Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty (12 page)

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The Americans, meanwhile, were working on two plans for the final defeat of the Japanese. The atomic bomb would be the ace in the hole—if the top-secret project could reach fruition in time. Otherwise, a massive invasion of Japan’s home islands could cost as many as a million American lives. At a strategy conference at Yalta in the Russian Crimea in February 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt pressed Stalin to enter the war. A Soviet attack on Manchuria would keep the Japanese from shifting their troops from China and Manchuria back to the home islands to join the defense. That second front would reduce the invaders’ casualties by an estimated two hundred thousand. Moscow agreed to make such an attack, within two or three months following Germany’s surrender, in exchange for some Japanese territory— southern Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands—and a grant of post-war “preeminence” in Manchuria. The Russians were thus committed to “share the cost in blood of defeating Japan.”
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The A-bombing of Hiroshima of August 6 showed that there would be no need to invade Japan with infantry and, thus, no military need for Soviet intervention. Nevertheless, sticking to the letter of its agreement, Moscow entered the war two days later. In the less than one week remaining before Tokyo’s surrender, Soviet troops attacked the dispirited Japanese in Manchuria and Korea and routed them, suffering fewer than five thousand casualties in the process. In Korea the only real battle may have been the struggle for the northeastern port of Chongjin, where naval units carried the major burden of attack.
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The Soviet military occupied the portion of Korea north of the 38th parallel, under a hastily reached agreement that called for the United States to occupy the more populous southern part of the peninsula. Although both victorious allies wanted to maximize their respective spheres of influence in the post-war world, the Americans did not have troops available to go to Korea immediately. Fearing that Soviet troops would press on all the way to the southern tip of the peninsula and present a fait accompli, Washington proposed the demarcation line. Two colonels in the War Department, Dean Rusk (-who would become secretary of state during the Vietnam War period) and Charles Bonesteel, took a quick look at a map to come up with the proposed placement of the line. Dividing the country at the 38th parallel left in the southern zone the current capital, Seoul, as well as an ancient capital, Kaesong, which was still an important city. The USSR got control of the northern Korean ports of Chongjin and Wonsan. Moscow had wanted the war to last longer so it could grab more of Japan’s territory—but figured this division was the best bargain it could drive, under the circumstances of the unexpectedly quick Japanese collapse.
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While carving up the peninsula, neither Washington nor Moscow gave
thought to the fact that the line would slice though Korea’s major veins and arteries. Once the military occupations began, though, the Americans quickly realized that both halves of Korea were now crippled in terms of resources. Cutting off trade at the artificial demarcation line deprived the South of the coal and electricity that were produced in the North, even as it kept from the relatively infertile North the rice produced in abundance by the South. The realization came too late. The American occupation chief, Gen. John R. Hodge, tried fruitlessly to negotiate a system that would restore the pre-liberation economic flow across the 38th parallel. Balking at even discussing the matter for a time, the Soviet occupation authorities began enforcing North Korea’s isolation from South Korea and the capitalist world.
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The administrative line soon became a fortified barrier.

Some Soviet officials evidently thought of Kim Il-sung as a promising candidate for an important position in a new Korean regime. They could expect to make use of the fame he had achieved among Koreans during his guerrilla-fighting days. But they gave him no chance to polish his reputation further by taking an actual military role in the final defeat of the Japanese. Although Koreans of the Eighty-eighth Brigade expected to join in the fighting to liberate their homeland, it was all over before they could see action.
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The Soviet Army disbanded the Eighty-eighth and, a month after the surrender, sent its Korean and Soviet-Korean members to North Korea under Kim’s command.
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By the time the contingent arrived on Korean soil, more than a month had passed since the surrender. The band of returnees first tried to enter Korea via Manchuria and the border city of Sinuiju. Hearing that the Russian invaders had blown up the Yalu River bridges, they returned to Soviet territory and tried again, the second time by ship. They disembarked from the Soviet naval ship
Pugachov
at the Korean east-coast port of Wonsan on September 19, 1945. Reportedly, Kim when he landed still wore the uniform of a Soviet Army captain.

Judging from Yu Song-chol’s account, even at that moment Kim was attempting to revise history. Privately, he instructed his comrades that, if anyone should ask, they must say that Kim Il-sung was not among the party that had landed at Wonsan but had traveled separately. Yu figured that Kim, thinking of his reputation as a fighter, “wanted to hide the truth of his shabby, humble return to Korea.”
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In the division of Korea the American occupation zone got not only the capital but most of the prominent Korean politicians, as well. In the Soviet zone, the scarcity of high-visibility Korean leaders boosted Kim Il-sung’s prospects. The commander of the military government in North Korea, Gen.
Ivan M. Chistiakov, showed the Soviets’ deep interest in Kim by traveling from Pyongyang to meet him after his arrival at Wonsan.

The occupation leaders assigned members of Kim’s group to key public-security posts or, in the case of some Soviet-born ethnic Koreans, jobs as interpreters for the Soviet generals. According to Yu’s account, they gave Kim no immediate assignment; they were reserving him for something even bigger than the job of Pyongyang police chief, which they had tentatively mentioned in discussions back in the Eighty-eighth Brigade’s camp. (Yu said that job went instead to O Jin-u, who eventually became the top military man in North Korea and held that post until his death in February 1995.
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O had followed Kim around as an admiring teenager in the Manchurian guerrilla zones, toying with the Mauser pistol in the older man’s holster before being permitted to join the guerrilla unit in the mid-’30s.)
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In his early days in Pyongyang, Kim conferred frequently with Soviet generals as they puzzled over their choice of an indigenous leadership that would carry out occupation policies for governing the Northern zone. For the time being the Soviet authorities wanted to work through a coalition that would include Northern noncommunist nationalist elements. As their first choice for nominal leader they settled upon the widely respected nationalist Cho Man-sik.

Before liberation Cho had been a leader of the nonviolent reformist movement, influenced by Gandhi and Tolstoy. Instead of attempting fruitlessly to overthrow the iron rule of the Japanese, those reformists had argued, Koreans should focus their energies on education and the development of a self-sufficient economy to prepare for eventual independence. For many years the Presbyterian deacon Cho had costumed himself for his role, dressing in
hanbok,
the traditional Korean cotton suit, and in a Korean overcoat and shoes. Even Cho’s name cards, Kim Il-sung himself noted, were printed on homemade paper as “a symbol of his patronage of Korean products.”
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As the leader of North Korean communists who had served in the Soviet Union under Soviet military orders, the newly arrived Kim Il-sung conferred with Soviet officers over lavish dinners in
kisaeng
—Korean geisha— houses (with Cho M.an-sik also present on one such occasion). Soon Kim emerged as an obvious candidate for a high-profile role of his own.
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On October 14, 1945, less than a month after his arrival in North Korea, the people of Pyongyang were invited to a Soviet-organized rally billed as a “reception for the triumphant return of General Kim Il-sung.” Preceded both by his reputation and by an introductory speech that Soviet officers had persuaded a reluctant Cho to deliver, Kim took the rostrum to the crowd’s roars of “Long live General Kim Il-sung!”

Kim read a speech drafted by Soviet occupation officials. During the speech, rumors began flashing through the crowd that he was a fake and a Soviet stooge.
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Koreans had been brought up to respect age and seniority.

Until that moment they had imagined Kim Il-sung as a grizzled veteran. Only thirty-three and looking even younger with a blue suit too small for him and what an unfriendly onlooker described as “a haircut like a Chinese waiter,” the speaker hardly seemed the man behind the legend.
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Soviet officials polled the audience after the speech and were dismayed by the reaction. According to one report the Russians had been leaning toward making Kim defense minister—the strong man’s post—in a regime to be headed nominally by Cho M.an-sik.
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But it would not do to have the Korean populace believe the Russian occupiers were installing a stooge.

The answer was a propaganda offensive to shore up Kim’s image. That campaign sought to turn his youth into a virtue. As an official biography later expressed the formula, a promise of “everlasting prosperity to the people” is delivered convincingly not by “an old man given to reminiscing on past glories but a young man who looks to the distant future.
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By most accounts Kim, during that period, displayed a modest, unassuming demeanor. His Soviet handlers thus had a fairly easy time of it as they worked to correct the initial image problems of the attractive young leader. Here is a description by an apparently dazzled reporter for a South Korean newspaper who interviewed him in December 1945:

A dimpled smile, gentle eyes and the light of genius glittering in them. … Let me present the appearance of the General in detail. Sunburnt brown complexion, short, modern-style hair, gentle, double-lidded eyes, dimples appearing when he smiles—he is a perfectly handsome youth. His height is probably about five feet six and he is not so plump. Generous, open and cheerful character and modest, yet clear-cut attitude make people feel as if they have been his friends for a long time. It is difficult to guess where his ambitious spirit and daring are hidden. … The General uses simple and clear expressions. He is modesty itself, and when asked if he had any intention of becoming a statesman, he answered that he is not fitted for such a name. When youthful people or students call him General, he replies: “I am not a General, but your friend. Please call me
dongmoo
[comrade].” … He loves the masses of people; above all, young people he loves deeply; he meets everyone with good grace, listens to them with sincerity, and answers their questions with kindness. General Kim is now among our people as a simple citizen. How his youthful wisdom and courage will reflect themselves in the development of our nation must be a great matter of concern of Korea.
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The Soviet authorities’ initial plans ran into a roadblock when Cho Man-sik showed that he would be no pliant figurehead. He complained that Soviet
occupation troops had confiscated grain needed by the hungry Koreans.
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That same issue in November 1945 inspired student-led riots in Sinuiju, ?which ushered in several months of often-violent struggle.
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More significantly Cho refused to compromise his demands for immediate independence in favor of a “trusteeship” plan for Korea. Actually put forth first by the Americans, that plan called for up to five years of tutelage by four Allied powers—the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain and Nationalist-ruled China. During that time the Koreans would learn to govern themselves. The American proposal responded to concern over the resource imbalances and other ill effects of dividing Korea into exclusive American and Soviet zones. Trusteeship offered unity for the country and its economy under a single government.
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Many Koreans, however, felt insulted and outraged by the notion that they needed tutelage. In the South, opposition from such right--wing nationalists as Rhee Syngman and Kim Ku was ferocious. American occupation officials—including some who had been suspicious of the idea to begin ?with—quickly sought to distance themselves from the hot-potato trusteeship proposal. In the North, Cho Man-sik had put behind him his longtime advocacy of nonresistance and national self-improvement. With the Japanese defeated, it was time for independence. Cho was not the least bit interested in exchanging Japanese rulers for new foreign masters under the rubric of “trusteeship.”

Moscow, however, refused to budge from its public stance. The USSR’s position was curious. The Soviet occupation for its first few months otherwise gets generally high marks for responsiveness to Korean aspirations— especially when compared with an often overbearing American occupation in the South. And analysts in the USSR could see clearly that trusteeship would dilute Moscow’s control in North Korea, to the benefit of the United States and the other two noncommunist Allies.

How, then, and “why did the Soviet authorities get themselves and their Korean communist allies into the unpopular position of appearing to champion “trusteeship”? One theory is that the communists, needing time to strengthen their political forces in the South, saw a trusteeship of several years as in their interests.
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Dutch scholar Erik van Ree puts forth a different argument, based on Soviet documents made available after the USSR’s collapse. Moscow did not really want trusteeship, van Ree asserts; its supposed support of the concept was merely camouflage and a delaying tactic while it pursued its true aim: planting a satellite regime in the North. “Moscow was not anxious to reunify Korea,” he says. The Americans, on the other hand, initially favored unification out of the belief that, since they controlled Seoul and two-thirds of the population, “they would profit more from unification than the Russians.
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