740.00119 Control (Korea)/11–146: Telegram
The Political Adviser in Korea (Langdon) to the Secretary of State
priority
[Received November 2—11:42 a.m.]
128. Summary conditions in Korea September 16 through October 16.
[Page 754]1. Political. Unrest, violence and large scale disorders as well as political realignments on fundamental issues marked the period under review. An optimistic view of the disorders might be that they are the normal birth pains of a new nation or that they reflect an awakening sence of individual rights against oppressive authority, fancied or real. A pessimistic view might be that they reveal unpromising national characteristics: lawlessness, instability, irrationalism, latent savagery, and incapacity for self-government; also that Koreans only respect force since they dared not rebel against Japanese authority in the last 25 years and now submit meekly to a dictatorial alien controlled regime in North Korea. In any event, the disorders served to impress upon both American authorities and Korean political leaders the realities of the situation.
The disorders began with a zone wide strike of railroad workers on September 22 followed by a printers strike and threatened strikes or sporadic layoffs in factories, public utilities, government offices and higher schools. No violence occurred until the 30th when in the course of evicting railroad strikers from a public building in Seoul, the police killed two or three persons, wounded others, and suffered some casualties themselves. The following day in Taegu a mob gathered to prevent passage of a train rumored to be on its way and in clearing the mob the police killed one youth, also rumored to be a student. This inflamed the student body and other elements who the following day attacked and occupied police hqs. When tactical troops arrived to restore order the rioters went to the outskirts of the city where they destroyed police boxes, brutally murdered policemen, terrorized their families, and indulged in an orgy of destruction. Thereafter some 30 or 40 attacks on police and Korean officials, with arson of police stations and military government employees homes, broke out in small towns, chiefly in the southeastern provinces, and in quelling them tactical troops in one or two instances were compelled to fire on rioters, killing or wounding a few. In two or three cases troops reported they were fired on by the rioters, possibly with arms taken from the police (several rifles were reported so taken in the Pusan–Taegu area), while in other cases road blocks were put up to stop the dispatch of troops to the scene of disorder: also telephone lines were cut between a number of points.
By October 15 full railroad service was resumed, with the strikers’ demands partly met following orderly collective bargaining with military government labor mediation officials. Also, other strikers were generally back at work while attacks upon police in the disturbed provinces were reported dying down by reason of tactical troop and police dispositions. As for the causes of the upheaval, there is ample evidence that Pak Heun Yung or “international” Communists, with [Page 755] financial and personnel assistance from the Communist Party in the north, planned and directed them, taking advantage of the discontent among laborers over the rice shortage and high prices and among small farmers over the grain collection program just ended, alleged to have been administered arbitrarily, unjustly, and corruptly by the police in many areas, and over the rice collection program about to begin. The political nature of many disorders and strikes was also evident from the demands set forth (received garbled) for settlement, such as release of detained Communist offenders, reopening of newspapers suspended for violation of SCAP proclamation No. 2,68 et cetera. There seems to be little doubt that the purpose of the agitating elements was to discredit the US and military government and to wreck the coalition movement and project by [of?] interim legislature.
The daring and destructive program of Pak Heun Yung’s Communists alarmed the moderate and nationalist elements in the Leftist Front and tended to unite them behind Lyuh Woon Hyung, the leader of these forces. The dissident or Nationalist Communists held a convention on September 28 and organized as a distinct party, calling it the “Convention Communist Party”, Uthilea (received garbled) Prof. Pak Nam Woen’s Democratic Party reorganized on September 25 after having purged itself of “international Communists”. The official (received garbled) of Lyuh’s People’s Party also proceeded boldly against these Communists. The impetus of the cleansing movement was the apparent sanction given Lyuh by the Pyongyang leaders to cooperate with Dr. Kimm Kiu Sic in the Coalition movement and to replace Pak Heun Yung. Lyuh went to Pyongyang during the last days of September evidently to get these leaders to withdraw their support from Pak’s subversive program and to obtain their approval of his collaboration with the American authorities and with the Moderate Rightists represented by Dr. Kimm. This approval was apparently forthcoming, as upon his return on October 1 he proceeded to positive measures in these respects, signing on behalf of the Left Coalition compact with Dr. Kimm and a joint petition to Gen. Hodge for an interim legislature, also a joint letter to the American and Soviet commanders calling for early reconvening of the Joint Commission. This action was taken in the nick of time, however, as he disappeared on the 6th, evidently lured by Pak’s agents, in an effort to prevent the signing (on the 5th [sic] he reappeared and took refuge in a public hospital, badly shaken from the experience). Also with Lyuh’s return from Pyongyang the fusion of the three cleansed Leftist Parties proceeded apace and by the end of the period they were formally merged into one “Social Labor Party” under [Page 756] Lyuh. It would thus appear that the Oriental People’s Front is splitting. Pak and his followers are still active, however.
Fissures began to set in the heretofore solid Right Wing too. A number of Liberal members of the Korean Democratic Party, the core of the Rightist bloc, probably disturbed by the outbreak against the police and certain military government elements generally associated in the minds of the people with that party, withdrew from the party on the grounds that it opposes the Moscow decision and the land reforms agreed upon by the Lyuh Coalition Committee.
The Coalition compact signed on October 4 by Dr. Kimm and Lyuh and their interim legislation petition to Gen. Hodge indicated considerable Rightist concessions leanings to the Left. The seven bases of Coalition are mostly of a radical nature, including unreserved support of the Moscow decision, gratis distribution of Japanese land and drastic reduction of Korean private landholdings, while the petition insists on exclusion of pro-Jap and bloc collaborations and on the understanding that the legislature is only a step toward, or part of, a later National Assembly. In fact, the Coalition Committee has been showing a spontaneous tendency to become the nucleus of a party of strong and patriotic individuals with a common political viewpoint which conceivably may become the dominant party of south, if not of all, Korea, inasmuch as the committee would appear to be favored by the North Korean leaders. And this common viewpoint, it should be emphasized, is a distinctly radical one; pursuant to the committee petition the organic ordinance of the interim legislature was promulgated October 13 and a schedule of units set up—45 members of the legislature are to be elected and 45 nominated by the CG. In special releases on the subject, both Gen. Hodge and Gen. Lerch indicated the wide field of legislation open to the body, denying it only measures touching upon the primary fiscal and political responsibility of the US.
September 30 the editor of one of the three suspended Leftist papers was found guilty by provost court of violating proclamation No. 2 and sentenced to 18 months’ hard labor. Gen. Hodge suspended this sentence, however, and in a special release on October 11 dealing with the freedom of the press, announced that, if the three papers reopened, their future would depend on the degree of responsibility they showed.
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- See Foreign Relations, 1945, vol. vi, p. 1044, footnote 57.↩