Curious Case of South Korea: Part 1
Japanese brutality
As the proverb says: before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes.
This is not meant to be the definitive guide to modern Korean history. It is meant to give enough detail of key events, so you understand the depth of South Korean feeling.
Until the mid-19th century, Korea was a vassal state of China. The Korean court sent regular emissaries to Beijing to present tribute, and consult the Chinese on the conduct of foreign relations. The Qing emperor confirmed the authority of Korean rulers, approved the Korean choice of consorts and heirs, and bestowed noble ranks on Korean kings. The Korean envoy performed the kowtow (complete prostration and knocking of the head on the ground) before the Qing emperor, and addressed him using the terms appropriate to someone of inferior status.
But, the Korean emperor was left to run his own domestic affairs. It was a relationship the Korean court and elite seemed happy enough with anyway. The following sums it up:
“The Meiji Restoration ended the 265-year-old feudalistic Tokugawa shogunate in Japan. The new government of Japan sent a messenger with a letter informing Korea’s Joseon dynasty on December 19, 1868.
However, the Koreans refused to receive the letter because it contained the Chinese characters 皇 ("royal, imperial") and 勅 ("imperial decree"). Only the Chinese emperor was allowed to use these characters, as they signified the imperial authority of China. Their use by a Japanese sovereign was unacceptable to the Koreans, as it implied he was an equal of the emperor of China.
The Koreans laughed at the Japanese, and told them to go away.”
The Koreans should have been more tactful. In the late 19th century, China weakened precipitously while Japan strengthened rapidly.
Sitting at the mouth of the Han River, Ganghwa Island controlled access to imperial capital in Seoul. It had been a site of clashes between Korean and foreign forces before, including an American diplomatic delegation sent to establish trade and political relations. When Korean shore batteries attacked two American warships in June 1871, the U.S. retaliated.
About 650 Americans landed, and captured several forts, killing over 200 Korean troops with a loss of only three Americans. Korea continued to refuse to negotiate with the United States until 1882, when a treaty normalizing diplomatic relations was signed.
Korean weaponry of the era
So, it was well known the Korean garrison at Ganghwa would shoot at any approaching foreigners. On the morning of 20 September 1875, a Japanese naval ship was sent there to look for trouble.
It found it. The Japanese went ashore to request water and provisions. When the shore batteries of the Korean forts fired on the crew, the Japanese response was swift and severe.
After bombarding the fort, the Japanese landed another shore party. Armed with modern rifles, they made quick work of the Koreans who carried matchlock muskets; thirty-five Korean soldiers were killed.
The Japanese used the incident to compel the Koreans to sign the Japan-Korea Treaty of 1876. It ended Korea's status as a protectorate of China, forced open three Korean ports to Japanese trade, and made Japanese citizens exempt from Korean law.
During the next 35 years, Japan became increasingly involved in Korea’s internal affairs, including inserting Japanese military advisers in the Korean Army, and orchestrating the assassination of Korea’s Queen Min, a proud nationalist.
In 1910, Japan annexed Korea outright. It was formalized in the Japan-Korea Treaty of 1910, which stipulated these humiliating terms:
Article 1: His Majesty the Emperor of Korea concedes completely and definitely his entire sovereignty over the whole Korean territory to His Majesty the Emperor of Japan.
Article 2: His Majesty the Emperor of Japan accepts the concession stated in the previous article, and consents to the annexation of Korea to the Empire of Japan.
Japan put Korea under Japanese military administration.
Schools and universities forbade speaking Korean. Public places adopted Japanese, and an edict to make films in Japanese soon followed. It also became a crime to teach history from non-approved texts, and the Japanese burned over 200,000 Korean historical documents, essentially wiping out the historical memory of Korea.
One of the most powerful symbols of Korean culture was its royal palace, Gyeongbokgung, built in Seoul in 1395 by the Joseon dynasty. Soon after assuming power, the Japanese colonial government tore down over a third of the complex’s historic buildings, and the remaining structures were turned into tourist attractions for Japanese visitors.
The Japanese also stole tens of thousands of cultural artifacts. Japan has returned roughly 1,400 pieces to Korea. But, prominent Korean artifacts are held in the Tokyo National Museum and many remain in the hands of private “collectors.”
The Japanese took the land, too.
Japanese leaders, convinced their own country was overcrowded, encouraged farmers to emigrate; nearly 100,000 Japanese families settled in Korea.
Korean land-ownership was feudal, with absentee landlords and peasant farmers with traditional — but no legal proof of — ownership. So, the Japanese required written proof of ownership like deeds and titles; they took plots from those who could not provide it.
Of course, Japanese holdings soared; by 1932, Japanese owned 52.7% of all Korean land. They took the best farmland.
Many former Korean landowners and their feudal workers became tenant farmers, on Japanese farms. As often occurred in Japan itself, tenants had to pay over half their crop as rent.
The Japanese also forced Koreans to do long days of compulsory labor on irrigation projects, which the Japanese made them pay for with taxes, impoverishing many, and causing even more to lose their land.
No comfort for the women
This also forced many to send wives and daughters into factories or to be “comfort women” so they could pay taxes.
Comfort women is an incendiary issue in Korean-Japanese relations to this day. The name "comfort women" is a translation of the Japanese ianfu (慰安婦), a euphemism for "prostitute."
How many Korean women ended-up as comfort women is the subject of a trivial debate among academics (somewhere between 50,000 and 200,000). Foreigners turning any significant number of your women into whores will sting for a long time.
The atrocious 35 year Japanese occupation ended after the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, also bringing to a close World War II.
Korea was divided at the 38th parallel into two zones of occupation; the Soviets administered the northern half, and the Americans administered the southern half.
A Marxist state was established in the north under Kim Il-sung, and a capitalist state in the south under Syngman Rhee. Both claimed to be the sole legitimate government of all of Korea, and neither accepted the border as permanent.
North Korea invaded the South Korea on 25 June 1950, and swiftly overran most of the country. The Soviet Union played a significant, covert role in the conflict, providing material, medical services, and more importantly, Soviet pilots and MiG 15 fighter jets.
A United Nations force, led by the United States, intervened to defend the South, and rapidly advanced into North Korea. As they neared the border with China, Chinese forces intervened on behalf of North Korea, shifting the balance of the war again. Fighting ended on 27 July 1953, with an armistice that approximately restored the original boundaries between North and South Korea.
Approximately 3 million people died in the Korean War, with a higher proportional civilian death toll than World War II or the Vietnam War.
No formal peace treaty was signed, and the division of Korea became enduring. The United States had full operational control of the South Korean military (which it kept until 1994).
South Korea, which is our focus, was set-up by the Americans to be a democracy. And in fact, elections were held at regular intervals under a constitution with American style term limits for Presidents.
In reality, with American consent, South Korea’s two main leaders from armistice to the end of the Cold War were authoritarians who assumed near dictatorial powers.
Elections were often a farce. In March 1960, President Syngman Rhee claimed to have won 90 percent of the vote. As Rhee was ousted in a coup about a month later, suffice to say there was more opposition to him than that.
A democratic government followed. A year later, it was overthrown in a coup led by Major General Park Chung-hee.
Park was responsible in large part for South Korea’s “economic miracle”; the programs he initiated gave his country one of the fastest-growing economies in the world.
However like Rhee, Park became increasingly authoritarian, with restrictions on personal freedoms, suppression of the press and of opposition parties, and control over the judicial system and the universities.
Park was assassinated in 1979, and the government that followed was another military regime. Throughout the era there were street protests, some of which were put down with force resulting in death.
The numbers 5-1-8 are seared into the memory of South Koreans. On 18 May 1980, an elite unit of paratroopers attacked protesting students in front of Chonnam National University in Gwangju with clubs.
Gwangju massacre
But, it only lead to bigger protests.
On May 21, the Army opened fire on protesters, killing hundreds. Enraged, the citizens broke into an armory, gathered weapons, and drove the soldiers from their city.
Six days later, the army re-entered the city, and defeated the civilian militia after a final stand at the Provincial Office Building in downtown Gwangju. How many died is not clear. Numbers range from 600 to 2,000.
At the time, the U.S. Commander of Forces in Korea had operational control of all South Korean military units. So, it’s clear the South Korean army units that put down the uprising went to Gwangju with American awareness, even if their orders came from South Korean commanders.
While the economy grew rapidly, street protests continued. The government was under increasing pressure.
However, after Mikhail Gorbachev took over the Soviet Union, the communist threat began to recede globally. North Korea got less Soviet support. Seoul was awarded the 1988 Olympic games. The United States prodded the government to hold elections.
On June 29, 1987, the government's presidential nominee Roh Tae-woo gave in, announced a direct presidential election for December, and restoration of civil rights.
Since that time South Korea has been a noisy, but functioning democracy with an economy that has joined the First World. Korea might have been the worst place to live in East Asia in 1920; in 2020, you could make an argument it’s the best place to live.
What happened in Korea from 1870 to 1945 under the Japanese was an atrocity.
Was what happened in South Korea under the Americans from 1945 to 1987 perfect?
No. Neither was anywhere else in the world.
If you're under the age of 30, take it from someone who lived through the late Cold War: the collapse of global communism did not feel inevitable. As late as 1979, it looked like the “free world” was more likely to lose.
The better question for South Koreans: would you have rather spent that period and after living under the Kims?
Their North Korea is a Marxist nightmare where citizens have no freedom of expression, assembly, association, and religion. All organized political opposition is illegal. And the government routinely uses arbitrary arrest, torture, forced labor, and executions to maintain control. The economy is a basket case; up to 3 million people may have starved to death and a starvation remains an annual threat.
It’s also not a hypothetical question for South Koreans. The Kims actually invaded to make South Korea just like the North. And would have succeeded had the U.S. military not stopped them.
The North Korean threat remains, which we’ll consider as move to the present.