Left Flank

Yesterday was Liberation Day in ROK. That I have mixed feelings about the day is an understatement.

On one hand, Liberation Day (or V-J day in the States) is an odd national holiday on the face of it. The day celebrates the surrender of the Japanese to the US and its WW2 allies, which as a result, liberated the Japanese colony of Chosen from Japanese rule. The Koreans did not liberate themselves, and many actively collaborated with the Japanese or joined the Communists in China.

Korea was not liberated truly from foreign intervention in August 1945 since Korea came under the spheres of influence by another two foreign powers (the US and the USSR). Moreover, Korea was not handed over to the Koreans to rule, but it was divided in half.

Much misconceptions exist about this transitional period, from 1945 to 1948. For example, a common belief is that the division of Korea was agreed upon by the allies at the Potsdam Conference, but during Cairo and Potsdam Conference discussions on the future of Korea, no mention was made specifically about a division of Korea, only that Korea would be granted independence in due course following the war. Without a clear agreed plan and with the Pacific War coming to end hastily, and Soviet troops nearing Korea and Japan, with US forces far away in the Pacific, the US came up with a unilateral and quickly-drawn proposal to divide Korea in half into two occupying zones (as Imperial Russia and Japan had proposed many years before when their ambitions on Korea clashed) so that the US would at least get a foothold in Korea even though it was not feasible to reach Korea in time to challenge the Soviet occupation of whole Korea. The US was surprised that the Soviets complied to this proposal and stopped at the 38th parallel. If a proposal for joint occupation of whole Korea was made, as in Austria, it would have expedited decolonialization of Korea and would have left Korea in one piece to chart its future. But that was not the case.

The US side maintains that the zonal occupation proposal was a temporary measure, a military one and not a political one, but history tells us that that fateful decision sealed a series of events that made the division of Korea permanent: different approaches to decolonialization and demilitarization of Japanese forces in Korea, the trusteeship confusion and debacle, deep polarization of political forces in respective zones, political assassinations and violent purges, uprisings and beginnings of civil war, border clashes that led to all-out war, foreign military interventions, precarious armistice with lack of peace treaty, security-first policies and political repression .......

One minor quibble: At Teheran, all parties agreed upon the principle of Korean independence. FDR at Yalta recommended dividing the Korean peninsula into trustee zones, administered by the US, USSR, and China, to prepare Korea for independence.
One major quibble: There were at least two Korean governments-in-exile, with many leaders self-exiled to other states. Inter-factional and personal squabbles between prominent Korean leaders, even those of the same hue, developed before the Japanese had even consolidated control of the peninsula. Also, both American and Soviet forces arrived on the peninsula after the formation of the Korean People's Republic on September 6, 1945, whose cabinet included both Communist and conservative leaders.

As Carter Eckert and Ki-baik Lee argue, «Koreans in 1945 were not merely pawns in a great power game: just as Koreans actions were affected by the presence of two foreign armies, so too were the Americans and Soviets influenced and constrained by the Korean milieu.» (p. 335) Generally, the Soviets allowed the KPR to do its work within its zone; Americans refused to recognize the KPR outright. Although both governments were committed to reconciliation of the trustee zones, local forces co-opting native, and antagonistic, political parties undermined the KPR and the zones devolved into states. Fratricidal enmity between politicians ensued, resulting in murder, exile, and marginalization. The enmity between Kim Il-sung and lee Syng-man predated the KPR and never abated.

Using the American and Soviet occupations as a justification for their own fratricidal enmity is a Korean specialty. The plain fact is, that Korean and foreigner contributed to the tragedy of division.

Yet, this continual revisionism only distracts from the present-day reality of a national holiday that oddly always uncovers the impotence of Korean nationalism, not its triumph. Worst of all, it's the time for presidential pardons, when eminent criminals and traffic violators get off easy. It's no surprise, that on July 17, Constitution Day, Seoul de-emphasized that national holiday by requiring South Koreans to work. Fratricidal enmity and government ineptitude are stronger than law in Korea still.