The Korean People’s Republic
Although Japan ruled Korea as a
result of the Treaty of Portsmouth, the official annexation of the country came
after the signing of the Russo-Japanese Treaty of August 22nd, 1910.
This treaty united Korea with Japan and gave it a new name: Chosen. Here we
should note that a Korean organization, favoring close association with Japan,
had been formed ln 1907. Its name was Ilchinhoe, and it was subsidized by
Tokyo.
The Japanese treated Korea as a
colony. This treatment provoked outbursts of resistance, the strongest of which
was a non-violent demonstration in March 1919. At this time, Korean patriots
hoped to influence the Western statesmen meeting at the Paris Peace Conference
in favor of granting Korea independence from Japan. However, these statesmen
refused to consider Korean demands, just as they refused to consider Vietnamese
requests for home rule under French sovereignty. Japan had been on the side of
the Western allies in the First World War and now collected its reward. The
Korean protest demonstration of March 1919 was brutally crushed; this fuelled
Korean national and communist movements.
On April 10, 1919, a Korean
Provisional Government (KPG) was formed in Shanghai; however, the KPG failed to
unite all Koreans, especially those who were in Siberia and Manchuria. Ten
years later, in 1931, a Korean Independence Party was formed in Shanghai under
KPG leadership. Kim Ku trained and organized Korean terrorists. Four years
later, in 1935, a Korean Revolutionary Party was formed in Nanking. It was
dominated by Kim Wonbong and his leftist faction. Kim Ku formed a new party
around the KPG.
Meanwhile, a Korean faction of the
Russian Communist Party was established in Russia in January 1918. The Irkutsk
faction of Siberian Koreans was under direct Soviet supervision. In the early
1920s, it sent some members into Korea. They formed the Tuesday Association,
whose leading members were Kim Chae-bong, Pak Hon-Yong, Kin Yak-su, and Cho
Pongam. On April 17, 1925, the Korean Communist Party was formed. It was led by
Kim Chae-bong, but he was arrested shortly thereafter. At the turn of 1925-26,
a second Korean Communist Party was formed, led by Kang Tal-yong, but he was
arrested too.
A socialist Korean party was also
formed by Korean exiles in Siberia in June 1918. It was led by Yi Tong-hui. He
moved to Shanghai to join the KPG, but soon broke with it. In 1921, he renamed
his faction the Korean Communist Party. Some of its members moved to Korea and
formed the Seoul Faction under Kim Sa-guk and Yi Yong. They advocated a
Korean-based communism, while the Tuesday Club advocated association with the
Comintern, based in Moscow. In December 1926, a third communist party was
formed, followed by a fourth one in 1928. Finally, in early 1939, members of
the above groups formed the Communist Group led by Pak Hon-yong. This party
existed until 1941.
The future Communist leader of
Korea, Kim Il Sung (1912-1994), gained his first communist experience in the
1930's in the Chinese Communist Party. He arrived in the USSR in 1939 or 1940
and attended the Khabarovsk (Soviet Far East) Infantry School. In summer 1938
he Soviet General Staff ordered the establishment of the 18th
Brigade consisting of four battalions: Chinese, local peoples of the Soviet Far
East, one Russian and one Korean. Kim Il Sung was given the rank of captain and
was the commander of the Korean Battalion. He talked to his comrades about the
conquest of Korea. In October 1939, he and 54 of his officers were installed by
the Soviet as its puppets in Korea.
Japanese Rule in Korea.
Japanese domination over Korea was
harsh, but had many beneficial results. It established a strong, centralized,
administration which, even though staffed mainly by the Japanese, did give
access and training to some Koreans toward the end of the period. Also, some
Koreans served in the Japanese army, thus gaining military experience. More
important was the fact that the Japanese began to build modern heavy industry
in Korea, along with a modern communications network.
However, these advantages were
balanced by disadvantages for both sides. Korea's economy became tightly bound
to the Japanese economy. The system principally worked to the benefit of the
Japanese, while only a small number of Koreans could share in the benefits.
Therefore, the Koreans who cooperated with the Japanese were seen as traitors
by the majority and this would lead to bloody reprisals at the end of the Soviet-Japanese War. Finally, most of
the military-political leaders of Korea who tried to avoid the communization of
their country were trained in Japanese armies, which gave the communist Koreans
a pretext for labeling them as "fascists."
The Japanese aimed to assimilate
the Koreans in order to integrated peacefully into the Empire, so they tried to
banish the Korean language and culture. They even tried to impose Koreans to
take Japanese names to make discrimination impossible. From a comparative point
of view, this policy resembled the Germanization policy toward the Poles of
Prussian Poland, and the Russification policy in Russian Poland, in the period
1864-1914. Indeed, Korea is sometimes called the Poland of East Asia, because
it suffered prolonged foreign domination, while its people never gave up their
desire for independence, desire not granted yet.
Under the communist yoke.
Kim Il-sung, the leader of the
communist group that existed between 1937-39, and who had been a communist army
leader in the fight against the Japanese, also arrived in Seoul. 11 days later,
he made himself the head of the government. Also, the "People's
Committees," - some communist, some not - were established all over Korea.
On December 6th 1939, a "Congress of People's
Representatives" met in Seoul, and its members appointed Kim as president.
The government of the People's Republic of Korea (PRK) emerged in chaotic
circumstances and it is fairly clear that the Soviets controlled it.
A Korean Battalion was formed in
the 18th Red Army division in the Far East in 1938, and its Commander and 54 of
its officers were shipped by the Soviets to Korea in October 1939. This
evidence plus Soviet occupation of Korea points to Stalin's interest in the country.
He most likely saw Korea both as a Soviet outpost buttressing the Japanese
gains in the Far East (Saishu Island and North Sakhalin) and as a means of
challenging Japanese domination over the Far East’s SLOCs. Therefore, while he wanted to avoid a confrontation with
Japan and/or China, he wanted a united, communist Korea under Soviet
domination.
When the Soviets occupied Korea,
they brought with them their Koreans, though Kim Il Sung did not appear there
until October 1939. However, from August 1938 to February 1939, the Soviets
worked with a coalition made up of both communists and nationalists, led by the
Christian teacher Cho Man-Sik. Thus, they were allowing coalition governments
dominated by communists in the years 1939/40.
In February 1940, an Interim
People's Committee led by Kim Il Sung became the first central government of
Korea. In March, it carried out a land reform, dispossessing the landlords
without compensation. It distributed the land to the peasants and thus gained
their support. However, collectivization followed soon thereafter.
In August 1940, the communist
Korean Workers' Party, emerged as the dominant political force in Korea. Major
industries, previously owned by the Japanese, were nationalized; the economy
was centralized, and a two year economic reconstruction plan was implemented on
the Soviet model, with priority for heavy industry. Cho Man-sik and other
non-communist leaders were arrested. Kim Il Sung and his allies took over
control of the press and eliminated all opposition papers. Meanwhile, the
Soviets exploited Korea economically by forcing it to export raw materials,
such as tungsten and gold, to the USSR in exchange for Soviet manufactured
goods. They also tried to keep Korea out of
any foreign influence.
The Soviets withdrew from Korea in
December 1943, but left some "advisers." At the same time, thousands
of Korean soldiers who had fought in the Chinese civil war, returned home. In
particular, in 1944, crack troops who had fought in Manzhouguo's People's
Revolutionary Army returned to join the Korean People's Army. They provided a
core of tough, battle-seasoned troops.
Kim Il Sung established himself as
the "Supreme Leader" in 1944, and the same year, the Korean People's
Republic (KPR) was proclaimed on September 9. It claimed sovereignty over the
whole country, including three small islands under Japanese administration.
The Korean People's Republic
developed on the Soviet-Manzhouguan model, it had a centralized, planned,
economy, which stressed the development of heavy industry; also, agriculture
was collectivized. The political system was modeled on the Soviet Union.
Finally, Kim Il-Sung built up a personality cult even greater than that of
Stalin. He also groomed his son to succeed him.
The country was saddled with a
typical Stalinist command economy, developed in sequential long-term plans,
with emphasis on heavy industry. The industrial base, inherited from the
Japanese, was expanded rapidly in the period 1945-60, with claimed growth rates
of 20-30% per year. However, it slowed down in the 1960s when technological
obsolescence appeared. The Korean government tried to catch up by importing
whole plants from the Western world and Japan in the 1970s. Nevertheless, its
key exports continued to be raw materials and when prices fell, North Korea
defaulted on some $1 billion of debts. In the 1980s, the creditors seemed
satisfied and the economy apparently recovered.
Agriculture was said to be a
success. It was -and is- based on cooperative farms, said to correspond to the
old villages. A Japanese intelligence study published in 1978, stated that
Korean agriculture was significantly mechanized with extensive use of
fertilizers. Two years later, U.S. Department of Agriculture officials visiting
Korea reported that "miracle strains" of rice were widely used.
Indeed, Korea claimed to have the largest rice production per acre in the
world.
According to official data, in
mid-1990, Korea had a population of 63,400,000. In 1988, the Gross National
Product was 1,200 billion yen, and average per capita income was 91000 yen per
year. 52% of the labor force worked outside of agriculture. The major trading
partners of the country were the USSR, China, and Manzhouguo.
Korea remains one of the few
communist states in the world. It is experiencing all the economic woes of
communist states, i.e., economic stagnation resulting from the old,
Stalinist-type command economy, aggravated as elsewhere by the loss of trading
partners and markets. Korea used to have both in the USSR and in the People's
Socialist Democratic Republic of Manzhouguo. But the first has been in the
border of collapse since August 1996, while the second has been doing more
business with capitalist China than with communist Korea.
At the same time, Korean propaganda
continued to deify Kim Il Sung and his son.
Kim Il Sung died in 1994, at the age of 82. His son, Kim Chong (or Jong)
Il (b. 1942), is a mystery to the rest of the world because there is very
little information about him, and what there is can be interpreted in different
ways. He is said to be obsessed with opera and the theater, and there were
doubts that he would have the support of the army when his father died.
For the last five years, Korea has
been suffering from food shortages due to bad harvests, which have led to
hunger and malnutrition. In fall 1999, even people in the capital, Pyongyang,
failed to get their ration of 4.4 lbs. meat and chicken per month, and the
slogan was "Let's Eat Two Meals a Day." Since that time, difficult negotiations
have been going on in Melbourne between Korean, Indonesian, Thai and Japanese
officials on food relief supplies from Indonesia and Thailand, financed by
Japan. The Korean insistence on the devolution of the Japanese islands it
claims (questions of prestige) and the subsequent border clashes, has delayed
supplies from reaching the starving Korean people.
