Korean War After World War

Korean War

After World War II, international relations were complex and in flux. The fascist powers had been defeated, Europe was in shambles, and Joseph Stalin's combination of paranoia and greed soon caused a rift between the U.S.S.R. And the West, now commonly known as the Cold War. Because of the Soviet desire to spread international communism, and the fears from the West about nuclear proliferation, intelligence agencies played a seminal role in the culture of the era. However, it wasn't simply the Soviets that worried the West, for by the end of the decade China, too, had become communist.

The paranoia was not all fantasy. The FBI, for instance, worked with the British to break a Soviet Code in Project Verona. This effort confirmed the existence of Americans working in the United States for Soviet Intelligence, later to be a basis for the paranoia of the McCarthy Era. (Romerstein, 2001). During the late 1940s and early 1950s, America feared a nuclear attack from the Soviet Union. Many middle class Americans built bomb shelters, students were trained in the "duck and cover" method of civil defense, and popular culture reflected this paradigm of fear (See: "Cold War Culture," 2009).

Thus, one can imagine that the tension that existed in most aspects of international diplomacy simply waited for something to happen to cause conflict. During World War II, though, the Japanese utilized Korea's food, livestock and metals for the continuation of their war effort. They conscripted almost 3 million Koreans as forced laborers, and even into the Army. Per agreement with President's Roosevelt and Truman, the Soviet Union declared war against Japan in August 1945, and occupied the northern part of the Korean Peninsula, up to the agreed upon 38th parallel (Goulden, 1983, 17). As the Allies were dividing up Europe, the also decided to divide up Korea, and since the Soviet Army stopped at the 38th parallel, gave the northern part of Korea to a Soviet "Zone of Influence." This was primarily done as part of the give-and-take agreements when dividing up Europe and assigning influence to the other parts of the older colonial empires. So, by the end of 1945, Japan had surrendered, the Soviets controlled North Korea, the United States the Southern State, and the Chinese communists were at war to overthrow the warlord monarchy in mainland China (Miscamble, 2008, 4-32).

As tensions grew over the Korean issue, there was a new solidification of the Japanese-American alliance, and changing the political structure within Japan. A new Constitution was ratified in 1946, and became a more western style democracy in which it "drew much of its inspiration from the U.S. Bill of Rights, New Deal social legislation, the liberal constitutions of several European states and even the Soviet Union…. [it] transferred sovereignty from the Emperor to the people in an attempt to depoliticize the Throne (Emperor) and reduce it to the status of a state symbol. Included in the revised charter was the famous 'no war,' 'no arms' Article Nine, which outlawed belligerency as an instrument of state policy and the maintenance of a standing army. The 1947 Constitution also enfranchised women, guaranteed fundamental human rights, strengthened the powers of Parliament and the Cabinet, and decentralized the police and local government" (Eiji 2003, xxxix).

Additionally, between 1946 and 1950, tensions escalated between the newly elected governments in Korea. By 1948, the pro-democracy movement in the South established the Republic of South Korea, and the Soviets aided Kim Il-sung in establishing a Communist North Korean government. The North, however, was more nationalistic in its ideas, and believed that the entire peninsula should be united based on a common language and culture. At the time, primarily because of the tremendous loss of resources from World War II, the South was unable to fight off the North completely (Stokesbury, 1990, 25-61). Based on the tense atmosphere between the United States and the Soviet Union, the Iron Curtain descending on Eastern Europe, and the Soviet push towards nuclear parity with the U.S., most of the Western governments assumed that all communistic leadership, regardless of location and nationality, were controlled either overtly or covertly by Moscow. So, when the North Korean government began its guerilla attacks against the South, the United States saw this as direct aggression from the Soviets and a desire to export communism even further. Added to this was the looming war in China, and the fear that the most populace nation on earth would become a communist state (Wainstock, 1999, 137). Attempting to diffuse the situation somewhat, however, U.S. troops withdrew from Korea in 1949, leaving a desolate and ill-equipped army; the Soviets officially left North Korea in late 1948.

One of the major changes in academic research regarding the Korean conflict has been the declassification of Soviet documents and a new insight on Josef Stalin's involvement and views on the Korean issue. In fact, it seems that until the end of 1949 Stalin believed there would be an Allied invasion from the South consisting of U.S. And South Korean troops. This view was based on Stalin's paranoia regarding President Harry Truman, and the U.S. being the only nuclear power at the time. We now know that the Soviets were actively trying to bridge that gap through whatever means necessary. Stalin was actually hoping for a peaceful reunification of the Korean peninsula, albeit one that favorite the communist regime of Kim Il Sung (Lashmar, 1996).