Division of Korea

The Korean peninsula, first divided along the 38th parallel, later along the demarcation line.
Detail of the DMZ

The division of Korea into South Korea and North Korea was the result of the 1945 Allied victory in World War II, ending the Empire of Japan's 35-year colonial rule of Korea by General Order No. 1. The United States and the Soviet Union agreed to temporarily occupy the country as a trusteeship with the zone of control along the 38th parallel. The purpose of this trusteeship was to establish a Korean provisional government which would become "free and independent in due course",[1] as set forth in the Cairo Conference.

Japan capitulated in August 1945. An effort to construct an independent government for the entire Korea was made in September 1945 by the statesman Lyuh Woon-Hyung. However, he had to step down under pressure from the United States Military Government. An initiative to hold general and free elections in the entire Korea came up in the United Nations in the fall of 1947. However this initiative did not materialize because of disagreement between the United States and the Soviet Union: During this period of two years between the fall of 1945 and the fall of 1947, in the absence of the opportunity to set up a unified government, two separate governments began evolving and consolidating in the south and in the north.

A Communist state was permanently established under Soviet auspices in the north and a pro-Western state was set up in the south. The two superpowers backed different leaders and two States were effectively established, each of which claimed sovereignty over the whole Korean peninsula.

The Korean War, which lasted from 1950 to 1953 as a part of a greater plan from Soviet Union to conquer Asia,[2] occurred as Secretary of State Dean Acheson defined the American "defensive perimeter" in the Pacific as a line running through Japan, the Ryukyus, and the Philippines [3] as a speech made at the National Press Club on 12 January 1950 by excluding Taiwan and Korea, left the green light to Soviet's desire of invasion, and left the two Koreas separated by the Korean Demilitarized Zone through the Cold War and into the 2010s. The 2000s saw some improved relations between the two sides, overseen in the south by liberal governments, who were more amicable towards the north than previous governments had been.[4] These changes were largely reversed under conservative South Korean president Lee Myung-bak who opposed the north's continued development of nuclear weapons. In addition to this, after the death of Kim Jong-il, the incumbent supreme leader, Kim Jong-un threatened to bomb parts of South Korea.

Historical background

Korea under Japanese rule (1910–1945)

As the Russo-Japanese War ended in 1905, Korea became a nominal protectorate, and was annexed in 1910 by Japan.

End of World War II (1939–45)

Main article: World War II

In November 1943, Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Chiang Kai-shek met at the Cairo Conference to discuss what should happen to Japan's colonies, and agreed that Japan should lose all the territories it had conquered by force. In the declaration after this conference, Korea was mentioned for the first time. The three powers declared that they were, "mindful of the enslavement of the people of Korea, ... determined that in due course Korea shall become free and independent.”[5]

For Korean nationalists who wanted immediate independence, the phrase "in due course" was cause for dismay. In any case, discussion of Korea among the Allies would not resume until Germany was defeated.

Soviet invasion of Manchuria

Regional movement of Soviet forces in 1945.

With the war's end in sight in August 1945, there was still no consensus on Korea's fate among Allied leaders. Many Koreans on the peninsula had made their own plans for the future of Korea, and few of these plans included the re-occupation of Korea by foreign forces. Following the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, Soviet soldiers invaded Manchuria,[6] as per Stalin's agreement with Roosevelt at the Yalta Conference of February 1945.

However, American leaders were suspicious of the people's committees forming all over the peninsula, and suspected that without American intervention, the whole peninsula would elect to come under Communist government and Soviet influence. Soviet forces arrived in Korea first, but occupied only the northern half, stopping at the 38th parallel, per the agreement with the United States.[7]

On August 10, 1945 two young officers – Dean Rusk and Charles Bonesteel – were assigned to define an American occupation zone. Working on extremely short notice and completely unprepared, they used a National Geographic map to decide on the 38th parallel. They chose it because it divided the country approximately in half but would leave the capital Seoul under American control. No experts on Korea were consulted. The two men were unaware that forty years before, Japan and Russia had discussed sharing Korea along the same parallel. Rusk later said that had he known, he "almost surely" would have chosen a different line.[8] Regardless, the decision was hastily written into General Order No. 1 for the administration of postwar Japan.

General Abe Nobuyuki, the last Japanese Governor-General of Korea, had been in contact with a number of influential Koreans since the beginning of August 1945 to prepare the hand-over of power. On August 15, 1945, Lyuh Woon-Hyung, a moderate left-wing politician, agreed to take over. He was in charge of preparing the creation of a new country and worked hard to build governmental structures. On September 6, 1945, a congress of representatives was convened in Seoul. The foundation of a modern Korean state took place just three weeks after Japan's capitulation. The government was predominantly left wing; many of those who had resisted Japanese rule identified with Communism's views on imperialism and colonialism.

Post World War II

South Korea

Lyuh Woon-hyung giving a speech in the Committee for Preparation of Korean Independence in Seoul on August 16, 1945.

On September 7, 1945, General MacArthur announced that Lieutenant General John R. Hodge was to administer Korean affairs, and Hodge landed in Incheon with his troops the next day. The troops occupied Southern Korea and took over comfort stations, then many women in comfort stations began working as a western princess.[9]

The Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea sent a delegation with three interpreters, but Hodge refused to meet with them and refused to recognize the People's Republic of Korea or the Korean Provisional Government.[10] In September 1946, thousands of laborers and peasants rose up against the Allied Military Government. This uprising was quickly defeated, and failed to prevent scheduled October elections for the South Korean Interim Legislative Assembly. The U.S. military has maintained a presence on the Korean Peninsula through to the present day.

South Korean citizens protest allied trusteeship in December 1945.

The former President of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea, the government-in-exile in Shanghai, and ardent anti-communist Syngman Rhee, was considered an acceptable candidate to provisionally lead the country since he was considered friendly to the US, having traveled and studied stateside. Under Rhee, the southern government conducted a number of military campaigns against left-wing insurgents who took up arms against the government and persecuted other political opponents. Over the course of the next few years, between 30,000[11] and 100,000 people would lose their lives during the war against the left-wing insurgents.[12]

In April, 1948, Jeju islanders rose up against South Korean officials, and South Korea sent troops to repress the rebellion. Tens of thousands of islanders were killed and by one estimate, 70% of the villages were burned by the South Korean troops.[13] The uprising lasted until the end of the Korean War.

In August 1948, Syngman Rhee became the first president of South Korea. In October 1948, the Yeosu–Suncheon Rebellion took place, in which some regiments rejected the suppression of the Jeju uprising and rebelled against the government.[14] In 1949, the Syngman Rhee government established the Bodo League in order to keep an eye on its political opponents. The majority of the Bodo League's members were innocent farmers and civilians who were forced into membership.[15] The registered members or their families were executed at the beginning of the Korean War. On December 24, 1949, South Korean Army massacred Mungyeong citizens who were suspected communist sympathizers or their family and affixed blame to communists.[16]

North Korea

Welcome Celebration for Red Army in Pyongyang on 14 October 1945.

Throughout August, Koreans organized the country into people's committee branches for the "Committee for the Preparation of Korean Independence" (CPKI, 조선건국준비위원회). The Soviet Army allowed for these committees to continue to function since they were friendly to the Soviet Union, but Colonel-General Terentii Shtykov conceived of the Soviet Civil Administration to begin to centralize the independent committees. Further provisional committees were set up across the country putting Communists into key positions. In March 1946 land reform was instituted as the land from Japanese and collaborator land owners was divided and handed over to poor farmers. Kim Il-sung initiated a sweeping land reform program in 1946.

Organizing the many poor civilians and agricultural laborers under the people's committees a nationwide mass campaign broke the control of the old landed classes. Landlords were allowed to keep only the same amount of land as poor civilians who had once rented their land, thereby making for a far more equal distribution of land. The North Korean land reform was achieved in a less violent way than in China or in Vietnam. Official American sources stated, "From all accounts, the former village leaders were eliminated as a political force without resort to bloodshed, but extreme care was taken to preclude their return to power."[17] This was very popular with the farmers, but caused many collaborators and former landowners to flee to the south where some of them obtained positions in the new South Korean government. According to the U.S. military government, 400,000 northern Koreans went south as refugees.[18]

Key industries were nationalized. The economic situation was nearly as difficult in the north as it was in the south, as the Japanese had concentrated agriculture in the south and heavy industry in the north.

In February 1946 a provisional government called the Provisional People's Committee was formed under Kim Il-sung, who had spent the last years of the war training with Soviet troops in Manchuria. Conflicts and power struggles rose up at the top levels of government in Pyongyang as different aspirants maneuvered to gain positions of power in the new government. At the local levels, people's committees openly attacked collaborators and some landlords, confiscating much of their land and possessions. As a consequence many collaborators and others disappeared or were assassinated. Soviet forces departed in 1948.

Elections and UN intervention

South Korean demonstration in support of the U.S.-Soviet Joint Commission in 1946.

With mistrust growing rapidly between the formerly allied United States and Soviet Union, no agreement was reached on how to reconcile the competing provisional governments. The U.S. brought the problem before the United Nations in the fall of 1947. The Soviet Union opposed UN involvement.

South Korean general election on May 10, 1948.

The UN passed a resolution on November 14, 1947, declaring that free elections should be held, foreign troops should be withdrawn, and a UN commission for Korea, the United Nations Temporary Commission on Korea, should be created. The Soviet Union, although a member with veto powers, boycotted the voting and did not consider the resolution to be binding. In April 1948, a conference of organizations from the north and the south met in Pyongyang. This conference produced no results, and the Soviets boycotted the UN-supervised elections in the south. There was no UN supervision of elections in the north.

On May 10, 1948 the south held a general election. On August 15, the "Republic of Korea" formally took over power from the U.S. military. In the North, the "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" was declared on September 9, with Kim Il-sung as prime minister.

Korean War

Main article: Korean War

This division of Korea, after more than a millennium of being unified, was seen as controversial and temporary by both regimes. From 1948 until the start of the civil war on June 25, 1950, the armed forces of each side engaged in a series of bloody conflicts along the border. In 1950, these conflicts escalated dramatically when North Korean forces invaded South Korea, triggering the Korean War. The Korean Armistice Agreement was signed three years later ending hostilities and effectively making the division permanent. The two sides agreed to create a four-kilometer wide buffer zone between the states, where nobody would enter. This area came to be known as the Demilitarized Zone.

Geneva Conference and NNSC

As dictated by the terms of the Korean Armistice, a Geneva Conference was held in 1954 on the Korean question. Despite efforts by many of the nations involved, the conference ended without a declaration for a unified Korea.

The Armistice established a Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission (NNSC) which was tasked to monitor the Armistice. Since 1953, members of the Swiss[19] and Swedish[20] Armed Forces have been members of the NNSC stationed near the DMZ.

Post-Armistice Inter-Korean Relations

Although the truce seemingly ended the war between North and South Korea, it is often regarded as a truce in name only. This proved to be especially true after the attack of ROKS Cheonan sinking, the world has their eyes on North Korea's next move, and two Koreas' tension has flared since then. The incident chilled inter-Korean relations and seemed to freeze all exchanges between the two Koreas. As soon as the investigation team revealed that the Cheonan was sunk by North Korea, President Lee implemented countermeasures called the May 24 Measures. The South Korean government suspended all inter-Korean exchanges and cooperation with the North, except for business operations in the Kaeseong Industrial Complex and the pure humanitarian aid for the underprivileged people in North Korea.

The Korean peninsula, in the end, became a continuous battlefield without an official declaration of peace. With the South Korean conscription act and North Korea maintaining the largest standing army, it is very obvious that the threat of war remains in the air between North and South Korean politics. With the armistice, there was no official statement of which political ideology was right. As a result, both countries were determined to keep their ideology going strong. For example, the North Koreans saw themselves as the "true" Koreans and would refuse unification unless a Communist regime was accepted [21]

There is a great deal of skepticism towards North-South Korea relations. Economically, it is commonly alleged that the South provides a great deal of support to the North whilst receiving nothing in return. However, compared to the previous South Korean government or the former West German aid to East Germany, the Kim Dae Jung administration's assistance to North Korea has been rather minuscule. The aid to North Korea in the year 2000 was only .017 percent of South Korea's GDP, less than one-fourth of the former West Germany's annual aid to East Germany.[22] While it may seem low, it must be remembered that during the year 2000, much of the South Korean government had considered the Sunshine Policy as dead. Beginning in 1998, the South Korean president Kim Dae-jung has made efforts to reunify the Korean peninsula by creating the Sunshine Policy. This policy was meant to ease tensions between South Korea and North Korea after so many years after the Korean War. It initially was meant so that instead of treating North Korea like a caged animal, South Korea and North Korea would work together and discuss any issues within the peninsula [23] However, the South Korean government has recently stated that the nuclear arms program in North Korea has killed the Sunshine Policy.[24] As such, the South Korean government no longer desires cooperation with North Korea since North Korea refused to meet all its demands.

On July 7, 1988, with the announcement of the Presidential Declaration for National Self-esteem Unification and Prosperity, South and North Korea officially promoted inter-Korean exchanges and cooperation. These exchanges halted temporarily when North Korea withdrew from the NPT in March 1993, but it eventually resumed its course and remains in effect to the present day. Up until 1989, only one person crossed the border but that number has increased over the years and now stands at 130,000. Inter-Korean trade recorded 19 million US dollars in 1989 but it reached 1.9 billion US dollars in 2010. Additionally, the total amount of humanitarian aid from 1995 to late 2010 equals approximately 2.9 billion US dollars.

The foreign relations that define the place of North and South Korea in the world community today are product of the trajectories. Starting with 1945 nation building process of South Korea led by US, South has been allied with United States whereas North Korea has allied with China and Russia. However with the increasing prosperity of China and its power in the international society, North Korea has limited power in China.[25]

Post division of Korea incidents

Since the division of Korea, there have been numerous instances of infiltration and incursions across the border largely by North Korean agents, although the North Korean government never acknowledges direct responsibility for any of these incidents. A total of 3,693 armed North Korean agents have infiltrated into South Korea between 1954 to 1992, with 20% of these occurring between 1967 and 1968.[26] According to the 5 January 2011 Korea Herald, since July 1953 North Korea has violated the armistice 221 times, including 26 military attacks.[27]

In 1976, in now declassified meeting minutes, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense William Clements told Henry Kissinger that there had been 200 raids or incursions into North Korea from the south, though not by the U.S. military.[28] Details of only a few of these incursions have become public, including raids by South Korean forces in 1967 that had sabotaged about 50 North Korean facilities.[29]

Some instances of incidents caused by North Korea include:

Land border incidents

Between 1966 and 1969, a series of land border and DMZ incidents occurred. Other incidents after 1969 include the following:

Incidents in other areas

Maritime incidents

Air incidents

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Savada, Andrea Matles; Shaw, William, eds. (1990), "World War II and Korea", South Korea: A Country Study, GPO, Washington, DC: Library of Congress
  2. ↑ "American Experience". Retrieved 5 April 2015.
  3. ↑ "Dean Acheson's Press Club Speech Reexamined - Matray - Journal of Conflict Studies". Retrieved 5 April 2015.
  4. ↑ Feffer, John (June 9, 2005). "Korea's slow-motion reunification". Boston Globe. Retrieved 2007-08-13.
  5. ↑ "Cairo Communique, December 1, 1943". Japan National Diet Library. December 1, 1943.
  6. ↑ Walker, J Samuel (1997). Prompt and Utter Destruction: Truman and the Use of Atomic Bombs Against Japan. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. p. 82. ISBN 0-8078-2361-9.
  7. ↑ Seth, Michael J. (2010). A History of Korea: From Antiquity to the Present. Rowman & Littlefield.
  8. ↑ Oberdorfer, Don. The Two Koreas. Basic Books, p. 6.
  9. ↑ Cho, Grace (2008). Haunting the Korean Diaspora: Shame, Secrecy, and the Forgotten War. University of Minnesota Press. p. 94. ISBN 0816652759.
  10. ↑ Hart-Landsberg, Martin (1998). Korea: Division, Reunification, & U.S. Foreign Policy. Monthly Review Press. pp. 71–77.
  11. ↑ Arthur Millet, The War for Korea, 1945–1950 (2005).
  12. ↑ Jon Halliday and Bruce Cumings, Korea: The Unknown War, Viking Press, 1988, ISBN 0-670-81903-4.
  13. ↑ "Ghosts of Cheju". Newsweek. 2000-06-19. Retrieved 2012-09-02.
  14. ↑ "439 civilians confirmed dead in Yeosu-Suncheon Uprising of 1948 New report by the Truth Commission places blame on Syngman Rhee and the Defense Ministry, advises government apology". Hankyoreh. 8 January 2009. Retrieved 2 September 2012.
  15. ↑ "Gov’t Killed 3,400 Civilians During War". Korea Times. 2 March 2009. Retrieved 19 October 2014.
  16. ↑ 두 민간인 학살 사건, 상반된 판결 왜 나왔나?'울산보도연맹' – '문경학살사건' 판결문 비교분석해 봤더니.... OhmyNews (in Korean). 2009-02-17. Retrieved 2012-09-02.
  17. ↑ Cumings, Bruce. The Origins of the Korean War: Liberation and the Emergence of Separate Regimes, 1945–1947. Princeton University Press, 1981, 607 pages, ISBN 0-691-09383-0.
  18. ↑ Allan R. Millet, The War for Korea: 1945–1950 (2005) p. 59.
  19. ↑
  20. ↑
  21. ↑ Jager, Sheila Miyoshi. Brothers At War: The Unending Conflict in Korea. 1st ed. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2013. Print.
  22. ↑ Kurt M. Campbell, Vice President, Center for Strategic and International Studies, and Alton Frye, Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations June 12, 2002. Council on Foreign Relations
  23. ↑ Cha, Victor. The Impossible State: North Korea, Past And Future. New York: HarperCollins, 2012. Print.
  24. ↑ Jager, Sheila Miyoshi. Brothers At War: The Unending Conflict in Korea. 1st ed. New York: W.W. Norton &, 2013. Print.
  25. ↑ Kim, Samual S. The Two Koreas and The Great Powers. 2006 Cambridge University Press.
  26. ↑ North Korea: Chronology of Provocations, 1950–2003. Retrieved 2010-01-15.
  27. ↑ Korea Herald, "N.K. Commits 221 Provocations Since 1953", 5 January 2011.
  28. ↑ "Minutes of Washington Special Actions Group Meeting, Washington, August 25, 1976, 10:30 a.m.". Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State. 25 August 1976. Retrieved 12 May 2012. Clements: I like it. It doesn't have an overt character. I have been told that there have been 200 other such operations and that none of these have surfaced. Kissinger: It is different for us with the War Powers Act. I don't remember any such operations.
  29. ↑ Lee Tae-hoon (7 February 2011). "S. Korea raided North with captured agents in 1967". The Korea Times. Retrieved 12 May 2012.
  30. ↑ Incursions. Korean DMZ. Retrieved on 2013-07-12.
  31. ↑ "North Korean artillery hits South Korean island". BBC News. 23 November 2010.
  32. ↑ Michael Pearson, CNN (10 October 2014). "North and South Korea exchange fire". CNN. Retrieved 5 April 2015.
  33. ↑ "North and South Korea 'exchange fire over border'". BBC News. Retrieved 5 April 2015.
  34. ↑ Bertil, Lintner (2002), Blood Brothers: Crime, Business, and Politics in Asia, Allen and Unwin, pp. 213–214, ISBN 1-86508-419-0
  35. ↑ Dies, Harry P., Jr. (October–December 2004), "North Korean Special Operations Forces: 1996 Kangnung submarine infiltration", Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin, retrieved 2007-06-01
  36. ↑ "North Korea denies murdering diplomat", CNN, 1996-10-04, retrieved 2007-06-01
  37. ↑ Jeong, Hoe-sang (1996-10-17), "최덕근 영사, 러시아 마피아가 살해했다?/Consul Choe Deok-geun, killed by the Russian Mafia?", Sisa Journal, retrieved 2007-06-01
  38. ↑ Efron, Sonni (1998-06-23). "S. Korea Seizes Another Northern Sub Off Coast". los Angeles Times.
  39. ↑ "North Korea ship 'in flames after naval clash', says Seoul". Herald Sun. Retrieved December 23, 2011.
  40. ↑ "(Cheonan attack) (News Focus) S. Korea working on diplomatic, military options against N. Korea". English.yonhspnews.co.kr. Retrieved 18 October 2014.
  41. ↑ Shim, Sung-won (June 18, 2011). "South Korean troops shoot at civilian airliner by mistake". Reuters. Retrieved 2011-11-13.

References

  • Oberdorfer, Don. The Two Koreas : A Contemporary History. Addison-Wesley, 1997, 472 pages, ISBN 0-201-40927-5
  • Cumings, Bruce. The Origins of the Korean War: Liberation and the Emergence of Separate Regimes, 1945-1947. Princeton University Press, 1981, 607 pages, ISBN 0-691-09383-0
  • Hoare, James; Daniels, Gordon (February 2004). "The Korean Armistice North and South: The Low-Key Victory [Hoare]; The British Press and the Korean Armistice: Antecedents, Opinions and Prognostications [Daniels]". The Korean Armistice of 1953 and its Consequences: Part I (PDF) (Discussion Paper No. IS/04/467 ed.). London: The Suntory Centre (London School of Economics).

External links