Korea: After The Second World War
Reports Presented in 1949 to the Pacific Institute of the Academy of Sciences, U.S.S.R.
Korea: After The Second World War
By F. I. Shabshina
KOREA AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR
Korea is a country where the force of the character of the post-war crisis of the colonial system of imperialism reveals itself with a special fullness. Korea is the first colony which has been liberated from imperialist oppression as a result of the Second World War. The question of the paths of its development, of its further destinies has become the subject of a sharp and obdurate struggle between the forces of democracy and the forces of aggression.
“The Korean Question” is an illustration of two policies of two approaches to a solution of the fate of the colonial countries, of two diametrically opposite lines. On the one hand, it demonstrates the policy of the Soviet Union, which is consistent, based upon respect for the sovereign rights of peoples and directed towards the complete liberation of colonies, and their democratic development; on the other hand, the predatory, aggressive policy of American imperialism, which has as its aim the enslavement of peoples and their conversion into colonial slaves of the Dollar.
The territory of Korea has not merely become the meeting-point of mutually opposing political tendencies in the solution of the colonial problem. Here they have found their practical verification and testing in life. Two parts of the Korean People’s Democratic Republic—the North, where thanks to the support of the Soviet State and its army, the Korean people headed by the working class, have carried out great historical changes and laid the firm foundation of People’s Democracy and the South which is groaning under the yoke of the American colonizers—are a graphic expression of these two policies. They demonstrate before the eyes of the peoples of the colonies, what mighty support has rendered them by the peace-loving policy of the Soviet State and what the imperialist line pursued by the U.S.A. brings to them.
“under present
conditions, imperialist countries like the U.S.A., Great Britain and the states
closely associated with them become dangerous enemies of national independence
and the self-determination of nations, while the Soviet Union and the new
democracies are reliable bulwark gist encroachments on the equality and
self-determination of nations.” (A. A. Zhdanov, The International Situation, Foreign Languages Publishing House,
Moscow, 1947, p. 31)
Korea is a clear
example illustrating the crisis of the colonial system. The formation of the
Korean people’s Democratic Republic, the successful development of People’s
Democracy in the North of the country as well as the powerful rise of the
national-liberation democratic movement in the South point to the formation of
a new breach in the colonial system of imperialism.
THE FIRST PERIOD AFTER THE LIBERATIO OF KOREA
(August-December, 1945)
Soviet troops having defeated the best forces of the Japanese—the Kwantung Army—in August 1945, liberated the Korean people from colonial oppression that had lasted for many years.
According to an agreement between the USSR and the U.S.A., Korea was temporarily divided into two zones—to the North of the 38th Parallel, the Zone under the supervision of the Soviet Army and to the South, the Zone under the supervision of American troops.3 This division was to be a temporary one. The question of the future destinies of the liberated colonies was under special consideration.
Immediately after liberation there began a mighty upsurge of social activity in North and South of Korea. The perspective of the creation of an independent democratic state evoked an unprecedented growth in the political activity and creative energy of the Korean people. Different parties and public organisations began to be formed spontaneously. Everywhere there were demonstrations and meetings of many thousands in which was clearly expressed the love and gratitude of the mass of people of Korea to their true friend and mighty liberator, the Soviet Union.
Under the pressure of the people, the Japanese authorities, who remained in the country till the entry of the Soviet and American troops were compelled to release the political prisoners. Emerging from deep underground and the Japanese torture chambers, the Korea Communists under the leadership of the tried professional revolutionary, Pak Hen En4 set about reorganising the Communist Party.5
On 20th August, 1945, a preparatory committee was organised for this purpose and a programme of action was worked out. The Communist Party became the fighting centre of all the democratic progressive forces inside the country.
In the very first
days after the capitulation of Japan, a Preparatory Committee was created in
Seoul for the organization of state power in Korea.
Simultaneously, People’s Committees began to be formed in the North and in the South,
in the towns and villages at the initiative of the people. In some places, they
were called preparatory committees for the organization of state power, in
other places, political people’s committees, but their essence remained the
same—they were organs of the Korean people’s power.
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3 North
Korea covers nearly 57% of the entire area and two-fifths of the population of
Korea. It constitutes the industrial area of the country, and is rich in useful
minerals. According to the figures of 1939, there was concentrated in North
Korea: 99.9 per cent of the iron ore mines, 99.5 per cent of anthracite, 97.7
per cent of brown coal, 78.5 per cent of wolfram and molybdenum, 71 per cent of
graphite, 72.5 per cent of gold and silver and the entire production of cast iron.
The
Japanese created a wide network of hydro-electric stations in North Korea.
According to the 1937 figures, North Korea provided 92.7 per cent of the entire
production of metallurgical industry and 85.7 per cent of the entire chemical
production of the country. During the Second World War, up to 40,000 workers
worked in the largest chemical combine in Hinnam. Besides this, two big
metallurgical factories were situated in North Korea, a factory of special
steel and factories of ferrous metal, etc.
South
Korea constitutes in the main an agricultural region. The agricultural
production of South Korea according to the average figures for 1936-37 comprise
in percentage relations: 69.2 per cent of the whole production of rice, 85.7
per cent of barley, 77.3 per cent of cotton.
Industry
in South Korea is predominantly textile mills, which in 1937 gave 76.8 per cent
of the entire textile production of the country, foodstuff enterprises, which
produced 60.7 per cent of the production and metal refining plants which gave
92.7 per cent of the metal refining production of the country. “CHOSAN KENDJE
NENPO” (Yearbook of Korean Economy) Seoul, 1948, p. 322.
4 PAK
HEN EN was born in 1900 in a family of a peasant tenant in the Province of
Chunch on Namdo. From 1919 he commenced active revolutionary activities. In
1925, Pak Hen En organized a Union of Korean Communist Youth. He was arrested
in that very same year and sentenced to 2 years of hard labour. Although he has
been in prison for 10 years. After the liberation of Korea, he took the lead in the reorganization of
the Communist Party and was elected its General Secretary. After the
unification of the Communist Party and the People’s and New People’s parties
into the Labour Party of South Korea, Pak Hen En was elected Vice-President of
the Cabinet of Ministers and Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Korean
People’s Democratic Republic.
5 The
Communist Party of Korea was formed in 1925 out of scattered Communist groups.
In 1928, the decision of disbanding it was adopted. It was proposed to the
Korean Communists that they conduct work for rallying the masses and primarily
for organising the workers, so that later on, a communist Party could be
created whose basis would be the workers. Right up to the moment of the
liberation of Korea, the Communists
carried on work amongst the masses from deep underground. In Seoul, Taegu,
Khamken, Communist groups were organised. In 1934, a group of Communists, with initiative,
published the Programme of Action of the Communist Party of Korea, which served
as a basis for rallying the Communist forces in the country. However, the
re-formation of the Communist Party was possible only after the liberation of
the country from the Japanese.
On 6th September, the First Congress of People’s Representatives took place in Seoul. It was attended by more than 1,000 delegates. The Congress elected a Central People’s Committee of the Korean Republic, where the representatives of different parties and views participated.
The declaration adopted by the Central People’s Committee reads: “We are fully determined to:
(1) Build a self-sufficient State,
independent both in political as well as economic respects;
(2) Liquidate the remnants of
Japanese imperialism and the feudal survivals in our country and to devote
ourselves to the principle and ideas of real democratism on the basis of which
the political, economic, and social needs of our nation must be satisfied;
(3) Ensure the most rapid improvement
of the living standard of workers, peasants and all toilers;
(4) Being one of the democratic countries of the world, strengthen the cause of peace, jointly with other democratic countries.”
The Central People’s Committee noted as its practical tasks:
(a) To revoke immediately all laws and decrees issued by the Japanese colonisers.
(b) Nationalisation of the land
belonging to the Japanese and the traitors to the Korean people and its
transfer, free of charge to the peasants.
(c)
Nationalisation
of all mills, factories, mines, railways, sea transport, banks and all forms of
communications, belonging to the Japanese.
(d) To bring all industrial and
commercial enterprises under State control.
(e)
To
establish the eight-hour day; and for those below eighteen, 6 hours; employment
of children up to 14 years to be prohibited.
(f)
To
grant political freedom: freedom of expression, of press, of assembly, of
union, of demonstration and of religion to the Korean people.
(g) To grant voting rights to all
citizens who have reached the age of 18, irrespective of sex and other
restrictions, with the exception of national traitors; to grant women equal
rights with men.
(h) To introduce compulsory primary education.6
Besides this, measures were envisaged for the regulation of prices, the restoration of industry, the abolition of forcible rice supplies and the abolition of unemployment. This democratic programme of action of the Central People’s Committee was popularised by the local committees among the broad masses and accepted by them with great satisfaction. However, its realisation was only possible in the North of the country. The Soviet Army, which entered Korea as an army of liberation, supported the initiative of the mass of people in its Zone, recognized the People’s Committees as the lawful organs of power, ad created favourable conditions for their activities.
The
people’s power of North Korea, with the support and help of the Soviet troops,
immediately set about the determined eradication of the remnants of Japanese
domination inside the country and a demolition to the roots of the Japanese
colonial apparatus. The Japanese colonizers and their Korean accomplices were
from the very start deprived of the possibility of influencing the internal
life of the country.
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The very fact of the presence of Soviet troops, the support rendered to them by the patriotic progressive forces of the country, contributed towards a rapid consolidation of the democratic camp of North Korea and to the weakening of the forces of reaction.
In October, 1945, the Org. Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of North Korea, headed by the famous national hero and greatest political leader of Korea, Kim Ir Sen was created. Till then the role of a Party Centre of the Northern Zone was fulfilled by the Phen Yan Regional Committee of the Party. The Communist Party headed the struggle of the people for the carrying out of democratic transformations and the formation of a United Independent Democratic Korean State.
Under the leadership of the Communists in North Korea, there were formed trade unions, unions of Communist Youth, Women’s Democratic Organizations; Peasants’ Unions began to emerge in villages and were later amalgamated into a United Peasants’ Union. A Democratic National Front was created in the country, Communists also fulfilled leading role in the People’s Committees.
It is completely
evident that under the conditions that were created from the very first day in
the Northern Zone, Korean reaction was not able to operate openly. The
reactionary feudal-landlord elements with all types of Japanese accomplices,
sensing that the ground was slipping from under their feet and powerless
to oppose, chose round-about paths of struggle. They tried to penetrate inside
the organs of people’s power, to occupy leading position in them and to
disorganise them from within.
There used to be cases when the big landlords, acting under the guise of democrats transferred their land plots to the People’s Committees and took upon themselves the maintenance of the apparatus of the Committees and wormed their way into leading positions. Besides, they tried increasingly to implant their agents in all links of the administration.
The resistance of the class enemy was reflected also in the sabotage of the decisions of the People’s Power on the lowering of rent on land to 37 per cent of the harvest and other measures of the People’s Committees. The Communist Party of North Korea, backed by the mass democratic organizations, carried on a determined struggle for the consolidation of the People’s Committees as a result of which they were purged of reactionary pro-Japanese elements and became a powerful support of the new democratic power.
A completely
different situation was created in the American Zone of supervision—South
Korea. Already before the entry of American troops into Korea, on 7th
September, 1945, General MacArthur issued an order, the so-called “Proclamation
No. 2”, which said that everyone who committed an action “with the aim of
destroying public peace and order, and deliberately performs action hostile to
the allied troops will, according to the decision of a Military Occupation
Court be sentenced to death or any other punishment which the Court
determines.”
How soon it had become clear that it was primarily the national-liberation movement, the struggle of the popular masses for independence and democracy which was considered a blow to the American order! The edge of the police regime created in South Korea was also directed towards the suppression of this movement, towards the defeat of the democratic forces.
The American occupation forces refused to recognise the democratic organs of power—the Central People’s Government and the People’s Committees in the localities. On 17th October, 1945, General Hodge, who was commanding American troops in South Korea declared that the sole government and the sole authority in South Korea is the America Military Administration.
The occupation
authorities of the USA completely retained the Japanese colonial administrative
system, the Japanese laws, orders and rules, the entire colonial apparatus
hated by the people. In the beginning, they even attempted to keep also the
Japanese administration in the Government organs and to retain the Japanese
police and gendarmerie and it was only under the public pressure that they were
forced to give this up. But while removing the Japanese officials, they placed
instead “Koreas with experience,” i.e., the active collaborationists. Besides,
they preached increasingly the “theory” which is a favourite one with the
colonisers that the Koreans were “unfit” to rule their country, a theory that
was wholly refuted by the practice of North Korea.
While pursuing colonizing aims, the American military authorities, from the very first day of their arrival in South Korea, directed their efforts towards forming for themselves a social support inside the country and with its assistance, to put a new burden of slavery o the Korean people.
Out of which class elements was this support created? Above all, from the representatives of the most reactionary class of Korea—the big landlords and the semi-feudalists who were the stronghold to Japanese colonial administration and had for many years actively helped the Japanese to enslave the country, and themselves plundered and ravaged the mass of people with the protection of the Japanese.
A similar support were the representatives of the big bourgeoisie, who had actively collaborated with the Japanese and had created a position for themselves under them. Such blatant Japanese accomplices as the “textile kings” and the big landlords of Korea—Kim Si Su, and Kim Ion Su or the owner of the aviation company, Pak Hin Sik and similar others, were naturally the most reliable and an already “tested” support for the foreign plunderers. To them were added also the representatives of the reactionary officialdom, who had worked in the Japanese organs of Government, the most mercenary and depraved elements, who purchased the right to serve in the colonial apparatus at the price of national treachery.
But the American could not limit themselves to this type of a support. Its authority amongst the people was far too undermined, the hatred and score evinced by the mass of people towards it was too strong. The ranks of the open traitors had to be supplemented with the Quislings and traitors, playing the role of “fighters for independence”. With this aim, reactionary elements from amongst the Korea emigrants all over the world were gathered. The so-called Provisional Government which had for a quarter of a century lived at the expense of foreign imperialists, was sent for from China. The hour had come even for those Korean reactionaries, who were in emigration in the U.S.A. and had long ago betrayed the interests of their people and become American agents. In October 1946, Syngman Lee7 was hurriedly brought to South Korea in a military planes.8
7 Syngman
Lee is generally known to Indian readers as Syngman Rhee.
8 SYNGMAN
LEE was born in 1874 in a nobleman’s family. Spurred on by ambitious hopes, he
began to participate in political
life and was soon appointed
a member of the Taineh Council under the Korean Emperor. His character began already
to
manifest
itself
here.
Syngman
Lee
supported
as
actively
as
possible
openly treacherous pro-Japanese
elements, who were compelled to resign from the membership of Taineh Council.
In 1898, he was arrested along with other members of the “Independence Club”
and sentenced to indefinite penal servitude.
It is interesting to note that General Hodge represented Syngman Lee as a great patriot, as the State leader of Korea, as “the father of the Korean people” and he is in turn recommended Hodge as a great liberator and friend of the Korean people.
The political centre of the camp of reaction became the Democratic Party, Hang Uk Minchjudan, which was created in the days of the entry of the American troops into Korea. It united the active Japanese accomplices, the big capitalists and the landlords and various types of national traitors in whom there was born a fear before the people and a desire to retain the colonial position of the country. Hang Uk Minchujdan became a nest of national betrayal and the most active force of Korean reaction.
Around the Democratic Party, there grouped other Right parties and organisations, which also represented a bloc of landlords, big capitalists, and corrupt officials. It became a centre of terrorist bands and fascist youth organizations.
Depending on these reactionary fascist forces, the Americans began to create a police terror regime in South Korea. And although Korea is not enemy territory but territory liberated from the enemy, they established military occupation rule in their Zone.
By organizing and supporting Korean reaction, the occupation authorities opposed in every way the creation and the activity of genuinely democratic organization. But they were incapable of halting the swift growth of the democratic movement.
Towards the end of 1945, under the leadership of the Communist Party, mass political organizations were created in South Korea—the Workers’ Confederation of Labour, the Women’s Union, the Union of Communist Youth, the Peasants’ Union. At that very time, a People’s Party was organized, which was nearly close to the Communist Party in its programme and principles, and closely cooperated with it.
But he found a
highly-placed protector. The Japanese Minister plenipotentiary in Korea turned
to the Korean Government with a petition for the release of Syngman Lee. As a
result the indefinite penal servitude was commuted to 7 years’ imprisonment.
In 1904, Syngman Lee was released
from prison and went to America. Immediately after the annexation of Korea in
1910, Syngman Lee returned to his native land. He hoped to make a career for
himself by joining the Japanese imperialist masters. It is not accidental that
the accomplice of Syngman Lee, Sin Hin U pointed out: “Had Syngman Lee received
recognition from the big politicians of Japan, then he would have found a
common language with them.” (“Ideological Questions” from the Japanese Supreme
Court of Korea, Seoul 1938). But the “big politicians” of Japan did not value
the qualities of Syngman Lee. He returned to Korea in 1912 working as the
founder of the Social Department of the Youth Christian Society. He lived in
Korea from 1910 to 1912; seeing that the attempts “to make a contract” with the
Japanese did not lead to anything. Syngman Lee returned to America.
When in 1919, the
Korean emigrants created a Provisional Government in Shanghai, Syngman Lee was
proclaimed its Prime Minister and later—its President. Having received no
recognition from Japan, he became an active accomplice of the Americans. In
1920-21, Syngman Lee succeeded in transferring Korea under the mandatory rule
of the U.S.A. This was such an open betrayal of the ideas of independence that
even the leaders of the self- styled emigre Government began to express their
dissatisfaction. Syngman Lee had to shift in his attempts to retain his
reputation as “fighter for Independence” and at the same time to win
recognition and help from the American imperialists. He persistently sought for
establishment of ties with the reactionary circles of the U.S.A. in every way
before him and poured out torrents of dirty anti-Soviet slander in the columns
of the Hearst Press in order to please the. Simultaneously, he conducted trade
with American businessmen, by selling them the national riches of the country.
The democratic camp in South Korea grew and consolidated.
Thus, the first period after the liberation of Korea from Japanese colonial rule was characterise by a tremendous rise in the political activity of the people by the creation of a People’s Democratic Power as represented by the People’s Committees, the functioning and growth of democratic parties and organizations. However, the different tasks and aims, pursued by the Soviet and the America armies, which had entered the Northern and Southern Zones of the country determined, from the very beginning, the different paths of development of these Zones.
In North Korea, the democratic authority, which was created by the people away, recognized and supported by the Soviet Military Command, was able in this period to demolish the Japanese colonial apparatus and to prepare the conditions for fundamental democratic changes.
In
contradistinction to this, in the Southern Zone, the American occupation
authorities, having kept the mass of people away from the administration of the
country recognized the Japanese colonial administration in accordance with the
interests of American imperialism. They organized and united the forces of
Korean reaction in order, by depending on these forces, to defeat the growing
democratic front and the national liberation democratic movement of the people.
II
THE DECEMBER MEETING ON KOREA OF
THE MINISTERS FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS: TWO PATHS OF DEVELOPMENTS OF THE SOUTHERN
AND NORTHERN
ZONES OF THE COUNTRY (Dec. 1945 –
April, 1947)
In December, 1945, there took place a meeting of the Foreign Ministers of the USSR, U.S.A. and Britain, in which the programme and concrete conditions of the establishment of Korea as an independent democratic State were discussed. Already at this meeting two different approaches to the solution of the Korean problem were noted.
The plan proposed by the American delegation and later withdrawn by it, in fact, meant the conversion of Korea into a mandated territory under the power and authority of a “High Commissioner”. It kept away the Koran people from participating in the administration of the country and did not envisage the creation of a National Government. It advanced, as its most immediate task the formation of an American-Soviet Military Administration, which was to rule the country till the establishment of trusteeship. They further had in view the creation of an administrative organ of Four Powers (U.S.A., U.S.S.R., Great Britain and China) for the establishment of trusteeship which according to the plan could continue for ten years.
The Soviet
delegation could not naturally agree to the American proposals, which ran
counter to the legitimate rights of the Korean people. It brought forward its
own plan which was based on the Moscow Agreement. According to this Agreement,
the Allied Powers had to ensure the restoration of Korea as an independent
State and the creation of conditions for the development of the country on
democratic foundations. The Moscow Agreement recognized the urgency of the
formation of a Provisional Korean Democratic Government. The Agreement says:
“With a view to the re-establishment of Korea as an independent state, the creation of conditions for developing the country on democratic principles and the earliest possible liquidation of the disastrous results of the protracted Japanese domination in Korea, there shall be set up a Provisional Korean democratic government which shall take all the necessary steps for developing the industry transport and agriculture of Korea and the national culture of the Korean people.” (The Soviet Union and the Korean Question, Documents, Moscow 1948, p. 5)
It was decided to form a Joint Soviet-American Commission for assistance in the creation of a Provisional Korean Government.
The most important condition for the implementation of the Moscow Agreement was the obligation taken upon itself by the Soviet Union and by America to consult the democratic parties and organizations of Korea, since it would, of course, be impossible to decide the question of the future of the Korean people without listening to their opinion.
The Joint
Soviet-American Commission was entrusted, “with the participation of the
Provisional Korean democratic government and of the Korean democratic
organisations, to work out measures also for helping and assisting
(trusteeship) the political, economic and social progress of the Korean people,
the development of democratic self-government and the establishment of the
national independence of Korea.” (Ibid., p.
6)
The period of the Trusteeship was fixed at five years and its prolongation was ruled out.
Thus, the decision of the Moscow Agreement which was adopted in conformity with the Soviet plan, corresponded to the fundamental national demands and interests of the Korean people and opened the path for the restoration of Korea as an independent, democratic State. The people of Korea met it with a warm approval All over the North and the South, demonstrations of many thousands were held to greet it. All the democratic parties said organizations of North and South Korea declared their unconditional support to the Moscow decision. It was only the numerically weak reactionary parties and groups which came out against it, since this decision struck a blow at their anti-popular plans.
It turned out that the December meeting of 1945 brought complete clarity on the Korean question and determined the further paths of development of Korea. However, it was only the beginning of the acute, irreconcilable struggle between the U.S.A, which from the very first days, took the course of disrupting the agreement that was adopted bye the Soviet Union which consistently and persistently pressed for its realization in life.
In March 1946, the Joint Soviet-American Commission began its work in Seoul. Contrary to the Agreement, the America delegation in the Joint Commission refused to consult the democratic parties and organizations of Korea, representing the majority of the Korean people and expressing their will. It insisted on consulting the anti-popular Right reactionary organizations and groups. It included in the list of consultations 17 parties and groups of South Korea which had actively fought against the Moscow Agreement.
Being convinced that the position of the Soviet representatives who were pressing for the fulfilment of the Moscow Agreement was unbending, the U.S delegation, after a month and a half’s session, proposed to cease the work of the Commission.
The aggravation of the struggle around the Korean question facilitated the process of the demarcation of political forces inside Korea. Two sharply hostile camps were formed. On the one hand, the Right-wing camp, isolated from the people and uniting all the reactionary forces in the country, all the anti-popular treacherous elements for whom the democratic power, based on the broad masses, was more dreadful and dangerous than the foreign colonizers. On the other hand, the Democratic National Front, fighting for the reunification, independence and democratic development of the country and resting on the support, and sympathy of the broad strata of the people—the workers, peasants, intelligentsia, artisans, handicraftsmen and a considerable number of the middle and petty owners and traders. At the head of this camp stood the working class, headed by the Communist Party. The influence of the Communist Party in the masses grew incessantly and this gave an irretrievable blow to the American policy of disuniting and colonizing the country.
In spite of the disruption of the work of the Joint Commission, the people’s power of North Korea with the direct help and support of the Soviet Army, began to implement an extensive plan of democratic changes. These changes were dictated by the vital interests of the people, by the tasks of the economic and cultural development of the country. They were the only sure guarantee of its independence and sovereignty and were called to transform North Korea into a base of independence and the democratisation of the whole country.
In February, 1946,
at the initiative of local people’s committees, a Provisional People’s
Committee as the central organs of power was formed. Kim II Sun was elected its
president.
Kim II Suen was born in 1912, in the family of a teacher revolutionary. As a boy of 13, Kim II Sun went to Manchuria. On completing middle-school, he joined a partisan detachment and soon became the generally acknowledged leader of the Korean partisan movement. In 1930, Kim II Sun joined the Communist Party. Till partisan detachments that were operating against the Japanese in Manchuria and the North regions of Korea. A talented commander and organiser, he with his fearless and courageous struggle against the Japanese, with his brave exploits for the sake of the liberation of his native land, with his supreme service to the people, who renown as national hero.
The Provisional People’s Committee of North Korea took the lead in implementing democratic changes. The most grandiose of these was the Lad Reform.
It is completely evident that for such a backward agrarian country as Korea, where approximately three-quarters of the population was employed in agriculture, where landlord ownership and the enslaving rent system dominated in agriculture, where the overwhelming majority of the peasantry did not possess any land of its own and languished for many years under the dual yoke of the Japanese colonizers and the Korean landlords and moneylenders, where agriculture was fettered by feudal survivals and was actually in a state of deterioration, the Land Reform was an acute political and economic necessity.
It was only after having solved the question of land, and liberating the peasantry from feudal bondage and predatory exploitation and after having undermined the economic base of the class of landlords, that it was possible to go over to other democratic changes. The Law on Land Reform adopted by the Provisional People’s Committee on 5th March, 1945 envisaged a radical solution of this question.
“The task of Land
Reform”, the Law points out, “is the abolition of Japanese landownership—the
landownership of the Korean landlords and the abolition of the rent system.
Only he who tills the land will have the right to own it. The agrarian
structure in North Korea will rest on independent peasant households which are
free from the landlords, and are the private property of their possessors.” (Land Reform in North Korea.)
In conformity with
this Law, land belonging to the following categories was confiscated and
distributed freely to the peasants: land belonging to the Japanese State, to
those individuals who are Japanese by birth and jurisdiction, to traitors to
the Korean people who had actively collaborated with the Japanese organs of
power and to those who had fled from the country at the time of Korea’s
liberation from the Japanese yoke; the landlords who did not carry on their
farming and had given all their land on lease; owners of plots of land, who
had, irrespective of its size, given it systematically on lease; churches which
had more than 5 chons of land.
Korean
landlords who owned farms of more than 5 chon9 of land; the9 Korean
measure of land equal to 0.991 hectare.
The entire confiscated land was released from all debts and burdens and handed over free of charge to the perpetual ownership of the Korean peasantry.
Tractors, agricultural implements, outhouses, estates of the landlords were placed at the disposal of People’s Committees for distribution amongst the farm labourers and peasants with very little land. Forests attached to landed properties, irrigation and other technical equipment were also confiscated and transferred within the province of the Provisional People’s Committee.
As a result of the Land Reform, more than one million chon of land was confiscated. Seven- hundred and twenty-five thousand landless peasants and peasants with little land received it; more than 60 percent of this land was received by 400,000 landless tenants and farm labourers. The Land Reform was implemented with the direct and active support of the broad peasant masses. In some places it was carried out by the People’s Committees and Peasant Committees, specially created for this purpose, and elected at meetings of the landless peasants and peasants with little land.
It is difficult to overestimate the significance of the Land Reform for the population of North Korea. It liquidated the Japanese landownership and the landownership of the Korean landlords; eliminated the lease system, and freed the peasantry from the oppression of the landlords and the moneylenders and made them independent agricultural producers. It liquidated the economic foundations of the most reactionary class—the landlords, which was the support of collaboration and treachery both in the period of the Japanese rule and after the liberation of the country. Moreover, it undermined the forces of reaction inside the country.
The Land Reform
unleashed the political activity of the peasantry, and joined it to broad State
activity. Having undermined the forces of reaction and consolidated the forces
of democracy, it facilitated the conditions for carrying out other democratic changes
into practice.
Along with this,
the Provisional People’s Committee of North Korea adopted a decision about a
single agricultural natural tax, which provides for supplies to the State; from
fields under water 27 per cent of the harvest, fields under cereals and
technical crops 23 per cent and 10 per cent from land cultivated by Hvadzenmins,10 the so-called
“burning fields”. After the payment of agricultural tax, the peasants obtained
the right to dispose of their harvest freely.
Land Reform and the introduction of an agricultural tax helped in solving the food provisions problem, which was the most difficult for North Korea.
The people’s power of North Korea implemented the nationalization of the industry, transport, communication and banks, belonging to the Japanese and to the traitors to the Korean people.
The Law of the Provisional People’s Committee of North Korea, adopted on August 10, 1946 says:
“All the industrial
enterprises electric stations, railway and water transport communication,
commercial and cultural institutions, banks, belonging earlier to the Japanese
and to individuals who are Japanese by birth and by jurisdiction as well as to
the traitor to the Korean people are to be confiscated without any compensation
and declared the property of the Korean people, i.e., they are to be
nationalized.” (Law on the Nationalization of Industry, Means of Transport,
Communication and Banks in North Korea.)
10 Hvadzenmins—Peasants
cultivating the land in mountain regions that are not scorched. They burn
forests and bushes and sow grain crops and potatoes on scorched plots.
It is quite obvious that the nationalization of Japanese industry has become possible only owing to the fact that the Soviet Army only preserved national property and gave it to a People’s State.
In the Law on the Nationalization of Industry, it is stated that:
“the Soviet Army
entering on the territory of Korea with the purpose of defeating the Japanese
Army, liberated North Korea from Japanese slavery and guaranteed democratic
liberties to the Korean people, safeguarded the private and public property of
the Koreans, preserved national wealth and created the possibility for the most
rapid economic and cultural rebirth of the Korean State.”
Thus, the commanding heights in the most important branches of economy (largescale industry, banks, transport) passed over into the hands of the State and along with the agrarian reform, was the biggest step in the path of building the economy of the People’s Democratic State and unfolded broad possibilities for the further development of the country.
While setting about the restoration of industry in North Korea, the people’s power was simultaneously confronted with the necessity of a fundamental reorganization of this industry. The colonial policy of Japanese imperialism determined the one-sided distorted development of the industry of Korea. It was wholly subservient to the interests of Japanese monopoly capital. The construction of factories, mines, pits, electric stations and railroads in Korea by the Japanese had the aim not only of extracting super-profits and exploiting the cheap labour but also of converting Korea into a military strategic springboard for Japan. The industry of the colony served exclusively the aims of predatory Japanese imperialism and was an integral part of the war industrial base of the metropolitan country.
Before the
people’s power of North Korea stood the task of the complete subordination of
the development of industry to the interests of the nation, the creation and
consolidation of a People’s Democratic State and a rise in the well-being of
the people. While the agrarian reform liquidated the class of landlords, the
nationalization of industry, belonging to the Japanese and to the traitors to
the Korean people, liquidated the economic base of the Korean big bourgeoisie,
closely connected with Japanese capital. And although in North Korea it was not
numerous, since the main enterprises belonged to the Japanese monopolists, its
liquidation signified a serious blow to the forces of reaction.
Along with this, there are small and medium enterprises in North Korea which are in the hands of the Koreans. The enactment of the Provisional People’s Government, which was adopted in October, 1946, provided for the protection of the rights of private property and encouragement to private initiative in industry and in commerce. “In the interests of drawing in private capital of Korean citizens for increasing the output of production and goods of wide consumption for the needs of the population”, the sale and lease of mills, factories, mines, forests and fisheries (with not more than 50 workers) and also commercial investments, belonging to the Japanese and now at the disposal of the People’s Committees to industrialists and merchants was permitted in certain cases.
However, while
permitting and encouraging private initiative, the people’s power took it under
its own control and directed it towards ensuring the interests of national
economy.
The conditions of work of the workers and employees were altered in a radical manner. The Law on Labour adopted in June 1946, was the greatest gain of the working class of North Korea; the eight- hour day was established in enterprises and institutions, and in heavy work and in industries below the ground, the seven-hour day. Child labour which was widely employed before was forbidden. Labour protection and social insurance were introduced. This contributed to a rapid growth of the productivity of the labour of workers, the birth and the development of labour emulation and shock work.
In the process of the struggle for the democratic rebuilding of the country and the restoration of national economy, their own national cadres of specialists, who had successfully familiarized themselves with the science of directing production were created and grew. As a result of the reforms passed, the conditions were created for the emancipation of the Korean women, who had no rights and were subjected both to unheard of degradation and savage exploitation. They were granted equal rights with men in all the spheres of State, economic, cultural, and social and political life. The Korean woman became an equal partner in the building of a new life.
The implementation of democratic changes in North Korea took place under conditions of an acute class struggle. The remnants of the defeated class of landlords and collaborationist bourgeoisie, the reactionary bureaucratic elements, the section linked with the Catholic Church and in the main with the Protestant Church, which was since long connected with the American Missionaries—the agents of U.S. imperialism—such were the internal forces of reaction. But besides this, bands of terrorists and wreckers were constantly sent by the American and Korean reactionaries from the South. These hostile elements tried to disrupt the democratic changes in every way. They, as before, tried to penetrate inside the People’s committees and political parties in order to disrupt them from within. The reactionaries succeeded in temporarily worming their way in to the leading organs of the democratic Party of North Korea. But the lower organizations exposed the anti-popular policy of the treacherous leadership of this Party and the first session of the Party in February, 1946, the Central Committee headed by Cho Man Sik was dismissed. During the carrying out of the land reform, the reactionaries assured the peasants that the reform would lead to starvation and the collapse of agriculture. They frightened the peasants that the land would be returned to the landlords.
Possessing no influence among the people and deeply scorned by them, the enemies of the people’s Democratic power, directed by South Korean reaction and its American leaders, in their impotent and violent fury, resorted to the most diverse forms of struggle, from wrecking acts to sabotage and terror.
The unification in August, 1946, of the Communist Party and the New People’s Party which was close to it in its aims and tasks, into a Labour Party of North Korea (Puk Choson Notondan) was of tremendous importance for the democratisation of the country. This contributed to the further growth and consolidation of the democratic camp in the country. The Labour Party became the soul and the leading force of the United Democratic National Front of North Korea (Puk Choson Minchjyuchjyui Minchjok Chonchjen) which was formed in the middle of 1946 and united under its banner more than 5 million people.
In the process of
the democratic construction, the People’s Committees—the basis of the New
Democratic regime of North Korea, were consolidated. The People’s Committees in
the Northern Zone became the genuinely democratic organs of power.
“The defeat and the liquidation of the main centres of Fascism and world aggression”, Comrade Stalin points out “have led to profound changes in the political life of the peoples of the world, to a broad growth of the democratic movement amongst peoples. Learning from the experience of the war, the mass of people have understood that the fate of States can never be entrusted to reactionary Governments, pursuing narrow, caste and selfish anti-popular aims. It is, precisely therefore, that the people, not wishing to live any longer in the old way, are taking the fate of their States in their own hands, establishing democratic order and waging an active struggle against the forces of reaction and against the instigators of a new war.” (J.V. Stalin: Pravda, 1.5. 1946)
The main feature
of the People’s Committees of North Korea is precisely that they represent the
power of the toilers, the vast majority of the people, under the leadership of
the working class.
On 5th
September, 1946, the Provisional People’s Committee of North Korea adopted the
law on the people’s Committees of the provinces, districts, towns and volosts
as organs of local people’s power, elected by the people on the basis of
general, equal, direct voting rights with secret ballot. The law laid down the
responsibility of the members of the people’s Committees to the electors. “If a
member of the People’s Committee fulfils badly the responsibility with which he
is charged, the electors have the right in the established legal order to
recall him and elect a new one. All members of People’s Committees must
understand that they are the chosen and trusted persons of the people.
Therefore, the fulfilment of the popular will is their highest duty.” (Law on
People’s Committees.)
In November, 1946, in North Korea elections to the provincial, district, and town People’s Committees took place and in the beginning of 1947, to the village and volosts committees. These elections demonstrated the great solidarity and unity of the people of North Korea. 99.6 per cent of votes were cast for the candidates of the United National Democratic Front.
The representatives of all strata of the population joined the People’s Committees. All the democratic parties and social organizations of North Korea were represented in them.
The First Congress of the People’s Committees held in February, 1946, elected the highest legislative organ of North Korea—the People’s Assembly. It was composed of 89 members of the Labour Party, 29 members of the Democratic Party, 29 members of the Chonudan Party and 90 non-Party members. (The Chonudan Party is pre-eminently peasant in composition. Its programme, along with religious principles puts forward the demand for democratic reforms. The Chonudan Party is inside the Untied National Democratic front of North Korea).
The People’s Assembly and the People’s Committee elected in February, 1947, exercised legislative and executive authority in North Korea till the formation of all-Korean organs of power.
While the population of North Korea, with the support of the soviet Army, effected a very great transformation laying the economic basis of People’s Democracy, in South Korea the American military authorities, relying on Korean reaction, continued their policy of enslaving the country consistently and in a planned manner. This was expressed in the preparation of a corresponding political and economic regime, which would guarantee the implementation of the colonizing plans of U.S.A. as well as in the military measures, directed towards converting South Korea into a military and strategic base of the U.S.A.
Having disrupted
the work of the Joint Soviet-American Commission, the Americans commenced
terroristic operations in their zone against Left organizations and leaders,
against all those who supported the decisions of the Moscow meeting on Korea,
against the democratic progressive forces of the country, and primarily against
the Communists.
The Communist Party was forced to go over to a semi-illegal position. The American authorities issued laws, demanding not only the registration of political parties and organizations but also the submission of a complete list of all members and all financial documents to the police. There is no need to say that the edge of these laws was directed, above all, against the Communist Party.
The American Military Command prohibited Left organizations from holding demonstrations and meetings, and encouraged in every way the pogroms of the reactionaries.
The American
occupation authorities of South Korea paid great attention to the formation of
a police corps. The police recruitment took place by recruiting “those who had
experience”, i.e., those who had worked earlier in the Japanese police. The
police was vested with extensive powers. The police was empowered to keep under
arrest arbitrarily thousands of innocent people for any period of time. All its
activities were carried out under the guidance of the American military police.
In South Korea, a broad branching out network of terroristic organizations, uniting the fascist youth, the sons of the big landlords and the capitalists, all kinds of de-classed rabble and criminal elements began to be formed for helping the police. The most significant amongst these was the fascist organization, the Korean National Youth which was taken into the keeping of the American military administration.
After having taken the Japanese mills and factories under their control and having seized the commanding positions belonging to the Japanese, the Americans utilised this to penetrate more deeply into all the pores of the economy.
Having set the aim of converting South Korea into its colony, the American military administration undertook nothing to restore Korean industry. In 1946, 40 per cent of the enterprises in South Korea were in operation, in 1947 only 25 per cent while even those enterprises which were functioning worked far below the full capacity.
The American monopolies were not interested in the rebirth of Korean industry which would have created the prerequisites for the economic independence of the country. They were not interested in the restoration of mills and factories, whose production would constitute a competition to the goods exported from U.S.A, In South Korea there were nearly 300 enterprises (including also small ones) of the machine-building and instrument industry. However, the American authorities included only 16 enterprises in the plan of output for 1947. The ship-building industry was exclusively occupied with the repairs of small ships. In spite of the fact that here, there are two shipping wharves equipped for the construction of steamers and 55 shipping wharves for building country-boats, in two years only one boat was built in all the wharves. The locomotive and wagon-building factories existing in South Korea have the right to occupy themselves only with repair work, and the Americans have begun importing locomotives into the country.
The production of the textile industry (which in the main was concentrated precisely in South Korea) comprised in 1946 altogether of only 17.6 percent of the production of 1941. For the future, textile production was still more curtailed.
While holding back the restoration of Korean enterprises, the Americans began to import goods in the country which could be provided with success locally for the needs of the Korean population. In the first place, it was subordinated to the task of converting South Korea into a springboard of American reaction against the forces of democracy in Eastern Asia, and against the Soviet Union. In passing, the American monopolies disposed of in South Korea any rubbish, left over from the war production; cement, preserved food, old clothing, telephone and telegraph apparatus, motor lorries, etc. were transported in increasing quantities.
South Korea is in the main an agricultural region and the land question is a central question for it. Besides, after the liberation of the country, no changes took place in this sphere—everything remained as under the Japanese colonial rule. The landlords’ ownership of the land and the enslaving lease system were fully retained. As before, the landlords and the usurer remained the all-powerful masters in the countryside. Eighty percent of the peasants had no land and were forced to rent it.
The biggest Japanese monopoly—the Eastern Colonial Society—was converted into an American company, “New Korea”. Having concentrated in its hands the former Japanese land, irrigation and other constructions, and the industrial enterprises, this company remained as before the main colonial plunderer.
The American imperialists were not interested in effecting agrarian changes in South Korea. From the very first day, they opposed their implementation as well as the carrying out of other democratic reforms into practice. The Americans were not interested in the liquidation of feudal relationships and the backwardness of the Korean countryside. This backwardness was suitable and necessary for them, since it was by utilising it that they hoped to realise their aggressive plans. Besides, the agrarian transformation would have undermined their economic positions and the positions of their allies in South Korea—the Korean landlords and the capitalists, closely linked with landownership.
Thus, owing to the colonising policy of the American imperialists, agriculture of South Korea continues to remain fettered by feudal survivals, and the peasant masses doomed to bondage and misery.
South Korea is indispensable for the U.S.A., primarily as a war base, as a strategic springboard for the fight against the U.S.S.R. and democratic China..
As soon as American troops entered into South Korea, they began to implement their plan of military measures. It was expressed in the creation of military and aviation bases, in the extension and re- equipment of sea ports, in the formation and training of police and military formations from amongst the Koreans. The Americans began the extension of the Port of Fuzan (Pusan) and the construction of a new port to the North-East of Fuzan. The construction of a new pier was begun in the Port of Inchon. Aerodromes were reconstructed and extended. The aerodrome of Kimpo, 40 kilometres away from Seoul, was extended several times. Barrack construction was developed on a broad scale.
The American military authorities paid special attention to the formation and to the suitable training of the so-called “Korean army.” It was with this purpose that the Department of National Defence was created. The command of the army formations was selected from among those Koreans who had served in the Japanese army. The training was conducted by American instructors with American weapons. The preparation of armed forces was also going on under the guise of the creation of a police corps. The Americans took into their own hands the military training of the terrorist youth organizations of a fascist type to which their officers were attached in the capacity of advisers.
Consequently, the expansionist policy of American imperialism in South Korea proceeded from the very beginning on the lines of a complete political and economic enslavement of the country and its conversion into a military and strategic springboard of the U.S.A. in the Far East.
However,
insuperable barriers stood in the way of the realisation of the designs of the
USA, in the form of the national-liberation movement, which drew into its
powerful stream the broad masses of people.
The first
significant mass action against US imperialism and its puppets in South Korea
was the general strike of October, 1946, which passed over into an all-people’s
liberation struggle. Begun in September, 1946, on the initiative of the
railwaymen of Pusan, it was caught up by all the workers of the country and
soon became general. The peasants supported the workers. Everywhere in the
villages, there began revolts and demonstrations. The peasants attacked the
landlords’ estates and the police posts, wreaking vengeance on the traitors to
the people.
In the beginning
of October, the strike and demonstration in many places grew over into armed
uprisings. In the struggle were included the employees, the students, the
traders—representatives of all strata of the population. According to the
incomplete figures, more than one million took part in the movement. The main
slogans of those in revolt were: immediate cessation of the terror and the transfer of all power to the
People’s Committees; the guarantee of political liberties, the carrying out of
Land Reform; the implementation of nationalization of industry, transport,
communications; the immediate passing of a democratic law on labour as in the North.
At the head of the October people’s struggle emerged the working class and the Communist Party of South Korea, which in November merged with the People’s and New People’s Parties, which were close to it and formed the Labour Party of South Korea (Nam Choson Notondan).
The people’s
struggle was suppressed with great savagery, which took a toll of innumerable
victims but the bloody defeat of the movement, brought about with the active
help of the American troops, did not crush the will of the people for
independence and for liberty.
The strike
movement assumed a broad sweep. The strikes bore a clearly expressed political
character. The main demands of the strikers, the demonstrators and the
partisans were: (1) Transfer of power to the People’s Committees; (2) The
carrying out of similar democratic transformations as in North Korea. It was
generally supported by the peasantry and by other strata of the people, which
in its turn testifies to the qualitative growth of the movement. Thus, the
general strike in March 1947, called forth by the intensified repression on the
part of the American authorities, their order for the arrest of the Central
Committee of the Labour Party, was immediately caught up by the peasants, the
employees and the students. In the villages “rice riots” flared up now and
then. In some regions, partisan actions developed. The period from the Moscow
meeting in December, 1945 to the summer of 1947, disclosed still more clearly
the profound difference in the two paths along which the development of the two
zones of Korea proceeded.
III
CONSOLIDATION OF THE FOUNDATION
OF PEOPLE’S DEMOCRACY IN NORTH KOREA: THE MILITARY OCCUPATION REGIME IN
SOUTHERN ZONE OF THE COUNTRY
(April 1947 to September 1948)
In April, 1947, the Minister for Foreign Affairs of the U.S.S.R., V.M. Molotov and the Secretary of State of the U.S.A., Marshall, exchanged letters on the question of Korea. V.M. Molotov proposed the renewal of the work of the Joint Commission on the basis of the exact fulfilment of the Moscow Agreement, having defined as its main tasks:
“1. Formation of a
Provisional Korean Democratic Government with the broad participation of Korean
democratic parties and social organizations, in order to accelerate the
political and economic unification of Korea as an independent State, exempt
from foreign interference which would put an end to the division of the country
into two zones.
“2. Formation
throughout Korea of democratic organs of Government by means of free elections
based upon universal and equal suffrage.
“3. Assistance to the Korean people in reviving Korea as an independent democratic State and in developing the national economy and national culture.”
(The Soviet Union and the Korean Question, Moscow, 1948, p. 17)
On May 21, 1947,
the Joint Soviet-American Commission restarted its work, but in spite of the
agreement, the position of the American representatives remained unchanged.
They proceeded from the following: either to ensure a majority of Right
reactionary elements in the Provisional Government or if this were not to
succeed, to disrupt the work of the Commission and carry on separate
operations. This was confirmed by the whole course of the work of the
Commission and the conduct of the American delegates. They presented the
Commission a list of 425 parties and organizations, whom it was necessary to
consult. All kinds of local, religious, and even purely family groups and trade
institutions were included here. A considerable part of these were fictitious.
Here there were also active opponents of the Moscow Agreement, the participants
in the “Committee of Anti-Trusteeship Struggle.” All these organizations
represented, according to the American figures, 70 million people, which
exceeds by five times the number of the inhabitants of South Korea.
The striving of
the American delegation to ensure, in any way possible, the predominance of
reactionary elements and not to permit the creation of a democratic Government,
was expressed quite openly by the American representatives themselves.
However, the situation which existed was not in favour of the Americans. The firm stand of the Soviet delegation, supported by the broad masses of the Korean people, the influence, and the organization of the parties of the Democratic National Front headed by the Labour Party, the unpopularity of the Right organizations and leaders amongst the peoples served as a serious impediment in the realization of the American plans of dividing and colonizing the country. Convinced of this, the American delegation took the course of disrupting the work of the Joint Commission and of carrying out separate actions. In his letter to V.M. Molotov, dated the 26th of August, 1947, Lovett, the U.S. Vice-Secretary of State, while affirming that the Joint Commission was incapable of fulfilling its mission, presented the proposals of the U.S.A. regarding the creation of provisional zonal legislative assemblies in South and in North Korea, which was basically contrary to the decisions of the Moscow Agreement and which secured the division of Korea into two zones.
The Soviet Government rejected these proposals. In his reply, V.M. Molotov pointed out that the Joint Commission had far from exhausted its possibilities and that the failure of the work of the Commission was the result of the position taken by the U.S.A., the result of its unilateral activities.
In the summer of 1947, when the Joint Commission was still conducting its work, the occupation authorities in South Korea began to carry out a smashing up on a broad scale of the democratic parties and organizations. In all places, there began mass arrests of Left leaders, the smashing up of all democratic papers. All the progressive organizations were driven underground. Terror assumed unheard of dimensions inside the country.
In reply to the
declaration of the head of the Soviet delegation in the Joint Commission,
General Commander Shtykov, that the mass terror and repression were disrupting
the work of the Commission and to the demand to adopt measures for restoring
the normal conditions, the American representatives answered cynically that the
repression in South Korea was a normal police measure against “violators of
order”. They even attempted to blame the Soviet delegation, that being a
“guest”, it was interfering in the domestic
affairs of south Korea, although it was absolutely clear that the Soviet
delegation in the
International Commission created by a decision of the Moscow Agreement, could not remain indifferent to the activities which disrupted this decision.
Seeing that the U.S. Government did not wish to fulfil the obligations taken upon itself and that it was disrupting the work of the Joint Commission, the Soviet Government, through its representatives in the Commission brought forth the proposal for a simultaneous withdrawal of the Soviet and the American troops from Korea and for granting the Korean people the opportunity to decide their own State affairs. This proposal was a radical solution of the question. It corresponded with the fundamental interests of the Korean people and was met by them with warm approval. But it did not suit the plans of the American imperialists.
The ruling circles of the U.S.A., which till now had affirmed hypocritically that they were striving for the quickest withdrawal of foreign troops from Korea, refused to accept the Soviet proposal.
Having grossly
violated its obligations, taken at the Moscow Conference and having twice
disrupted the work of the Joint Commission, the U.S.A. illegally brought the
Korean question for discussion in the General Assembly and tried to screen its
colonizing policy in Korea with the authority of the UNO.
The United States managed to press the discussion of the Korean question at the second session of the General Assembly of the UNO. Against the protests of the representatives of the USSR, this discussion took place without the participation of and behind the back of the Korean people. Under the pressure of the USA, which mobilised the majority machine, the session adopted a decision to send a Provisional Commission of the UNO to Korea, which had ostensibly “to supervise” the carrying out of the elections and the creation of a Korean government. This decision violated also the principles of national self-determination of the Korean people and the international agreements on Korea. The Soviet Union and the countries of People’s Democracy refused to participate in this illegal Commission.
The population of Korea replied to the formation of the UNO Commission with general mass protest. The Commission turned for consultation to another illegally formed organ, to the so-called Inter- Session Committee which gave a directive to conduct separate elections in South Korea. Thus, the American Government completely revealed its plans. They consisted in the fact that in order to tighten the occupation of South Korea, to consolidate the position of its support in the country—the collaborationists and the reactionaries—to form out of them, under the cover of the UNO, an obedient puppet government and with its support, to realise the conversion of South Korea into a colony and a military-strategic springboard of the USA.
The terror intensified. Tens of thousands of patriots were murdered, tortured and cast into prison. Even before the far from objective materials of the UNO Commission on Korea pointed out that 30,000 democratic leaders were imprisoned in South Korean prisons, which exceeded the number of those imprisoned under the Japanese. These materials cite that “the majority of people with democratic views are now either under arrest, or in prisons or their freedom of movement is restricted.” (Pravda, 11-12- 1948)
The American
militarists in South Korea created chaos and violence. Along with the Korean
police and the fascist terrorists, they tortured the population not only for
participating in the national- liberation movement, but also for the slightest
sympathy with this movement. The American occupationists and their agents
destroyed the homes of peaceful inhabitants merely because their owners
supported the decision of the Moscow meeting on Korea. They arrested thousands
of Koreans, who had participated in the meetings of support to the work of the
Joint Soviet-American Commission. They
declared
the unemployed as “seditious” because they demanded work. The strikes of
workers were crushed with the force of arms. Peaceful demonstrations were fired
upon.
In 1920, Vladimir Ilych Lenin, pointing to the predatory character of Japanese colonial rule in Korea wrote:
“Here there is a
combination of all the methods of Tsarism, all the latest perfected technique,
with a purely Asiatic system of torture and unheard of cruelty. But now the
Americans want to snatch this dainty Korean piece away.” (V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. XXV, Russ, ed.,
Moscow, p. 502)
The American imperialists, who had for many years longed for the “dainty Korean piece”, in attempting to seize it, created in their zone, an occupation regime which combined unheard of brutality and purely Asiatic torture and the latest technique of plunder and exploitation of the mass of people.11
It is no accident that the American military authorities learnt the experience of conducting “plebiscites” from the German fascists before conducting separate elections in South Korea.
The entire conduct, the practices of the American military authorities in South Korea, confirms that they used extensively the fascist methods of suppressing and destroying the national-liberation and democratic movement of the mass of people.
The entire Korean people in the North and in the South met the decision on separate elections with profound discontent. Even the Centrist and a section of the Right-wing political parties of South Korea came forward with a call to boycott the elections.
Towards the end of April, 1948, there was a meeting held in Pyongyang of, representatives of 56 political parties and social organizations of North and South Korea, uniting more than 10 million people. The meeting decided unanimously to boycott the elections. It turned to the Governments of the USA and the USSR with a request for the immediate withdrawal of foreign troops from Korea.
After this a meeting of 33 political parties and social organizations of North and South Korea was convened at which a declaration was worked out, which envisaged the immediate withdrawal of foreign troops, the convocation of an all-Korean Congress for the formation of a Provisional Democratic Government and the carrying out of universal elections to the legislative organs.
However, contrary to the will of
the Korean people, irrespective of the mass general protest, the American
authorities conducted the so-called elections in South Korea. They were held
under conditions of barbaric police terror and force. The American troops, the
Korean police, the terrorist organizations were brought out in fighting
readiness. American warships were brought to the shores of Korea. American planes flew over the country;
American soldiers, armed with automatic
revolvers patrolled the streets. Police patrols were quartered
by the election booths and in many places the police were inside the election
booths. The electors were searched and beaten up.
|
In Seoul, on the day of voting, 10th May 1948, a state of war was declared. At all places in South Korea, mass arrest took place. For three days from the 7th to 10th may, 1948, 5,424 people were arrested, 350 were murdered and wounded for participating in the movement against separate elections. From 11th to 14th of May, 137 people were wounded and 128 were killed from among those who had refused to participate in the elections.
Eighty-four landlords, 34 big owners of enterprises, 23 officials who had earlier actively collaborated with the Japanese entered the “National Assembly” of South Korea which was created by means of the pressure of military and police forces, through terror and falsification.
On August 15, it was declared that a Korean ‘Government’ had been appointed. It was headed by Li Bom Sok, who had been an emigre for more than 30 years in China and had arrived in South Korea on the recommendation of the American Intelligence Service. It is characteristic that the Prime Minister is at the same time the leader of a fascist organization, “The Korean National Youth” and four “Ministers” in his Government are members of the presidium of this organization.
The head of the
Seoul Police, the landlord Chan Tek San who had won notoriety for himself as a
leader of pogroms and a terrorist, was appointed Minister for Foreign Affairs.
Chon Dzin Han, who was renowned for his bloody vengeance against the strikers,
who was the protector of strike-breakers and the leader of reactionary trade
unions, received the portfolio of Minister for Social Work. An official of the
Japanese Court, Li Ni became Minister for Justice. The landlord Yun Chi Iyon,
who had in the past been an active leader of the pro-Japanese organizations in
Korea was appointed Minister for Internal Affairs.
An offspring of
the former Emperor’s family had been included in the ‘government’ but there was
not a single representative of the labouring people—the workers, the peasants,
the intelligentsia.
Out of the
eighteen Ministers, eight are members and leading workers of the democratic
party Hang Uk Minchujdan—the citadel of Korean reaction.
Syngman Rhee was proclaimed President of the ‘Republic’. Such a South Korean ‘Government’ was created by the Americans in order to secure and consolidate a political system in the country, suited to their colonizing designs so that with the assistance of this ‘government’ screening them they could suppress the national-liberation movement of the Korean people. From the very first days of its work, the puppet Government directed all its efforts for the fulfilment of the plans of the American masters.
The agreement, signed in the middle of September 1948, by the American Command and the South Korean ‘Government’ is extremely significant. According to this agreement, the American Command retained complete political, economic, and military control over South Korea as well as the right to dispose of the national wealth of the country without any restriction. The one-sided character of this treaty was so evident that even many members of the National Assembly refused to accept it.
In December, 1948, the USA signed an agreement with its puppet Government on the rendering of ‘American aid’ to South Korea, for the next three years, in accordance with the Marshall Plan. According to this agreement, the ‘Government’ of South Korea undertakes to establish control over foreign trade, through the introduction of a system of licenses on export and import, and to develop the industry, working for export. It undertakes to create conditions favourable to foreign capital investment. Besides, American citizens will be granted the most favourable conditions for commercial, industrial or any other kind of activity. The Syngman Rhee ‘Government’ undertakes to transfer to America the material it needs and primarily military and strategic raw material, and to come to an agreement on “individual sections” of its economic plan, in other words, on all its economic measures. This treaty is a new act of the economic and political subjection of South Korea to American imperialists.
By utilizing the
Syngman Rhee regime, the Americans have begun to extract its natural resources
out of South Korea. They are exporting strategic raw materials—wolfarm,
molybdenum and other rare metals out of it. The entire ferro-wolfarm ore is
exported to America. From May to August, 1947 alone 87,070,000 wongs (4 wongs = 1 rouble) worth of lead, 39,200,000 worth of wolfarm and
50,000,000 wong worth of ferro wolfarm were exported to America. (Korean Year Book, Chosen Nenkvan, 1949,
Pyongyang, p. 185)
While holding back Korean economy artificially in a state of decline, the American imperialists affirm that without the investment of American capital, South Korea is not in a position to solve the task of the restoration of economy. Under the cover of this colonizing theory, they have begun increasingly to import their capital inside the country; American companies have invested more than 750,000 dollars in the electrical industry of South Korea. All the coal mines of South Korea have already passed under their control. In the four Provinces of the South alone, three million dollars were invested by them in the extraction of non-ferrous metals.
An inevitable result of the colonizing policy of the USA is the deterioration in the life of the mass of people of South Korea. According to the official figures, the total number of unemployed in South Korea is 700,000 and according to an admission of the Seoul press, it has reached 2,790,000.
Inflation is rising. The gap between the excessively high prices of goods and the low wages is increasing more and more. Thus as compared with 1936, the prices in 1948 had gone up by 710 times while wages by 200 times (Ibid, p. 191). Speculation has assumed catastrophic dimensions and disorganized completely the economic life of the country.
The position of the peasantry is deteriorating. According to the figures of 1947, 63 per cent of the area under cultivation in South Korea belongs to the landlords, who comprise 3.4 per cent of the total number of farmers engaged in agriculture.
Rent, taxes, rice supplies to the Syngman Rhee Government and all manner of extortions take away a lion’s share from the peasants’ harvest and sometimes even exceed it. The collection of rice supplies is accompanied by force and by arrests. Their dimensions are growing continuously. Thus, in three years, they were increased twice over. The sowing area diminished by 31 per cent in comparison with 1944. The annual yield of rice also fell approximately to the same extent (Ibid, p. 190). South Korea which is the granary of the country is experiencing an acute and chronic shortage of food supply; its population is starving. At the same time, the profits of the colonizing companies and the incomes of the landlords are growing. According to official figures, the net income of the “New Korea Company”, for a little more than two years, was 2,280 million wongs, (Ibid, p. 188) (4 wongs = 1 rouble).
In March, 1948, the American military administration issued an order for the dissolution of the “New Korea” Joint-Stock Company. According to this order, the land of the company had to be sold off to the peasants, having upto 2 chon of their own land. The peasants were bound to pay compensation for 15 years to the “Central Land Administration” that was created in the place of the Company. The American military authorities placed certain hopes on this measure. They timed it with the elections to the “National Assembly”, calculating on deceiving the votes in the countryside with this “gift”, but the peasantry of South Korea gauged unerringly the significance of this “reform”. It was not in a position to pay for the purchase of the land. The peasant of South Korea, in an overwhelming majority of cases, is a poor insolvent debtor. He is not able, nor does he want to pay for land which by right belongs to him, which in the North of the country has been distributed free of charge for perpetual use to the peasants. As one should expect, the land sold off fell into the hands of landlords and speculators.
The predatory
colonizing actions of the U.S.A. are made more and more difficult by the
resistance of the mass of people of South Korea. The anti-imperialist
liberation struggle, headed by the working class and the Labour party is
extending and growing inside the country. The movement against the American
policy of dividing and colonizing the country, against the separate elections,
against treacherous actions of the puppet Government has assumed the character
of an all-people’s liberation struggle for national sovereignty, for the unity
of the country, for People’s Democracy. The victories of People’s Democracy in
North Korea, ensuring the rise and development of people’s economy, an
improvement in the well-being of the mass of people, a resurgence of the national
culture of the Korean people are a powerful stimulus to this struggle.
Already towards the end of 1947 almost all the 1,034 nationalised industries in North Korea were restored and put in operation. The production of more than 100 new types of products was mastered. The National Economic Plan of 1948 was fulfilled by 105.5 per cent. Industrial production rose by 45.9 per cent in comparison with 1947, and 3.3 times over as compared with 1946.
Released from the shackles of feudalism and serfdom, agriculture entered the path of progress. The sowing area increased in 1948 in comparison with 1945 by 15.6 per cent and the productivity of the main agricultural cultivation considerable exceeded the pre-war level. Improved irrigation installations were brought into service, which in their turn made it possible to extend the sowing area of the irrigated fields. In the beginning of 1948, 58 such installations were built and set into operation.
While in South Korea, just as under the Japanese rule, the main figure in the countryside is the landless peasant-tenant, in the North, as a result of the agrarian reform, the independent agricultural producer, free from the fetters of feudal and usurer exploitation, has become the main figure.
The existence of a democratic State power, representing the interests of the broad labouring masses of town and countryside, the nationalisation and steady development of the most important branches of economy, the broad support rendered by the People’s Committees to the peasant farms, create extremely favourable conditions for the further progressive development of agriculture.
The Two-Year National Economic Plan of 1949-50 places before itself the aim of finally liquidating the remnants of the colonial past of the national economy and of overcoming completely its feudal backwardness. According to the plan, the volume of gross output of State industry in 1949, will exceed the 1946 level by 4.7 times and in 1950 by 6.6 times. In 1950, the output of the most backward branch of industry—machine building—will rise 33 times as compared to 1946. (The newspaper, Teren Tyu Djiho, 27-11-1948, Tokyo). In the sphere of agriculture, the plan has in view a further extension of the sowing region, the construction of irrigation installations, the raising of the yield-capacity and an increase in livestock cattle. The successful fulfilment of the Two-Year Plan is laying the firm foundations of the economic development of United Korea.
As a result of the profound changes brought about by the People’s Democratic power in the economy of North Korea, the following main sectors have been formed: Socialized sector, which consists of State industry, transport, means of communication, banks and other credit institutions, State commerce and cooperatives; small commodity sector, including peasant farms, handicraft and a section of the small trade enterprises; private capitalist, embracing the private industrial and commercial enterprises. The Socialised sector occupies a leading role in the national economy. The output of State industry for 1947 comprised 83.2% of the total industrial output of North Korea (The journal Atarasii Sekayi—New World—Tokyo, March 1949, p. 20).
On the basis of the successful development of national Economy, the well-being of the people has improved. In June 1948, by a decision of the People’s Committee, prices of nutrition products and of goods of wide consumption were lowered in the State and co-operative trade. The real wages of workers and employees rose considerably.
A national culture, expressing in content the deep popular and democratic changes which have taken place in the Northern part of the country after its liberation, is being reborn.
In North Korea, where there was not a single high school, there now function eleven high schools for higher education and 720 middle schools.
While for South
Korea, the period between the summer of 1947 and September 1948, was
characterised by the creation of a reactionary puppet “Government” set up by
the occupationists and existing by grace of the American imperialists, for
North Korea this was a period of consolidation of political and economic
foundation of People’s Democracy.
The daily friendly assistance of the Soviet Union, having created conditions for the consolidation and development of People’s Democratic power in North Korea, ensured a rapid rise of its national economy, an increase in the level of the well-being and culture of the working people and opened the path for a further flourishing of economy and culture.
As a result North
Korea became not only the centre of unification and democratisation of the
entire country; it became a new base of People’s Democracy in the Far East,
which by itself was a blow to the aggressive plans of the U.S.A. and one of the
clear indications of the sharpening of the crisis of the colonial system.
* * *
The tremendous successes achieved by the people of North Korea were secured by the assistance of the Soviet Union and by the vanguard role of the working class in the democratic national liberation struggle of the Korean people. The combination of these two main conditions has led both to the victories of People’s Democracy in North Korea and to the formation of a Korean People’s Democratic Republic.
The Soviet Union
which liberated the people of Korea from Japanese bondage, is a powerful factor
in its free democratic development. In exactly the same way as he liberation of
Korea from Japanese colonial
oppression was a result of the great liberation mission of the Soviet Union,
the successes of people’s Democracy in North Korea became possible thanks to
the assistance and support of the soviet people.
“Our people will
never forget,” wrote Kim Ir Sen, in his address to Com. Stalin, “that it was at
the hands of the Soviet Army, led by you, that they attained not only
liberation but also the opportunity of building their life on democratic
principles. The freedom-loving people of Korea are overcoming all difficulties
and obstacles in the path of the complete restoration of their sovereign State.
In many thousands
of letters and speeches, the workers, peasants, teachers, doctors, artisans—the
entire people of Korea declare:
“The dearest and most cherished
thing that we possess, which we will guard and strengthen is the friendship
with the great Soviet Union.”
Another conditions, ensuring the victory of People’s Democracy in North Korea and leading to the formation of the People’s Democratic Republic, is the leading role of the working class in the liberation movement of the Korean people and the unbreakable alliance of the working class with the peasantry.
The Korean people, who have languished for four decades under the Japanese yoke had even earlier conducted a struggle for national liberation. The clearest expression of this was the popular uprising of 1919 which was one of the links of the international revolutionary process, arising under the influence of the Great October Socialist revolution. But then, the people of Korea did not possess a militant, revolutionary leader. The working class was young and weak, and it did not yet represent an independent political force, capable of leading peasantry and other strata of the population behind itself. There was no revolutionary Party. The bourgeoisie and the semi-feudal elements took upon themselves the role of leader not in order to lead the movement of the people but in order to decapitate and betray the movement by a deal with Japanese imperialism.
As distinct from
this, after the Second World War, the leadership of the democratic liberation
movement of the Korean people is in the hands of the working class and its
party. It has passed over to a class, which is capable of fighting with utmost
determination, consistently and to the end for national independence and
against the attempts at a new colonisation, for the elimination of the ruinous
results of Japanese rule, the elimination of feudal survivals and for People’s
Democratic transformations.
The passing over of the leadership to the working class contributed to the further drawing in of the broad masses of people in the struggle since it is precisely the vanguard role of the proletariat which guarantees the realisation of the fundamental interests of the broadest sections of the people.
The Communist Party, which emerged from underground immediately after the liberation of the country from the Japanese, headed and united all the advanced democratic forces of the country, organized, rallied the democratic front, and became the universally acknowledged leader of the mass of people.
In the conditions of Korea, what was it which caused the passing over of the leadership of the national liberation movement to the hands of the working class? It was, above all, the growth in the specific weight and influence of the proletariat inside the country, particularly in the period of the Second World War. However much the Japanese imperialists arrested the development of industry in their colony, the conversion of Korea into a military springboard against the Soviet Union and the pursuit of super profits forced the Japanese ruling circles into extending the industry to a certain extent. And although this was a distorted colonial, industrial development, it was all the same inevitably accompanied by a growth in the working class.
The preparation for a war compelled the Japanese to implant new branches of industry in Korea, which were of interest to the Japanese war machine. Enterprises of military importance, linked with the concerns Mitsubishi, Noquti, Sumitomo, Mitsui and other Japanese concerns were created on the basis of the local raw materials.
The number of mill and factory enterprises, of manufacturing industry in Korea, comprising of five or more workers rose from 4,025 in 1929 to 6,298 in 1937 and the number of workers from 86,400 in 1931 to 167,100 in 1937. (Ghazdantsev, Korea, p. 417.)
The total number
of all workers, including the mining industry, transport, etc., comprised of
approximately 1,100,000 workers in 1938. (Ibid, p. 301)
War in the Pacific
contributed in a still greater degree to the industrial development of Korea.
Big metallurgical enterprises, automobile and even aeroplane plants made their
appearance in the country. The shortage
of military and strategic materials in Japan proper and the impossibility of
its supplies from the South Sea countries forced Japanese imperialists to
increase the extraction of the strategic raw materials in Korea and to develop
war industrial construction there. The extraction of coal was nearly 8 million
tons in 1944, the extraction of iron ore 3.3 million tons. Smelted cast iron,
which amounts to 161,000 tons in 1933 reached 800,000 tons in 1943. In 1945,
there were more than 30 ferrous metallurgical enterprises in Korea and more
than 100 electric steel smelting furnaces and more than 20 factories of
non-ferrous and light metals (Zaichikov, Korea,
p. 98)
Their main part was situated in North Korea. According to the figures of the Japanese Governor- General in January 1945, the total number of workers in Korea amounted to 2,122,374.
With the aim of dispersing industry and relieving transport as well as to utilise cheap labour power and raw materials in the locality, the Japanese transferred, in the war years, a part of their big enterprises from Japan to Korea. All this stimulated not only a numerical increase in the working class of Korea but also its concentration in big industrial enterprises, and consequently, a growth of its organisation and its role and influence among the people.
Another reason conditioning the advance of the working class to the position of a vanguard of the national-liberation struggle, was the fact that the compromising national bourgeoisie of Korea had, by its many years of collaboration with Japanese imperialism, compromised itself in the eyes of the people and had finally been isolated from the people’s liberation struggle.
The path of the
Korean big bourgeoisie, which was closely linked with feudal landownership and
with Japanese capital, was the path of the systematic betrayal of the national
interests.
In his speech at a meeting of the students of the Communist University of the Toilers of the East on May 18, 1925, Comrade Stalin pointed out that with the growth of the revolutionary movement in the colonial and dependent countries,
“the national bourgeoisie in such countries splits into two sections, a revolutionary section (the petty bourgeoisie) and a compromising section (the big bourgeoisie), the former of which continues the revolutionary struggle, while the latter enters in to a bloc with imperialism.” (J.V. Stalin, Marxism and the national and Colonial Question, L. & W., London, 1942, p. 215)
This
also applies as a whole to Korea.
The big bourgeoisie and the landlords of Korea were specially drawn close to Japanese imperialism in the period of the Second World War. They called upon the people of Korea to support Japan in the war and strenuously mobilised the forces of the nation for the victory of imperial Japan.12
12 The
figure of the leader of the Democratic Party of South Korea, Kim Son Su is
extremely significant in this respect. A big capitalist and a landlord under
the Japanese he was one of the leader of the political organisations created by
them in the country, which had at their aim the rearing of religious sentiments
for the Emperor and disuniting the mass of people, of exposing and isolating
the most advanced revolutionary elements.
It is perfectly
natural that this could not but undermine the influence of the Korean
bourgeoisie among the people, could not but push it aside from the leadership
of the national liberation struggle. The reactionary Korean emigres who had
compromised themselves and broken away from the national- liberation struggle,
attempted to play upon the contradictions between the imperialist powers in
order to realise their own narrow mercenary ends.
On the other hand,
the mass of people in Korea had the opportunity to be convinced through the
experience of the preceding anti-imperialist struggle about the self-sacrifice
and revolutionary consistency of the working class and its Party, which fought
irreconcilably and determinedly for the general national interest of the people
and the independence of the country.
The passing over
of the leadership of the national-liberation movement to the hands of the
working class, caused substantial changes in the character of the movement.
The experience of
Korea confirms that where the working class stands at the head of the national
liberation struggle, it inevitably grows over into a struggle for People’s
Democracy. For only the working class, as the most consistently revolutionary
class, is interested in carrying the democratic transformation to completion,
and in creating the necessary pre-requisites for advance to Socialism.
It is precisely the working class, which is interested in radical land reforms, liquidating the landownership of the landlords, emancipating the millions of peasants from landlord’s and moneylender’s bondage and contributing to the advance of the entire national economy of the country.
The Korean big bourgeoisie, owing to its class nature, its links with imperialism and with the feudal elements, cannot have any interest in the liquidation of the economic and political backwardness of the country, which it needs for the unhindered exploitation of the mass of people, which fact is also confirmed by its grievous activities in South Korea.
It is precisely the working class which is vitally interested in completely eliminating the backwardness of the country and the ruinous results of Japanese colonial rule. It is vitally interested in the realisation of those reforms and changes which ensure the genuine and not the formal independence of the country and ensure not formal but real democracy.
Headed by the working class, the anti-imperialist liberation struggle of the mass of people of South Korea against the American aggressors and their colonising policy, a struggle which did not subside for four years, is a struggle for People’s Democracy, for the realisation of the same democratic changes that have been introduced in North Korea and which serve as a guarantee for the independence and unity of the country.
FORMATION OF KOREAN PEOPLE’S
DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC
The mighty liberation movement of
the mass of people of Korea, headed by the working class was crowned
by the creation of a Korean People’s
Democratic Republic. According to a decision
of a joint meeting of the
leaders of the political parties and the public organisations of North and
South Korea, elections to a single legislative organ of the country—the Supreme
People’s Assembly, were held on 25th August, 1948. 99.7 per cent of
the electorate of North Korea and—in spite of savage police terror—77.5 per
cent of the voters of South Korea took part in the elections.
During the war
in the Pacific, Kim Son Su persuaded the Korean Youth to enter the ranks of the
Japanese Army voluntarily and “to die for the Japanese Emperor”. He called upon
the people of Korea to support all the war measures of Japan.
All sections of
the Korean people—the workers, peasants, employees, handicraftsmen, artisans,
traders are represented in the Supreme People’s Assembly. Thirty-two parties
and public organisations of North and South Korea are represented in it.
The first session
of the Supreme People’s Assembly adopted the Constitution of the Korean
People’s Democratic Republic. In this Constitution were embodied the cherished
aspirations of the Korean people. It gave legislative embodiment to the
historic gains of the mass of people of North Korea and opened the path for a
further development of the country.
On 10th
September, 1948, the Supreme People’s Assembly of Korea turned to the
Government of USSR and the USA with a request for the simultaneous withdrawal
of Soviet and American troops. True to its international obligations, and
desiring to speed up the restoration of Korea as an independent State, the
Soviet Government thought it fit to meet this request. In December, 1948, the
evacuation of Soviet troops who had fulfilled with honour the noble task of
assisting the people of North Korea in the rebirth and democratisation of the
country, was completed.
The reply from the
Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, J.V. Stalin, to the appeal of
the Chairman of the Ministerial Cabinet of the Korean People’s Democratic
Republic, Kim Ir Sen, on the establishment of diplomatic relations between the
USSR and the Korean People’s Democratic Republic says:
“The Soviet
Government which unswervingly upholds the right of the Korean people to create
their united independent state, welcomes the formation of the Korean Government
and wishes it success in its activities on behalf of the national resurgence
and democratic development of Korea.” (The
Soviet Union and the Korean Question, Moscow, 1948, p. 84)
The Soviet Union and the People’s Democratic recognised the Korean People’s Democratic Republic and established diplomatic relations with it. This was of tremendous and decisive significance for the future destiny of the young Republic since in the strengthening of the friendly relations and ties with the Soviet State lay the guarantee of its independence, democratic development, and the progress of its economic and cultural life.
In
their letter to Comrade J.V. Stalin, the Korean people write:
“The Korean people
will in future strengthen the friendship with the Soviet people, a friendship
which is the guarantee that the Korean people will be free and happy. The
strengthening of the friendship among our peoples, cemented by the bright blood
of the Soviet fighters, shed on the battlefields for the liberation of our
country, is our sacred duty.”
The mass of people
of Korea see in the mighty Soviet power a reliable bulwark of their freedom and
independence. The agreement on Economic and Cultural Cooperation between the
USSR and the Korean People’s Democratic Republic which was concluded in Moscow
in March, 1949 signalises a further consolidation of Soviet-Korean friendship.
It is the first equal treaty in the history of the Korean people. It not only
corresponds to the vital interests of both the countries but also serves the
cause of international cooperation, of peace and security in the Far East and
in the whole world.
As is well-known,
the United States did not respond to the request of the Korean people for the
withdrawal of troops and for granting them the right to resolve their State
affairs themselves. On the contrary, the USA attempted in every way to entrench
itself inside the country. It once again thrusted the Korean question at the
session of the General Assembly. The notorious Provisional Commission of the
UNO was once again sent to South Korea.
The struggle of the Korean people for the unification and independence of their country is broadening and growing. In May 1949, the democratic parties and organisations of South Korea turned to the Central Committee of the United Democratic National Front of North Korea with the proposal to form an All-Korea National Front, uniting all the democratic forces of the country.
The constituent session of the United Democratic Fatherland Front which was held in June 1949 ratified the programme of the United Democratic Fatherland Front and adopted an appeal to the Korean people with the concrete parties and organisations of the Northern and Southern part of the Republic, the entire Korean people, met the declaration of the UDFF with warm approval.
Mortally afraid of the plan of the peaceful unification of the country, the American puppets intensified the terror and repression. They attempted to foment the conflagration of a civil war. With the support of the American patrols, they adopted special measures for the strengthening of the South Korean Army, the police, and the terrorist organisations.
But the Korean people’s will for the unification of their Motherland is unswerving. All the provinces of South Korea are enveloped in a partisan movement. The partisans are undermining the military measures of the Syngman Rhee clique, capturing ordnance stores with arms, destroying railway lines and dislocating communications. In the regions they have captured, they are creating People’s Committees, carrying out Land Reform and other democratic changes. The strike movement in South Korea is growing, the unrest among the peasantry is increasing.
None of the efforts, none of the roundabout manoeuvres of the imperialists and their agents is in a position to halt this movement, or to arrest the process of the progressive development of the infant Korean State, which was born as a result of the defeat of Japanese militarism in the Second World War, the unselfish assistance of the Soviet Union and the unprecedented rise of the national liberation struggle of the Korean people for independence and for People’s Democracy.
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