Office of the Historian

740.00119 Control (Korea)/10–1646

Memorandum by the Assistant Secretary of State for Occupied Areas (Hilldring) to the Director of the Office of Far Eastern Affairs (Vincent)

[Washington,] November 8, 1946.

Thanks for the note. I agree with you that it would be far better to have a unified central Government before we withdraw, and I heartily subscribe to that as the most desirable and the first preference.

I don’t believe, however, that I am as much impressed with the necessity for a central government as you are.77 I believe that what we really need as a prerequisite for withdrawal is not so much a central Government as a strong Russo-American Control Council in Seoul. At the time of the withdrawal of the troops we may or may not [Page 765] have a central government operating under this Control Council, or Governments may rise and fall after our troops leave. My judgment is that it isn’t the existence of a central government that is of such importance to us but rather the existence of a reliable, strong, nationally recognized central government. If we wait for that to occur, our troops may be there for 10 years. The problem you raise is the exact replica of the one we have had in Austria for six or eight months. In Austria we are quite willing to withdraw our troops if the Russians will do so, in spite of the fact that we wouldn’t bet a dime on the length of tenure of the Renner Government.78 In Austria the condition is a little worse than it is in Korea. Instead of having two air tight compartments, we have four.

To sum it up, I think if the Russians would come forward tomorrow with a proposition for both of us to pull our troops out of Korea, we would decide—and very properly in my opinion, to haul our freight.

J. H. Hilldring
  1. Mr. Vincent wrote a notation at the bottom of this memorandum: “Actually what I said was that there should be ‘some kind of unified administration for all of Korea’ as a prerequisite to troop withdrawal. JCV”.↩
  2. Karl Renner, of the Socialist Party, was elected President of the Second Austrian Republic on December 20, 1945. The coalition cabinet was headed by Chancellor Leopold Figl, of the People’s Party.↩