Korea

Korea became, against the wishes of its population, a Japanese protectorate in 1905 and was annexed by Japan in 1910 when the king was forced to abdicate. Resistance to Japanese occupation increased after 1919 and from 1925 onwards was mostly controlled by a number of communist factions outside and within Korea.

The Japanese wrought an industrial revolution in Korea and in 1937 a process of assimilating the 23.5 million population began after a Japanese general, Minami Jiro, had been appointed governor-general the previous year. The Korean language and literature were banned from schools, and Koreans were even ordered to change their names to Japanese ones. In 1938 a ‘volunteer’ system began conscripting Korean youths; in 1939 Korean labour began being employed overseas; and in 1942 conscription for the Japanese Army was started. The nationalists and communists in China also raised army units from Korean patriot groups who had taken refuge there. Those who joined the nationalists were formed into a single military force in 1941, headed by Yi Pom-sok, and one of its units took part in the Burma campaign. The communist bands, based at Siking in north-west China, were led by Kim Il-sung, North Korea's first post-war political leader.

As the war progressed Japanese exploitation of Korea increased. The country was stripped of its rice production, cattle were confiscated, and metal objects of all kinds were seized for the war effort. This exploitation caused unrest, forcing the Japanese to increase their military presence in the country, from 46,000 troops in 1941 to 300,000 by 1945. By the end of the war 2.6 million Koreans were engaged in forced labour in Korea and ‘thousands of sociopathic Koreans were recruited to serve in the ranks of the repressive police. Korea became a slave-labor camp under armed guard’ ( R. Whelan, Drawing the Line: the Korean War 1950–1953, London, 1990, p. 22). Some 723,000 Koreans were also sent overseas as were tens of thousands of women who were forced to act as comfort women for Japanese troops. Many Koreans were sent to work in Japan and by January 1945 made up 32% of the labour force there. Perhaps as much as a quarter of the total casualties at Hiroshima were Koreans.

At the Cairo conference in November 1943 (see SEXTANT) it was agreed by China, the UK, and the USA that Korea should become independent ‘in due course’. With this Stalin concurred and at the Yalta conference in February 1945 (see ARGONAUT) a form of trusteeship, first raised by Roosevelt with Eden in early 1943, was discussed between the major powers, but was never implemented.

After the USSR declared war on Japan in August 1945 (see Japanese–Soviet campaigns), Soviet forces mounted a number of small amphibious operations north of the 38th Parallel (see Map 58) and the Soviet Twenty-Fifth Army advanced into Korea from China. As agreed with the USA (which had suggested the 38th Parallel as a dividing line), the Soviets then occupied north Korea while General John Hodge's 24th US Corps, which landed on 8 September from Okinawa, occupied south Korea. Syngman Rhee (1875–1965), who had been associated with an ineffective Korean provisional government formed in China in 1919, became president of the Republic of Korea in 1948.

Bibliography

Cumings, B. , The Origins of the Korean War (Princeton, 1981).