The Korean War: Prelude
The soldiers are Chinese, the sailors are Korean. And the ships too.
Korea's relationship with Japan has always been... complicated. We often recall the Imijin War and other samurai aggressions on the peninsula. But we somehow forget that fleet Kublai Khan, who twice attempted to conquer Japan, was Korean. Koreans are good sailors, some of the best in these parts. And compared to the Chinese, who never achieved anything special in naval matters, they're mere terminators!
General Yamagata Aritomo, the father of Japanese militarism
As is well known, back in the late 19th century, General Yamagata Aritomo called Korea a dagger pointed at the heart of Japan. This statement justified everything the Land of the Rising Sun would subsequently do to the peninsula, but in the grand scheme of things, the general wasn't entirely wrong: all the invasions that had occurred on the islands had originated from Korea. It was simply the shortest route. Therefore, immediately after the Meiji Restoration and the end of the Boshin Civil War, the Japanese began to resolve the Korean question.
Ganghwado Incident
On September 20, 1875, the Japanese gunboat Un'yo was fired upon by Korean batteries from Ganghwa Island (a port of entry to Seoul). The gunboat suppressed the battery, and a landing party was sent to the island, which burned a local village, killing 35 Koreans and capturing 16. It was a routine border incident, but its consequences were far more serious. The Japanese had learned the lesson well from Commodore Perry's American ships. And they treated the Koreans in exactly the same way: they imposed on Korea, whose army was a pale shadow of Japan's, an unequal treaty, similar to what the Americans had imposed on them. Mikado's subjects enjoyed extraterritoriality on the peninsula, Japanese goods were tax-exempt, and so on. In short, Mitsui and Mitsubishi had found a market for their products.
Queen Min is the only male member of the Korean royal family...
Not everyone in Korea liked this; reformers attempted to stage a coup d'état to remove conservatives—opponents of Japanese-style reforms—from power. The coup failed: Queen Min sent envoys to China, and Yuan Shikai's troops routed the rebels. The coup's leaders fled to Japan. Then, in 1894, the Tonghak Rebellion—hardcore Confucians and opponents of any reform—began. The rebellion became the pretext for the introduction of Chinese and Japanese troops into the country, leading to the Sino-Japanese War, which Japan won.
At the Shimonoseki negotiations, the samurai forced the Chinese to renounce their suzerainty over Korea. The only male member of the Korean royal family, the intelligent and active Queen Min, attempted to secede under Russian protection, but she was assassinated by the Japanese soldier Miura Goro, who organized a raid on the royal palace by local Japanese (one of the staff of the Kanjo Shinpo newspaper—there were combat journalists in Japan!). King Gojong decided that since he was now independent of China, he should become emperor himself. And he became emperor in 1897. Old Korea had thirteen years left to exist.
The situation in Korea at the beginning of the 20th century in the language of caricature - this is roughly how it was
Why didn't Japan annex Korea immediately after defeating China? There was still one other contender for the Land of the Morning Calm—Russia. The Japanese settled the issue with Russia during the Russo-Japanese War. Emperor Meiji concluded treaties with the United States and England pledging non-interference in Japan's Korean policy. The country was then declared a protectorate. The Imperial Army was reduced from 20,000 to 1,000 men, the judicial system became completely under Japanese control—all Korean judges were dismissed and replaced by Japanese. Emperor Kojong conducted all foreign policy exclusively through the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The Emperor of Korea, Gojong, tried to somehow struggle.
In 1907, a peace conference was held in The Hague, where Kojong sent secret envoys to draw the attention of the participating countries to Korea's problems, but they were not even allowed into the conference hall. To somehow attract attention to the delegation, one of the ambassadors, Yi Tjun, publicly committed suicide. This attracted attention. They ousted the overly independent Kojong and installed the heir to the throne and obvious puppet, Sunjong, in his place. The result was a rebellion by the "righteous army," joined by disbanded units of the Korean army. The rebellion was suppressed by one Japanese division. And on September 26, 1910, Japan annexed Korea.
"Emperor" Sunjeong - the form is beautiful, but he didn't even try to flutter...
What does this have to do with the Korean War? Directly! The fact is that, having secured their first colony, the samurai began to manage it rationally. The first step was to reform the educational system—the old Confucian one was completely destroyed, and a new one, based on the Japanese (that is, European) model, was created in its place. Why? Well, to exploit the colony, local personnel were needed... The new schools taught Japanese, one European language (English or French, optional), and even a little... Korean. Education reached 15 percent of the peninsula's population—almost the same number of Indians in British India (the Japanese clearly borrowed their colonial experience from their closest allies at the time). In 1924, Japan National University opened in Gyeongsong: it was attended mostly by local Japanese, but also by 25-30 percent Koreans. Furthermore, wealthy Koreans sent their offspring to study at Japanese universities. In general, the issue of educated personnel was resolved.
Japanese troops in Seoul
Then the Japanese took up the economic development of the peninsula. In fact, it was they who essentially divided Korea into North and South. The northern mountains are rich in mineral resources: coal, iron, and non-ferrous metals. It was more profitable to process all of these resources locally, to avoid the expense of logistics. Therefore, the Mikado's subjects began actively developing industry in the north of the peninsula: per capita investment amounted to $37, while the British in India had only $8.
Tarauchi Masatake, the first Japanese Governor-General of Korea
But that's the North, while the South has plenty of arable land and a milder climate, so the Japanese created an "agricultural cluster" there: they introduced the most advanced agricultural technologies of the time, resulting in a sharp increase in rice yields. Furthermore, land unsuitable for rice cultivation was used for potato farming, thus solving the famine in Korea (almost all the rice was exported to Japan, but potatoes were plentiful!). Fish catches also increased: the Japanese replaced the old sailing junks with new motorized seiners.
Korean staff at the "comfort station." Why do Koreans dislike the Japanese? This is one of the reasons...
Of course, every coin has its downside: the regime in the colony was sometimes extremely harsh (and sometimes quite liberal, depending entirely on the governor). A policy of Japanization was pursued—Koreans were forced to adopt Japanese names, forcibly introduced to Shinto rituals, and forced to join Japanese patriotic organizations. Not adopting Japanese names meant giving up on a career; accepting them meant serving in the Japanese Imperial Army. And then going off to war, somewhere in China or Manchuria.
The worst of it all began with Japan's entry into World War II: Korean women were sent to "comfort stations," as the samurai poetically called military brothels. Men who refused to adopt Japanese names were transported to the mother country as virtually free labor. In short, the Japanese, through their policies, created not only Korean industry and agriculture, the economic division of the peninsula into North and South, but also a harsh Korean nationalism. Moreover, nationalism became the unifying ideology of resistance to the Japanese for all of Korea, both South and North. All Korean political forces, including the communists, were nationalist to one degree or another.
The house in Mangyongdae where Kim Sung-ju was born
On April 15, 1912, in Mangyongdae, a small village near Pyongyang, a boy named Kim Song-ju was born. The boy's family was Christian and intellectual: his father, Kim Hyong-jik, had attended a missionary school and was very religious, working as an elementary school teacher, a minor clerk, and even as a herbalist. His mother, Kang Bang-seok, was the daughter of a Protestant pastor. The boy's parents were also staunch nationalists—they absolutely detested the Japanese! The family was poor and soon moved to Manchuria, where work was easier. There, Kim Song-ju attended a Chinese school; he would remain fluent in Chinese for the rest of his life and relax by reading classic Chinese novels.
Kim Sung-ju in 1927
In 1926, Kim Hyong-jik died at the age of 32, and the family, already poor, fell into extreme poverty. Here, in Japanese-occupied Jilin, Kim Song-ju joined a Marxist circle and, at 17, found himself imprisoned for the first time. After serving several months, the young Marxist was released, but instead of returning to school, he joined a guerrilla unit—a Chinese Communist guerrilla unit. In 1932, he joined the Chinese Communist Party and adopted the new name Kim Il-sung.
Kim Il Sung (back row, center) with his guerrillas
Judging by his meteoric rise, the young partisan fought well and with distinction! When the units were merged into the Second Separate Division of the Northeastern United Anti-Japanese Army, Kim Il Sung became political commissar of the 3rd Partisan Detachment, a position the partisans didn't offer just anyone. A couple of years later, he became commander of the 6th Partisan Division: all this at the age of 24—Gaidar would be envious! True, a partisan division only had a few hundred fighters, but nonetheless. Soon, the division (which was increasingly referred to as the "Kim Il Sung Division") began to make a name for itself: on July 4, 1937, it crossed the border between Manchuria and Korea and attacked a police post in Pochonbo. Japanese newspapers dubbed the young Kim "the most dangerous communist bandit" - it's cooler than getting to "Peacemaker" today!
Kim Il Sung (center) with the surviving soldiers of his unit in Khabarovsk
Fame has its downside: the Japanese began hunting down the "Kim Il Sung Division" in earnest. Soon, only Kim remained alive out of the entire 1st Partisan Army command; the division was visibly disappearing, the Japanese encirclement tightening around the partisans... The division commander made the decision to retreat to the USSR. In December, what remained of the division crossed the Amur River—13 men escaped encirclement with Kim Il Sung.
Red Army Captain Kim Il Sung (circled)
A large number of Manchurian partisans had accumulated in the USSR. They formed the 88th Brigade, which included a battalion of Koreans, commanded by Kim Il-sung, who had received the rank of captain in the Red Army. During the war, the brigade remained in the Far East: the Chinese and Koreans had plenty of work to do there—from time to time, warehouses exploded on the other side of the border, police stations burned, and local partisans were blamed for everything.
The Soviet command introduces the Koreans to their Great Leader
Then came 1945. Korea was being liberated by Soviet troops from the north, and by Americans from the south. The demarcation line was drawn in the middle, around the 38th parallel. In the north of the peninsula, the secular occupation administration encountered an unexpected problem: the troops lacked Korean interpreters—they were planning to fight the Japanese, so Japanese interpreters had been trained. This resulted in misunderstandings with the local population, and a group of Korean soldiers arrived on the steamship Yemelyan Pugachev to assist the Soviet commandants. The most senior among them was Captain Kim Il-sung. Clearly, when the question arose of who would lead North Korea, Comrade Kim Il-sung emerged as the most suitable candidate.
The Young Great Leader assesses the amount of work that remains to be done
True, this didn't become clear immediately. The fact is that both the USSR and the US understood that Korea was a single country, inhabited by a single people. Therefore, they attempted to negotiate the creation of a unified state, with Kim Il Sung to become Minister of Defense. However, they were unable to agree on a candidate for the head of a unified Korea: the Soviet comrades were unsatisfied with the American candidates, and the Americans were unsatisfied with the Soviet candidates. As a result, in 1948, the DPRK was proclaimed, and a former Red Army captain was appointed its leader.
Lee Seung Man, your grandfather is just bursting with energy!
And what about the South? In the south of the peninsula, the Americans were facing exactly the same problems! Their military administration was also completely ignorant of Korean affairs, and they needed someone who was both local and knowledgeable about English and American realities. And they found just the man! It was Syngman Rhee—the complete opposite of Kim Il Sung. Kim was young, Rhee was born in 1875. Kim was an experienced and talented commander, Rhee a civilian, a politician to the core. Kim had no desire to become head of state (his complaints to the Soviet ambassador after his appointment as leader of the DPRK have survived: “I want a regiment, I want a division, but why do I need all this?”), Lee was ready to go to power over heads (in 1919, in Shanghai, emigrants created the Provisional Government of Korea, which had no influence on anything, and Syngman Lee was elected president; in 1925, even in this shady office, he was impeached "for abuse of power").
The March 1st march of 1919, one of the first Korean nationalist protests, was massacred by Japanese troops. A month and a half later, the "March 1st Movement" would form a provisional government in Shanghai, with Syngman Rhee as president.
Syngman Rhee spent most of his life in exile in the United States. After participating in the 1899 uprising, he was sentenced to life imprisonment but released after the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War. He went to Hawaii and wisely stayed out of Korea until 1945. When General MacArthur needed someone knowledgeable about Korean affairs, the 70-year-old Syngman Rhee was flown to Tokyo, and after a private meeting, he was flown to Seoul on the American general's private jet. There, he launched a vigorous campaign to establish a puppet government and combat the communists. He considered all his enemies, regardless of party affiliation, to be communists, and he never hesitated to physically eliminate them. The regime of "this powerful old man, the father of Korean democracy" resembled a dictatorship far more closely than the initially vegetarian administration of Kim Il-sung.
However, there were similarities between the two Korean leaders. Both believed that Korea should be a unified state. However, the existence of an opponent within this unified state was not envisaged. Therefore, a clash was inevitable...
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