Chapter 7: US and Soviet Occupation: 1946-1947
봄이오고 겨을가니 세월흐르는데
심육십칠 언제가고 동화다시피네
다시원한 홍강도에 은하수에서
겨우직녀 한알줄이 누가아리까
우리태양 푸른하늘 성천강물 흘러
그옜날에 오작교는 슬슬흐르는물
Our life flows away as another Spring follows Winter,
And spring flowers bloom again,
Where has my youth of seventeen and eighteen gone?
The bright sun shines through the blue sky over,
And the clear waters of Sung-chun River flow into the East Sea,
I yearn for the Ojak bridge over the river in the days long gone
Meeting angels from Heaven on the bridge.
The Hamhung 2nd Middle School class song, 1949.
Soon after Liberation, my father joined the Sin-min-dang, the New People’s Party, founded by the Chinese faction of the Korean communists. Its founding father was Kim Du Bong, the ranking Korean in Mao Zedong’s Yenan base. Father’s friend, Doh Yong Ho, a lifetime communist, became the governor of South Hamgyong Province and my father became the province vice chairman of the New People’s Party.
Korean communists returning home from Manchuria found free room and board at my home. They would stay up late in the night chatting politics with my father. Among our houseguests were Kim Il Sung’s partisans and old comrades of the Hong Won Peasants Uprising. These old communist revolutionaries had gone through all sorts of hardship in China and managed to evade the Japanese secret police and their Korean informers. They were all came home broke, wearing rags of military wears of the Japanese Army. They were more or less walking skeletons by the time they reached Kapsan.
During World War II, Japan lorded over Manchuria and Koreans openly worked for the Japanese to rule that vast region of China. The oppressed Chinese hated the Koreans more than the Japanese, because the Koreans, in order to please their Japanese masters, competed to be more harsh and brutal than the Japanese to the Chinese people. When the Japanese were defeated, the Chinese people rained vengeance on the Koreans and the Japanese alike. Chinese mobs attacked and killed Korean women and children in the regions controlled by Chiang Kaisek. Ironically, American troops were flown in to protect the defeated Japanese in China, but no such protection was given to the Koreans. One might argue that some of the Koreans deserved the punishment because they had indeed committed crimes against the Chinese people. However, many innocent Koreans were also killed for the sole reason that they were Koreans.
Kim Il Sung was elected chairman of the Provisional People's Committee of North Korea (PPCNK), On February 8, 1946, in effect the northern branch of the Korean People's Republic, outlawed by the US Military in South Korea. PPCNK became, in all actuality, the government of North Korea. The Soviets fully supported and virtually ran PPCNK. The Public Security Bureau was headed by Pang Hak Se, a Soviet-Korean. Kim's partisans headed police, border guards and military branches of the Bureau.
On February 10, 1946, Kim Il Sung announced: 'Land for those who till it' (to-ji-nun nong-ming eh ke). He said that the government owned all land and those who worked it would pay the government 30% of the crop and retain the remaining 70% for themselves. The days of landowners were over. The land reform was especially popular among Korean peasants. For many centuries, these poor souls spent their entire life at hard labor and in misery and sub-human poverty. Their lot was no better than that of a beast. The land reform ended that feudalistic travesty of justice. The landed gentry, the yangban, had sold out our country to Japan. Now, pro-Japanese landlords were hunted down and forced off their land and homes. Their former slaves were given the land free. Those landlords who were not pro-Japanese were allowed to keep just enough land to live on, provided that they lived on their lands and did the farm work personally. They were not allowed to be absentee owners anymore.
My father was confident that he belonged to the latter category. He had many friends among the communist cadres, people who had many obligations to him. He figured none would dare to touch him. My father asked his brother-in-law, an authentic Korean farmer, illiterate and superstitious, uncle Park, to move onto our lands right away before the land reform went into effect. In this way, he would be able to retain part of our land. However, uncle Park, not quite understanding the reason behind the rush, consulted a fortune-teller for the opportune time to move. It was too late. He missed the deadline and my father lost all of his land. My father was furious, but uncle Park did not understand why my father was so angry with him.
In addition to the land reform, other reforms of the 27-point platform were implemented such as the nationalization of major industries, reduction of the work-day to eight hours, the enactment of social security, and various labor reforms. Non-communists were allowed to participate in the political process.
One of the most vivid memories of my youth was when a mob of peasants gathered in front of our Kapsan house on February 12, 1946, and accused my father, a landowner, of having collaborated with the Japanese. My father's communist friends looked the other way. Our farm tenants egged on by fanatic Communist agitators attacked my family. But fortunately, the militia saved us just in time. To this day, I recall the mob beating up my elder brother in front of our gate, while my little 8-year-old sister and I stood behind the gate armed with kitchen knives. Inside the house, my parents wailed as my other brother, Sung Sik, was mortally wounded and dying.
Figure 14. My
little sister, Kim Young Ja, circa 1938.
This was an unbelievable injustice to my father. In the 1920s, he was a young Communist revolutionary who believed that the only way to help Korea's poor was to improve their economic status. He had labored many years to build canals and turn barren Kapsan lands into rich farmland. He made his farmland available to poor landless farmers. He helped finance Kim Il Sung's partisans, and spent years in a Japanese prison for that. Nevertheless, the Communists branded him a rich pro-Japanese traitor.
A Kim Il Sung partisan came to our rescue. He provided us with a truck and arranged our escape to Hamhung. The old truck chugged along the slippery icy mountain path. It was an old wood-burning, steam-generating Japanese army vehicle. My grandma, mother and sister rode in the back and my father talked the driver into seating by him. My poor father rode outside hanging onto the passenger side door.
It was a scary ride. The icy road wound along steep cliffs and I saw scored of smashed American trucks in the gullies. The Americans gave these trucks to the Soviets during World War II. Countless Soviet drivers had difficulty maneuvering the narrow icy roads and plunged to their death.
Our first stop was Chun-jin. Father paid a woman, a distant relative, to buy us food, but she never returned. She just took his money and ran away. After an eternity in the old truck, we finally made it to our new home in Hamhung. Kim Ung Sik, my only surviving brother, was already in Hamhung attending high school. My father thought that Kapsan schools were substandard for his first-born and sent him to Hamhung, Ung Sik stayed with the third wife of my father, whose family lived there.
Hamhung is one of the most ancient cities in Korea, dating back to the Old Chosen Kingdom eons before the Koguryo Dynasty. It was a key military stronghold of both Koguryo and Koryo and the old hunting ground of Yi Sung Ge, the first king and the founder of the Yi Dynasty that lasted for 500 years. Yi was born into a military family in Yonghung, Hamgyong Province. His father, Yi Ja Chun, was a high-ranking military official of Koryo, and Yi followed in his father's steps and inherited his military command.
Yi's forefathers served in the Mongol Dynasty Army and participated in numerous campaigns of conquest in Manchuria and Siberia. Yi's father was a general in the Mongol army but joined the Koryo Army in 1356 and helped defeat Mongols in a key battle at Ssang-sung. In October 1361, Yi Sung Gye put down a rebellion by a renegade general and later that year, raised a private army to retake the Koryo capital from Chinese invaders. In the Battle of Hamhung, Yi decidedly defeated a Mongol army of several tens of thousands in 1362. From 1377 to 1380, Yi campaigned against Japanese invaders in southern provinces and defeated the Japanese in the Hang-san battle.
As the Mongol Empire began to crumble, Yi was ordered to invade Manchuria and retake the Koguryo territory lost to the Chinese. He led an invasion army of 20,000 men and reached as far north as the Yalu River. There his army refused to cross the river and Yi saw a once in a life time chance to gain power. He led his army south and occupied the Koryo capital. He became the real power behind the king and purged corrupt officials and instituted land reform. In July 1392, he became the king of a new dynasty. American policy makers currently trying to figure out today’s North Korea should realize that North Koreans harbored contempt for the Seoul based regime during the Yi Dynasty’s following five hundred year rule.
Figure ham-home.jpg. A rough map of my home area in Hamhung. Hamhung was put on the world map after the Chosin Reservoir battle. Sungchun River flows through Hamhung. The road to Orori leads to Chosen Reservoir. The city water reservoir pumped water from Sungchun River via aqueducts laid along the tunnel. The tunnel doubled as an air raid shelter during WWII and the Korean war. Japanese refugee dead were buried in mass graves in the meadows in front of my house. My brother attended the Hamhung Medical College, which was turned into a field hospital for the People's Army during the Korean War. My home address was: #201, 2nd Street, Unhung-ri, Hamhung, South Hangyong Province.
My father bought three houses, one for each of his three wives, and an orchard for his mother and mentally retarded sister, early in the 1940s. The best house in the best area, the 1st street inhabited by Japanese, was for his youngest wife he stayed with. The least desirable house was near a cemetery, the 3rd street, and his second wife and her children lived in. My family's house was in between, the 2nd street, both location-wise and quality-wise. It was said that my father bought the properties from Japanese owners who saw the wring on th wall and moved back to the Japanese mainland before World War II began. Those who stayed on in Korea lost all possessions, and for good many of them, their lives as well.
Our street address was Unhung-ri, 2-Ga, #201 and it was located at the foot of Mount Bun-hong, where the treacherous but successful Yi Dynasty founder, Yi Sung Geh, had practiced archery from a galloping horse. The pristine waters of Sung Chung River flowed on the other side of the mountain. The Japanese built a tunnel through the mountain for the convenience of the swimmers and for protection against the US bombers during World War II.
Figure ham1.jpg: Manse-gyo, the Bridge of Eternity, cross Sung-chun River being blown up by the UN troops in 1950. My home was about one mile north of the bridge.
Located near our house had been a large residential community of the railway employees, mostly Japanese, now gone, replaced by Korean railroad workers. A large underground cavity held the drinking water supply for the city. The underground reservoir was covered with cherry, apple and other fruit trees. Huge pipes sucked water from the Sung Chun River into a reservoir.
Hamhung had electricity and city water, a civilized place thanks to the Japanese. There was no electricity or running water in Kapsan. In Kapsan, we used kerosene lamps or candles for light and fetched water from filthy wells. However, the latrine was the same, a hole in the ground with an enclosure over it much like an American outhouse. Peasants from nearby farm villages emptied the waste into ox carts for pay. Cooking was done on an electric stove, and electric blankets kept us warm during winter. In Kapsan, my mother used firewood for cooking and heating the on-dol floor and gathering the firewood was a life or death proposition.
Another major attraction of Hamhung was its movie house, a facility unthought of in Kapsan. All movies such as Fall of Berlin, Stalingrad Campaign, Gen. Gudzov, October Revolution, Stone Flower were in Russian. The movies had no subtitles and so a raconteur stood by the screen and tried to interpret male and female utterances. Our guy was an old actor and was very good. It is funny how frivolous details can be remembered decades after a time of upheavals: we laughed every time he tried to mimic a female voice.
Figure ham3.jpg: The Hamhung City Hall, where I enjoyed many Soviet movies and cultural events. It was the US X Corps HQ in late 1950.
People's schools, equivalent to elementary schools, had five grades; junior high schools had three grades and the senior high schools had also three grades. I was enrolled in the first grade of the Chima-dae Junior High School. The People's Committee built the school four miles north of Hamhung in the village of Chimadae, where Gen. Yi’s troops were stationed. The southern half of a hill was bulldozed over and a brand new two-story building had been quickly built. The hill used to be a burial ground and the schoolyard was full of human bone fragments. After each heavy rain, more dirt was washed away exposing more human bones.
Kids with money rode a bus to school but the most of us walked, rain or shine, sleet or ice. On the way to the school, I passed a slaughterhouse, a People's Army garrison and a shooting range, and an apple orchard. During the season, you got tons of apples for virtually nothing. If you did not have the money, you got to eat rejected apples that had worms inside free. For diversion, I would stop by the slaughterhouse and watch cows and pigs killed. The poor animals seemed to know what was going on and refused to cooperate with the butchers. I also spent hours watching the People Army marching and doing war games.
Many Japanese civilians were trapped in North Korea when the Japanese Empire collapsed in 1945. Our former rulers were housed in a school building a few blocks from my home in Hamhung. They were free to move around but very few dared to venture out. The Korean People's Militia guarded the Japanese by agreement with Gen. Abe, but the Militia had no jurisdiction over the Soviets. During the night, drunken Russians openly walked past by the Korean guards and raped the women, young and old. All Japanese men shaved their head as was their custom during World War II, and so the Russians sought people with hair. Any Japanese with hair was raped. Soon, the Japanese women and children shaved their head, which was also good for controlling lice.
Gen. Abe, The Japanese Governor General of Korea, had stockpiled six months' provisions for his people. but the Soviets eagerly confiscated the stockpiles for their own use. It was painful and sad to watch Japanese men, former teachers, neighbors and medical doctors, going around the Korean neighborhood offering menial labor for food. Most of us did our best to help these former lords of Korea, but some Koreans stoned the poor Japanese. Countless Japanese died of starvation and disease.
The Russians sat on the fence until the atomic bombs had been dropped. There had been no battles or victories with their entry into Korea. Now, the Soviets carted off everything they could lay their hands on. They took all Japanese factories, house furniture, food stocks, supplies, vehicles, anything not tied to the earth was loaded on to trains headed to Siberia. They took the six-month rice stock Gen. Abe gave to the Korean People's Committee. The angry Korean students demonstrated against the Soviets at Hamhung and Sinyiju, to no avail. Every day, train loads of seized properties and food stocks left for Russia and there was not a single thing we could do to prevent it. The communists said that it was legal, that the Soviets were justly collecting their war reparations. Everything we had belonged to the Japanese, according to the Soviets, and all Japanese properties were the spoils of war. Forty years of horrors, which Western missionaries noted surpassed the Third Reich’s treatment of the Jews had passed. Largely due to the fragmented but nonstop Korean resistance, the allies had never faced Japan’s seventy divisions busy occupying Korean and Manchuria. Npw, the Soviets told Koreans that they were entitled to nothing.
Stalin filled the 25th Division of the Red Army with prison inmates and other scum of the Soviet nation. The soldiers of the 25th were dumped onto Korea ill trained and poorly equipped. Many of them did not have proper uniforms and had no choice but to live off the land. With ancient fear and hatred of Asian races, the Red officers looked the other way when their soldiers raped Korean and Japanese women and stole their properties.
Across from my house was a small meadow, full of wild flowers and small trees. Children in May 1946 played hide and seek in the meadow. But no more, for it was turned into a ghostly graveyard for dead Japanese refugees. Deep trenches were dug across the meadow. A trench was good for 50 to 60 bodies. All day long, masked Japanese men, who were walking skeletons themselves, trudged up the hill carrying dead bodies. The corpse were dumped into a trench and then covered with a layer of lime in order to discourage animals from eating the bodies and also to disinfect the corpses. As soon as a trench was filled and covered with earth, some of our neighbors would rush in and plant corn and sunflowers, which seemed like one step short of cannibalism. When you are starving, you don't ask too many questions. When the darkness set in, we could see flickers of eerie light in the meadow. Some people said that the flickers were the ghosts of the dead; others said that they were grave robbers stripping the dead of their last possessions. My neighbor claimed that it was the lepers feasting on the bodies in the age-old belief that human livers could cure their disease. There were all sorts of horror stories, all made up, I am sure, about the Japanese dead in the meadow.
My science teacher told me that the light flickers were due to potassium in bones reacting with the elements, a pure and simple chemical reaction, he said. But I believed some of the flickers did come from lepers eating the rotting livers of the Japanese dead. My neighbor’s claim that this was how lepers could cure their disease sounded reasonable enough to me. He added that young kid's living livers worked better for the cure and warned me not to go anywhere near the tunnel where the lepers lived. I stopped going out alone at night, and no more swimming by myself because I had to go through the leper’s tunnel for swimming.
The Japanese were not the only ones dying of hunger and disease. The Soviet troops lived off the land and we had not much left to eat after the Soviets filled their bellies. There were shortages of everything: the Russians occupied basically all Japanese houses and buildings plus many Korean houses as well; there were hardly any medical services or medicine, and almost no clothing, fire woods, and drinking water. Indeed, the disease and famine were killing more Koreans than all of the Koreans killed during the 36 years of Japanese occupation.
The Soviets went after our Korean women as well. The Peoples Militias were helpless to protect our women from the Soviets. The best the militias could do was to contact Soviet military police who sometimes intervened but often did not. A Russian soldier, in broad daylight raped, one of my neighbors. The rumor had it that the Russian rapist got 'stuck' to the poor woman and the militias had to carry them both in an ox-cart to a hospital for separation. I was told that the Russian penis worked just like a dog's, that the Russians were more canine than human. Indeed, they looked like snarling dogs.
At last, the Japanese refugees, the few that still survived, were loaded onto a train. They were taken to Hungnam and from there, shipped to Japan. Thus ended the Japanese occupation of North Korea.
The Americans in the South had no monopoly on responding to resistance with the force of arms; that August in Pyongyang, Kim Il Sung merged the New Peoples Party and the Communist Party into a new party, the North Korean Workers' Party. He became its vice chairman and the famed novelist, Kim Tu Bong was appointed the chairman. Young students staged protests against the Soviet occupation in Hamhung and Sinyiju and the Russian troops shot and killed several student demonstrators. My brother Ung Sik was one of the student leaders in Hamhung. The Russians arrested the student leaders and turned them over to the Korean People's Militias, but the sympathetic militias let them go.
Yet, it was not until September 10, 1946, that th claw o the Russian bear slashed at me personally in a bizarre Asian Tom Sawyer story. A schoolmate of mine and I went bird hunting with a pellet gun. My father gave me the gun on my 11th birthday. I really wanted a shotgun but it was illegal to own a firearm at my age. The pellet gun was made in Hitler’s Germany before World War II. The gun barrel was hinged and you compressed the air in a chamber by turning the barrel at the hinge. Pellets were made of soft lead and loaded directly into the barrel. My friend and I set off for the summit of Mt. Yong-hong, which was covered with huge ancient pine trees. All sorts of birds and wild animals lived there. At the foot of the mountain were some choice wooded lots, formerly Japanese-owned, occupied by the Soviet military.
I spotted a large bird and stalked it for an hour or so. I was so excited about my upcoming first kill, that I failed to notice that I was approaching a Russian compound. I did not see the two Russians approaching me from behind. My companion spotted them first and ran for dear life, but it was too late for me. The Russian soldiers pounced on me and beat me unconscious. When I came to, I found myself inside an old Japanese Shinto shrine, about the size of a phone booth. I was so terrified that I peed in my pants and started screaming – “Help, Help!”.
After an eternity, a Russian officer opened the door and let me out. One of the Russians who caught me claimed that I shot him with the pellet gun! The other soldier said that I was spying on them. The officer accepted their lies and they started beating and kicking me all over again. I was shoved back to the Shinto shrine. By now, I was convinced that I was doomed, but I was perfectly calm, neither sad nor scared. I coolly and defiantly relieved myself on the floor as a parting gift to the Russians. My revenge! Then I felt stupid, but I was ready to die. I suddenly realized why the Chinese prisoners who were about to be beheaded by the Japanese were smiling. I used to think the Chinese were total imbeciles. Now I understood the feeling; when a doomed man realizes that his end is near, that there is absolutely nothing he can do to change it, that's his karma. As I pondered this revelation, my friend escaped from the Russians and ran to a militia station as fast as he could to save me. The station chief contacted a Korean communist friend of his, who in turn contacted a Russian political commissar. Perhaps, the Russians realized that killing a young Korean school kid was not a popular thing to do, especially when there was a live witness to their crime.
Several hours later, a militiaman and a Soviet major arrived. The major shouted some commands to my captors and I was let out. The major gestured that I was free to go. Foolishly, I asked for my pellet gun. The Russian commissar said he was keeping it as evidence. With a final kick to my butt, I was handed over to the militiaman. He was fuming mad at the Russians but said there was not a thing he could do. He said that we were paying dearly for the corruption and incompetence of our forefathers. I don’t know if the upcoming bloody political purges, or the scorched earth war, took the life of this God-sent Korean militiaman, but his next remark containing the essence vital for all who wish to understand today’s Korea. He said that someday Korea would become strong again, as in the glory days of militarily powerful aged aggressive Koguryo, and get even with all of the foreigners who had humiliated us over the centuries.
My near death experience deepened my hatred of the stinking, lying, raping Russians. My hatred was directed to the Soviet Russians, not communists. After all, the Korean communists were the only organized resistance to the Japanese occupation. Most of them were merely Korean patriots using communism as a vehicle to get their homeland back.
More and more Koreans from the Soviet Union moved in and took over key positions in the People's Committee and government agencies. The Soviet Koreans isolated the native and Korean-Chinese communists aside. Comrade Chu, an old Korean communist who spent years in China with Mao, was made the party boss of Hamhung in 1945, but he was demoted and eked a living teaching history at my school. The kids made fun of him because he spoke the old pre-Japanese Korean language.
The Soviet Koreans, those who came from Russia and those non-Russian Korean opportunists who worked for the Russians - possessed few qualifications for their jobs and were much despised by the people for their incompetence. The only thing they had going for them was their loyalty to Stalin, our great father and our new fatherland, the USSR. More significantly, the Soviet Koreans were viewed as errand boys of a foreign power, not much different from Syngman Rhee's pro-Japanese lackeys working for the Americans.
These pro-Soviet Koreans called the USSR their fatherland and Stalin their father. They sang Russian patriotic songs and kissed the Russian ass. Incredibly, they didn't know much about Korea. At social gatherings, it was customary to do some communal singing of Korean folk songs, but the Soviet Koreans rendered their version of 'Our great, eternal leader Marshal Stalin' instead! They made me sick.
On October 1, 1946, Pyongyang University was renamed Kim Il Sung University, ushering in the enduring personality cult in North Korea.
There was no fraternization between Koreans and Russians except at the top level. Russian kids attended their own schools in former Japanese buildings and we went to Korean schools. The Russians looked down on us as a second-class race and there existed much tension. It was not safe for a Russian to be alone in a Korean neighborhood, and vice versa, even in broad daylight. Many of us carried Japanese hara-kiri swords, grenades, even pistols, in our school bags.
I was late for school and had to walk alone on October 2, 1946. Normally, I walked together with my schoolmates for protection against the Russian kids. All of sudden, I heard a loud scream, “Watch out!”, from behind. As I was about to turn around, I felt a sharp pain in my back and the sickening sound of metal colliding with my bone. A Russian kid had just stabbed me! Luckily, the blade hit my shoulder blade and did not penetrate much. Several Korean adults rushed to my assistance and the poor Russian kid froze there without knowing what to do. I took out my Japanese hara-kiri knife from my schoolbag and went after my assailant, bent on killing my attacker, but an adult stopped me and took my knife away. The Russian kid started to cry and we let him go. I was told to quickly disappear because the Russian kid would certainly bring in the troops after me. I went into hiding for the rest of the day. When I hear “Russians are coming”, my adrenaline pumps even today.
My father bought a dry cell battery factory in Hamhung and became a capitalist. The factory was originally built by the Japanese to make batteries for the Japanese Army during WW2. After the liberation, the factory was stripped bare by the Soviets. My father poured in money to refurbish it and hired its former Korean workers, who promptly went on strike demanding more pay and benefits.
By January 1947, the Korean communists had five factions: The domestic communists who stayed in Korea during the Japanese occupation, The Kapsan Group made of Kim Il Sung’s partisans and supporters , mostly from Kapsan; the Pro-Chinese Koreans who worked for Mao Zedong in China; the pro-Russian Koreans who worked for Stalin; and the newly converted Koreans who became communists after the liberation
The last category was made of semi-illiterate peasants and workers who were ignorant of the basic tenets of communism. They had joined the Party on the belief that they would gain personally. Indeed, they were given civic and other choice jobs vacated by the Japanese and their Korean collaborators, their only qualification being party loyalty. This was probably the worst mistake made by Kim Il Sung. He should have curtailed his anti-Japanese campaign and retained all Japanese collaborators except those who had worked for the Japanese police or army. In retrospect, if Russian aims in Korea were much clearer than that of the Americans to the South, the actual occupation practices were no less stupid.
We were too busy surviving, when Chiang Kai Sek attacked Mao's capital city of Yenan in March 1947. That was the year my brother was accepted by Kim Il Sung University in Pyongyang, where only the best and the most progressive were allowed into this university. My father knew many of the communist leaders, including Kim Il Sung.
On April 10, 1947, the US military led forces crushed the last People's Committees in Cheju Island and Keoje Island off Korea’s south coast. Many Korean nationalists died in the fighting and thus died the Korean People's Republic at the hands of a foreign power and its running dogs. The very same Korean traitors who sold out our country to Japan had found a new master, the American military.
Historical records show that in July 1947, Yo Hung Yong, the founding father of The Korean People's Republic, was assassinated by order of Syngman Rhee. Yo was one of the founding fathers of Korean Provisional Government in 1919 in Shanghai, China. His family had a record of anti-Japan activities. One of his uncles was a Tonghak leader, a peasant uprising during 1892-94 against Queen Min's corrupt dynasty, calling also for the expulsion of the Japanese from Korea.
Yo had become editor of Chung Ang Ilbo, a daily newspaper in Seoul. Just days before the surrender in 1945, the Japanese handed him the rein of Korea and he formed the Korean People's Republic and the various people's committees that existed at the local level all over Korea. His dream of a unified national government for Korea died when the US military refused to recognize the Korean People's Republic or the Korean Provisional Government in Shanghai. After the disbanding of the KPR, Yo continued his efforts to organize a coalition government that would represent all the various factions in the Korean political landscape. Yo represented the great majority of the Korean people in 1947. He was adamantly opposed to retention of the Koreans who had worked for the Japanese police. That was enough reason for Rhee to order him wasted.
By September 25, 1947, the
Americans were fighting a new kind of war “Cold War” with the Soviets and
their satellites. The US National Security Council in Washington stated: “In the event of hostilities in the Far East, our present forces in
Korea would be a military liability and could not be maintained there without
substantial reinforcement prior to the initiation of hostilities. Moreover, any
offensive operation the United States might wish to conduct on the Asia
continent most probably would by-pass the Korean peninsula.”
On November 14, 1947, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution for Korean independence. It called for free Korea-wide elections to be supervised by a UN Temporary Commission in Korea. Kim Il Sung opposed this resolution on the grounds that the elections would favor the more populous South Korea controlled by Rhee. The Soviets refused to allow UN members to enter North Korea. The stage was set for permanent partition of Korea, that still shreds the hearts and lives of millions and would, in just a few short years, claim the lives of tens of thousands of Asians and Westerners. The bloodletting would shatter most of my illusions, destroy my teenage idealism and nearly take my life.
For information on Yi Sung Gye, see
1) http://1109.co.kr/home/history/history_korea/josun_beginning.htm Founding of the Yi Danasty
2) http://ns.koreastudy.co.kr/1/index11/98.htm Yi Sung Gye biography
3) http://my.netian.com/~chakhani/ina3-1.htm Historical figures
4) http://user.chollian.net/~hephziba/kor02.html Choe Yong and Yi Sung Gye
5) http://myhome.naver.com/hodram99/ks/leesung.htm Yi Sung Gye's war records
6) http://www.news-times.co.kr/2000-06tomb.html Yi Sung Gye's grave