagandist and also met Sun Yatsen and Mao Zedung. He escaped Chiang Kai Sek's purge of communists in Shanghai in 1927, only to be arrested by Japanese agents in China and returned to Korea to serve a three-year prison term in Korea. After serving his jail term, became chief editor of the Joong Ang Ilbo in Seoul. In 1946, Yo's People's Republic of Korea was smashed by the US occupation forces and he was assassinated on July 18, 1947 by Rhee Syngman's forces.
My eldest brother Kim Ung Sik was a proud member of the militia. All sorts of Korean patriots suddenly emerged from years of hiding and told us about their anti-Japanese heroics. One old man showed off a bullet scar on his left thigh: he was one of the last surviving soldiers of the Yi Army. The Kapsan chapter of the Korean People's Committee was established. My father was elected to the Committee leadership. He was also a founding member of the New People's Party, Shin Min Dang, originally formed by the Koreans in Mao Zedong's base in Yenan, China.
We learned how to make the Korean flag, tae-guk-gi, still in used in South Korea. No one was sure of the exact specs or what the bars meant. It seemed that everyone had his own design. We learned the old Korean national anthem, sung to tune of a foreign country popular song, and the Korean alphabet Hangul for the first time. The anthem, which seemed to have an endless stanzas, was the very first Korean writing we learned. The lyrics and the tune made you sad much like the Japanese anthem did. Besides, the tune was borrowed from a foreign country and we felt uncomfortable singing a national anthem that was not quite our own. I wondered how our nationalist fighters could have put up with it for long. The lyrics included words like "God protect us", but the Korean word for God, hana-nim, does no necessarily mean Christ's Father and so the anthem does not imply Christianity is our national religion..
The excitement was breeding instability and vengeance. Gangs of peasants roamed the streets beating up Japanese collaborators. Those Koreans who had worked for the Japanese police were hunted down and beaten to death. The People's Militia, looking splendid in Japanese police uniforms, was kept busy protecting the enemies of the people. My father helped a couple of police informants to escape to nearby towns.
The growing force vacuum was also wrecking havoc in the South. On August 18, 1945in Seoul, a pro-Japanese terrorist attacked Yo Ung Yong, nearly beating him to death. The US military ordered the the Japanese to regain control of S. Korea from the People's Republic of Korea and turned against Yo, in spite of their agreement made earlier. The Japanese thought that Yo would be a puppet at their bidding, but instead Yo's government had attracted anti-Japanese elements and worked against the colonial forces. The Japanese were out to ruin the Korean economy. They destroyed war supplies and printed some three billion yen in currency; handed out money and weapons to pro-Japanese collaborators. They had imported the poisonous mamushi snake, similar to American copperhead, to be encountered by American forces, and endured to this day by Koreans. Worst of all, the Japanese fed misinformation to the Americans in order to turn them against Yo's Republic.
On August 20, 1945, a platoon of Soviet soldiers led by a tiny tank marched into Kapsan from Manchuria. The tank barely passed through the town gate. The people's committee organized a welcoming party. We lined up the street and waved little red flags that we made ourselves. We were genuinely elated to see our liberators, the Soviet troops.
My brother led an honor guard of the Militia to greet the Russians, referred to as 'Big Nose', ma-ho-jae, by our elders. The Russians were much impressed by the heroes' welcome and gave us black bread, 'huh-lev', a Soviet Army staple, tough enough to be used as pillows or sit on, but quite tasty if softened in water or soup. An old Korean communist showed up with a worn-out copy of 'Das Capital' and the Russians went crazy over it. The old man was hoisted up on top of the tiny tank and became an instant celebrity.
The Russians set up a camp on the schoolyard of Kapsan Agricultural Technical School. My friends and I used to hang around the Russians. They taught us some Russian words, Yaponski (Japanese, thumbs down) and Kareesky (Koreans, thumbs up). I noticed the two good-looking female soldiers among the Russians; these women, even though their arms and legs were hairy, were not bad looking at all. My brother said that the Russian women were crazy about Korean guys, and they would rape you if you got too close to them.
Figure sov-man.jpg: Soviet troops in Manchuria in August 1945. Kapsan was occupied by Soviet troops led by a small tank similar to the tank in this photo. The tiny tank barely passed through the main gate that was built centuries ago. American medium tanks blew up the gate in 1950. The soldiers in Kapsan were from Central Asia, led by Russian officers.
The Soviet soldiers had dozen or so mortars and practiced firing them for hours every day. They pretended to grab an imaginary shell and shove it into the tune and then covered their ears. They had several heavy machines on wheels and dragged them around the school yard like kids playing with toys. Some soldiers carried burp guns, called dabal-chun (dabal means a round, disk-shaped headgear worn by Korean women while carrying a load on the head and the burp gun shells were fed from a circular disk) by the Koreans, and other soldiers carried bolt-action rifles dating back to the days of Bolshevik revolution.
The Russians cooked meals in huge drums. They filled the drums with water fetched from nearby wells, threw in dough balls, muttons and other items I had never seen before. The muttons came from the sheep introduced and raised by the Japanese. During World War II, the Japanese Government enforced a "cottons in South and sheep in North" policy in Korea, and brought flocks of sheep to North Korea from the conquered nations in the Pacific. They were for clothing the Japanese Imperial troops and not for eating. When the Japanese left, there were an abundance of sheep.
The Koreans were not fond of lamb chops, but the Russians, mostly from the Soviet Muslim regions, were born eaters of sheep. The Russian cooks slashed the poor animals' throat and then skin them while the animals were alive and kicking. The Russians had a plenty of meat and generously gave the hungry Koreans the innards of dead sheep. There was shortage of food for the residents of Kapsan and any edible was welcome. Sheep guts, hearts, bladders and other organs, still steaming and twitching, were doled out by Russian soldiers, beaming like Santa Clauses, to the Koreans with buckets waiting in a long line. The mutton-loving Muslim Russians were short in stature and dark-complexioned. They had rather unpleasant, strong body order that made me sick. In fact, the whole sheep-cooking affair made me sick.
Most of the officers were tall and fair-skinned. My brother told me they were the real Russians from Russia. They ate more normal foods. On one occasion, a Russian officer brought a live chicken to our house and gestured if my mother would cook it for him. She was more than happy to do so and the Russian fellow ate the whole chicken by himself and went away. He gave us a loaf of black bread and a bottle of vodka. He was clean and well-mannered, a real gentleman.
The Soviet soldiers suddenly moved out to fight Japanese stragglers coming down from Manchuria. The Japanese stragglers, remnants of the once almighty Kwangtung Army, stayed up on the mountains, trying to reach the East Sea., traveling along the very same routes the Chinese Army would use in just a few years later. The Russians went after the Japanese in an half-ass way. They went up the mountains and started firing their mortars and machine guns in the general direction of the fast moving Japanese soldiers. The Japanese ambushed the Russians, killing one female soldier and wounding scores. The Russians followed the fleeing Japanese towards the East Sea, far away from us, never to return. That was the end of the Russian occupation of Kapsan.
Elsewhere in Korea, soviet troops landed at Wonsan on August 21, 1945, trapping some 200,000 Japanese in North Korea. Over one million Japanese were cutoff in China between the Great Wall and the Yangtze River. Japanese refugees in northeast Korea were herded into concentration camps in Hamhung. The Soviet Army 25th Division (about 30,000 strong), under Gen. Ivan M. Chistiakov, allowed Kang Ki Dok, chief of the Wonsan People's Committee, to rule the city.
By August 24, 1945, the Soviet troops moved into Pyongyang and Hamhung. Gen. Ivan Chistiakov ‘s 25th Division became the new foreign occupation force of North Korea. Gen. Nikolai Lebedev was the political commissar of the 25th responsible the political affairs in North Korea. Gen. Andrei Romanenko took charge of civic affairs dealing with Korean natives. Reporting to Romanenko was Col. Alexandre Ignatiev, a specialist on Korea. Ignatiev was responsible for putting Kim Il Sung in charge of North Korea.
Historical truth is that the Russians had done their homework in the occupation of Korea, and it contrasted sharply with American efforts in the South. Since the mid 90’s, I have published pro and unflattering articles on my Korean Web Weekly, and more than once I have been accused of being anti-American. My purpose is not to invalidate or dispraise the uncountable instances of genuine compassion and friendship between decent Americans and Koreans, but to chronicle the Tin gods and Misdeeds of Those in Power that have caused misery and death as the quest for Korean independence has continued. The Korean people shall remember Hodge and MacArthur as the worst enemies of Korea in the 20th Century.
Lt. Gen. John H. Hodge, the US warlord of South Korea, the three-start racist from Missouri, told his troops that Korea “is an enemy of the United States, (and therefore) subject to the provisions and terms of surrender”. American airplanes dropped leaflets with Gen. MacArthur's command to all Koreans – “any Korean who harms either Japanese or American personnel will be punished by death.”, and that all powers of government over the territory and people of S. Korea were under MacArthur’s authority. How that contrasted with the Soviet declaration of independence and freedom of the people in North Korea! Hodge even decided to retain the Japanese administration including the Japanese police. The Japanese were given a free hand to hunt communists.
John H. Hodge had not the slightest idea of what he was supposed to do in Korea. Hodge stated that because so many Koreans had fought with the Japanese Army that “Koreans are breeds of the same cats as the Japanese” and that he intended to treat Koreans as conquered enemies. With MacArthur's concurrence, Hodge allowed the Japanese police to continue their work as if nothing had changed. Koreans were stunned by Hodge's regarding them as defeated enemies! Happily, from Washington, Gen. George Marshall countermanded MacArthur and ordered Hodge to shut his mouth and disband the Japanese police immediately. In spite of Hodge's low esteem of the Korean people, he stayed on for three years as the Lord of Korea.
Today’s visitors to or students of Korea must know that the Soviet occupation of North Korea, though brutal, was better organized compared to the fumbling efforts of the United States in the South. On August 28, 1945), Yo's CPKI in Seoul issued a proclamation: “A national government is to be established by a people's committee elected by a national conference of peoples' representatives...;a complete independence and true democracy; sweeping out feudal remnants; a mass struggle against the anti-democratic reactionary forces who colluded with Japanese imperialism and committed crimes against the nation.” The Korean Provisional Government in Chungking in China, led by Kim Gu, issued a similar proclamation.
Even today, the world watches
clips of the grim Japanese surrender ceremony held in Tokyo Bay aboard the
battleship USS Missouri.
The footage lacks important clarity. A Japanese with a wooden leg, his
leg blown off by a Korean nationalist, led the delegation. The crippled Japanese
delegation chief said: “We hereby proclaim the unconditional surrender to the
Allied powers of the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters and of all Japanese
armed forces and all armed forces under Japanese control wherever situated.” MacArthur with no doubt sincere
but blind and unthought out sentiments concluded the ceremony with: “Let
us pray that peace be now restored to the world and that God will preserve it
always. These proceedings are now closed.”
History records that on September 4, 1945, an American advance party of eight officers and ten GI's landed at Kimpo Airport to establish liaison with the Japanese. Gen. Toshimaro Sugai put up the Americans at the Chosen Hotel where the Japanese hosts threw bawdy geisha parties for the Americans. The Americans refused to see a delegation of Koreans. But the Koreans were busy. On September 6, 1945, representatives from the People's Committees from all corners of Korea met in Seoul and proclaimed the Korean People's Republic KPR – The Chosun In Min Kong Wha Guk. The KPR cabinet included Syngman Rhee, chairman; Yo Ung Young, vice chairman; Ho Hon, prime minister; Kim Gu, interior; Kim Pyong No, justice; Kim Kyu Sik, foreign; Ha Pil Won, economics; Cho Man Sik, finance; Shin Ik Hui, communications; Kim Il Sung, defense; and Kim Song Su, education.
On September 9, 1945 in Seoul, Hodge accepted the surrender of the Japanese forces south of the 38th parallel. Hodge set up the US Military Government in Korea (USMGIK). In an act no less sweeping than the Romans salting the fields of Jewish farmers, Hodge retained the Korean traitors who had served under the Japanese and let them run the USMGIK bureaucracy and the police. The South Korean Kyong Chal (police) retained the Japanese police uniforms and the name Gei-Sia-Tzu. The new cops looked and acted just like the Japanese cops, indeed, many of them were former Jap police! This move caused instant anger at the Americans; why were they keeping these traitors in the national police? One of the Jap lovers, Park Jung Hee, later became South Korea's dictator. Thus began the anti-American sentiment in Korea, both South and North.
On September 19, 1945, Kim Il Sung and his second spouse, Kim Chong Suk, returned to Korea from Siberia. Kim and his forty guerrillas numbering and their families arrived at Wonsan, aboard the Soviet warship Pukachev.
The US intelligence file on Kim
Il Sung states: “Faced with the threat of extinction by the Japanese, a few hundred
under the leadership of Kim Il Sung, long time Communist, made their way North
and into the Soviet Maritime Province. After verifying their political and
military backgrounds, the Soviets established these people in a training camp at
YASHKI Station, in the general area of Khabarovsk. Here and later at RARARASH, near the junction of the USSR-Korea and
Manchurian frontiers these Koreans were trained in espionage, radio
communications, sabotage and general military subjects. From 1941-45, these
people were utilized by the Soviets as agents in MANCHURIA. In the spring of
1945, in addition to normal political training, they were briefed on Korea and
Korean politics.”
Figure kim-sov.jpg: Kim Il Sung - a hero's welcome in Pyongyang in 1945. The Soviet adviser standing next to Kim was killed during the Korean War.
High up in Siniju on the Korean side of the mouth of the Yalu River, the 2,000-strong vanguards of the Korean Volunteers Army (KVA) returned home on October 12, 1945. KVA was with Mao’s 8th Route Army and numbered 600-800 men at the time of liberation. Mu Chong commanded the artillery section of the 8th Route Army. Mu was born in 1905 in North Hamgyong Province and went to China in 1922. He joined the warlord Yen Hsishan’s army and became an expert on artillery. Mu was with Chiang's Northern Expedition as an artillery lieutenant, then joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1927. Mao Zedung put Mu Chong in charge of his artillery brigade. Mu was in Mao's vanguard of the Long March and had been wounded several times. After reaching the safe haven of Yenan, the Korean combat veteran commanded the KVA. Mu Chong fought many battles on the side of the 8th Route Army.
There were other notable KVA commanders: Kim Kang had also participated in the Long March; and Kim Ho graduated from the Whampoa Military Academy; and many other Koreans had risen to high ranks in the Chinese Red Army. As the vanguard marched toward Korea, many recruits joined up and its ranks swelled to over 2,000 by the time they reached Yalu River. Interestingly, the main body of the KVA soldiers volunteered to remain in Manchuria and fight Chiang Kai Sek. The KVA in China grew into a major fighting army of over 250,000 men by the time the Korean War started in 1950.
Perhaps lost to today’s students of Asian history, and surely lost on John Hodge and the American occupation forces was the fact that decades of struggles had bred Koreans to be reckoned with. In addition to the 250,000 KVA troops, North Korea gave Mao 100,000 rifles and 1,000 tons of explosives captured from the Japanese in Korea. Mao’s troops were allowed to pass through North Korea for deployment and for sanctuary. Kim Il Sung’s trusted lieutenant, Kang Gun, commanded the Korean troops in China. The Koreans liberated the Hainan Island and much of Manchuria for Mao.
Politically acceptable to both the Chinese and the Soviets, Kim Il Sung was given a hero's welcome at the Pyongyang Municipal Stadium on October 14, 1945, the same day, the Soviet political troops replaced the combat troops. These new troops were not friendly at all, not like the combat troops. I believe that in most wars, the soldiers who do the fighting have much respect for human life and do not kill or harm enemy prisoners or civilians. It is the non-combat soldiers, who follow the front-line, who commit most war crimes. The combat soldiers are the first to forgive their former enemies, but the non-combat people, those who manage to stay out of the killing zones, are the last to forgive. I guess this is how they prove their manhood and patriotism.
No one made note that Cossacks and Russian troops had seized Korean soil, raping and pillaging before the Japanese destroyed them in only forty years earlier. Indeed, for a century, Russia had lured Koreans, across the Tumen River border to settle areas in and around Vladivostok and become Russian subjects,
New Koreans in Russian army uniforms arrived in my town. Among them were several teenagers of my brother's age. One guy, a tall handsome kid of about 15, liked to show off his pistols. He had eight pistols of different size and shape. He said that the Chinese Mauser, actually a submachine gun, was his favorite. He showed me how to shoot a pistol, first stretch your arm and arch it down and forward from over your head to the level of your eyes and then pull the trigger as the gun barrel lines up with your eyesight and the target. Always aim at the upper body and hit at least twice for sure kill. As the gun recoils, your arm arches up and you start the arching down motion for the next shot. Use a slow jumping motion to absorb the gun recoil.
Life after liberation was tough. Not many jobs were available and everything was in short supply. Food was very scarce and inflation skyrocketed. My father was struggling to feed his three spouses and their children. He trucked in frozen cods, myong tae, from a fishing village and oranges from Changjin and bartered them for other edibles like wheat, potatoes and bits of meat. We had our hands full with day-to-day survival when the Interim People's Committee in Pyongyang met again on November 15, 1945, and created the Five-Province Administrative Bureau, a de facto government of North Korea. Cho Man Sik was elected president of the Bureau.
We were coping with the harsh winter in Korea’s highlands on December 17, 1945 when Kim Il Sung was elected chairman of the North Korean Branch Bureau of the Korean Communist Party and gave his first major speech: “Party organizations have yet to be created in a large number of factories, enterprises, and farm villages.... Procedures for admission to the Party have not been established.... A certain Kim, secretary of the Yangdok County Party Committee, for instance, was a police sergeant at the police station in that county during Japanese imperialist rule. The ranks of our Communist Party are infested with pro-Japanese elements. The Communist Party will be able to perform its duty if it is organized in the most centralized manner, if iron discipline bordering on military discipline prevails in it, and if its Party center is a powerful and authoritative organ. If we do not continually strengthen our ties with the masses, teach them, and, in addition, learn from them, the Communist Party will not be able to become a truly mass party, competent to lead the entire working people.”
Like people elsewhere in the world, the residents of Kapsan did not know that Korea was a power keg, and fuses were being lit on both sides of it. On October 16, 1945. Either unaware of or indifferent to old hatreds and rivalries, MacArthur had Rhee flown in his personal airplane from Tokyo to Seoul. Rhee was surrounded by American advisers such as Col. Goodfellow, military intelligence; Robert Oliver, speechwriter; and Harold Noble, the American contact. MacArthur told Rhee to work with Kim Gu and other nationalists to form a democratic governing body, but Rhee wanted a Christian anti-Communist dictatorship. Rhee hired ex-Japanese police and anti-communists from North Korea, the Northwest Youth Group, and started to build a dictatorship. Alarmed, Hodge placed Rhee under surveillance. US Counter Intelligence Corps routinely tapped Rhee's phones and read his incoming and outgoing mail.
Yet, Rhee officially denounced communists and refused to work with the Korean People's Republic. Rhee embraced Hodge's policies and accepted pro-Japanese Koreans and feudal landlord yangban. By late October 1945, Rhee's anti-Communist stand had thoroughly enraged the Soviets and the Korean communists.
By October 26, 1945, the US State Department in Washington received a confidential cable from William Langdon, its representative in Korea: “As for favoring plutocracy in, and excluding popular left wingers from, Military Government, it is quite probable that at the beginning we may have picked out a disproportionate number of rich and conservative persons. But how were we to know who was who among unfamiliar people. For practical purposes we had to hire people who spoke English, and it so happened that these persons and their friends came largely from moneyed classes because English had been a luxury among Koreans. But Military Government long ago realized the unrepresentative character of its Korean structures and is fast broadening the social base of that structure.”
By November 2, 1945, Kim Gu received Hodge’s permission to return home after months of delay. Hodge was already unhappy with Rhee and hoped to use Kim Gu as a possible replacement for Rhee. Kim Gu was forced to sign a statement promising that he would not push the Korean Provisional Government in Seoul. Things only deteriorated in Korea’s southern half. On November 10, 1945, Hodge closed down Seoul’s Maeil Ilbo, Daily News, and imposed a nationwide press censorship.
Figure kimgu115.jpg: Kim Gu's home coming in November 1945, at Kimpo. Maj. Gen. Hodge sent a military plane to fetch Kim Gu and associates from China. Kim Gu and company were provisioned by the US military government of Korea headed by Hodge.
Scores of political groups, some even calling for the restoration of the defunct Yi Dynasty were clamoring loudly to have their own way. But the American misconception of the Korean communism led them to embrace any groups who were opposed to the communists regardless of their background. The Americans openly employed military and police officers that participated in Japanese anti-guerrilla campaigns in Manchuria. Hodge's pro-Japanese and anti-Korean policies outraged Korean masses; Korean nationalists and leftists alike would not work with Hodge and his Korean henchmen. Collaborators were back in power, still persecuting their own countrymen using Japanese legal codes and the American military.
On November 23, 1945, when Kim Gu and his followers came to Seoul from Chungking, China, Hodge provided American MP escorts and living quarters for Kim and his men. Hodge was to find soon that Kim Gu was no puppet that could be manipulated and muzzled.
To the dismay of Hodge, the
beloved crusty old Korean freedom fighter, who had left a trail of Japanese
bones behind him in China, proclaimed on his return home: ”We will have to discharge all officials appointed by the interpreters
of Military Government. After August 14, 1945 all pro-Japanese and national
traitors under the Japanese first went into hiding.. And later come out to buy
off the interpreters so that they would get positions in the provincial
governments, the district government and the police. We must clean out all these
people, and at the same time stop this spirit of dependence on foreign
countries.”
With political trenches ever
growing, the American generals in Seoul proceeded to dig them deeper. On
December 5, 1945, Hodge created the Korean Military English School to train
Korean officers for a South Korean army to be created later. The first class
consisted of 60 students; 20 former Japanese servicemen, 20 from Kwantung Manchuokuo
Army, and 20 from the Korean Provisional Government Army, the Kwang
Bok Gun.
Some 50,000 Koreans served in the Japanese Army during World War II, mostly as lowly privates. However, several hundred Koreans did volunteer and achieved the junior officer ranks, lieutenants and captains. The nationalists and communists refused to enroll in the School with the Japanese collaborators. Furthermore, Hodge stipulated that no Korean with a Japanese prison record would be accepted.
Not surprisingly, by December 8, 1945, Hodge issued Ordinance #34 that prohibited labor strikes and labor movements. The Americans were on the side of Korean capitalists fighting against the communists behind labor movements, and four days later, the US military outlawed the People's Committees in South Korea. This spelled the death of the Korean People's Republic and planted the seed of the Korean War. This action by the USMGIK was met by violence by labor unions and peasant associations all across S. Korea. People's Committees started armed insurrection against the new colonials and the Americans’ darlings, the incredibly brutal pro-Japanese police. Hodge had 43,000 US soldiers to pacify the South Korean people. South Koreans were split into some 113 factions and many were engaged in political terrorism.
Quickly, Hodge formed the constabulary, later to become the South Korean Army, even though it was against the directive from the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. Those Koreans who had served the Japanese led the constabulary, including former Japanese Col. Kaneyama and Lt. Park Jung Hee. Col. Kaneyama, whose new name Kim Suk Won, was the favorite "general" of Rhee. However, in order to please the State Department in Washington, Song Ho Sung from China, nominally headed the Korean constabulary. Gen. Song Ho Sung had served in Kim Gu's Independence Army in China as the head of training, went by his nom de guerre Song Ho, 'Song the Tiger'.
So bitter was Song’s experience with the Americans, at the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, he defected to North Korea and organized the People's Volunteers Army, In-min yi-yong-gun, to fight the Americans. In June 1950, I heard Gen. Song's speech on Seoul Radio, exhorting all Korean patriots to rise up and fight the American invaders. He was active in North Korean politics until his retirement.
The Korean army officer corps consisted mainly of former Japanese army officers and the Korean students who volunteered to serve the Japanese emperor during World War II. Song was the sole exception and his popularity among the ex-Japanese officers was not high. On account of his long years of fighting in China, Song’s manners were non-exemplary. He made no effort at tact or diplomacy, and spoke not a single word of English. Although he was the first commander, the South Korean army history does not mention his name because he went over to the other side during the Korean War.
Song's habit of blowing his nose in the traditional manner, plugging one nostril with a thumb and blowing out the mucus to the ground, and then repeating the process for the other nostril in front of his troops, was abhorrent to the Japanese-trained officers. The Yanks refused to shake Song's hands.
This grizzled warhorse of the China wars commanded one of the three detachments of the Korean Independence Army, whose chief of staff was Lee Bom Suk. As Lee gained Rhee Syngman's confidence, Song's star began to dim. It was rumored that Lee and Song had major differences during their days in China.
Song had an especially hot temper, but he was forthright and extremely bright. Unlike the Japanese-trained officers, Song was kind to his officers and fairly democratic in performing his duties. He had married a Chinese woman with bound feet, and his officers were expected to salute her. Centuries before, a Chinese emperor had found women with tiny feet sexually attractive and decreed that all women should have tiny feet. Lacking surgical expertise, the ingenious Chinese bound baby girls’ feet with cloth so that their feet would curl and deform. This barbaric practice continued into the 1930s in China.
Hodge and Rhee began to lean toward Kim Suk Won aka Kaneyama to command the constabulary. Kim Suk Won ran Sung-nam School in Yong-dung-po Ward, Seoul. Kim was the most famous Korean officer in the Japanese army. His machine gun unit had killed several thousands of Chinese soldiers in a battle and the grateful Emperor Hirohito gave him a large sum of money. Kim used this money to establish his school.
Some historians claim that Kim Suk Won declined the job of commanding South Korea’s constabulary because he was ashamed of his Japanese connection. Kim's son also served in the Japanese army. The Americans wanted Kim Suk Won to attend the Korean military academy as a cadet, which offended Kim's pride immensely; “Do you want me to attend a school as if I was a young cadet?” Yes, the Yanks said, and Kim stormed out.
Unlike the egotistical Kim Suk Won, Song welcomed the idea of becoming a cadet and starting at the bottom. Thus this remarkable 50-year old man was sent to the training camp and became the first commander of the Korean army, graduating with the second class of the academy. How ironical the Korean twist of fate: in this class was Japanses Military Academy graduate Park Chung Hee!. Song did not have to complete the whole course. After a few weeks in the camp, he was commissioned a brigadier general and became the commander of the Korean army.
Not surprisingly, Kim Suk Won did attend the military school after Gen. Song became the commander.
Dividing Korea into two spheres of influence was not a new thought. The idea to recognize the North as a sphere of Tsarist Russian influence, the South under Japanese political and economic domination, had been proposed more than forty years earlier. On December 20, 1945, the 38th Parallel officially separated Koreans into two camps - 9 million in the North and 21 million in the South. The Soviet military sealed off the new border and all trade and traffic across the 38th came to a halt.
At a December 29, 1945 meeting held in Moscow, the US, the USSR and Britain agreed on formation of a provisional government of Korea after a five-year trusteeship, which sparkled fresh indignation in remote Kapsan and throughout the Peninsula. The new foreign imperialists wanted to lord over Korea for five years! We marched and shouted anti-foreign slogans, and the Korean communists marched with us.
Hodge informed Song Chin U, a tutelage supporter, that same day. Next day, Song Chin U was assassinated by Kim Gu who was passionately against any tutelage. Kim Gu called a nationwide strike and ordered all Korean employees of the USMGIK to take orders only from him. The old Korean firebrand demanded immediate recognition of the KPG. The uproar was not confined to only South Korea. That day, the Five-Province Bureau of Pyongyang split into two camps: the communists supporting the Moscow agreement on tutelage, and the nationalists led by Cho Man Sik, opposing it.
On December 31, 1945, Kim Gu attempted a coup d'etat but it sizzled out. The apolitical, battle-scarred old Korean freedom fighter was hauled into Hodge's office and told that the US military would kill him if he double-crossed Hodge again, whereupon Kim Gu threatened to commit suicide in Hodge's office. The failed coup put Kim Gu and the KPG out of action, but even America’s heavy-handed three-star ruler of Korea realized that the revered Korean’s martyrdom would be counter to US interest. By default, Hodge was forced to embrace Syngman Rhee, as the lesser of two evils, and sealing the fate of a southern regime for decade to come.
For information on American and Soviet occupation of Korea, see:
1) Korea: The Unknown War - Jon Halliday and Bruce Cumings, Pantheon Books, NY, 1988; a Pentagon paper on the Korean War with extensive entries from the native side.
2) The Origins of The Korean War - Bruce Cumings, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1981. This masterpiece on Korea (1945 - 1947) details US Army's continuance of the Japanese colonial rule using the Japanese personnel and Korean traitors.
3) http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/books/p&d.htm UNITED STATES ARMY IN THE KOREAN WAR. CENTER OF MILITARY HISTORY, UNITED STATES ARMY, WASHINGTON, D. C., 1992
For information on Kim Gu, see:
1) http://www.kimkoo.or.kr/ Kim Gu Home Page
2) http://www.kimsoft.com/2000/kimgu.htm Who was Kim Gu? By Lee Wha Rang
For information on Korean socialists, see: http://www.aks.ac.kr/kwonhy/ Korean History and Political Ideology