“Welcome, USA”: How did the Americans meet in Korea and why it ended in a big war

The Korean war is often perceived as the prototype of the Vietnamese: the classic conflict of the Cold War between the USSR and the USA, which occurs on the periphery of the zones of the influence of empires. But this story begins earlier, in 1945, at the time of the transition of the strategic port city of Inchon from the Japanese to the US Army. The book of the British historian and journalist Max Hastings was one of the first attempts to combine the political, military and human history of the Korean warfare. Based on an interview with the participants in the fighting on both sides, archival materials and his own talent of the reporter, the author shows the war not only as a strategic clash of superpower, but also as a drama of millions of people who found themselves in a whirlpool of a “forgotten conflict”.

History knows not many cases when any country suddenly came out of the shadows and was in the center of world events, as happened with Korea. The first significant contact of the West with the country of morning freshness occurred on the September morning of 1945, when the advanced detachment of the American army in full combat equipment landed in the western harbor of Incheon, where the delegation of Japanese officials in tailcoats and cylinders met him. Thus began the operation “Black list of forty” - the occupation of South Korea by the United States.

Inchon appeared before the first American officers who entered it, frightened, not knowing what to wait, and tightly closed. Having blocked along the deserted streets, where only the corner of the eye could be grabbed by the faces of local people who sternly peeping behind the liberators from the windows and from the corners, they came across a lonely Chinese restaurant with the announcement of “Welcome, USA”. Further, starting from the moment they plunged on a train to Seoul, they were encountered everywhere with undisguised glee. In every village that they drove, a small crowd of local gathered at the paths and joyfully waved flags. From the Seoul Station, they intended to get to the destination - the city post office - by truck, but when they arrived, they changed their minds and decided to go on foot. What was the amazement of the Americans when they were surrounded by a festive crowd of violently rejoicing Koreans: they flooded all the streets and lanes, climbed onto the carts, protruded from the windows, and covered the roofs. The Americans did not know what to think. They could not even imagine, which meant for the people this all the forgotten peninsula to the end of the war with Japan.

Throughout its history, until the end of the 19th century, Korea was a predominantly agricultural country, striving to live in isolation from the rest of the world, and this was well succeeded in. Since 1392, in the country, is the dynasty rules, but in the 16th century it survived two large invasions from Japan. When the Japanese left, Korea returned to the harsh traditional way - she froze to the bones in winter and fried in the sun in the summer, the ruling clans from generation to generation were at enmity with each other. According to the Confucian canon, according to which foreign policy was considered a continuation of intra -family relations, Korea historically remained faithful to China, to her “eldest brother”. Until 1876, she considered her closest neighbor Japan to be friendly even. But in early January of that year, in the wake of expansionist policy, which will move Japan for the next seventy years, Tokyo sent a military detachment to Korea to "conclude a friendship and trade cooperation agreement." And after a short and unsuccessful attempt to resist on February 26, the Koreans signed this agreement. He obliged Korea to open his ports for Japan, and endowed her citizens with extraterritorial rights.

The wounded Koreans began to consult with other neighbors how to discard this humiliating yoke. The Chinese advised to agree with any of the Western powers, “which will serve as an antidote”, better with America, since it seemed to have no territorial claims to mainland Asia. On May twenty -second, 1882, Korea signed an agreement on “friendship and trade” with the United States. As one American historian, a leading specialist in that period, put it, as a result of "Korea ended up in the ocean of intrigues that was not powerful over." Enraged Japanese now more and more interfered in the Intacorean internecine struggle. Britain also showed interest to maintain the status of China as the "older brother" of Korea in order to resist the influence of Russia in the Far East. By 1893, Korea consistently signed a series of trade agreements with all major European states. The Japanese clearly defined their goal: the Foreign Minister of Japan openly stated that Korea "needs to be applied to the Japanese card." Tokyo did not have understanding only in one thing: how to achieve this without confrontation with any of the great powers.

China solved the problem. Beijing’s increasingly rude interference in Korean affairs, his claims to a certain power over Seoul caused a wave of anti -Chinese sentiments and a surge in the location to the Japanese, who could now count on the support of at least part of the Korean people. In 1894, Japan decided to forge iron while he was hot, and landed SKA in Korea. The Seoul Government in confusion and panic asked Beijing to help suppress the flared uprising * by military force. The Japanese in response moved the sea infantry right to the capital. Korean authorities, finally and hopelessly driven into a corner, began to beg both neighbors to leave. But the Japanese smelled of victory. They sent an additional contingent.

In recent years of nominal independence, Korea has acquired the features of the Overpor Absurd. The authorities, inexperienced either in diplomacy or in modern power policy, twitched and floundered in networks that entangled them all the same. China admitted its inability to give the Japanese a military rebuff in Korea. Tokyo held the local authorities by the throat, squeezing his grip tightly, until in 1896 the king made an attempt to break free, hiding in the Russian mission in Seoul. There, in the shelter, the king issued decrees on the execution of all his manifested ministers. The Japanese temporarily retreated.

The next seven years, Petersburg and Tokyo fought for power and concession in Seoul. The outcome of this struggle was decided by the crushing victory of the Japanese in the Tsushima battle - a few miles from Busan. In February 1904, Japan entered a large army into Korea. In November next year, the country became a Japanese protectorate. Britain, demonstrating the colonial cynicism characteristic of that period, blessed the capture of Japan Korea in exchange for the support of its rule in India. Whitehall recognized Japan's right to “take such measures to manage, control and protect Korea [the country's name was then written in English through C-Corea], which will consider the proper and necessary” to ensure its “primary political, military and economic interests”.

So the independence of Korea has become a fiction. In subsequent years, Japanese officials and immigrants flowed into the country in an inexhaustible stream. In Korea, the Japanese education system was introduced, roads and railways and sewage were laid. But the Koreans - ardent nationalists - did not experience the slightest gratitude.

The armed resistance was steadily growing, behind which there was an unusual union of scientists-confusion, gangster clans, Christians and peasants suffering from colonial authorities. In 1908, the Anti -Sapon Partisan Army reached its peak of its number - 70,000 people. But immediately after that she was defeated by the ruthlessly suppressing the rebel movement of the Japanese. Korea turned into an armed camp, where mass executions and hazardous arrests were carried out all the time and any disagreement was suppressed. On August 2, 1910, the Korean emperor signed a rejection of all his rights to sovereign power. Japan introduced its own titles for the nobility and established its military government. Over the next thirty-five years, despite the stubborn armed resistance of nationalist detachments hidden in the mountains, many of whom were communists, the Japanese kept their despotic hated Koreans over the country, which in the 30s of the 20th century became an important bridgehead for expansion to the north, into Manchuria.

However, despite the fact that China is now mired in the internecine war of the governor-dackets, and Russia was busy building a new life after the revolution, even before the Second World War it became clear that, due to its geographical position at the junction of three great powers Korea, it would remain an uninhabited foci of tension and rivalry. The American historian Tyler Dennett was perspicacious in 1945, a few months before the end of the war in the Far East:

“Many of the factors of the international situation that led to the fall of Korea, or have been preserved unchanged for the past half a century, or most likely will manifest themselves again as soon as the world is restored in the east. Japan with its thirst for power will be able to restore, but not forever. Perhaps in the next generation, Japan will again have a great influence in the Pacific region. Russia, most likely, will most likely interest Russia no less than forty years ago. And it is likely that this factor will be more important than ever before. It is worth expecting that the traditional involvement of China in the affairs of this region will also remain. ”