The Cleanest Race - B. R. Myers [10]
WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION, 1948-1966
On August 13, 1948 Syngman Rhee announced the establishment of the Republic of Korea (ROK), whereupon Soviet officials in Pyongyang, abandoning hopes for a single state, relinquished power to Kim Il Sung. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) was formally established on September 9. Having flown the same yin-yang symbol as the American zone for three years, the DPRK now hoisted a communist-style flag, with a red star as the focal point. At the end of 1948 Soviet troops withdrew from the peninsula. No sooner had they gone than Kim began enlisting Moscow’s support for a military re-unification of the country. Stalin agreed to send weapons, supplies, and advisers.1 Meanwhile the DPRK’s propaganda apparatus prepared the masses for the coming conflict. The South had gone from a Japanese colonial hell to an American one, with the same treasonous elite in charge; how long would the suffering brethren have to wait for real liberation? Yi T’ae-chun and other writers wrote short stories or poems demanding violent retribution against the Yankees and their lackeys.2
On June 25, 1950 the Korean People’s Army launched what would later be called the “Homeland Liberation War” with a surprise advance across the 38th parallel.† Capturing Seoul on June 28, KPA troops rolled as far south as the Nakdong River before MacArthur’s landing in September at Inch’ŏn, a harbor city on the west coast, reversed the course of the war. As UN soldiers neared Pyongyang, the cultural apparatus joined the party leadership in fleeing north. China entered the war in October, pushing the Americans and their allies back down the peninsula. Seoul was recaptured by the communists only to fall once again to UN troops, in whose hands it remained. Kim’s writers and artists then hunkered down in a village near Pyongyang while the US Air Force embarked on a long and indiscriminate bombing campaign.
Such a war would have brought out the xenophobia in any nation, but in the DPRK, where most people had been steeped in blood-based nationalism since their colonial childhood, the mood was such that even the Chinese ally was regarded with hostility.3 Writers depicted the Americans, including women and children, as an inherently depraved race.4 There was none of the proletarian internationalism that had made Soviet propagandists draw a line between Nazis and average Germans. One writer jeered at the corpses of UN troops, while another celebrated the abuse of captured enemy pilots.5 Much sport was made of the Yankees’ Caucasian features, with a leading author asserting that they reflected an inner “idiotization.”6 The same man also penned a short story named Jackals (Sŭngnyangi, 1951) in which US missionaries murder a Korean child with an injection of germs.7 The enormous popularity of this story may well have inspired the regime in late 1951 to make formal allegations of American germ warfare.
In 1952 a war-weary Kim Il Sung called on China to help bring about a ceasefire. Mao and Stalin both urged him to stand firm.8 After the generalissimo’s death in May 1953, Moscow at last permitted Kim to enter into negotiations with the enemy. The DPRK and China signed an armistice with the United States on July 27, 1953. Pyongyang would henceforth celebrate the date as marking the enemy’s surrender, making skilful use of photographs that showed the American negotiators in weary or exasperated moments.
Now more dependent on his patrons than ever, the dictator took pains to sound internationalist notes in high-profile speeches, even asserting in December 1955 that “to love the USSR is to love Korea.”9 Domestic