"The entire administrative power of the territory of Korea south of parallel 38 is under my jurisdiction. The population should unreservedly obey the orders issued over my signature. Those acting against the occupation or violating order and tranquillity will be mercilessly and severely punished. For the period of military occupation, English is introduced as the official language." - Gen. Douglas MacArthur, upon occupation of South Korea by U.S. forces on Sept. 8, 1945.
Fifty years ago the victors in World War II divided the Korean peninsula. From the beginning Korean workers and peasants fought against military occupation and for reunification. Washington sent thousands of troops, under the United Nations banner, to block reunification and protect imperialist interests. The Korean War claimed more than 3 million lives. July 27 marks the 42nd anniversary of the end of the brutal imperialist invasion. The article below is excerpted from "Civil War in Korea - New Stage in the Asian Revolution," which appeared in the September- October 1950 issue of Fourth International, a forerunner of today's New International magazine.
Even before the entry of American or Russian troops, however, local revolutionary committees divested the Japanese authorities of power throughout the country. The network of "people's committees" had been quickly consolidated into a "People's Republic" set up at Seoul, the capital, located in the South.
"The Japanese authorities," writes Professor McCune, the outstanding American authority on Korea, "fearful of the powder keg on which they were sitting, did not impede the formation of the Republic, but on the contrary granted its leaders special facilities in exchange for assistance in maintaining order." (Korea Today, by George M. McCune, Harvard University Press, 1950. Our presentation of Korean events leans heavily on this scholarly work for its factual material.)
In the North the Republic's activities were thereafter carried on "with the sanction of the Russian occupying forces" who promptly recognized the new "people's committees." When US troops arrived on September 8, 1945, the Republic offered its services to the American command, but "was given a cold shoulder." Instead, General Hodge, the commanding general, "announced that the existing Japanese administration would continue in office...."
Greatest of all was the land hunger that had grown to vast proportions under the Japanese and which here, as everywhere in Asia, was the paramount explosive force. The Soviet-backed North Korean authorities faced that problem at once and a central decree legalized all previous action taken spontaneously, with sweeping provisions "bestowing the right to exploit the land to those who cultivate it." All Japanese and collaborator-owned lands were confiscated and distributed in their entirety to the peasants free of charge....
In the South, on the other hand, all revolutionary overturns in property were ruthlessly suppressed. No land reform at all was instituted until 1949. Under the land bill finally passed by the American-sponsored National Assembly, peasants were required to pay for land grants, parceled out from estates formerly owned by the Japanese, with 20% of their crop for 15 years (to compensate former landlords).
Compounded with all these sources of resentment was that of the division of the country itself, felt equally strongly by the mass of the people in the South as well as in the North....
Like the Chinese civil war which finally overthrew Chiang Kai-shek, the Korean war is anchored in a revolution which, challenging foreign imperialism, tends to overturn all of society in the process. The events in China proved that the revolutionary ferment produced by World War II had risen to such proportions that the ruling class, no matter how superior its material resources and how great the aid obtained from abroad, could not withstand the assault of the dispossessed....
In Korea, as in China, the war proceeds with a constant division of the landed estates. The army recruits as it marches forward, the peasants are only too anxious to defend their newly acquired land, the population its newly acquired rights. That's what makes for the undiminishing mass of soldiers and their "fanaticism." What makes the "people's war" so superior tactically, as Jack Belden has pointed out in China Shakes the World, is that its soldiers know exactly what they are fighting for, they have it tangibly before their eyes. On the other hand, the soldiers opposing them have only the vaguest notions as to the whys and wherefores of the struggle. At best, as one of them explained to a front reporter in Korea, "I am fighting to remain alive."
The example of China, and now of Korea, cannot help but have its effect on the rest of Asia. "The promptness with which the North Koreans instituted drastic land reforms in the conquered areas of South Korea is an impressive fact for many Asians," writes Harold R. Isaacs in The Nation. And this, the writer explains, undermines the ability of politicians like [Pandit] Nehru [in India], much as they desire, to carry their countries into an alliance with the US.