Appunti Storia della Corea 2

December 1945 - Five-year trusteeship over Korea announced

December 1945 —> ve-year trusteeship over Korea announced by the Soviet-American Joint Commission—> communists supported the trusteeship —> source of division among Korean political interests in the south. Right-wing = opposition to the trusteeship / left-wing = pro-trusteeship.

US policy —> against People’s Republic and Korean Provisional Government, favoured USAMGIK (The United States Army Military Government in Korea) as sovereignty.

USAMGIK —> rose as primarily an enforcer of anti-communism and cultivator of conservative, pro-American political forces —> anti-communist autocracy.

Interim Legislative Assembly was created to execute one of the three branches under military government (judiciary, executive and legislative).

The southern system not only matched with American’s inclinations, but eliminated rival political forces.

Syngman Rhee and Gim Gu manoeuvred to block any outcome that might incorporate moderates in

apower-sharing arrangement —> assassination of Yeo Unhyeong in July of 1947 and with him died anychance for non-extremists to survive.

American leadership declared illegitimate the people’s committees in the south and then suppressed anyorganised activity that were deemed too close to communism. Beginning in the spring of 1946, thousandsof leftist activists were incarcerated and hundreds were killed.

Joint CommissionThe was created to construct a uni ed governing mechanism for the entire KoreanPeninsula, but neither the Soviets nor the Americans were prepared to accept any Korean government thatechoed the opposing occupation.

United Nations,The Americans sought to shift responsibility to the newly-created while promoting theprovisional governing councilformation of a in the south —> headed by Syngman Rhee, this councilcontinued to purge leftist through a very brutal policing force.

UN-sponsored election for a new KoreanThe UN declared its rst priority to be the

holding of a government, but the Soviets refused to participate, denying entrance to the UN in early 1948. The elections established a government for only southern Korea.

May 10, 1948 —> elections were held to choose representatives for the National Assembly, with Syngman Rhee as the Assembly’s speaker.

presidential system Voted to implement a over a parliamentary one. Rhee the new president.

June 20 1948 —> the Assembly elected August 15, 1948 —> South Korea was created.

December 1948 —> National Security Law

June 1949 —> Land Reform to address the economic inequities from the colonial period.

September 1949 —> Rhee, under the pretest of anti-communism, dissolved the year-long criminal court investigating the most notorious pro-Japanese collaborators.

September 1948 —> formal establishment of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (NK).

Mid 1949 —> Gim Gu’s assassination

Late 1949-early 1950 —>

suppression of the Guerrilla Movement —> peaceful South Korean area before the war

Economic recovery in full swing in May 1950

February 1950 —> Land Reform Law. 80% of the whole population was composed of peasants, whose 75% were tenants. Most peasants leaned toward socialism.

21. The Korean War

Formal establishment of the states of South Korea and 1948 summer North Korea

Training and fighting of North Korean troops in the 1948-49 Chinese civil war

US secretary of state’s declaration of the American 1950 January defence perimeter

Outbreak of the Korean War as Northern army crosses June 25th 1950 the border

1950 September Landing of American forces in Incheon

Chinese intervention in the Korean War on behalf of the 1950 October North

1951 July Commencement of peace talks

1953 March Death of the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin

27th July 1953 Armistice to end fighting

factoMarch 22, 1949 —> DPRK-USSR Economic & Cultural Agreement (de alliance treaty)

June 1949 —>

Korean War. Kim played both Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong o each other. Stalin had to consent to Mao’s returning thousands of North Korean troops left over from the Chinese civil war. Kim then found it easier to convince Mao that the North Koreans should proceed with a communist-led military reuni cation of the fatherland. Mao even o ered Kim Chinese military assistance, but Kim Il Sung refused it. Stalin, while committing only strategic and material assistance from the Soviet Union, gave the April 1950 nal go-ahead in for Kim to pursue militarily his desperately sought uni cation.

June 29, 1950, On the (North) Korean People’s Army launched a full-frontal assault over the border at the 38th parallel. The South’s lack of preparation showed clearly in the Northern army’s easy rampage to Seoul, which was captured within a couple of days, refugees streaming southwards. The Northern Army quickly captured most of South Korea within a few weeks, joined by the leftist guerrillas.

Holding out in the mountains and by Communist sympathisers hiding within South Korean society.

In the occupied territories administration was reorganised according to the Northern model, land and other properties were confiscated and redistributed and prominent local figures were arrested and often killed, or taken to the north.

The Southern army, assisted in part by American forces, committed atrocities on its southward retreat, killing everyone who seemed leftist to them. This brutal cleansing of opposing or simply suspicious elements set the stage for reciprocity once the tide of the war changed and towns were reoccupied by the opposing sides.

First major turning point —> the “Busan Perimeter” held off the North Korean siege long enough for the UN to organise an American-led recapturing of the South.

Incheon Landing, September 1950 —> the American forces, led by General Douglas MacArthur, attacked the North Korean on the backside as UN reinforcements were sent into the south.

The Northern army swiftly retreated. The combined US-ROK forces quickly recaptured Seoul and within a few weeks had chased the People’s Army out of Pyongyang as well. The American military commanders kept pushing up the peninsula all the way to the border area with China.

In October 1950 the Chinese People’s Liberation Army intervened with the Northern army in chasing the joint US-ROK forces back down the peninsula. Mao had warned the US not to cross the 38th parallel. The joint Chinese-North Korean forces recaptured Pyongyang and even Seoul, although just briefly. Then the UN forces pressed the front back to just north of the Southern capital, where it would remain for the next two-and-a-half years.

Truce talk started with two issues:

1. How to draw the borderline;
2. How to exchange prisoners of war.

The latter issue caused the talks to be dragged for two years.

Armistice July 1953 —> that left the country divided along the same 38th

parallel where the war had started. Peace talk would be held later.

Results:

• Utter destruction of the population and landscape, with ultimately little to nothing accomplished other than millions of deaths and a bitterness and mistrust singed into the memory;
• No liberals in South Korea and North Korea;

To North Koreans —> relentless barrage of American bombs, napalm, and other carriers of genocidal devastation that led people to live underground in an elaborate tunnel network; infrastructures of modern life had been destroyed, agriculture had been decimated, reservoirs and dams had been bombed useless —> a memory that was later used as a reminder of American brutality, reinforcing NK’s own legacy.

South Koreans point of view of the war:

To those who view South Korean history in a triumphant way, the Korean War represented the moment of great heroism and sacrifice for the sake of preserving the south’s independence from communism and of integrating into the

American-led global order;- To the South Koreans that have a more sober view, the war preserved national division, dependence on international powers, and a series of anti-communist South Korean dictatorships generated, legitimated, and sustained by national division and the Cold War.

22. Early North Korea

• First Soviet incursions into northern Korea.
• 1945 August Liberation from Japanese colonial rule
• Soviet Central Administration established
• 1945 September Jo Mansik asked to head a governing body
• Kim Il Sung introduced by Soviet occupation to crowds in
• 1945 October Pyongyang
• 1945 November Massacre of Christian nationalists in Sinuiju
• Initiation of comprehensive land reform in the northern
• 1946 spring occupation zone
• 1946 November Elections for the interim northern legislature
• 1947 Establishment of the Korean People's Army
• Formal establishment of the Democratic People's
• 1948 September Republic of Korea
• 1950-53 Korean War
• 1955 December Kim Il Sung's "Juche speech"

In the 1950s Korea was very, very poor. It depended on the UNKRA, UN agency for Korea's reconstruction.

Peasant Society:

• Yangban

No more hereditary social status, class disappeared;

May 1950 to 1951 —> land reform;

Traditional values overturned by the war and the presence of the US military;

Very poor situation, poorer than the 1930s;

New capitalist society divided into:

• Chaebol;

The newly originated

• Small portion of middle class;

Educational fever with the rise of educational institutions;

Public mass participation in any kind of trade;

Syngman Rhee believed that US should support Korean rearmament and whole