Why and How Korea got Split

Why did Korea get split? Tomas Pueyo’s account of the events leading to the division of Korea reads like a thriller (except it is real and tragic). In thriller/ movie style, he posts a pic from the Yalta conference in Feb, 1945 with Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin in it and says it all started there…

 

At this point, it is a foregone conclusion that Germany will be defeated. The question is not “if” but “when”. But in the Pacific, against Japan, the war is showing no signs of ending. The US asks the USSR to join the war against Japan, but Stalin stalls: he will join, he says, 3 months after Germany falls.

“This would end up determining the future of Korea, but none of them knew it at the time.”

 

Germany surrenders on May 8^th, 1945. That means the USSR will declare war on Japan on August 8^th. This should be good news for the Americans. Except that on July 16^th, the US acquires the atomic bomb. They don’t need Stalin anymore, no need to split the spoils of Asia the way Europe had been split between the US and the USSR. But there are only 18 days left before the USSR joins the war.

 

With 13 days left, the US demands Japan surrender unconditionally. Japan takes 2 days to respond. And refuses. 11 days. Truman decides to drop the atomic bomb on August 3^rd to force a Japanese surrender. With 5 days left, the Americans are ready to drop the atomic bomb on Japan. But bad weather intervenes and extends for 2 whole days. 3 days left. On August 6^th, the first atomic bomb is dropped. 2 days left. Japan still doesn’t surrender…

 

As promised, on August 8^th, 1.5 million Soviet soldiers attack Japanese occupied China, Inner Mongolia, Korea (northern part) and a few islands in Japan. The Americans freak out. On 9^th August, they drop the 2^nd atomic bomb. Japan has to be made to surrender. It cannot be split with the USSR, the way Europe was. After 2 atomic bombs, Japan finally surrenders.

 

By 10^th August, the USSR is already in Korea. The US doesn’t want Korea to fall to the Soviets. So they pull in 2 colonels who “did not know anything about Korean geography” to draw a proposed split of Korea. They decide the capital Seoul should be under American control and hence pick the 38° North latitude as the line of separation! Stalin agrees to the split of Korea. Both the US and USSR put their troops in their respective halves of Korea.

 

By 1949 though, US troops leave Korea. North Korea considers invading South Korea and asks Stalin to support them. Stalin isn’t sure: the US has atomic weapons, the USSR doesn’t. So the North asks China, shouldn’t a communist country support the fellow North? China blesses the invasion – it doesn’t like the idea of a capitalistic South Korea so close to itself.

 

The US decides a message needs to be sent to the communists. And so the Americans enter the war on the South’s side. They seem to be succeeding. But then China sends 1.5 million soldiers into the South. A brutal war of attrition follows:

“In 1953, after over three million Koreans had died, North Korea and South Korea signed an armistice, and the border it established has been kept ever since.”