(Korean War History) The Division of Korea, 1945-1948. Post # 27

Prof. Kathryn Weathersby

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In the last post we saw how the US considered extending $200 million in economic and technical aid to Korea in the wake of the announcement of the Truman Doctrine in March 1947. The idea was that this assistance would help create a viable government in the southern zone, which would enable the US to withdraw its occupation forces without leaving southern Korea vulnerable to a Soviet takeover. This overly optimistic view was fueled by growing pressure within the US to “bring the boys home.” Some soldiers in Korea even wrote letters to their local newspapers complaining about their poor living conditions and accusing their officers of corruption and mistreatment.

In other words, the Truman administration faced political pressure to end the occupation at the same time as it drew up plans for its Korean aid program. The plan the State Department sent to Assistant Secretary of War Patterson called for providing $540 million to a new provisional government and replacing American military officials with civilian advisors, overseen by a new political advisor for Korea with wide decision-making powers. With Cold War battle lines solidifying, US officials were less concerned with cooperating with the Soviet Union to create a government for Korea. The State Department thus called for the administration to implement this plan even if the Joint Commission resumed its meetings.

Patterson, a clear-eyed military man, doubted that economic aid would improve conditions in southern Korea. He advocated instead that the US withdraw its forces from the peninsula as early as possible. In Seoul, however, General Hodge publicly expressed support for economic and political aid. “If we can’t get Russian cooperation,” he stated at a press conference, “we must carry out our commitments alone.” Trying to avoid an open violation of the Moscow Conference agreement, Hodge declared implausibly that the US was not creating a separate government, only attempting to foster freedom, democracy, and sound government in southern Korea.

Through the spring of 1947 President Truman denied that the US had reached a decision on aid for Korea. However, by that time the administration had decided that if the Soviets refused to reopen Joint Commission negotiations, the US would carry out this aid program. Moreover, as a last resort it would take the issue to the United Nations. On April 8 John Carter Vincent summarized this view to Dean Acheson, writing that “our program seems to us to be the only feasible way of accomplishing [the reduction of our commitments] once we rule out the alternative of abandonment of Korea to USSR domination.”

The impossibility of cooperation between the Soviets and the Western allies became more apparent at the meeting of the Council of Foreign Ministers in Moscow in March/April 1947. The conference failed to reach agreement on the main items on the agenda – peace treaties for Germany and Austria. Secretary of State George Marshall reported at the conclusion of the conference that the Council was unable to agree because “the Soviet Union insisted upon proposals which would have established in Germany a centralized government, adapted to the seizure of absolute control of a country which would be doomed economically through inadequate area and excessive population, and would be mortgaged to turn over a large part of its production as reparations, principally to the Soviet Union….Such a plan…not only involved indefinite American subsidy, but could result only in a deteriorating economic life in Germany and Europe and the inevitable emergence of dictatorship and strife.”

Secretary Marshall also raised the Korea issue at the Moscow conference, blaming the Soviets for the failure to reestablish economic unity and create a provisional government. In the next post we will examine how the two sides discussed the absence of progress of the Joint Commission and how, surprisingly, they agreed to resume its meetings.

[Sources: This post relies on James Matray, The Reluctant Crusade: American Foreign Policy in Korea, 1941-1950 (University of Hawaii Press, 1985). The text of Secretary Marshall’s report is found online in The Avalon Project, Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy of the Yale University Law School.]

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Very informative. Interesting how you start understand the wants and needs of each significant figure and what they're thinking, whether it's the Truman Administration or the US soldiers in Korea.

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