North - Russian, south

Korea was divided equally only geographically

These days mark 60 years since the formation of two states on the Korean Peninsula: the Republic of Korea (ROK) in the south and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) in the north. The state, which had been united since the 7th century, split. “No division of a nation during the redivision of the world after the Second World War was so dubious, abnormal and artificial as the division of Korea,” wrote American historian Gregory Henderson.

The question of the situation in Korea after the end of the Second World War was first raised in 1943 at an international conference in Cairo, when it was considered what fate would befall the territories that had been colonies before the war. Great Britain and France insisted on maintaining the status quo. The Soviet Union was for independence and self-determination, and the United States, represented by President Franklin Roosevelt, proposed transferring this country under the quadripartite trusteeship of the United States, Great Britain, the USSR and Kuomintang China.

At first, no one intended to divide Korea into occupation zones, but each side hoped that it would be able to influence the situation within the country so that the Korean people would choose the “right” path of development. The Americans counted on the support of the liberal intelligentsia, brought up on European values. The Soviet Union was going to act on the wave of a natural shift to the left after the liberation of the country.

On August 9, 1945, the Soviet Union entered the war in the Far East, and already on August 15, the Japanese occupation corps in Korea ceased resistance. Everything happened so quickly that fighting for Pyongyang was no longer carried out. By the way, the liberation of Korea occurred without the participation of the national liberation movement. Thanks to the harsh policies of the Japanese occupiers, there was no partisan movement on Korean territory. It was based outside the peninsula in the territories of third countries.

Since the Americans expected to begin the invasion of Japan in the fall, at best, they had to urgently come up with a compromise option that would satisfy Moscow. Charles Bonesteel and Dean Rusk, the two U.S. Army lieutenant colonels tasked with the task, had half an hour to think and a map of Korea as their only source of information about the country. The solution was simple in American style: divide the country into two parts along the 38th parallel, giving the north to the Russians and the south to the Americans. Outwardly, it looked like a division in half. But the American half retained the capital Seoul, two-thirds of the population, and a significant part of the agricultural and industrial resources.

Why did the Soviet Union so easily agree to this proposal? The fact is that at that time Korea was “terra incognita” for both the USSR and the United States. In the United States, there were no specialists on it in the government. In the Soviet Union, the older generation of Korean studies scholars was repressed, while a new generation was just beginning to emerge. There was no one to tell me what to do correctly.

While the northern part of the peninsula was occupied by Soviet troops immediately, the Americans came to the south only in September 1945. The command of the American troops had instructions not to recognize any self-proclaimed Korean governments. After all, since 1919, China had a Korean Provisional Government in exile, which by 1945 was led by Kim Gu, a staunch nationalist who disliked both the Communists and the Americans. In addition, there was also a “transitional” government created by the former Japanese authorities of the peninsula in order to ensure the evacuation of the Japanese population and avoid reprisals against them. This “transitional” government, taking advantage of the situation, was headed by one of the leaders of the Korean left-wing nationalists, Yo Un Hyun. The People's Republic of Korea (PRC), which he created, managed to carry out a number of democratic events, and the country was covered with a network of people's committees subordinate to its government. At the end of 1945, the Americans dispersed the central apparatus of this government, but they fought with the local people's committees until 1950.

The foreign ministers of the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union met in Moscow on December 27, 1945 to determine the status of Korea. The Americans proposed resolving the issue according to the Japanese model, placing Korea under the rule of MacArthur or another American general, but the USSR and England confirmed the fidelity of Roosevelt’s idea of ​​international trusteeship. Then the Americans tried to torpedo the Soviet project, declaring the country’s readiness for self-government, especially since everyone in Korea itself wanted independence right now.

Washington had no single candidate to lead the country, but the military, especially General Douglas MacArthur, supported Syngman Rhee. A longtime participant in the anti-Japanese movement, Syngman Rhee was sent to America on a secret mission back in 1905, but, unable to complete his task, he remained in the United States, received a higher education and became the first Korean with an American doctorate in political science. By the time he returned to the country, he was already 70 years old, he spoke impeccable English and broken Korean, knew little about the situation in Korea, but considered himself “the new Moses of the Korean people.” Syngman Rhee, even earlier than his American masters, began to voice the idea of ​​​​creating a separate state on Korean territory and quickly took off.

In the North, meanwhile, began the rise of Kim Il Sung, who in the 1930s was a successful guerrilla commander and one of the last to cross the Soviet border when the Japanese “cleansed” Manchuria, where his unit was fighting. Moscow chose him because he was young and had real merits, unlike other figures of the communist movement, who were more involved in baiting each other or were far from the real political struggle.

The USSR and the USA governed “their” parts of the peninsula differently. The Soviet Union set itself the task of building a politically and militarily strong state loyal to Moscow. The United States did not have a clear plan for the development of Korea. If the Americans tried to reverse the leftist deviation, then in the North they used it: the structure of power was similar to the Soviet one, but outwardly it looked like a natural continuation of the people's committees.

The Americans sought to rule themselves, while the Soviet administration resorted to a system of indirect control. It was manifested both in the creation of local authorities and in the active use of representatives of the Korean diaspora from the USSR. This model did not force the Soviet military to “get involved” in issues in which they were incompetent. And unlike white-skinned foreigners in the South, Soviet Koreans did not seem alien, since they did not differ in appearance from the local residents. The Soviet administration tried to suppress factional struggle, but the Americans turned a blind eye to it, and even encouraged it in their own interests, as a result, terror and political assassinations became the norm. This is how both Kim Gu and Yeo Un Hyun died.

By the beginning of 1947, against the background of the Cold War and the collapse of the structures created by the Moscow Conference, the USA and the USSR began to independently form the authorities of the future Korea. The Soviet Union presented the transfer of power as a development of the tradition of people's committees, at the congress of which the People's Assembly was elected as the highest body of state power. Elections took place in both the north and south on February 1, 1947. And although the statement that the majority of the population of the south took part in the illegal voting is far from the truth, the very fact of the elections there has been confirmed by historians.

The United States acted differently: using its influence in the UN, they referred the Korean issue for consideration there. On November 14, 1947, the UN General Assembly decided to form the so-called UN Temporary Commission on Korea (UNTCOK), which decided to hold general democratic elections on the peninsula. The commission included representatives from the Philippines, Kuomintang China, Canada and Australia. There were no Soviet representatives. Moscow and Pyongyang refused to accept it as a credible body.

But when the Soviet Union refused to accept the UN resolution on Korea, Syngman Rhee proposed holding elections “wherever possible,” and on May 10, 1948, a heavily flawed general election was held in the South, organized with the participation of the police and Syngman Rhee loyalists. semi-gangster formations. Voting was often combined with stamping food cards and was carried out under the slogan “he who does not vote, does not eat.”

Both the north and the south consider “their” elections to be more legitimate, but from a formal point of view, the position of the northerners is more correct. At a minimum, because elections were not held on the territory of the DPRK at all, while the north held elections in the south, albeit illegal, and all the highest bodies of power were built on equal representation of northerners and southerners.

On August 15, 1948, the separate state of the Republic of Korea was proclaimed on the southern half of the peninsula, and on September 9, 1948, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea was proclaimed. This name was proposed by representatives of the Soviet administration. The Koreans themselves wanted to call the country the People's Republic of Korea, by analogy with Yo Un Hyun's project.

So Korea became divided. Both states formally extended their jurisdiction over the entire peninsula, considering the other half illegally ruled by puppets of the ideological enemy. The 1948 Constitution of the DPRK declared Seoul, located in temporarily occupied territory, to be the capital of the country. The author of these lines visited Seoul, but in conversations Koreans rarely raised this topic, although most agreed with the opinion of historian Gregory Henderson - the split proposed by the United States and organized by Syngman Rhee and his sponsors became the cause of a whole chain of tragedies, the first of which was the Korean War 1950--1953.

Konstantin ASMOLOV, leading researcher at the Center for Korean Studies, Institute of Far Eastern Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences