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Authors: Max Hastings
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have-nots; between those who shared the privileges of power and those who did not; between landlord and peasant; intellectual and pragmatist. The luxury of civilised political debate was denied to South Korea, as it was to the North.
Ferris Miller, the naval officer who was one of the advance party at Inchon in September 1945, left the country at the end of that year. But he was that rare creature – an American deeply attracted by Korea: ‘Somehow, it had got into my blood. I liked the place, the food, the people.’ In February 1947, he returned to Seoul as a civilian contract employee of the military government. He was dismayed by what he found:
Everything had gone downhill. Nothing worked – the pipes were frozen, the electricity kept going off. The corruption was there for anybody to see. A lot of genuine patriots in the South were being seduced by the blandishments of the North. There were Korean exiles coming home from everywhere – Manchuria, China, Japan. Everybody was struggling, even the Americans. The PX was almost bare of goods. Most of our own people hated the country. There were men who came, stayed a week, and just got out. There were Koreans wearing clothes made of army blankets; orphans hanging around the railway stations; people chopping wood on the hills above Seoul, the transport system crumbling. It was a pretty bad time. 23
The conditions Miller discovered in Seoul might as readily have been observed in Berlin, Vienna, Hamburg – any of the war-ruined cities of Europe – that winter. Even in London and Paris, cold and shortages were a way of life in 1947. But whereas in Europe, democratic political life was reviving with remarkable vigour, in South Korea a fundamentally corrupt society was being created. Power was being transferred by the Americans to a Korean conservative faction indifferent to the concept of popular freedom, representative only of ambition for power and wealth. The administration and policing of the country were being placed in the hands of men who had been willing tools of a tyranny that a world war had just been fought to destroy. Their only discernible claim to office was their hostility to communism.
Between 1945 and 1947, the foreign political patrons of North and South Korea became permanently committed to their respective protégés. The course of events thereafter is more simply described. In September 1947, despite Russian objections, the United States referred the future of Korea to the United Nations. Moscow made a proposal to Washington remarkably similar to that which General Hodge had advanced almost two years earlier: both great powers should simultaneously withdraw their forces, leaving the Koreans to resolve their own destinies. The Russians were plainly confident – with good reason – that left to their own devices, the forces of the left in both Koreas would prevail. TheAmericans, making the same calculation, rejected the Russian plan. On 14 November, their own proposal was accepted by the General Assembly: there was to be UN supervision of elections to a Korean government, followed by Korean independence and the withdrawal of all foreign forces. The Eastern bloc abstained from the vote on the American plan, which was carried by forty-six votes to none.
The United Nations Temporary Commission on Korea met for the first time in Seoul on 12 January 1948. The Russians and North Koreans utterly rejected UN participation in deciding the future of Korea. Thus it was apparent from the outset that any decision the Commission reached would be implemented only south of the 38th Parallel. The General Assembly’s Interim Committee brooded for a time on this problem. Dr Rhee was strongly in favour of immediate elections for as much of Korea as was willing to hold them. But every Korean opposition party argued against holding a vote in the face of the communist boycott. Not only would this make genuinely ‘free’ elections impossible – it would doom for
Ferris Miller, the naval officer who was one of the advance party at Inchon in September 1945, left the country at the end of that year. But he was that rare creature – an American deeply attracted by Korea: ‘Somehow, it had got into my blood. I liked the place, the food, the people.’ In February 1947, he returned to Seoul as a civilian contract employee of the military government. He was dismayed by what he found:
Everything had gone downhill. Nothing worked – the pipes were frozen, the electricity kept going off. The corruption was there for anybody to see. A lot of genuine patriots in the South were being seduced by the blandishments of the North. There were Korean exiles coming home from everywhere – Manchuria, China, Japan. Everybody was struggling, even the Americans. The PX was almost bare of goods. Most of our own people hated the country. There were men who came, stayed a week, and just got out. There were Koreans wearing clothes made of army blankets; orphans hanging around the railway stations; people chopping wood on the hills above Seoul, the transport system crumbling. It was a pretty bad time. 23
The conditions Miller discovered in Seoul might as readily have been observed in Berlin, Vienna, Hamburg – any of the war-ruined cities of Europe – that winter. Even in London and Paris, cold and shortages were a way of life in 1947. But whereas in Europe, democratic political life was reviving with remarkable vigour, in South Korea a fundamentally corrupt society was being created. Power was being transferred by the Americans to a Korean conservative faction indifferent to the concept of popular freedom, representative only of ambition for power and wealth. The administration and policing of the country were being placed in the hands of men who had been willing tools of a tyranny that a world war had just been fought to destroy. Their only discernible claim to office was their hostility to communism.
Between 1945 and 1947, the foreign political patrons of North and South Korea became permanently committed to their respective protégés. The course of events thereafter is more simply described. In September 1947, despite Russian objections, the United States referred the future of Korea to the United Nations. Moscow made a proposal to Washington remarkably similar to that which General Hodge had advanced almost two years earlier: both great powers should simultaneously withdraw their forces, leaving the Koreans to resolve their own destinies. The Russians were plainly confident – with good reason – that left to their own devices, the forces of the left in both Koreas would prevail. TheAmericans, making the same calculation, rejected the Russian plan. On 14 November, their own proposal was accepted by the General Assembly: there was to be UN supervision of elections to a Korean government, followed by Korean independence and the withdrawal of all foreign forces. The Eastern bloc abstained from the vote on the American plan, which was carried by forty-six votes to none.
The United Nations Temporary Commission on Korea met for the first time in Seoul on 12 January 1948. The Russians and North Koreans utterly rejected UN participation in deciding the future of Korea. Thus it was apparent from the outset that any decision the Commission reached would be implemented only south of the 38th Parallel. The General Assembly’s Interim Committee brooded for a time on this problem. Dr Rhee was strongly in favour of immediate elections for as much of Korea as was willing to hold them. But every Korean opposition party argued against holding a vote in the face of the communist boycott. Not only would this make genuinely ‘free’ elections impossible – it would doom for
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