Chapter 6 Independence "in due course"

The State Department was not at all coy when it told Syngman Rhee that he was not qualified to represent any "government."North Korea is one of many abandoned countries whose future will be resolved peacefully.In 1942, North Korea wasn't on anyone's priority list. President Franklin D. Roosevelt shared the same lack of respect his relative Theodore had for the nationalist Koreans.At the Tehran conference in 1943, he told Soviet leader Joseph Stalin that the Koreans were "not yet capable of exercising and maintaining an independent government, and that ... they should undergo 40 years of tutelage".At a meeting later that year, Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and China's Chiang Kai-shek issued an official communiqué that reflected Roosevelt's pessimistic tone: "In memory of the enslaved Korean people, the aforementioned The three major powers (the United States, the United Kingdom and China) decided to grant North Korea freedom and independence in due course (emphasis added by the quoter)."

In the eyes of Rhee and other North Korean nationalists, the term "in due time" is a blatant insult, and the North Korean shrimp is caught in the middle of a whale fight.Syngman Rhee angrily asked the U.S. State Department, what power do the allies have to prevent North Korea from becoming independent? Roosevelt's lack of enthusiasm for North Korea did not change his intention to prevent the Soviet Union from exerting a dominant role in North Korea after the war.According to secret State Department documents, Roosevelt pursued a broad diplomatic strategy to achieve this end.For example, he told Secretary of State Cordell Hull that North Korea "could be placed under international trusteeship with China, the United States and one or two other countries involved."Other State Department planning documents go even further, calling for postwar American rule over North Korea, implying a U.S. role in liberating North Korea by force. In March 1944, a State Department planning document stated: "United States participation in military operations in and around Korea will greatly strengthen its primary role in the internal affairs and international supervision of the Provisional Government." The report estimated that the United States The military occupation of North Korea is likely to be carried out "for a considerable period of time", and it may be carried out jointly with the Soviet Union, which will occupy a "substantial part" of the country.Two months later, in May 1944, another document warned that if the Soviets occupied North Korea alone, "the United States will consider this a danger to the future security of the Pacific."This document, as well as others, proposes that any occupation must be carried out through a central, all-participating government, rather than divided among several regional governments.

North Korea was finally included in the strategic planning of the vast Pacific theater as a bait to attract the Soviet Union to fight against Japan.A little background is needed here.Because the Soviets were fighting the Germans on the Eastern Front, the Soviets were still legally at peace with Japan even after the attack on Pearl Harbor and the declaration of war on Japan by the USSR's main allies, the United States and Great Britain.Both Japan and the Soviet Union had no intention of starting a war. The former was held back to fight in other parts of Asia, while the latter had no intention of opening up a second front.But early in the war, General Douglas MacArthur, commander of US ground forces in the Far East, had urged his Washington bosses to try to persuade Russia to join the Pacific War. On December 10, 1941, the third day after Pearl Harbor, MacArthur sent a telegram from his headquarters in the Philippines to Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall:

The enemy has invested a large amount of sea and air power in the Philippines and the areas east of it in this theater, thereby weakening the Japanese mainland. The definite information obtained here shows that the enemy is most worried about Russia's entry into the war.Now is a good time to attack Japan directly from the north. This will not only inflict heavy damage on the enemy, but also immediately ease the momentum of the Japanese going south. ... This is my golden opportunity to launch a general attack while the enemy is busy with his overstretched early air operations. Such a request was unrealistic, partly because the Germans were approaching Moscow, and partly because Marshall would not consider it.But at the end of 1944, before the tri-power strategic conference to be held in Yalta, Crimea, Russia, early the following year, the question arose again.The State Department's planning document endorsed the need for the Soviet Union's entry into the war, but worded it carefully.At this moment, the War Department was busy formulating a series of plans to attack the Japanese mainland, and it feared that it would pay a heavy price (some estimates put the United States at a million sacrifices).Two years earlier, at the Tehran Conference, Stalin had vaguely promised to take part in the Pacific War "in due course".Now the Joint Chiefs of Staff urged Roosevelt to let Stalin keep his word.War Department intelligence officials declared that Russia's participation in the war was "vital" to destroying the main force of the Japanese army.The Joint Chiefs of Staff estimated that the war against Japan would continue for 18 months after Germany surrendered, and that the Allies could have saved 200,000 casualties had the Soviets entered the war before the United States attacked the Japanese homeland.

To Roosevelt's inner circle, reducing so many sacrifices justified the political risk that the United States would take by giving the Soviet Union the opportunity to expand into areas controlled by Japan.State Department officials preparing for the Yalta meeting see North Korea as a bargaining collateral.According to the Yalta working paper, the United States was willing to occupy Korea after the war with Britain and China (and the Soviet Union, but it had to participate in the Pacific War), but the document emphasized that the United States should "play a leading role in the occupation and military government."The United States has no long-term interests in Korea, and all it wants is to deter any Russian meddling in Japan.

North Korea has once again become a "shrimp" caught in a whale's fight.