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Authors: Max Hastings
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years, if not for ever, the national unity so many Koreans still cherished. It would be a formal recognition of the divided status of Korea.
The Australian and Canadian members of the UN Temporary Commission shared these misgivings. But a majority of its members – France, the Philippines, Chiang Kai Shek’s China, El Salvador and India – supported elections in the South. The Interim Committee agreed that elections should go ahead. Campaigning for election to South Korea’s first government was held in a climate of mounting political repression. William F. Dean, the American Military Governor, replied to a question from the UN Commission about political prisoners: ‘I have yet to find a man in jail because his ideology is different from anyone else’s.’ Yet it was he who authorised the Korean police to deputise bands of ‘loyal citizens’ into ‘Community Protective Organisations’. These quickly became known colloquially among Americans as ‘Rhee’s goon squads’. Their purpose was frankly terroristic – to drive not onlycommunists, but any group unsympathetic to the right, from South Korean life. In the six weeks before polling, 589 people were killed in disturbances, and 10,000 ‘processed’ at police stations.
On election day, out of a total population of 20 million, 95 per cent of the 7.8 million registered voters went to the polls. The UN Commissioners declared that the vote represented a ‘valid expression of the free will of the people’. America’s Ambassador to the UN, John Foster Dulles, told the General Assembly that the elections ‘constituted a magnificent demonstration of the capacity of the Korean people to establish a representative and responsible government’. Syngman Rhee’s ‘Association for the Rapid Realisation of Independence’ gained fifty-five of the two hundred seats in South Korea’s new constitutional assembly. The Conservative Hanguk Democratic Party won twenty-nine, and two other rightwing groups gained twelve and six seats respectively. The right therefore commanded an effective majority of the two hundred seats. The left boycotted the election. The North Koreans, invited to send delegates, unsurprisingly made no response. Rhee and his supporters instituted a presidential system of government. He himself was inaugurated as South Korea’s first elected leader on 24 July 1948. On 14 August, the third anniversary of VJ-Day, amid the wailing tones of the Great Bell of Chongno, the US flag was lowered over the Capitol building in Seoul, and that of the new South Korean Republic was hoisted. General MacArthur himself delivered a bellicose speech in which he told Koreans, ‘an artificial barrier has divided your land. This barrier must and shall be torn down.’
In the months that followed, Syngman Rhee addressed himself to the creation of a ruthless dictatorship in South Korea. Any minister who showed symptoms of independence was dismissed. The President took steps to bind the police and constabulary under his personal control. Each new manifestation of left-wing opposition provided provocation for a renewed surge of government repression. There were frequent clashes along the 38th Parallel with North Korean border units, for which blame seemed about evenly divided. The most serious internal upheaval began on 19October 1948, when an army unit sent to deal with communist rebels on Cheju island mutinied at Yosu, on the south-west tip of Korea. They won local civilian support by urging vengeance upon oppressive local police, and marched against the town of Sunchon. Here, they were checked. By the end of the month, the uprising had been defeated, at a cost of a thousand lives. But a climate of oppression, intolerance and political ruthlessness was deepening. Ferociously hostile radio propaganda from Pyongyang fed rumours of imminent invasion from the North. In November, press restrictions were imposed, and more than seven hundred political arrests carried out. Between
The Australian and Canadian members of the UN Temporary Commission shared these misgivings. But a majority of its members – France, the Philippines, Chiang Kai Shek’s China, El Salvador and India – supported elections in the South. The Interim Committee agreed that elections should go ahead. Campaigning for election to South Korea’s first government was held in a climate of mounting political repression. William F. Dean, the American Military Governor, replied to a question from the UN Commission about political prisoners: ‘I have yet to find a man in jail because his ideology is different from anyone else’s.’ Yet it was he who authorised the Korean police to deputise bands of ‘loyal citizens’ into ‘Community Protective Organisations’. These quickly became known colloquially among Americans as ‘Rhee’s goon squads’. Their purpose was frankly terroristic – to drive not onlycommunists, but any group unsympathetic to the right, from South Korean life. In the six weeks before polling, 589 people were killed in disturbances, and 10,000 ‘processed’ at police stations.
On election day, out of a total population of 20 million, 95 per cent of the 7.8 million registered voters went to the polls. The UN Commissioners declared that the vote represented a ‘valid expression of the free will of the people’. America’s Ambassador to the UN, John Foster Dulles, told the General Assembly that the elections ‘constituted a magnificent demonstration of the capacity of the Korean people to establish a representative and responsible government’. Syngman Rhee’s ‘Association for the Rapid Realisation of Independence’ gained fifty-five of the two hundred seats in South Korea’s new constitutional assembly. The Conservative Hanguk Democratic Party won twenty-nine, and two other rightwing groups gained twelve and six seats respectively. The right therefore commanded an effective majority of the two hundred seats. The left boycotted the election. The North Koreans, invited to send delegates, unsurprisingly made no response. Rhee and his supporters instituted a presidential system of government. He himself was inaugurated as South Korea’s first elected leader on 24 July 1948. On 14 August, the third anniversary of VJ-Day, amid the wailing tones of the Great Bell of Chongno, the US flag was lowered over the Capitol building in Seoul, and that of the new South Korean Republic was hoisted. General MacArthur himself delivered a bellicose speech in which he told Koreans, ‘an artificial barrier has divided your land. This barrier must and shall be torn down.’
In the months that followed, Syngman Rhee addressed himself to the creation of a ruthless dictatorship in South Korea. Any minister who showed symptoms of independence was dismissed. The President took steps to bind the police and constabulary under his personal control. Each new manifestation of left-wing opposition provided provocation for a renewed surge of government repression. There were frequent clashes along the 38th Parallel with North Korean border units, for which blame seemed about evenly divided. The most serious internal upheaval began on 19October 1948, when an army unit sent to deal with communist rebels on Cheju island mutinied at Yosu, on the south-west tip of Korea. They won local civilian support by urging vengeance upon oppressive local police, and marched against the town of Sunchon. Here, they were checked. By the end of the month, the uprising had been defeated, at a cost of a thousand lives. But a climate of oppression, intolerance and political ruthlessness was deepening. Ferociously hostile radio propaganda from Pyongyang fed rumours of imminent invasion from the North. In November, press restrictions were imposed, and more than seven hundred political arrests carried out. Between
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