5-19-06, 9:07 am
For Part I, click here
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If I had been impressed with China, I would be, in quite another sense, more impressed by Korea. At the end I would say that I was a heroic country, unbelievably heroic: and to witness such mass heroism left an indelible mark upon me an inextinguishable responsibility.
And yet, 'nothing' in those ten days really 'happened' to me. As will be seen, I weary miles of museums and exhibitions, talked to many people, made a trip to Hamhueng, became a good friend of my interpreter, and then I left. I got no 'inside' information, I was privy to no inner secrets, and I encountered no dramatic episodes. And yet the impression left on me was profound and altered me; it changed me perhaps into that kind of new American who, whether he chooses or not, is locked in a struggle with that other kind of American who is the fear of the world and the substance of nightmares in numberless homes in far-flung countries of peoples who only want to make a better happier life for themselves, denied to them by others for many years, and now denied to them by the US.
Korea had been under Japanese occupation for 30 years. When the Soviet Red Army freed the Koreans in 1945 – after years of guerilla warfare led by Kim Il-Sung – Korea for the first time in living memory was free, only to fall under US occupation in the South, where 20 million Koreans – twice the number in the North – live. In 1950, the US tried to occupy all of Korea. That they failed was due to the Koreans’ unparalleled heroism and the assistance of Chinese volunteers and the other socialist countries of the world – a combination which succeeded in repelling a major imperialist country for the first time in modern history and spelled the doom of that unchallenged power which in the past could work its will everywhere in the world with a platoon of marines (as in Nicaragua) or a gunboat up the Whampoa (as in China). The Vietnamese would do the same to the French Imperialists in Vietnam; and these would be followed by similar resistance, successfully carried out, in Egypt, Lebanon, and Iraq. That Guatemala and British Guinea were too weak and too far away to be helped only underlined the nature of the great change. All this was to be climaxed by the revolution in Cuba – which is part of the whole fabric of anti-colonial revolt and cannot be suppressed any longer in the good old-fashioned way.
We visited the historical museum, and what struck me most vividly here was to realize how short Korea’s history, how painfully short it really was. I mean by 'history,' the history of its freedom. Its chief oppressor before the United States appeared directly on the scene has been Japan. But the United States is no recent interloper. Korea has figured in the plans of US imperialism for the Far East as early as 1845. In 1866 the US armed vessel, General Sherman, steamed up the Taidong, looting and terrorizing the population as it went. The Korean envoy, Li Hyun Ik, sent to negotiate with the invaders, was kept prisoner on ship; but the invaders did offer a price for their departure – 1,000 sulk of rice, gold, silver and ginseng.
The Koreans finally fought back, sending wooden boas up against the ship and setting it afire; the General Sherman went to the bottom of the Taidong. But this incident only gave the US government a pretext for sending a man-of-war Wachusett to Korea in march 1868; followed soon by the Shenandoah. Korean resistance managed to frustrate the aims of these invaders as well.
But Korea has been invaded by other Western imperialists, and tomb-robbing became a big pirating business.
In April 1871, Frederick P. Low, US Minister to China, organized another invasion of Korea. He sent a fleet of five warships and other vessels, under Rear Admiral J. Rogers, with more than 80 guns and a crew of 1,200 men, into Korea.
They attacked Kanghwa Island, and captured certain areas of it, but were severely battered by Korean fire in the process. Holed up at Moolchi Island, near Inchon, they prepared for another assault; but by this time the entire Korean population had been aroused to a pitch of patriotic fervor, and the resistance became the people’s resistance. After a campaign lasting some 40 days the US fleet withdrew again to China.
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But military actions, though they failed, were followed by diplomatic and economic actions, which succeeded. The US backed up the intrigues of Japan in Korea, conniving at the Wunyo Incident in August 1875, which ended in the unequal treaty forced upon the Korean people, the Kanghwado Treaty. This treaty was followed by the Korean-US Treaty of Friendship and Trade in May 1882, negotiated through Admiral R. W. Schufeldt. This treaty opened up Korea to US influence, and in the unequal terms of their relationship dumped products in Korea that were surplus in the America and took form Korea its gold, silver and other irreplaceable wealth.
With the behind-the-scenes support of the US government, the Japanese took over political control of Korea. The pretext was the Kap-o Peasant war in 1894, which saw the peasants of Korea rising against their feudal masters. In Korea, as in other countries, feudal Korean rulers invited foreigners to enter their country to help put down their own people in return for surrendering the country’s sovereignty. The Sin-Japanese war ended in the route of China and sealed the fate of Korea. Japanese rule began then and ended only a half-century later.
The US won certain concessions from the Japanese-controlled Korean government: among them the right to exploit the gold mines in Wonsan, to lay railway and streetcar systems, install telephone and water services – all no doubt necessary but bought at the price of the people’s freedom. In due course Britain, France, Germany Czarist Russia found their way to Korea and squeezed their share of wealth out of the people.
Agreements, often secret, between Japan and the United States, worked out a plan for dividing spheres of influence in the Far East. In return for supporting Japan in the Russo-Japanese war in 1905, William Howard Taft and Premier Taro Katsura agreed secretly to respect each other’s interests in the Philippines and in Korea. The payoff took place at Portsmouth where President Theodore Roosevelt, acting as mediator, established the spheres of influence openly. The Russians lost and Japan won full rights over Korea; five years later in 1910, it moved to take over Korea in name, annexing it to Japan: now called Chosen.
US support of Japanese interests in Korea underwent severe stress in the following years, as competition between the two imperialisms increased. US influence gradually grew. In 1926, for instance, of the 397 missionaries in Korea, 235 were from the US. They began to group around themselves Koreans who saw the United States as the way out of Japanese control, even if it meant falling under US control. Syngman Rhee belongs to this current, which became dominant finally as Japan weakened. US commercial interests increased their control over more and more sections of the Korean economy.
With the end of the war in 1945, South Korea fell, to intents and purposes, under US military control, with General MacArthur as supreme dictator. In 1948 the 'Republic of Korea' was set up, and Syngman Rhee, who had spent most of his 80-odd years in the Untied States, was hauled out of retirement and propped up to head the new Korean 'democratic' government. When one talks of puppets – as the press so glibly does – one should compare how the 'puppet' Kim Il Sung spent his time against the Japanese, and heading the liberating force of Koreans who helped liberate Korea along with the Red Army.
All democratic and workers organizations, their headquarters and newspapers, were suppressed shortly after, and a huge police force was organized to keep the people down. From 15,000 in November 1946 it jumped to over 50,000 by 1948. A veritable police state had been instituted in South Korea in the name of democracy.
Japanese property which had been taken over by the US military government in 1945 – which amounted to more than 80 percent of the economy – was never converted into national property or even turned over, on the whole, to private Korean capitalists. Economic catastrophe actually resulted; factories closed down; and millions of Koreans joined the huge army of the unemployed, which ahs persisted to this day in that tormented country.
The actual screen behind which US rule was fastened on Korea took the form of an 'election' called by the UN – under United states direction and influence, of course. It was held in South Korea, and with thousands who protested jailed or killed, the new 'democratic' government of South Korea was installed. On Election Day, May 10, the US army mobilized itself for action, and South Korean terrorist groups took over the polling booths. Although the figures are disputed, North Koreans claim that the election was actually effectively boycotted by the people, and the total number of voters represented a small minority of the population.
Be that as it may, the election was sufficient to legalize the new government which then proceeded to enact various agreements and treaties with the US in which economic independence was effectively bartered away.
North Korean sources claim that between August 1945 to June 1950 over 478,000 people arrested in South Korea, and over 200,000 were killed. The 'uprising' on Cheju Island was put down with blood, and some 60,000 killed.
The North Koreans cite the simple economic fact that South Korea cannot exist as an economic unity as on eof the motives behind the attack upon North Korea. All important heavy industry is located in the North; the electrical sources, for instance. South Korea had to have electricity delivered to some cities form US battleships which generated their own. US military control over South Korean forces was certainly no secret. Nor was it any secret that South Korean puppets – and here the word is richly earned – could not conceive of their own existence nor future as overlords of a part of the country, especially its poorer part. In time the superior showing of North Korea would have a devastating influence upon the entire nation. With the withdrawal of Russian troops from North Korean and the continuance of US troops in South Korea, the evidence of who was and who was not independent became all-too-clear. The tremendous advances which the North Korean people began to make, quite early after independence, could not help but affect the South Koreans. What more eloquent argument for superiority could there be than the fact that, while millions were unemployed and starving in South Korea, unemployment had been wiped out in North Korea?
Clashes took place along the 38th parallel for months before the actual outbreak of hostilities. The North Koreans were by no means caught unaware when the South Korean army crossed over the 38th parallel on the morning of June 25, 1950. What most Americans are not aware of is that this attack did not get far. The South Korean troops did not have their heart in it, were badly led; and the North Korean army smashed them almost at their first counter-attack. Then followed the fantastic route of that puppet army, which would have been thrown into the sea at Inchon if Truman had not made his unilateral decision to send in US troops.
Perhaps the full truth of what actually took place will not be known until the archives are opened. Certainly the principals involved – General MacArthur, John foster Dulles, and Truman – are hardly likely to speak. But, in general terms, the truth can be learned; for the invasion of North Korea had behind it all the preceding logic of America’s role in Korea. Long before hostilities began steps had been taken to suppress all democratic voices and forces in South Korea. The entire economy had fallen into US hands; the whole government was the plaything of US interests. Syngman Rhee, the Korean Chiang Kai-Shek made no secret of his bloody ambitions, and has called, not once but many times before, and since, for the invasion of the North. Only extreme force holds him back: only the fact that the grand strategy of US imperialism does not want a war at this time (1959) keeps him in check.
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In the afternoon, we went to the Writers Union headquarters, where I was to meet Han Sul Ya, the chair of the Writers Union, a man about 60 years old. Who had lived under Japanese occupation and was the dean of Korean literature. Comrade Kim – a writer – had already been introduced to me and was to be my mentor, with Sung Chun as my translator. At this meeting with the Chair of the Writers Union, Sung Chun had called up a friend of his who substituted for him during the discussion. Sung Chun’s English was not equal to the job, he was to tell me later; this friend of his had learned English in Japan where he had lived for many years. His English was better than Sung Chun’s, though it had a Japanese flavor.
The chairman was a smiling, easygoing man who made me welcome, offered me sweets and sodas to drink, as we sat before a table loaded with these goodies. I asked him to tell me something about Korean literature and then to ask me whatever he wanted about American literature.
He told me that all the Korean writers of any standing were in the North. South Korean literature was a crooked copy of the dominant Western trends, particularly the decadent, as indeed South Korean life itself was also. South Korean literature emphasized pessimism, eroticism, usually decadent; it was a mirror of defeat and despair. The worst US cultural products abounded in South Korea – bad Hollywood movies, sex literature. Prostitution, of course, was rife in South Korea; and the prostitute figured largely in the 'new' literature. (Prostitution doesn’t exist in North Korea.)
Most Korean writers who had lived under the Occupation had been part of the fight for national freedom. At the end of the war, some of them were caught below the 38th parallel and had to make their way, at the risk of their lives, North, where they could breathe freely.
Korean writers were close to the people. They spent their time in villages or factories, where they gathered material on the lives of workers and peasants. They were socialist realists as the secretary of the union told me, on one occasion, rather militantly.
Han Sul Ya had lived under Japanese occupation for many years, and had been active in the resistance movement; he had suffered imprisonment and the refined and unrefined tortures of the Japanese. I asked how the writers had responded to the event sin Hungary of 1956, which had been sparked by the members of the Petofoi Club in Budapest, and which had some passive support fo the Polish writers, as well as writers in various other countries in the West.
The Korean writers, he said, had recognized the counter-revolution for what it was. Faced as they were daily with the Syngman Rhee army poised, now with US atomic bombs, south of the border and ready to move, they had no illusions as to who was their enemy, and they could recognize their enemy even in Hungary. No, there had been no revisionism among the writers.
For Part III, click here
--Philip Bonosky is a contributing editor of Political Affairs, a former international correspondent for the People’s World, and the author of several books including Afghanistan: Washington’s Secret War, Brother Bill McKie: Building the Union at Ford (International Publishers), the novels Burning Valley (University of Illinois Press) and The Magic Fern (International Publishers), and two collections of short stories.
