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Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnon. And me, William Durrumpal. And I'm very excited today because we're going to be dealing with a major and very important Cold War landmark that is in many ways forgotten. I don't know whether you agree with me, but I think there's such a spectacularly big presence of Vietnam in cinema, whether it's, you know, Apocalypse Now or Full Metal Jacket. But the Korean War is ongoing.
I don't know whether you agree with me, but it's in a way a sort of forgotten war. You're right. I mean, it's almost forgotten. I mean, the only reason I know a little bit from TV is MASH. And that's because I was in love with Hawkeye. I mean, that's pretty much I can't tell you much beyond Hawkeye and Hot Lips. But, you know, you're right. Absolutely right. What we know of Korea today is K-pop. And that is in my house and in my life because of my nine-year-old kid who likes BTS.
Samsung. I use a Samsung. I'm a Samsung boy. Yeah. Korea also in cinema. I love all those Korean movies. Did you ever watch my favorite? Actually, we should mention this. The Kingdom, which was my lockdown favorite TV series, which was a medieval zombie series set in Korea with fantastic hats.
has the best hats in all TV. No, you know, weirdly, I didn't see that. You do bang on about it. I feel like I ought to as a public service, if nothing else. I strongly recommend Kingdom on Netflix. It was actually not just me, but the entire family. We watched it twice over. We were so excited about it. Yeah.
Yeah. But we have two very different notions of Korea. I mean, we have sort of South Korea, Samsung Korea, or as one Australian commentator put it in the 2012 Olympics, you know, they had the medals table up and I think they might even have labeled it naughty Korea and nice Korea for North and South Korea to explain, you know, how the medals were going. And by the way, that was a diplomatic incident. And
And then you've got North Korea, Kim Jong-il, Kim Jong-un, all of the pronouncements of Trump about who he respects as a strong leader. That conjures up a very different image. But other than that, the history of how we got here, how we got to having a major flashpoint for a potential international war, a world war, Korea. Yeah.
the line that was drawn, and we'll find out how that was drawn in a little while, that divided a country that was once one. We should perhaps say, before we do anything else, a little about the geography. Korea is, as we know, a peninsula, and it is the peninsula which divides China from Japan.
And civilizationally, in the period that I've been writing about in my new book, Korea is a major center of Buddhism, and it transmits the Buddhism that arrives from China to Japan. Then a little bit later in history, it becomes what's known as the Hermit Kingdom. It doesn't allow any Western colonization. There are no Brits going to Korea. There are no Portuguese, no Dutch settlements like you get almost everywhere else in Asia.
And the first form of colonialism it suffers is from the Japanese who move in and begin to crush any idea of Korean nationalism. Even Korean language and Korean names end up being banned or repressed. Yeah, I mean, you have to have a Japanese name at this time. You're absolutely right. It's also, you know, they may be sending envoys packing. Would you like to trade with us? No. No.
bugger off. But that does not mean it's off the radar of other countries. China wants to protect its borders, so it's interested in what happens with Korea. Japan, as you've said, has an interest and then a domination of the country. Very repressive. We should say it's one of the very, very repressive regimes. Very repressive, but...
bloody and awful. Following the Russo-Japanese War 1895, which we dealt with with Pankaj. Remember the wonderful Pankaj? Pankaj Mishra. Absolutely right. But also Russia has it on its radar. Absolutely.
as well, because Russia's always, when we talked about this during the Russia series, has a desire for an ice-free, warm water port. And this would be an ideal candidate. So, you know, the geography of the place is very, very important. And so the foreign interests in what happens to this place, although you'll be shocked at
at how little it figures after World War II for a while. You know, it's there. There are deep roots to this. But shall we introduce our special guest today? We should because he's a remarkable man and his book is...
book The Cold War's Killing Fields, Rethinking the Long Peace is a book I learned a great deal from because as we said this is a period that we really don't focus on in the way we focus on Vietnam. So do you want to introduce our wonderful guest Anita? I would be delighted. Welcome to Empire, Paul Thomas Chamberlain, Associate Professor of History at Columbia University and author as William says of The Cold War's Killing Fields, Rethinking the Long Peace. Thank you so much for being with us. First of all the
the Korean Peninsula? I mean, just tell us why it's important for everybody. So I think that Korea is an important place because it represents a sort of crossroads, a crossroads between the Pacific region and an entry point into mainland East Asia. This is
In some ways, an ancient imperial frontier that leads us from the Japanese archipelago into northeast China, which at the time we're talking about it, at least to a lot of Westerners, is known as Manchuria. And Manchuria itself is also this sort of imperial crossroads.
So for a lot of different groups that are interested in projecting power and influence into Asia, Korea is how you're going to get there. So, I mean, this strategic importance leads to China, Japan, Russia, all sort of clambering over each other for influence over Korea. And I think it's fair to say by the late 1800s, Korea sort of finds itself at a fork in the road, right?
It can follow China. It can reject foreign intervention. It could follow Japan. It could welcome Western trade and Western intervention. And it's 1895 that China formally recognizes Korea as an independent state. And then two years later, Korea changes its name. And I didn't know this before. From Joseon, I hope I'm pronouncing that right, to the Korean Empire. So you see a world in the late 1800s, early 1900s,
where Japan's influence starts increasing. You know, there are modernizing policies that you start seeing enforcing Koreans to cut off, you know,
you know, the traditional top knot hairstyles, the hats that William is so enamored of, you know, Western clothes, all of that kind of thing. It's a bad time for hats. It's a bad time for hats. Yeah, I think it's fair. And then you have, you know, we talked about this with Pankaj Mishra, the Russo-Japanese War of 1904 to 1905. Which is this crucial moment which we so often forget when you see
the rise of Japan as a complete bolt from the blue, as far as most Westerners are concerned. They are not used to seeing Asian powers defeating European powers. And this extraordinary sinking of the Russian fleet is an earthquake that has tremors in India. Everyone's watching. In the Ottoman world, everyone's watching. It's a major event, not just in the Pacific.
but across the entire colonized world. And a harbinger of things to come. Indeed. And also, this is sort of early. I mean, I know your very specialist area is 1945 and we're coming to that. But I think sort of a bit of background of just how deep the roots of U.S.
intervention in this area are interesting because we've talked a lot about Teddy Roosevelt in previous episodes. The Rough Riders. The Rough Rider of Teddy Roosevelt who, you know, sort of launches an invasion when his boss is at the osteopath and things like that. People loved that story. 1905, the Treaty of Portsmouth ends this Russo-Japanese War and Teddy Roosevelt, who heads the treaty, wins a Nobel Prize for it. So, you know, the Rough Rider is recognised as peacemaker under
all the while still having this eye on US markets
involvement or should we say preferment in territories outside the United States? And this is the backdrop where the US concedes any interest in this treaty in Korea, but there's a caveat. Japan has to recognize US influence in the Philippines. So, you know, go back to our Philippines episode and you'll see this quid pro quo, which is, you know, on a treaty, on a piece of paper, it's just some words, but it actually involves nation states, which, you know,
presumably have ideas of their own, but it's a game of chess where the pieces are being moved by America, among us, the United States, and Japan in this instance. And it's sort of 1910 when Korea finds itself formally annexed as a colony under the guise of civilizing Korea. And
And that is a narrative that we're going to hear time and again in this podcast. Let's, though, get to the period at the end of World War II. Would it be true to say, Paul, that Japanese occupation ends at the point that the bomb is dropped on Hiroshima in 1945? Is that the fate of the war?
changing moment for Korea? Yes, yes, it is. And I think this is something that is often forgotten in the West, that the end of the Second World War in East Asia takes place at the same time that the Japanese empire is just completely destroyed.
Right. And this is an incredibly dramatic moment in world history. The destruction of the Japanese empire is the result, on the one hand, of the atomic attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Right. The only instances of
the use of atomic weapons in warfare. It's a result of the creation of this massive new Navy that the United States builds up during the Second World War that at least in the Pacific is kind of anchored by these carrier task forces. These aircraft carriers are really a transformative
weapon in the Second World War, and they're going to establish US naval supremacy over the world ocean for the rest of the 20th century and arguably into the 21st century. It's also the result of the American ability to launch just a staggering array of amphibious invasions, which have their roots in colonial history, but
The Second World War is very much a story about the United States figuring out how to launch not just the D-Day invasion of Normandy, but just dozens of amphibious operations, particularly around the Pacific. And it's the success of these that puts the United States in a position to launch the atomic attacks on Japan and to burn Japan's cities to the ground with napalm.
But it also represents a threat of land invasion by U.S. forces. The other big factor that is often forgotten in the West is that the end of the Second World War in East Asia also witnesses a massive Soviet invasion of Northeast China. And the fact that the Soviets are moving their forces into Northeast China and into the area around Korea is going to play a major role in shaping the post-war politics of the region.
Paul, before we go into the post-war era, just give us a brief snapshot of what's been going on within Korea during the Second World War, during the period of Japanese occupation. Right. So Korea is occupied by the Japanese. Japan is trying to build up the greater East Asia co-prosperity sphere.
And as it does so, in some ways, Korea is the first building block of this, going back to 1910 before the larger vision is really assembled. But by the time you get to the 1930s, Japan has moved into Manchuria or Northeast China, which Japanese leaders see as their sort of industrial frontier. This is an area where they're going to be able to secure the industrial materials.
that the nation needs to sustain its quest for great power status. It's an area where they're going to be conducting colonization. There's this widespread sense in Japan through the 1930s and into the 1940s that they don't have enough land, and that land is going to be key to transforming Japan into a great power.
Are they using the same sort of language that the Germans are using in Europe, Lebensraum and this sort of thing? Yeah, it's very much blood and soil, but they're also combining it with an anti-colonial message.
So there's this notion that what Japan is doing, and it's not entirely false, but what Japan is doing is driving the Western empires out of East Asia. But how does it look like from the Korean point of view? Do you feel you're in a, what was the phrase you used, a co-prosperity sphere? Or are they feeling they're specifically being crushed, colonized there?
raw materials are being taken from them. But also their culture, their identity. I mean, are they treated like second class citizens by the Japanese? Yes, they are treated like second class citizens. But Japan is also delivering on some of its promises of modernization. They are building up these areas, particularly in northeast China. By the time that the Japanese are done, Manchuria or northeast China is the most heavily industrialized, well-developed section of China in many respects.
But as they're doing this, they're trampling on what trappings of sovereignty exist in these places. They are oftentimes stamping out many of the local cultures that they're encountering. And they've embraced this very clear hierarchy of various Asian peoples where the Japanese are going to sit at the top. So it is both an eradication of Western colonialism, but the imposition of a new Japanese-led culture.
And one that very much reflects the hierarchies and the racism of Western colonization. Yes. In some sense, they embrace it and they repurpose it for their own ends. So that's what they're doing. The Korean people during this time, are they chafing? Are they rebelling? Are they so completely crushed that they can do nothing? What is their situation?
So it's all of those things. The Koreans are not a monolithic group. Some of them are collaborating or, you know, a large number of them are collaborating with the Japanese. A large number of them are trying to fan the flames of Korean nationalism. They're traveling around the world trying to build support among foreign nations like the United States for an independent Korea.
But within Korea, there's no hope of resistance or even any sort of expressions of nationalism. There are expressions of nationalism and there are resistance efforts. A small number of Koreans also go into China and begin fighting with Chinese forces.
that are resisting the Japanese. And some of the key figures in the Korean War are actually going to be veterans of what will be the Chinese Civil War. And before that is the resistance against the Japanese. So you have that sort of epoch change.
changing detonation over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan then leaves the field, if you like, which leaves a vacuum. Now, you've already got the Soviets who've taken over Pyongyang and they have a historic interest. I mentioned they always had an eye on a warm water port.
you've got the United States coming in. What happens to Korea? Do they anticipate that they are now going to be independent now that Japan has been vanquished, or do they know something else is coming? So I think there is a general sense that independence and sovereignty will follow. But this is a tremendously uncertain moment in world history, right? 1945 is, I think, justifiably recognized as a turning point.
And it's not clear exactly what is going to follow anywhere around the world in any of these territories that have been conquered and occupied. And have you got nationalist figures returning from exile hoping to set up independent movements? Yes, they're returning from exile. And oftentimes they're doing so with the active support of World War II has created as a superpower system.
So the Americans are bringing Korean leaders back that are sympathetic to American interests. The Soviets and the Chinese are going to be bringing in Korean leaders that are going to be sympathetic to their interests. And how quickly do you see the geography assuming the form of?
that it has now with the peninsula being split on the 38th parallel. How quickly is that taking form? Almost immediately. It's actually one of my favorite stories to tell students in my classes. It's essentially mid-August 1945, right? Japan has just surrendered. It's really a matter of days after Japan's surrender. And you have U.S. officials meeting with Soviet officials to try to figure out what's going to happen to Korea.
And this is a key point here. They're not particularly interested in Korea at this point. The focus is largely on Japan in East Asia and the fate of Central Europe, right? The division of Germany. At this point in the history of what will become the Cold War, Korea is kind of a strategic backwater.
And so you don't have high level officials figuring this out. But it's late in the evening. There are two U.S. officials. One is Dean Rusk, who will go on to become secretary of state in the 1960s, and a man named Colonel Charles Bonesteel. And they're meeting with their Soviet counterparts. And as I said, it's getting late. They have to figure out what they're going to do with Korea. No one really knows very much about Korea.
How interesting. It's like an afterthought in the whole... Absolutely. And the Koreans are not there. Well, the Koreans are there, but they're not at the table, you're saying? Yeah, they're not at the table. And so Rusk and Bonesteel step out of the room and they pull out a map from National Geographic magazine. This is a map of Korea. They look at the map and one of them says, you know, gosh, the 38th parallel seems to cut the peninsula roughly in half. And
Let's just separate it. Let's draw up the occupation zones. And the 38th parallel is just a demarcation on a map to show distance. That's what it is. It's just how maps are presented, isn't it? Yeah, it does not have historical importance for Korean history or Korean culture. No. There's no ethnic divisions. There's no tribal divisions. Yeah, those will grow up. But yeah, it's literally a line on a map.
And so they go back in, they present it to their Soviet counterparts. Everyone agrees, you know, problem solved. We've figured everything out. What could go wrong? Oh, my God. So, I mean, literally, we've done this before with Lion in the Sand. It's people with a crayon and a napkin just saying, well, I mean, look, you know, we're a bit knackered now. This will do. And that's it. You know, the die is set. Right. And, you know, what a deeply ironic way for, you know, what is probably the most
enduring military frontier of the Cold War era to be established. Literally with a National Geographic map cut out of the magazine. And thereby creating a nuclear flashpoint that we're all sort of, you know, sort of looking over our shoulder at and
Right now, can I also just pause for a moment because I don't think we've done enough justice to Colonel Bonesteel's name. I mean, just for one moment, his name was Bonesteel. Yeah, I mean, a fictional character, if you came up with that, the editor will say,
Go and do something more believable. That is ridiculous. This is not a TV series on Netflix. Okay. So when does news sort of filter down to the people of Korea? But, you know, there is this 38th parallel that is now a land border. I mean, what happens and how does that filter down and show itself to them?
Well, the idea is that it's not supposed to be a border. It's just supposed to be a separation of the zone that the Soviets will occupy and the zone that the Americans will occupy in preparation for what will eventually be a unified Korea. Once the occupation is finished, once you finish clearing out
all of the Japanese imperial forces and set everything up so that the Koreans can run their own affairs. Like Berlin. Exactly. Yeah. So a checkpoint Charlie or whatever the equivalent is will be the meeting point and both spheres will keep themselves to themselves in the meantime. Right. And it ought to work this way because, of course, the Americans and the Soviets are allies, right? They're victorious allies. They've won the greatest, deadliest war in human history. And why shouldn't they be able to cooperate? Sure. I mean, it makes perfect sense. It's easy.
But already in Berlin, tension is growing. Since June, there have been increasing standoff at the Berlin frontiers. The Berlin airlift is what, around this time, isn't it? It's going to be in 48. 48. But it's sort of leading up in that direction. Yeah. And actually, Winston Churchill is having his strategic planners draw up a potential plan to launch World War III against the Soviet Union in order to liberate Eastern Europe.
This is a moment of tremendous uncertainty in international affairs. And it's a moment when all eyes are fixed on Berlin or Tokyo. They're not looking at Korea. So how quickly do tensions ratchet up in Korea? It's not an immediate thing. It's not like Berlin. It's not an immediate thing like Berlin, as far as Moscow and Washington are concerned.
But of course, tensions are running high inside Korea, right? Because while Korean affairs might not be a priority for the Americans or the Soviets, they are a priority for Koreans, both on the peninsula and also those leaders that are returning in the wake of the destruction of the Japanese Empire, right? So what you see after 1945 is simmering violence, right?
on the peninsula. But it's violence that is very much driven by Koreans themselves. Directed at both the Americans and the Soviets? Directed at Koreans, right? Because the Koreans are trying to figure out who is going to control an independent Korea.
Okay, so factions that have come back with different belief systems, wherever they fled in the world, whoever's been looking after them are coming back. They've come back or they've always been there. You know, these are some of the same forces that had resisted the Japanese. And they're still there. The Japanese are gone. But the enemy is no longer these foreign occupiers. The enemy is rival groups in Korea itself.
Paul, in Europe at the same time, it's a period of terrific hunger, hardship. There are very few food supplies. There are hundreds of thousands of refugees wandering around trying to find their way back to where they were before the Second World War or where they can find shelter and relief. Is that also happening on the Korean Peninsula? I don't think it's happening on the same level.
because there's not a great deal of fighting that has been taking place inside Korea during the Second World War. There's not a devastated landscape like Europe. Like Europe or like large parts of coastal China, like large parts of the Philippines, large parts of Japan. These are the areas where a lot of the combat and bombing and devastation took place during the war.
war, not so much Korea. Okay, the scene is now set. So you have Korea and you have a map from National Geographic with a line arbitrarily drawn through it. It sets itself up for two uncomfortable spheres of control. Join us after the break where we talk about how that plays out.
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Welcome back. So just before the break, we had the division of a nation, thanks to a US publication, excellent way of doing diplomacy. And now you've got sort of two separate, and would you call them occupied zones? I mean, how many people are sent from both the Soviet side and the US?
and the American side to police their spheres of influence? So, I mean, I don't know if I'd call it spheres of influence. It's really a post-war measure designed to create a measure of security after the end of the war and a measure of stability after the complete collapse and dismantling of the Japanese empire. So I think there's very little intention on the part of the Soviets or the Americans
to stay there long term. God, they really don't care about it. You've said it before, but it didn't quite, because it's such a big thing in the imagination now, North and South Korea, but they just, it was just an afterthought for them. I mean, I know you've said it before, but it's taking a while to sink in. The great irony is that this is going to become the pivotal theater of the Cold War, circa 1950. And it's just, it's five years later.
But in that time span of five years, Korea is something that virtually no one in the upper echelons of the US or Soviet government is worried about. This is a place where they're pondering deploying 30 to 50 atomic weapons. I will take my sphere of influence off the table and crush it under my heel. But let's talk about North and South Korea then. Are the Soviets well equipped to administer, if you want to use that word instead, North Korea? And are the Americans well equipped?
poised to put enough manpower to manage their South Korean bit? I think they are, and both sides are looking to the Koreans to do this for themselves. But they're looking to different groups of Koreans. And this is a pattern that we see going back...
to the Second World War, right? We see this with Poland, where the Soviets have their Polish government in exile that they're working with. The Americans and the British have their Polish government in exile that they're working with. The same thing is happening in Korea, right? The Americans have figures that are sympathetic to the United States. They're sympathetic to Western interests. And those are the people that they want to set up in power to run post-war Korea. Soviets are doing the exact same thing.
Tell me about some of the major players. Who do the Americans fancy then? So the major player that the Americans are working with is a man named Syngman Rhee. And Rhee is really going to be kind of the father of South Korean nationalism post-1945. He's an old man. He's in his 70s by the time that we get to the post-war period or the post-World War II period. And he'd been advocating for Korean independence since the 1890s.
So he's been doing this for a long time. And I think he sort of also claims some royal lineage as well. He sort of claims to be part of the heritage of the early Korean royal family. He's part of the elite. So, you know, the time when William is so fond of, you know, with the hats. He's definitely from the hat wearing classes. He's a conservative old guy from the elite. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Is he vivacious? Is he a good leader of men or is he more bureaucrat at heart? What kind of person is he?
I think he's more of a bureaucrat. He's more of a government official. He's spent a great deal of time in the United States, which is one of the reasons why U.S. leaders know him. He's educated at George Washington University. He attends Harvard. He attends Princeton.
So at these places, he's going to be associating with powerful American leaders. And so he's a known quantity for the Americans. Back in Korea, he has ties to the business community. He has ties to conservative landholders.
And so he's precisely the sort of person that the Americans are going to be looking at as a steward of post-war Korean nationalism. And specifically, given what's now going on in Europe, he's not a communist. He doesn't like communists. He doesn't talk Marxist rhetoric. He's not friends with the Russians, all that whole package of things. Exactly. He's someone that the United States can work with.
Let's talk about the man they absolutely cannot work with. And yeah, a name that is going to be very, very important.
for North Korea? Who did the Soviets draft as their pick? You see, I'm using Americanisms now. Are you impressed? Because I don't know what I'm saying, but I know it's in the right ballpark. Who do they pick as their man? So the North Korean counterpart to Syngman Rhee is going to be a man named Kim Il-sung. And the exact details of his early life are somewhat unclear. There's a great deal of propaganda on both sides, right? The anti-communists are going to be
maligning him. On what basis? What do they say? What's the black rumors that they're putting out? You name it. I mean, anything and everything that you can think of. But what we do have a pretty clear idea about him is that he is born in a village outside Pyongyang.
circa 1912. And in 1920, he moves into Northeast China. So he's a much younger man than Syngman Rhee. He's much younger, and he is a military leader. He is one of these figures that goes into China in the, or well, he's in China at this point in the 1930s, and he joins guerrilla forces that are fighting against the Japanese occupation.
And it's there that he's going to be coming into contact with Mao Zedong's Chinese Communist Party. By 1937, he's become a communist commander. He wins some battles. Indeed, the Japanese at one point actually put a bounty on his head, didn't they? Because he was such a successful... That's not propaganda. That is a fact. Yes. And this just tells you, you know, the place of a lot of these Korean communist fighters
in China and the influence that they're going to bring from China back into Korea after 1945. May I make a sidebar observation? I mean, North Korean leaders have a thing with hairstyles. I'm just going to comment on this. He's a 33-year-old man. I've seen some of the heroic portraiture of the time. He's got this rather pepe-lip
pure quiff going on. I mean, it is literally half a head of black hair, half a head of white hair, a shock of white hair, one may say. I thought that was the Deeragandy invention, but this precedes it. No, Kim Il-sung has cornered the market on Pepe Le Pew diplomacy. Is he more charismatic than his sort of bureaucrat rival across the 38th line? I'm not sure if...
You could say that he's more or less charismatic, but he definitely is. He has military laurels. He is a veteran. He has fought. He has resisted the Japanese occupiers. There's no taint of collaboration with the Japanese when you're talking about Kim. And in the 1940s, he's brought into the Soviet Union and he receives a political education from the Red Army, the Soviet Army. Already a specifically Maoist background.
education he's had. He's the first generation to grow up with that sort of education. Well, I mean, he would have been influenced by Mao, but also by Soviet leaders and Stalin. But it's the Soviets. Yeah. So, I mean, that's really interesting. During the 1920s, the time when he is being educated in the Soviet Union, this is a period of time I'm
vis-a-vis India, where they are very, very keen in the Soviet Union to wind up toy soldiers and send them on their way around the world. I mean, they're taking all those disgruntled Indian radicals who want to overthrow the British, they're training them, they're giving them sort of political instruction as well, and then sending them back.
The Guthar movement, a lot of them in India were similarly educated in this way. There's a hot route through Riga to Moscow where these people sort of go, they learn, and then they're released back into the wild. So, I mean, it is a thing that is happening. So you've got these two preferred candidates, North and South.
It doesn't feel comfortable. When does it become downright dangerous? So that's one of the dynamics that we don't really talk about as much in the West. There is what I think we should think of it about as an outright civil war taking place in Korea before 1950, really. So between 1945 and 1950, there are estimates that somewhere around 100,000 people are killed out
As part of this war, Korean fighting Korean rather than Korean fighting occupier. Exactly. Yeah. And this is this is a struggle to determine the shape of post-war Korea and to determine who's going to be in control.
And so the Western narratives that place the start of the Korean War in the summer of 1950 completely miss these violent dynamics taking place. So in December 1945 at the Moscow conference, the U.S. and the USSR agreed to prepare for a united provisional government in five years' time. But given what's going on in Berlin, given all the increasing tension now between the West and Russia,
the USSR, already you can see this thing polarizing in Korea into another version of the Cold War. Give us the stages by which the Cold War begins to freeze over, if you like, in the Korean Peninsula. Right. Or heat up, depending on how you want to think about it.
And I would just say on that last point, it's not simply a matter of the Americans and the Soviets deciding to transform Korea into a battleground in what will become the Cold War. A lot of this is being driven by Koreans themselves. It's being driven by figures like Kim and figures like Syngman Rhee. And here, I think it's important to go back
to this very arbitrary division of North and South Korea, because neither regime in Pyongyang or Seoul believes that there is any justifiable reason to cut the nation in two. But the United Nations has other ideas as well. So the United Nations passes a resolution, you know, sort of almost...
deaf and blind to what's going on on the ground and the kind of struggles that are happening. And they pass a resolution on the 15th of August, 1948. And they say, Rhee is going to be the first president of
of a republic of Korea. Now, when they pass that, do they mean all of Korea? Do they mean that it's going to be one true nation under their man? Or are they accepting that actually, you know what, these two sides are now completely divided? So the intention is to reunite North and South Korea. But again, it's a question of who is actually going to be in charge. And neither Kim nor Ri are content with the separation of their nation. And neither one is willing to agree
essentially step aside and say that the other can take power and neither one is willing to work as part of this sort of coalition government. And by the time that we get to 1948, the Cold War has taken shape and the superpowers are no longer in the situation where they believe that they're going to be working closely together.
They recognize that their interests have diverged and places like Korea might start to become important in the post-war struggle for influence around the world.
So, I mean, after 48, it's President Truman who's running the United States at this time. Does he think, okay, I'm going to prepare for this turbulent future I see on the horizon? Does he leave machinery, weapons, men on the ground? Or does he, you know, because everybody is really prepared.
depleted after World War II. This is actually, we just need to bring boys home now. That's certainly what's going on in India, isn't it? There's this sense that everyone who's there, all the British occupation forces are just longing to get back to Dover and get out of the war zone.
There aren't a large number of American troops in South Korea at this point in time. The largest military contingents are in Japan. That's where there is a larger post-war occupation, but these aren't really combat forces in Japan. Rather, the focus is really on building up these local South Korean military forces.
And these South Korean forces are active under the Seoul regime. A couple really important events that take place in 1948. In April, there is an uprising led by people's committees, which are kind of left-wing, right-wing
communist, sympathetic to the communists, kind of local political organizations. They rise up against the Seoul regime's influence on this island called Jeju, which is a large island off the southern coast of South Korea. And this initiates a brutal crackdown on the part of Ri's regime. South Korean forces move in, they burn something like 70% of the villages
on the island. A third of the population is relocated to government-controlled settlements. And some estimates are that 20% of the population is actually killed in the course of this brutal crackdown. I've never even heard of this. This is extraordinary. This is in April 1948. This is the Korean Civil War that is raging.
And it's more than two years before the date that we in the United States placed the start of the Korean War. And how much is these uprisings the initiative of Kim Il-sung? Because Khrushchev later says that the war wasn't pushed by the Soviet Union. It was very much Kim Il-sung himself on the ground pushing this and trying to encourage uprisings of people's committees and so on. So I think that is absolutely true. I don't think Stalin is driving this. I don't think Mao is driving this.
I'm actually somewhat skeptical that this is completely being driven by Pyongyang. A lot of this is local groups. And once again, we go back to this arbitrary division of North and South Korea. There are plenty of left-wing forces in South Korea. There are plenty of communists in South Korea. And these are groups that had organized as part of resistance to the Japanese and
They remain organized after 1945, and they are not willing to just sit back and allow Rhee's regime in Seoul to extend complete influence at the local level. There's a wonderful quote from Nikita Khrushchev, who is a Soviet leader who writes about this later on and says the war wasn't Stalin's idea.
It was Kim Il-sung's idea. Kim was the initiator. And apparently, according to Khrushchev, Stalin told Kim, if you should get kicked in the teeth, I shall not lift a finger. You're going to have to ask Mao for help. So there's such as the lack of desire to get pulled into what could be sort of World War III. They've just got over World War II. They really don't want to start something else up.
Absolutely. They don't want to start something else up. And if something does start up, they don't want it to be in South Korea. But the next movement is coming from China, isn't it? Because in October 1949, Mao unexpectedly succeeds with his revolution in China. And this frees up the many Korean people.
soldiers who are fighting in his forces. They are now free to go back home. Yes, this is an absolutely critical period. The late summer and autumn of 1949 are critical for the larger Cold War and for events in Korea. Two things happen, actually, and I'll start before the victory of the communists in China. In August of 1949, the Soviet Union detonates its first atomic weapon,
And it does so years ahead of the schedule that the Americans think the Soviets are on. This is a huge shock for the Americans. It's a huge shock. The Americans think this is going to come later into the 1950s. It happens in August of 1949. A few months later, in October of 1949...
Mao and the Communist Party in China win the Chinese Civil War. They declare victory. Also, a bit of a shock. A bit of a shock, not to Americans that were paying attention to what was happening in China.
The American diplomats and military observers that were in China have been warning about this for years at this point. But to the general American public, to a lot of people in Congress and the U.S. government, this is a shock. And it's a shock that means that the most populous nation on earth is suddenly controlled by the communists. These two events in August and October of 1949 completely transformed the dynamics of the Cold War.
And just again, to remind people what's happening in Europe on the 12th of May 1949, that's the end of the Berlin airlift. So now we have that familiar Cold War landscape, Checkpoint Charlie, all those black and white spy movies, Le Carre stuff is now up there in Berlin. So this whole new reality of a new hostility, a new division in the world is absolutely in everyone's mind by 1949. Right. By the end of 1949. Right.
This is happening. And this leads us into in the spring of 1950, there is a new document that is put together by the National Security Council. It's going to be one of the most important documents of the Cold War in the United States. It's called NSC 68. It is delivered to the White House in April of 1950.
And it is a, in no small part, is a reaction to the shocks of the Chinese revolution and the Soviet acquisition of an atomic bomb. And what NSC 68 says is that American leaders must understand the Cold War as not being simply a diplomatic rivalry or an economic rivalry between Washington and the United States, or rather being Washington and Moscow.
But rather, the Cold War is going to be a military struggle, right? And it demands a massive military buildup, right? The U.S. military must rearm after the demobilizations that have taken place post-1945, and it must prepare to confront Soviet and communist forces around the world. And one of the key lines in SC-68 is, and I'll quote it here, the assault on free institutions is worldwide now.
And in the context of the present polarization of power, a defeat of free institutions anywhere is a defeat everywhere. And just to repeat that, that last part, a defeat of free institutions anywhere is a defeat everywhere. Now, take that calculation and put it on Korea. This strategic backwater circa 1945, this afterthought that we need a map from National Geographic to figure out what the geography looks like.
Suddenly, under the logic of NSC-68, Korea emerges as potentially the pivotal theater of the Cold War. And also, on the other side, that's the US thinking, on the other side, you've got Stalin telling Mao, you know what?
Forget about all of the things that I said during wartime. In fact, I think the quote is to hell with Yalta. It's a brilliant quote. To hell with Yalta. I tell you something else that's happening at the same time. This is the month that All Will publishes 1984.
That whole idea that this is a period of endless war of secret police, that whole reality is dawning on people exactly this year. This is when that idea is forming. Right. Well, so NSC 68 hits his desk. President Harry Truman reads it.
And he's not sold. He's not convinced. This is the spring of 1950. He's worried about the loss of the American atomic monopoly. He's worried about the Soviet acquisition of the bomb. He's worried about what's happening in China. But he's not convinced that the U.S. military budget should be expanded. He's worried about hawks in the United States driving this. So he's going to need another event to convince him of the wisdom of operationalizing NSC-68.
And that event is just around the corner in June of 1950. That, my friend, is a point where I go, dun, dun, dun. So join us next time for the reason that pushes Harry S. Truman all the way.
all in. If you want to hear that next episode right now and you're a member of the club, you can get it right now wherever you listen to your podcasts. But for the rest of you, wait until the next installment of Empire with our special guest, Paul, who's going to be with us again. Until then, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnon. And goodbye from me, William Durham-Poole.