A History of Korea (78 page)

American resolve to withdraw was strengthened, however, when, on 12 December 1948, the
U.N.
General Assembly recognized the Republic of Korea as the only legitimate government on the Korean peninsula. The United States concluded that it now could take positive steps in the direction of disengagement. On 27 December 1948 the Soviet Union announced that it had completed withdrawal of its forces from North Korea and demanded that the United States do the same.

Finally, in March 1949, the United States decided to complete the withdrawal of its forces from South Korea by 30 June of the year. To placate Syngman Rhee and bolster South Korean morale, the formation of the Korean Military Advisory Group (
KMAG
) was announced on 2 May 1949 and it was officially established on 1 July. By the end of May the United States had transferred its remaining arms, ammunition, communications equipment, vehicles, and spare parts to the South Korean army, then numbering approximately 114,000.

Throughout June the
ROK
government sponsored mass demonstrations in which South Koreans protested the U.S. decision to withdraw its forces. The South Korean government stressed that the United States had an obligation to guarantee the survival of the
ROK
as a crucial bastion of democracy in Asia. Despite these desperate appeals, the United States refused to alter its plans. On 29 June 1949 the United States withdrew the last of its combat forces from South Korea, ending almost four years of military occupation. U.S. officials were confident that South Korea could survive without American military protection, but it did not take long for them to find out that they were wrong.

The period between the spring of 1949 and the winter of 1949–1950 witnessed the outbreak of large-scale border clashes along the 38th parallel and major guerrilla fighting within South Korea. These incidents took thousands of lives and ultimately led to North Korea’s all-out invasion of South Korea in June 1950.

The border fighting, probably initiated by South Korean forces, reflected a new assertiveness by the Syngman Rhee government toward North Korea. Indeed, the ardent anticommunist Rhee government called for a “March North,” and some South Korean officials boasted that if war broke out, they would eat breakfast in Seoul, lunch in Pyongyang, and supper in Sin
ŭ
iju on the Yalu River at the Korean-Manchurian border.

Rhee and his military commanders appear to have started the border fighting along the 38th parallel in the spring of 1949. Beginning in early May these border clashes often escalated into major battles in the Ongjin peninsula, at Kaes
ŏ
ng, and at Ch’unch’
ŏ
n, involving battalion-sized units on each side. There were also numerous patrol skirmishes. North Korea, however, was also responsible for the border clashes, and Soviet advisers to the Korean People’s Army were often involved in the conflicts. Since late September 1949 no major fighting along the 38th parallel occurred until the outbreak of the Korean War. The fighting that did erupt was confined to minor patrol skirmishes. Both Koreas
now devoted themselves to guerrilla warfare in the interior of South Korea. The fighting was costly for the Rhee government, as the United States became deeply suspicious of Rhee’s motives and made a fatal decision to limit its military aid to South Korea to “defensive weapons.”

Meanwhile, communist policy had changed. On 22 February 1949 a northern delegation, headed by Kim Il-sung and Pak H
ŏ
n-y
ŏ
ng, left for the Soviet Union. About three weeks later, on 17 March, North Korea and the Soviet Union formally concluded cultural and economic treaties. They also entered into a secret military assistance agreement, with the Soviet Union promising a large-scale buildup of North Korea’s military strength. As a result, North Korea accelerated the expansion of its armed forces over the winter of 1949–1950. Although the North Korean delegation succeeded in obtaining Soviet military aid, it failed to secure Stalin’s approval for an attack on South Korea.

While accelerating its military preparedness, North Korea deployed its reunification strategy effort, organizing a united front with opponents of Syngman Rhee and reviving the insurgency in South Korea. On 26 June 1949 North Korea formed the Democratic Front for the Unification of the Fatherland (
DFUF
) to create a political crisis for Rhee. The same day Kim Ku, Rhee’s chief political rival, was assassinated by a
ROK
army officer. The timing of the assassination and the conduct of the assassin’s trial aroused suspicion of government complicity at the highest political level. Indeed, Kim Ku’s assassin, though sentenced to life in prison, was soon released, reinstated, and promoted.

North Korea also began a large-scale guerrilla offensive. Aided by the infiltration of guerrilla units from North Korea, the South Korean Workers Party established new base areas on the east coast and stepped up its attacks on South Korean security forces. Although guerrilla activity peaked in mid-September 1949 with a succession of attacks on major towns in the countryside, the communist offensive soon collapsed.

After a brief pause, guerrilla warfare was renewed in October 1949. Responding to North Korea’s call for another large-scale offensive, the guerrillas mounted a second wave of attacks on towns in early October, but the South Korean government carried out a successful campaign to root out the guerrillas during the winter months. North Korea tried to revive the guerrilla movement early in 1950 but failed, and experienced another major setback on 27 March 1950 with the arrest of two top leaders of the South Korean Workers Party remaining in South Korea, Kim Sam-nyong and Yi Chu-ha.
²⁷
Now North Korea realized that the time for united front tactics had completely passed. The
remaining option for the communist country to achieve reunification was a full-scale conventional invasion of South Korea.

Although it had struck a fatal blow at communist guerrilla activity by the first months of 1950, the South Korean government paid a high price for its border fighting with its northern neighbor and its subsequent military campaign against communist guerrillas in the interior of the country. Because of heavy defense expenditures, it was in severe financial trouble, which was further aggravated by the government’s fiscal mismanagement as well as a declining economy, including vicious inflation.

Rhee’s maladministration greatly increased political opposition to him in the National Assembly. After the formal establishment of the Republic of Korea on 15 August 1948, the Korean Democratic Party, Rhee’s close ally during the U.S. military occupation period, was excluded from participating in the newborn Rhee government. Considering themselves betrayed by Rhee, beginning in late 1948
KDP
members established South Korea’s first opposition party. On 7 September 1948 the disgruntled National Assembly passed the National Traitors Law to punish pro-Japanese collaborators, and although many members of the party were also vulnerable to such charges, the
KDP
did not oppose the law to remove the members of Rhee’s cabinet that it disliked. In any case, the law had no effect, as Rhee had lined up with many pro-Japanese collaborators. On 10 February 1949 the
KDP
convinced several Rhee-aligned politicians, including Speaker of the National Assembly Sin Ik-h
ŭ
i, to break ranks with the Rhee government and join the
KDP
. Thereupon it was renamed the Democratic National Party (
DNP
) and became the first political group whose chief purpose was that of an opposition party.

Unhappy with Rhee’s authoritarian style, abuses of power, and fiscal irresponsibility, the opposition party sought power by means of amending the constitution to create a parliamentary system. By the spring of 1950, South Korea was engrossed in a struggle between Rhee and the
DNP
-led National Assembly over a constitutional amendment and the establishment of a date for general elections. The
DNP
introduced a constitutional amendment to institute a parliamentary system and extend the term of the Assembly for an additional year, but the proposal was defeated on 14 March 1950, having failed to obtain the necessary two-thirds majority in the Assembly. The vote was 76 in favor of the amendment and 33 opposed, with 66 abstentions. Despite this slim
margin of victory, Rhee immediately announced his intention to introduce his own constitutional amendment to increase the power of the chief executive by providing for the direct election of the president. Rhee sought to postpone the general elections several times, but following intense U.S. pressure, the date was finally set for 30 May 1950.
²⁸

South Korea’s relations with the United States increasingly became strained. Doubts about the U.S. security commitment were raised by Secretary of State Dean G. Acheson’s National Press Club speech on 12 January 1950, which seemingly left South Korea out of the U.S. defense perimeter in East Asia, and by the difficulty in securing passage of a Korea aid bill. Acheson’s speech, some believe, in effect invited the North Korean invasion of the
ROK
in June 1950. In his speech Acheson stated that only the Aleutians, Japan, Okinawa, and the Philippines fell within a perimeter that would be militarily defended by the United States, thus giving the impression that the United States would not defend South Korea under any circumstances. Whereas the speech shocked the Rhee government, it greatly delighted Kim Il-sung. In fact, Acheson’s speech was ambiguous in some ways that could be interpreted differently depending on one’s political orientation. Whatever its interpretation, the speech had no impact on the communists’ decision to invade South Korea.
²⁹

One week after Acheson’s speech, on 19 January 1950, the U.S. House of Representatives defeated by a single vote (192 to 191) the revised Korea Assistance Bill of 1949 providing South Korea with economic aid for the remainder of fiscal year 1950. This resulted mainly from the rejection of the bill by supporters of Jiang Jieshi’s Guomindang (Nationalist) government of Taiwan who assailed the readiness of the Truman administration to aid South Korea while denying economic aid to Taiwan. Rejection of the Korean aid bill further shocked the South Korean government. The Truman administration expressed concern and dismay over the rejection of the Korean aid bill and urged a quick reconsideration. To satisfy the Republican China lobby, the bill included economic aid for Taiwan. Thus, on 9 February 1950, the House passed the revised bill, now titled the Far Eastern Assistance Act, and the next day the Senate approved it. The bill provided $60 million to South Korea and $103 million to Nationalist China. On 31 March the Truman administration obtained congressional consent to another Korea aid bill that appropriated $100 million for fiscal year 1951.

By this time the military balance on the Korean peninsula was clearly tilted in favor of North Korea as a result of increased Soviet military aid and the return of thousands of Korean veterans of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army.
Moreover, the Soviet explosion of an atomic bomb and the earlier communist victory in the Chinese civil war had placed South Korea at a political disadvantage in that region of Northeast Asia. In the winter of 1949–1950, therefore, South Korea was in serious crisis both politically and militarily.

Beginning in early 1949 North Korea was on a war footing. Later Kim Il-sung’s 1950 New Year’s speech was bellicose, excoriating South Korea as a puppet of the United States. By early 1950 the North Korean army had become a formidable fighting machine, which, by the spring of 1950, clearly held military superiority over its southern neighbor. Under these already perilous circumstances, South Korea was also embroiled in a struggle for power between Rhee and his opponents in the National Assembly.

As scheduled, the National Assembly election was held on 30 May 1950. In the elections Rhee barely clung to power, losing 20 percent of his support, but the Democratic National Party suffered a real defeat. Rhee’s seemingly weakened position led North Korea to propose several last-minute unification proposals in the hope of destabilizing South Korea. Although most incumbents were replaced by new figures, the new National Assembly appeared to be dominated by independents who took 126 of 210 seats, while the pro-Rhee parties captured 55 seats and the Democratic National Party elected only 24 assemblymen. The remaining seats were taken by moderate and leftist candidates. Although its own formal ranks thinned in the elections, the
DNP
still had an excellent chance to increase its power by recruiting the many newly elected opposition independents. Rhee therefore faced a renewed challenge from the
DNP
when the new assembly convened, and until 1952 the
DNP
remained a strong, cohesive, and stable political force opposing Rhee.

Immediately after the elections, on 7 June 1950, the Central Committee of the Democratic Front for the Unification of the Fatherland proposed all-Korea elections in early August to elect a unified assembly. To prepare for these elections, the
DFUF
called for a joint conference of political leaders from both Koreas, scheduled to be held at either Haeju (North Korea) or Kaes
ŏ
ng (South Korea) in mid-June. It also demanded that Syngman Rhee, along with other rightist politicians and parties, be excluded from the meeting. On 19 June, the day when the new South Korean National Assembly opened, the North Korean Supreme People’s Assembly proposed to its counterpart in South Korea that the two legislative bodies merge. North Korea also offered to release Cho Man-sik
in exchange for Kim Sam-nyong and Yi Chu-ha, the two South Korean Workers Party leaders who had been arrested on 27 March. These offers were designed only to throw the
ROK
government into confusion, and the Rhee government flatly rejected them. The atmosphere on the Korean peninsula was ripe for the outbreak of war, and the moment was fast approaching when a Korean People’s Army soldier would fire on his enemies in the South.