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North Korea
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This edition supersedes North Korea: A Country Study, published in 1981. The authors wish to acknowledge their use of portions of that edition in the preparation of the current book.
Various members of the staff of the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress assisted in the preparation of the book. Sandra W. Meditz made helpful suggestions during her review of all parts of the book. Robert L. Worden also reviewed parts of the book and made numerous suggestions and points of clarification. Timothy L. Merrill checked the contents of all the maps and reviewed the sections on geography and telecommunications. Rodney P. Katz assisted with the compilation of several of the maps and also helped to collect research materials. Thanks also go to David P. Cabitto, who provided graphics support; Marilyn L. Majeska, who managed editing and production and edited portions of the manuscript; Andrea T. Merrill, who provided invaluable assistance with regard to tables and figures; and Barbara Edgerton, Alberta Jones King, and Izella Watson, who performed word processing. Alberta Jones King also assisted with the bibliography.
The authors also are grateful to individuals in various United States government agencies who gave their time and special knowledge to provide information and perspective. These individuals include Ralph K. Benesch, who oversees the Country Studies/Area Handbook Program for the Department of the Army; Cho Sung Yoon, Far Eastern Law Division, Library of Congress, who reviewed parts of the text and answered queries pertaining to the judicial and the legal systems; and C. Kenneth Quinones of the Department of State who reviewed the text and also offered many valuable suggestions and points of clarification. Inkyong Ahn, Yeonmi Ahn, Paul Dukyong Park, and Key P. Yang of the Library of Congress Korean Section all provided invaluable assistance in researching queries. The editor also wishes to thank the staff of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea Mission to the United Nations for their assistance.
Others who contributed were Ly Burnham, who reviewed the portions of the text on demography; Tinothy Merrill who assisted in the preparation of maps and charts; Debra Soled, who edited portions of the manuscripts; Cissie Coy, who performed the final prepublication editorial review; and Joan Cook, who prepared the Index. Linda Peterson of the Library of Congress Composing Unit prepared camera-ready copy, under the direction of Peggy Pixley. Most of the photographs were provided by Tracy Woodward, to whom the editor is extremely grateful, as there are so few travelers to North Korea.
This edition of North Korea: A Country Study replaces the previous edition, published in 1981. Like its predecessor, this study attempts to review the history and treat in a concise manner the dominant social, political, economic, and military aspect of contemporary North Korea. Sources of information included books, scholarly journals, foreign and domestic newspapers, official reports of governments and international organizations, and numerous periodicals on Korean and East Asian affairs. A word of caution is necessary, however. The government of a closed communist society such as that of North Korea controls information for internal and external consumption, limiting both the scope of coverage and its dissemination. For instance, data from North Korea are, on the whole, dated, limited, and couched in vagaries--and are often provided as percentages of increases over previous years rather than as hard numbers. In addition, information coming from the outside is subject to the political bent of its originator. Data from South Korea, for example, seek, by and large, to show the superiority of that country's economic and political system. North Korea's 1991 admission to the United Nations, however, may result in the release of more statistics.
Spellings of place-names used in the book are in most cases those approved by the United States Board on Geographic Names (BGN); the spelling of some of the names, however, cannot be verified, as the BGN itself notes. The generic parts appended to some geographic names have been dropped and their English equivalents substituted: for example, Mayang Island, not Mayangdo , and South P'yngan Province, not P'yngan-namdo. The name North Korea has been used where appropriate in place of the official name, Democratic People's Republic of Korea. The McCuneReischauer system of transliteration has been employed except for the names of some prominent national figures and internationally recognized corporations where the more familiar journalistic equivalent is used. The names of Korean authors writing in English are spelled as given.
The body of the text reflects information available as of June 30, 1993. Certain other portions of the text, however, have been updated. The Bibliography lists published sources thought to be particularly helpful to the reader.
IN THE EARLY 1990s, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DRPK, or North Korea) remained a vestige of the Cold War era. An isolated, closed, and tightly controlled communist society, North Korea was governed by a leadership that was only gradually opening the country to the outside world--and was doing so, in large part, only because its dire economic circumstances were forcing the issue. Although China, the former Soviet Union, and East European communist countries had undergone some degree of political and economic change, North Korea remained virtually the same as it had been for the more than four decades of its existence.
Korea's division in 1945 along the thirty-eighth parallel was originally intended as a temporary partition to facilitate the surrender of Japanese forces on the Korean Peninsula at the end of World War II. Superpower rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, and continued occupation of the peninsula, gave rise to the establishment of two hostile, competitive nations. North Korea was formed under Soviet sponsorship in the northern half of the peninsula. With the assistance of the United States, the Republic of Korea (ROK, or South Korea) emerged in the southern half. North Korea comprises approximately 55 percent of the total land mass of the Korean Peninsula. Some 22 million people live in the north, compared with about twice that number in the south.
North Korea's attempt at reunification by military action in 1950 led to the Korean War (1950-53), known in North Korea as the Fatherland Liberation War. Although North Korean troops initially were successful on the battlefield, only the massive introduction of the Chinese People's Volunteers into the conflict halted the almost total destruction of North Korean forces by the United States led-United Nations (UN) Command forces. The commanders of the Chinese, North Korean, and UN Command troops signed an armistice agreement in July 1953. Neither the United States nor South Korea signed the agreement, but both countries have adhered to it, and the armistice remained in force as of late 1993.
North Korean society revolves around the "religion of Kim Il Sungism" and his chuch'e ideology, North Korea's own brand of Marxism-Leninism, national identity, and self-reliance. Kim's "religion" and chuch'e have supplanted Confucianism and other religious and philosophical beliefs such as Daoism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Ch'ndogyo. Interestingly, some observers have suggested a possible connection between Confucian strictures and the transformation of North Korea into a society demanding loyalty to Kim Il Sung, the country's paramount leader.
North Korea's social services are similar to those of other socialist countries. Education is universal, free, and compulsory for eleven years. Health care is provided by a national medical service, and the country has a national health insurance system. Both the education system and the centrally controlled media stress social harmony. Contemporary cultural expression is also driven--and controlled--by the Korean Workers' Party (KWP) and the state.
In the beginning of its regime, North Korea was distinguished by its successes in agricultural growth rates and yields. This record, however, has not been duplicated in terms of growth and yield since then. There were reports of food shortages (leading to rioting and the imposition of food rationing) in the early 1990s, but the shortfalls were as much attributable to poor weather conditions and distribution problems as inherent problems in the agricultural sector.
North Korea's efforts at industrialization have not been very successful. Although the country initially achieved some success in industrialization, the overall record is grim. A portrait emerges of a centrally controlled economy in decline: resources are inequitably allocated, production is hindered by lack of energy and modern technology, shortages of energy and oil have resulted in production declines, and labor productivity is low. Low productivity stems, in part, from obsolescent plants fitted with broken-down equipment, few spare parts, and lack of the technical expertise needed to fix equipment. Further complicating matters, heavy demands for electricity necessitate its production on a staggered schedule in order to maximize its effective use. In addition, the development of key industries is linked to increased electrical production and the construction of power plants. Calls for greater electric power production are common (plants are idled because of cutbacks in power).
In the early years of the regime, the government stressed heavy industry and accorded consumer goods and light industries second priority. Since the late 1970s, however, economic planners have paid more attention to light industry. And, in the early 1990s, some planners even advised operating light industry plants on a full schedule, thereby increasing the production of people's daily necessities. Nonetheless, heavy industry--particularly defense needs--has remained a focus of central planning and a drain on the economy. The military's hold on scarce resources-- and the priority of the military over other sectors--adds to the large demands for resources and has further undermined economic efficiency. North Korea has repeatedly failed to achieve economic goals and production schedules. In the past, Soviet and Chinese aid permitted some production targets to be met within specified time allotments, but others had to be sacrificed.
North Korea's poor record of debt repayment and its bad credit rating severely limit its ability to engage in international trade. Further, it has little to sell abroad. The demands made by China and Russia that North Korea pay hard currency for purchases exacerbate the situation. The country's trade problems are also compounded by the layers of economic sanctions the United States has placed on North Korea.
North Korea is not known for releasing statistical (or other) information, and its revelations about its economy are offered in vague terms. For example, at the fifth session of the Ninth Supreme People's Assembly held in April 1993, the Third Seven- Year Plan (1987-93) was not even mentioned in discussions on the state budget. North Korea does not usually discuss increases and decreases in terms of real figures, but provides them as percentages.
In early 1993, a spate of articles from Russian sources, published in the South Korean and Japanese press, detailed North Korea's economic woes. In March 1993, East European and Russian diplomats stationed in P'yongyang, North Korea's capital, revealed that North Korea's gross national product (GNP) may have declined as much as 7 to 10 percent. Russians and East European observers attributed the economic decline to failures in the mining industry, which accounts for approximately 40 percent of GNP. Estimates for declines in the production of iron, steel, and cement and in oil refining also are significant. Agriculture presents a mixed picture: rice production continued a decline that began in 1990, but corn and cabbage production apparently has increased. Meanwhile, critical shortages of raw materials and fuel mean that factories operate at far less than capacity. The garment industry is the only area of increased economic activity.
Some analysts have theorized that North Korea's economic problems will ultimately force it to open somewhat to the outside world. Some observers viewed the leadership changes announced at a December 1992 session of the Supreme People's Assembly as aimed at promoting advocates of economic reform and an opening to the outside world. Others argue, however, that the leaders of North Korea fear that economic reform and an opening to the outside world could erode the foundation of the totalitarian state. Political unrest and disarray similar to that experienced in the former communist nations could lead to the collapse of the regime in P'yongyang.
Survival of the current regime remains North Korea's foremost priority. Since its founding, the country has been ruled by a single person, Kim Il Sung, in an extremely rigid system. A guerrilla leader active in the resistance against Japan before World War II, Kim became head of state in September 1948. Over the years, a cult of personality has grown up around him. In 1993, at age eighty-one, he continued to dominate the political scene and was the long-standing general secretary of the KWP Secretariat and president of the government. He turned over the chairmanship of the National Defense Commission to his son and designated successor, Kim Jong Il, in April 1993 as part of the process of grooming and positioning his political heir. In his position as president, Kim Il Sung had also previously controlled the military; he appointed his son supreme commander, or wnsu, of the army in 1992. Like Kim Il Sung, key leaders hold multiple offices: party, state, and military. The death of the elder Kim may destabilize the political situation as contending forces vie for power and Kim Jong Il attempts to assert control.
Chuch'e ideology is also a dominant force in North Korea. On November 23, 1993, the South Korean government released the text of the revised 1972 North Korean constitution, which had been approved, but had not been made public, by the Ninth Supreme People's Assembly on April 9, 1992. The revised constitution substitutes chuch'e for Marxism-Leninism as a guiding principle of politics; changes the term of office for members of the Supreme People's Assembly and its Standing Committee from four years to five; and extends by a year the terms of office for the president, Central People's Committee, National Defense Commission, Central Court, and Central Procurator's Office.
The end of the Cold War and the resulting changes in the communist world--the breakup of the former Soviet Union and the East European communist countries--have presented challenges both to P'yongyang and to its allies. Not the least of these challenges has been their dealings with and diplomatic recognition of South Korea. The Soviet Union and South Korea established diplomatic relations in September 1990; China and South Korea opened trade offices (with consular functions) in 1991 and established diplomatic relations in August 1992. The success of South Korea's Nordpolitik further contributed to the isolation of North Korea. In particular, Seoul's establishment of diplomatic relations with Moscow and its considerable trade with Beijing--more important than its trade with P'yongyang--have meant that North Korea has lost the ability to play the two communist giants off against one another. For China and Russia, the economic advantages of a relationship with South Korea mitigate the effects of a lesser relationship with North Korea.
Normalization of relations with Japan remains a contentious issue. North Korea expects compensation for the period of colonial rule and wants hard currency, investment capital, and technology. North Korea also wants Japan to respect the three- party joint declaration issued by Japan's Liberal Democratic Party and Social Democratic Party and by North Korea's KWP. In addition, it wants Japan to respect North Korea's independent position and apologize for its past deeds. Japan's pressure on the nuclear issue will likely deter an early resumption of negotiations.
Although North Korea has sought reunification of the peninsula on its own terms through the judicious use of force, subversion, or even peaceful political means, efforts at inter- Korean reconciliation through dialogue began in the early 1970s and continued in the early 1990s. The admission of the two Koreas into the UN in September 1991 marked a turning point in P'yongyang's inter-Korean policy, despite the fact that the two countries remain committed to unification according to their own programs. Although seated alongside South Korea, North Korea has said it would continue to pursue a "one-Korea policy." Both sides continue their political maneuvering. The signing of the historic December 13, 1991, Agreement on Reconciliation, Nonaggression, Exchanges, and Cooperation, and the Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, both of which became effective in February 1992, marked another turning point in inter-Korean relations. The former agreement is sometimes referred to as the North-South Basic Agreement, the latter as the Joint Denuclearization Declaration.
On February 28, 1993, North Korea issued another three-part memorandum on reunification. Three conditions were cited in order for "peace . . . to be guaranteed and the reunification process be continuously promoted on the Korean peninsula." First, the United States and South Korea must end their annual Team Spirit exercises. Second, South Korea must "take the road of national reunification on the principle of national independence." Third, the United States must renounce its Korean policy, which originated during the Cold War.
North Korea's Ten-Point Program of Great Unity of the Whole Nation for Reunification of the Country was presented at the April 1993 session of the Supreme People's Assembly. This program, adopted with the approval of all Supreme People's Assembly deputies, urged an "end to the national division."
North Korea also affirmed its continued interest in holding dialogue with South Korea and somewhat softened its standard demands. For example, the usual demand for the withdrawal of United States troops from the Korean Peninsula was recast and now echoed South Korea's expression of a "will to have US forces withdrawn from South Korea."
In May 1993, Kang Song-san, premier of the State Administration Council, sent a proposal to South Korea that the two sides exchange special envoys--"deputy prime minister-level officials fully in charge of reunification affairs, and the sooner the exchange of their visits, the better." Kang viewed this exchange as opening a new phase in implementing the North- South Basic Agreement and the Joint Denuclearization Declaration and as a way to move forward on the issue of reunification. Kang appealed to South Korea to recognize the importance of "national interest" and to grasp "the opportunity for the North and South to jointly open a bright future for the nation."
The legacy of mutual suspicion continues, however. North Korea maintains that inter-Korean barriers could be dismantled and mutual cooperation ensured once both sides end their arms race and bring about mutual and balanced force reduction. South Korea insists that dialogue should address nonpolitical questions until the two countries have developed mutual trust. Political issues influence all aspects of contact, however.
North Korea's apparent program to develop the ability to produce nuclear weapons has greatly complicated its relations with all nations. In December 1991, after years of secretly working to develop the means to produce plutonium, North Korea and South Korea signed the Joint Denuclearization Declaration. In this document, North Korea publicly pledged it would not develop, purchase, or otherwise seek to obtain nuclear weapons, nor the means to reprocess plutonium. In early 1992, North Korea finally signed a nuclear safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). This agreement enabled the IAEA to inspect the major facilities at North Korea's main nuclear installation, Yngbyn.
IAEA inspections revealed discrepancies between North Korea's claims about the amount of plutonium it had produced and the amount suggested by technical data developed during the inspections. To resolve these discrepancies, the IAEA sought to collect samples at two nuclear waste sites, which North Korea had tried to mask as rice paddies. When repeated diplomatic efforts failed to gain the desired access, the IAEA director general made a call for "special" inspections as provided for in the safeguards agreement between the IAEA and North Korea.
Parallel to these developments, North Korea's eighteen-month- long dialogue with Seoul ground to a halt in the winter of 1992. The first signs of renewed friction had appeared in October 1992, when Seoul's internal security agency, the National Security Planning Agency, announced that it had uncovered an extensive North Korean spy ring. Also in October 1992, at the annual United States-South Korea Security Consultative Meeting, it was decided to resume preparations for Team Spirit, the two countries' annual joint defensive exercise that had been suspended in early 1992 in recognition of North Korea's signing of the Joint Denuclearization Declaration. It was noted, however, that the 1993 exercise would not be held if there were significant progress in the South-North dialogue, particularly concerning formulation of a South-North nuclear inspection regime. North Korea pointed to these developments as it disengaged from all meetings with Seoul except for those focused on implemention of the denuclearization accord in the Joint Nuclear Control Committee (JNCC). But JNCC talks were discontinued in late January 1993 when the United States and South Korea announced they would conduct Team Spirit 1993.
By February 1993, all South-North dialogue had stalled, Team Spirit 1993 was about to begin, and the IAEA had yet to gain access to the two suspected North Korean nuclear waste sites at Yngbyn. The IAEA Board of Governors served notice to North Korea on February 25 that if it did not cooperate with the IAEA's director general and allow access to the suspected sites, the board would find North Korea in noncompliance with its obligations under its safeguards agreement with the IAEA and would report the situation to the UN Security Council.
North Korea reacted on March 12 by announcing its intention to withdraw from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT); it would be the first nation ever to do so. A ninety-day grace period would have to run its course before the withdrawal became effective.
There was an immediate, worldwide outcry. The more than 100 members of the NPT urged North Korea to reconsider its decision to withdraw. The IAEA Board of Governors passed a resolution at the end of March that found North Korea in noncompliance with its safeguards obligations and referred the matter to the UN Security Council. The global condemnation of North Korea climaxed on May 11 when the Security Council passed, with China and Pakistan abstaining, Resolution S/25768, which urged North Korea to comply with the IAEA director general's requests for "special" inspections at the two suspected nuclear waste sites. The resolution expressed full support for the IAEA, asked that North Korea remain a member of the NPT, and called on UN members to assist in seeking a solution to the impasse.
The United States subsequently agreed to engage North Korea in the first ever bilateral talks. At the first round of talks held in New York in June, the two countries issued a joint statement in which they noted that "the two sides discussed policy-related issues raised for fundamentally resolving the nuclear issue of the Korean Peninsula, and expressed support of the Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula in accordance with the purpose for preventing nuclear proliferation." North Korea stated that it had "decided to unilaterally and temporarily suspend the effectuation of the withdrawal from the NPT as long as it considers necessary." A second round of talks in Geneva produced some additional progress toward a resolution of the nuclear issue. The United States promised that as part of a final resolution of the nuclear issue, it would be willing to consider assisting North Korea in its desire to acquire light-water reactor technology.
P'yongyang promised that it would maintain continuity of safeguards, which requires IAEA inspection of its nuclear facilities, and indicated that it would consult with the IAEA about outstanding safeguards issues and resume serious dialogue with Seoul prior to a third round of talks with Washington.
As of late 1993, however, North Korea remained reluctant to allow the scope of inspection that the IAEA deems necessary to maintain the continuity of safeguards. Further, North Korea had yet to agree to resume its dialogue with South Korea. Consequently, the United States was refusing to agree to a third round of talks with North Korea. In short, the talks appeared close to being broken off, despite the willingness of the United States to suspend Team Spirit 1994 and to ultimately consider improving diplomatic and economic ties with P'yongyang in exchange for its remaining a member of the NPT, complying fully with the IAEA, and agreeing to the implementation of the Joint Denuclearization Declaration.
The future of the Korean Peninsula is far from resolved. Although there has been progress in inter-Korean relations, much remains to be worked out. The costs of reunification are high, both economically and politically. Analysts have noted that some South Korean government officials believe that North Korea has designated 1995 as the year for reunification and is accelerating its war preparations. Much of the current increased posturing by North Korea--particularly its nuclear stance--may be related to this issue. The only certainty is that the situation is far from closure.
December 16, 1993
* * *
The chronology of events since the Introduction was written shows little progress in inter-Korean relations, United States- North Korea relations, or full compliance by North Korea with IAEA nuclear inspection. The situation remains uncertain. Desirous of diplomatic recognition and economic aid from the United States--the latter also from its neighbors--P'yongyang, in the view of some observers, has used the "nuclear card" as a strategy to exact concessions from Washington but is also determined to continue its military program and develop a powerful nuclear arsenal. The United States Central Intelligence Agency suspects that North Korea already possesses two nuclear bombs and may have the potential to develop four to five more weapons.
In March 1994, almost one year after nuclear inspections were halted in North Korea, visas were issued to two teams of IAEA inspectors for access to seven of the nine nuclear facilities they sought to examine as part of the inspection process. Subsequently, the United States announced that a third round of high-level talks with North Korea on diplomatic and economic matters would be resumed in Geneva on March 21. The United States and South Korea agreed to conditionally suspend--pending North Korea's holding of nuclear inspections--their annual Team Spirit exercise scheduled for late March. For its part, North Korea also agreed to resume talks with South Korea. In early March, a broken seal was discovered at the Yngbyn nuclear reprocessing facility, a site where the surveillance cameras have been without operating batteries since October 1993. On March 16, the third round of talks between the United States and North Korea was canceled because of P'yongyang's refusal to allow a complete IAEA inspection. On March 21, President Clinton ordered a battalion of Patriot missile interceptors shipped to South Korea. That same day, the nine-member IAEA board (with China abstaining) passed a resolution asking North Korea "immediately to allow the IAEA to complete all requested inspection activities" and to "comply fully with its safeguards agreement."
On March 31, 1994, the UN Security Council issued a formal statement calling on North Korea to allow the IAEA full and complete inspection of all North Korean nuclear sites. (The United States, with the support of Britain, France, and Russia, had wanted to issue a UN resolution--which carries the weight of international law--on the matter, but China opposed such a stance.) The statement proposed a six-week deadline for the IAEA to report on whether or not inspections had been completed and whether or not North Korea was in compliance with international nuclear safeguards. A few days later, North Korea rejected the demand to comply with full inspections as "unjustifiable."
The stalemate continued in April. By mid-April Kim Il Sung had announced that the United States must abide by its pledge to proceed with high-level talks without preconditions. Moreover, Kim denied that North Korea has been--or is--developing nuclear weapons. On April 18, United States Navy ships began offloading Patriot missiles in South Korea.
There was no resolution to the situation in May. On May 19, the IAEA condemned North Korea for "serious violation" of the nuclear inspection program. At issue was the marking, or segregation, of certain critical withdrawn uranium fuel rods for eventual sampling to determine how much plutonium had been accumulated. If the IAEA cannot properly monitor, that is, sample, the withdrawn fuel rods, the agency cannot verify whether or not fuel has been diverted for use in nuclear weapons. (By measuring the radioactive fuel content of rods, scientists can determine the amount of plutonium that has been accumulated for nuclear weapons. Uranium fuel rods are replaced every few years. North Korea has said that the present rods are the original rods that were placed in 1986 and that they are almost spent, necessitating their replacement. The United States suspects that many of these fuel rods were secretly replaced in 1989 when the reactor was shut down for 100 days and that the removed fuel rods were ultimately reprocessed for use in nuclear weapons.)
After failing to conduct complete inspections in March, the two IAEA teams were again sent to North Korea in May to conduct nuclear inspections. Their efforts were again stymied. Complications were introduced when North Korea told the inspectors that they could observe the removal of fuel rods but that they could not test the rods. They were also informed that rods would not be set aside for future measurements and that IAEA inspectors could neither visit two nuclear waste sites nor complete the inspections at the plutonium reprocessing plant at Yngbyn. In response, the IAEA demanded an immediate stop to the withdrawal of fuel rods. In May, one IAEA team confirmed that North Korea had withdrawn approximately 4,000 spent fuel rods out of an estimated 8,000 rods in late May. The IAEA wanted 300 critical rods that constitute the core fuel element set aside for sampling.
By late May, the United States had warned that it would cancel new high-level talks if North Korea did not comply with IAEA demands and that it would press for international economic sanctions. North Korea has continued to reject the complete inspection program, claiming that it has a "unique status"-- attained in March 1993--when it threatened to withdraw from the NPT but then suspended its threats under United States pressure. North Korea has said that it will never allow the IAEA to mark and sample the rods even if threatened with economic sanctions under a UN resolution. On May 30, Britain, China, France, Russia, and the United States issued a statement urging North Korea to set aside fuel rods for future sampling. The following day, the IAEA telexed North Korea either to halt the withdrawal of fuel rods or to follow acceptable procedures for storing the rods under international supervision.
Also in late May, Japanese press reports, confirmed by United States officials, noted that North Korea appeared to be preparing for testing a new short-range ballistic missile within the next few weeks. Such a missile would be capable of reaching much of Japan. Department of Defense officials said that on May 31 North Korea tested a cruise missile in the Sea of Japan designed to hit ships at a range of more than 160 kilometers.
In early June, the uncertainty of the situation on the peninsula continued. On June 2, Hans Blix, director general of the IAEA, sent a letter to the secretary general of the UN stating that the IAEA was unable to "select, segregate and secure fuel rods for later measurements in accordance with agency standards" and that it could not determine the amount of plutonium that "has been diverted in the past." He subsequently announced that all but 1,800 of the 8,000 rods--including the 300 critical rods--had been removed and stored in such a way that the IAEA would be unable to determine their location in the reactor. The letter automatically placed the issue of sanctions on the UN Security Council agenda.
As of early June, United States had not yet decided on the level of sanctions it will seek. It also faces the difficulty of getting the full council membership--particularly China but also Russia--to agree to impose sanctions against North Korea. The action of the United States in extending most-favored-nation status to China in late May has been viewed as a means of appealing to China to either agree to economic sanctions or to use its leverage with North Korea to oblige it to comply with IAEA requests. And, the level of sanctions Japan is willing to impose also remained questionable. What remains certain is that the United States, China, Japan, Russia, and South Korea publicly want North Korea to comply with the nuclear inspection program, but they differ in their views on the level, the efficacy, and the timing of such sanctions.
Further complicating matters, North Korea has again threatened to withdraw from the NPT, stating that sanctions would violate the 1953 armistice agreement and be considered an act of war. Secretary of Defense William Perry has said that the United States will bolster its troops in South Korea and will defend that country if invaded by North Korea.
In mid-June the nuclear inspections issue continued to dominate events on the Korean Peninsula. The United States effort to garner support for the imposition of economic sanctions on North Korea was halted, however, as a result of events following the visit of former United States president Jimmy Carter to North Korea on June 15-18 and his meetings with Kim Il Sung. The United States agreed to resume its high-level talks (suspended for over a year) with North Korea in Geneva on July 8. In exchange, North Korea agreed to "freeze" its nuclear program: to allow IAEA inspectors to remain at Yngbyn, to halt reprocessing, and to stop reloading the reactor. However, this position is a short- term one. P'yongyang's long-term position on the nuclear issue will likely be contingent on the progress of the talks in Geneva.
During President Carter's visit, Kim Il Sung proposed a summit meeting between the leaders of North Korea and South Korea. On June 28, North Korea and South Korea agreed to hold such a meeting--the first since the division of the peninsula--on July 25-27 in P'yongyang. The agenda, however, was not discussed; a second, reciprocal meeting--likely to be held in Seoul--will be part of the agenda at the first meeting.
As of late June, the United States was considering a range of economic and diplomatic incentives in exchange for a freeze on North Korea's nuclear weapons program but planning for other contingencies. The United States Navy is sending two minesweepers and an amphibious vessel to Japan as a "purely defensive" measure in order to reinforce the United States military presence on the Korean Peninsula. The ships are scheduled to arrive by the end of July.
The talks in Geneva will likely be a forum for discussing the nuclear issue in a larger context. The dynamics of the situation will change, determined by the direction and progress, or lack thereof, of the talks.
* * *
The uncertainty of the situation on the Korean Peninsula continued with the sudden, unexpected death of Kim Il Sung of an alleged heart attack "owing to heavy mental strains." As a result of Kim's death on July 8, which was also the first day of talks in Geneva between the United States and North Korea, it was announced that subsequent talks between the two countries had been suspended, and that the summit talks between North Korea and South Korea scheduled for late July in P'yongyang had been postponed indefinitely. P'yongyang announced, however, that it would resume discussions on the nuclear weapons issue after Kim's funeral, and on July 20, the United States announced that these talks were expected to resume within a few weeks. On July 16, Kim's funeral was postponed for two days, causing some speculation among Korea watchers as to whether Kim Jong Il's so far seemingly orderly succession was meeting resistance. For the short term, it is expected that Kim Jong Il will be able to assume the positions for which he has been groomed without overt resistance; his long-term success remains open to question. The constitution makes no provisions for succession; as of this writing, Kim has not been formally proclaimed either president of state or general secretary of the party.
June 29, 1994
Andrea Matles Savada
PRIOR TO THE NATIONAL DIVISION of the Korean Peninsula in 1945, Korea was home to a people with a unitary existence, ethnic and linguistic homogeneity, and a historic bond of exclusionism towards outsiders--a result of its history of invasion, influence, and fighting over its territory by larger and more powerful neighbors. This legacy continues to influence the contemporary Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea).
There are other parallels between Korea's past and presentday North Korea. The traditions of Confucianism and a bureaucracy administered from the top-down and from the center continue to hold sway. Further, just as there was relative stability for more than two millennia on the Korean Peninsula, there has been relative stability in North Korea since Kim Il Sung came to power in 1946. As Confucian doctrine perpetuated the authority of the family system and the importance of education, so too were these elements paramount in Kim Il Sung's North Korea. Politics remain personalistic, and Kim has surrounded himself with a core of revolutionary leaders (now aging), whose loyalty dates back to their days of guerrilla resistance against the Japanese in Manchuria. Kim's chuch'e ideology also has its roots in the self-reliant philosophy of the Hermit Kingdom (as Korea was called by Westerners), and Korea's history of exclusionism also held particular appeal to a people emerging from the period of Japanese colonial domination (1910-45).
North Korea came into being in 1945, in the midst of a prolonged confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. North Korea was, and in some ways remains, a classic Cold War state, driven by the demands of the long-standing conflict with the Republic of Korea (ROK, or South Korea), and the United States and its allies. It emerged in the heyday of Stalinism, which influenced North Korea's decision to give priority to heavy industry in its economic program. North Korea was a state forged in warfare: by a civil struggle fought at the beginning of the regime and by a vicious fratricidal war fought while the system was still in infancy. All these influences combined to produce a hardened leadership that knew how to hold onto power. But North Korea also evolved as a rare synthesis between foreign models and native influences; the political system was deeply rooted in native soil, drawing on Korea's long history of unitary existence on a small peninsula surrounded by greater powers.
Koreans inhabit a mountainous peninsula protruding southward from the northeastern corner of the Asian continent and surrounded on three sides by water. Although Japan exercised decisive influence by the late sixteenth century, in ancient times the peoples and civilizations on the contiguous Asian continent were far more important. The peninsula is surrounded on three sides by other peoples: Chinese to the west; Japanese to the east; and an assortment of peoples to the north, including "barbarian" tribes, aggressive invaders, and, in the twentieth century, an expanding and deepening Russian presence. Koreans have emerged as a people influenced by the peninsula's internal and surrounding geography.
The northern border between Korea and China formed by the Yalu and Tumen rivers has been recognized for centuries. But these rivers did not always constitute Korea's northern limits; Koreans ranged far beyond this border well into northeastern China and Siberia, and neither Koreans nor the ancient tribes that occupied the plains of Manchuria (northeastern China) considered these riverine borders to be sacrosanct. The harsh winter climate also turned the rivers into frozen pathways for many months, facilitating the back-and-forth migration out of which the Korean people were formed.
Paleolithic excavations show that humans inhabited the Korean Peninsula half a million years ago, but most scholars assume that present-day Koreans are not descended from these early inhabitants. Neolithic age (from 4,000-3,000 B.C.) humans also inhabited the area, identified archaeologically by the ground and polished stone tools and pottery they left to posterity. Around 2,000 B.C., a new pottery culture spread into Korea from China. These people practiced agriculture in a settled communal life, and are widely supposed to have had consanguineous clans as their basic social grouping. Korean historians in modern times sometimes assume that the clan leadership systems characterized by councils of nobles (hwabaek) that emerged in the subsequent Silla period can be traced back to these neolithic peoples, and that a mythical "child of the sn," an original Korean, also was born then. There is no hard evidence, however, to support such beginnings for the Korean people.
By the fourth century B.C., a number of walled-town states on the peninsula had survived long enough to come to the attention of China. The most illustrious of these states was Old Chosn, which had established itself along the banks of the Liao and the Taedong rivers in southern Manchuria and northwestern Korea. Old Chosn prospered as a civilization based on bronze culture and a political federation of many walled towns; the federation, judging from Chinese accounts, was formidable to the point of arrogance. Riding horses and deploying bronze weapons, the Chosn people extended their influence to the north, taking most of the Liaodong Basin. But the rising power of the north China state of Yen (1122-255 B.C.) checked Chosn's growth and eventually pushed it back to territory south of the Ch'ngch'n River, located midway between the Yalu and Taedong rivers. As the Yen gave way in China to the Qin (221-207 B.C.) and the Han dynasties (206 B.C.-A.D. 220), Chosn declined, and refugee populations migrated eastward. Out of this milieu, emerged Wiman, a man who assumed the kingship of Chosn sometime between 194 and 180 B.C. The Kingdom of Wiman Chosn melded Chinese influence, and under the Old Chosn federated structure--apparently reinvigorated under Wiman--the state again expanded over hundreds of kilometers of territory. Its ambitions ran up against a Han invasion, however, and Wiman Chosn fell in 108 B.C.
These developments coincided with the beginnings of iron culture, enabling the rise of a sophisticated agriculture based on implements such as hoes, plowshares, and sickles. Cultivation of rice and other grains increased markedly. Although the peoples of the peninsula could not yet be called "Korean," there was an unquestioned continuity in agrarian society from this time until the emergence of a unified Korean state many centuries later.
Han Chinese built four commanderies, or local military units, to rule the peninsula as far south as the Han River, with a core area at Lolang (Nangnang in Korean), near present-day P'yongyang. It is illustrative of the relentlessly different historiography practiced in North Korea and South Korea, as well as the projection backward of Korean nationalism practiced by both sides, that North Korean historians deny that the Lolang Commandery was centered in Korea. They place it northwest of the peninsula, possibly near Beijing, in order to de-emphasize China's influence on ancient Korean history. They perhaps do so because Lolang was clearly a Chinese city, as attested by the many burial objects showing the affluent lives of Chinese overlords and merchants.
From approximately 108 B.C. until 313, Lolang was a great center of Chinese statecraft, art, industry (including the mining of iron ore), and commerce. Lolang's influence was widespread; it attracted immigrants from China and exacted tribute from several states south of the Han River that patterned their civilization and government after Lolang. In the first three centuries A.D., a large number of walled-town states in southern Korea grouped into three federations known as Chinhan, Mahan, and Pynhan; during this period, rice agriculture had developed in the rich alluvial valleys and plains to such an extent that reservoirs had been built for irrigation.
Chinhan was situated in the middle part of the southern peninsula, Mahan in the southwest, and Pynhan in the southeast. The state of Paekche, which soon came to exercise great influence on Korean history, emerged first in the Mahan area; it is not certain when this happened, but Paekche certainly existed by 246 since Lolang mounted a large attack on it in that year. Paekche, a centralized, aristocratic state that melded Chinese and indigenous influence, was a growing power: within a hundred years Paekche had demolished Mahan and continued to expand northward into the area of present-day South Korea around Seoul. Contemporary historians believe that the common Korean custom of patrilineal royal succession began with King K n Ch'ogo (r. 346-75) of Paekche. His grandson, Ch'imnyu, inaugurated another long tradition by adopting Buddhism as the state religion in 384.
Meanwhile, in the first century A.D. two powerful states emerged north of the peninsula: Puy in the Sungari River Basin in Manchuria and Kogury, Puy's frequent enemy to its south, near the Yalu River. Kogury, which like Paekche also exercised a lasting influence on Korean history, developed in confrontation with the Chinese. Puy was weaker and sought alliances with China to counter Kogury, but eventually succumbed to it around 312. Kogury expanded in all directions, in particular toward the Liao River in the west and toward the Taedong River in the south. In 313 Kogury occupied the territory of the Lolang Commandery and came into conflict with Paekche.
Peninsular geography shaped the political space of Paekche, Kogury, and a third kingdom, Silla. In the central part of Korea, the main mountain range, the T'aebaek, runs north to south along the edge of the Sea of Japan. Approximately three-fourths of the way down the peninsula, however, roughly at the thirty-seventh parallel, the mountain range veers to the southwest, dividing the peninsula almost in the middle. This southwest extension, the Sobaek Range, shielded peoples to the east of it from the Chinese-occupied portion of the peninsula, but placed no serious barrier in the way of expansion into or out of the southwestern portion of the peninsula--Paekche's historical territory.
Kogury ranged over a wild region of northeastern Korea and eastern Manchuria that was subjected to extremes of temperature and structured by towering mountain ranges, broad plains, and life-giving rivers; the highest peak, known as Paektu-san (White Head Mountain), is on the contemporary Sino-Korean border and has a beautiful, crystal-pure lake at its summit. Kim Il Sung and his guerrilla band utilized associations with this mountain as part of the founding myth of North Korea, and Kim Jong Il was said to have been born on the slopes of the mountain in 1942. Not surprisingly, North Korea claimed the Kogury legacy as the main element in Korean history.
According to South Korean historiography, however, it was the glories of a third kingdom that were the most important elements. Silla eventually became the repository of a rich and cultured ruling elite, with its capital at Kyngju in the southeast, north of the port of Pusan. In fact, the men who ruled South Korea beginning in 1961 all came from this region. It has been the southwestern Paekche legacy that suffered in divided Korea, as Koreans of other regions and historians in both North Korea and South Korea have discriminated against the people of the present- day Chlla provinces. But taken together, all three kingdoms continue to influence Korean history and political culture. Koreans often assume that regional traits that they like or dislike go back to the Three Kingdoms period.
Silla evolved from a walled town called Saro. Silla historians are said to have traced its origins to 57 B.C., but contemporary historians regard King Naemul (r. 356-402) as the ruler who first consolidated a large confederated kingdom and established a hereditary kingship. His domain was east of the Naktong River in present-day North Kyngsang Province, South Korea. A small number of states located along the south central tip of the peninsula facing the Korea Strait did not join either Silla or Paekche, but instead formed a Kaya League that maintained close ties with states in Japan. Kaya's possible linkage to Japan remains an issue of debate among historians in Korea, Japan, and elsewhere. There is no convincing evidence to definitively resolve the debate, and circumstantial historical archaeological evidence is inconclusive. The debate is significant since its outcome could influence views on the origin of the Japanese imperial family. The Kaya states eventually were absorbed by their neighbors in spite of an attack against Silla in 399 by Wa forces from Japan, who had come to the aid of Kaya. Silla repelled the Wa with help from Kogury.
Centralized government probably emerged in Silla in the last half of the fifth century, when the capital became both an administrative and a marketing center. In the early sixth century, Silla's leaders introduced plowing by oxen and built extensive irrigation facilities. Increased agricultural output presumably ensued, allowing further political and cultural development that included an administrative code in 520, a class system of hereditary "bone-ranks" for choosing elites, and the adoption of Buddhism as the state religion around 535.
Militarily weaker than Kogury, Silla sought to fend the former off through an alliance with Paekche. By the beginning of the fifth century, however, Kogury had achieved undisputed control of all of Manchuria east of the Liao River as well as the northern and central regions of the Korean Peninsula. At this time, Kogury had a famous leader appropriately named King Kwanggaet'o (r. 391-412), a name that translates as "broad expander of territory." Reigning from the age of eighteen, he conquered sixty-five walled towns and 1,400 villages, in addition to assisting Silla when the Wa forces attacked. As Kogury's domain increased, it confronted China's Sui Dynasty (581-617) in the west and Silla and Paekche to the south.
Silla attacked Kogury in 551 in concert with King Sng (r. 523-54) of Paekche. After conquering the upper reaches of the Han River, Silla turned on the Paekche forces and drove them out of the lower Han area. While a tattered Paekche kingdom nursed its wounds in the southwest, Silla allied with Chinese forces of the Sui and the successor Tang Dynasty (618-907) in combined attacks against Kogury. The Sui emperor Yang Di launched an invasion of Kogury in 612, marshaling more than 1 million soldiers only to be lured by the revered Kogury commander lchi Mundk into a trap, where Sui forces virtually were destroyed. Perhaps as few as 3,000 Sui soldiers survived; the massacre contributed to the fall of the dynasty in 617. Newly risen Tang emperor Tai Zong launched another huge invasion in 645, but Kogury forces won another striking victory in the siege of the An Si Fortress in western Kogury, forcing Tai Zong's forces to withdraw.
Koreans have always viewed these victories as sterling examples of resistance to foreign aggression. Had Kogury not beaten back the invaders, all the states of the peninsula might have fallen under extended Chinese domination. Thus commanders like lchi Mundk later became models for emulation, especially during the Korean War (1950-53).
Paekche could not hold out under combined Silla and Tang attack, however. The latter landed an invasion fleet in 660, and Paekche quickly fell under their assaults. Tang pressure also had weakened Kogury, and after eight years of battle it gave way because of pressure from both external attack and internal strife exacerbated by several famines. Kogury forces retreated to the north, enabling Silla forces to advance and consolidate their control up to the Taedong River, which flows through P'yongyang.
Silla emerged victorious in 668. It is from this date that South Korean historians speak of a unified Korea. The period of the Three Kingdoms thus ended, but not before the kingdoms had come under the long-term sway of Chinese civilization and had been introduced to Chinese statecraft, Buddhist and Confucian philosophy, Confucian practices of educating the young, and the Chinese written language. (Koreans adapted Chinese characters to their own language through a system known as idu.) The Three Kingdoms also introduced Buddhism, the various rulers seeing a valuable political device for unity in the doctrine of a unified body of believers devoted to Buddha but serving one king. Artists from Kogury and Paekche also perfected a mural art found in the walls of tombs, and took it to Japan, where it deeply influenced Japan's temple and burial art. Indeed, many Korean historians believe that wall murals in Japanese royal tombs suggest that the imperial house lineage may have Korean origins.
Silla and Paekche had sought to use Chinese power against Kogury, inaugurating another tradition of involving foreign powers in internal Korean disputes. But Silla's reliance on Tang forces to consolidate its control had its price. Because Silla had to resist encroaching Tang forces, its sway was limited to the area south of the Taedong River. Nevertheless, Silla's military power, bolstered by an ideal of the youthful warrior (hwarang), was formidable. It seized Tang-occupied Paekche territories by 671, pushed Kogury still further northward, and drove the Tang commanderies off the peninsula by 676, thereby guaranteeing that the Korean people would develop independently, without outside influences.
The broad territories of Kogury, however, were not conquered, and in 698 a Kogury general named Tae Cho-yng established a successor state called Parhae above and below the Yalu and Tumen boundaries. Parhae forced Silla to build a northern wall in 721, and kept Silla forces below a line running from present-day P'yongyang to Wnsan. By the eighth century, Parhae controlled the northern part of Korea, all of northeastern Manchuria, and the Liaodong Peninsula. Both Silla and Parhae continued to be heavily influenced by Tang Chinese civilization.
Silla and Tang China had a great deal of contact inasmuch as large numbers of students, officials, and monks traveled to China for study and observation. In 682 Silla set up a national Confucian academy to train high officials and later instituted a civil-service examination system modeled on that of the Tang. Parhae modeled its central government even more directly on Tang systems than did Silla and sent many students to Tang schools. Parhae's culture melded indigenous and Tang influences, and its level of civilization was high enough to merit the Chinese designation "flourishing land in the East."
Silla in particular, however, developed a flourishing indigenous civilization that was among the most advanced in the world. Its capital at Kyngju in present-day South Korea was renowned as the "city of gold," where the aristocracy pursued a high culture and extravagant pleasures. Tang dynasty historians wrote that elite officials possessed thousands of slaves, with like numbers of horses, cattle, and pigs. Officials' wives wore gold tiaras and earrings of delicate and intricate filigree. Scholars studied the Confucian and Buddhist classics, built up state administration, and developed advanced methods for astronomy and calendrical science. The Dharani sutra, recovered in Kyngju, dates as far back as 751 and is the oldest example of woodblock printing yet found in the world. Pure Land Buddhism (Buddhism for the Masses) united the common people, who could become adherents through the repetition of simple chants. The crowning glories of this "city of gold" continue to be the Pulguksa temple in the city and the nearby Skkuram Grotto, both built around 750. Both are home to some of the finest Buddhist sculpture in the world. The grotto, atop a coastal bluff near Kyngju, houses the historic great stone Sakyamuni Buddha in its inner sanctum; the figure is situated so that the rising sun over the Sea of Japan strikes it in the middle of the forehead.
Ethnic differences between Kogury and the Malgal people native to Manchuria weakened Parhae by the early tenth century, just as Silla's power had begun to dissipate a century earlier when regional castle lords splintered central power and rebellions shook Silla's foundations. Parhae, coming under severe pressure from the Kitan warriors who ruled parts of northern China, Manchuria, and Mongolia, eventually fell in 926. Silla's decline encouraged a restorationist named Kynhwn to found Later Paekche at Chnju in 892 and another restorationist, named Kungye, to found Later Kogury at Kaesng in central Korea. Wang Kn, the son of Kungye who succeeded to the throne in 918, shortened the dynastic name to Kory and became the founder of a new dynasty by that name, from which came the modern term Korea.
Wang Kn's army fought ceaselessly with Later Paekche for the next decade, with Silla in retreat. After a crushing victory in 930 over Paekche forces at present-day Andong, South Korea, Kory obtained a formal surrender from Silla and proceeded to conquer Later Paekche by 935--amazingly, with troops led by former Paekche king Kynhwn, whose son had treacherously cast him aside. After this accomplishment, Wang Kn became a magnanimous unifier. Regarding himself as the proper successor to Kogury, he embraced survivors of the Kogury lineage who were fleeing the dying Parhae state, which had been conquered by Kitan warriors in 926. He then took a Silla princess as his wife and treated the Silla aristocracy with great generosity. Wang Kn established a regime embodying the remnants of the Later Three Kingdoms--what was left after the almost fifty years of struggle between the forces of Kynhwn and Kungye--and accomplished a true unification of the peninsula.
Placing the regime's capital at Kaesng, the composite elite of the Kory Dynasty (918-1392) forged a tradition of aristocratic continuity that lasted to the modern era. The elite fused aristocratic privilege and political power through marriage alliances and control of land and central political office, and made class position hereditary. This practice established a pattern for Korea in which landed gentry mingled with a Confucian- or Buddhist-educated stratum of scholar-officials; often scholars and landlords were one and the same person. In any case, landed wealth and bureaucratic position were powerfully fused. This fusion occurred at the center, where a strong bureaucracy influenced by Confucian statecraft emerged. Thereafter, this bureaucracy sought to dominate local power and thus militated against Japanese or European feudal pattern of parcelized sovereignty, castle domains, and military tradition. By the thirteenth century, two dominant government groupings had emerged: the civil officials and the military officials, known thereafter as yangban.
The Kory elite admired the Chinese civilization that emerged during the Song Dynasty (960-1279). Official delegations and ordinary merchants brought Kory gold, silver, and ginseng to China in exchange for Song silk, porcelain, and woodblock books. The treasured Song porcelain stimulated Kory artisans to produce an even finer type of inlaid celadon porcelain. Praised for the pristine clarity of its blue-green glaze--celadon glazes also were yellow green--and the delicate art of its inlaid portraits (usually of flowers or animals), Kory celadon displayed the refined taste of aristocrats and later had great influence on Japanese potters.
Buddhism coexisted with Confucianism throughout the Kory period; it deeply affected daily life and perhaps bequeathed to modern Korea its eclecticism of religious beliefs. Kory Buddhist priests systematized religious practice by rendering the Chinese version of the Buddhist canon into mammoth woodblock print editions, known as the Tripitaka. The first edition was completed in 1087, but was lost; another, completed in 1251 and still extant, is located at the Haeinsa temple near Taegu, South Korea. Its accuracy, combined with its exquisite calligraphic carvings, makes it the finest of some twenty Tripitaka in East Asia. By 1234, if not earlier, Kory had also invented moveable iron type, two centuries before its use in Europe.
This high point of Kory culture coincided with internal disorder and the rise of the Mongols, whose power swept most of Eurasia during the thirteenth century. Kory was not spared; Khubilai Khan's forces invaded and demolished Kory's army in 1231, forcing the Kory government to retreat to Kanghwa Island (off modern-day Inch'n). But after a more devastating invasion in 1254, in which countless people died and some 200,000 people were captured, Kory succumbed to Mongol domination and its kings intermarried with Mongol princesses. The Mongols then enlisted thousands of Koreans in ill-fated invasions of Japan in 1274 and 1281, using Korean-made ships. Both invasions were repelled with aid, as legend has it, from opportune typhoons known as "divine wind," or kamikaze. The last period of Mongol influence was marked by the appearance of a strong bureaucratic stratum of scholar-officials, or literati (sadaebu in Korean). Many of them lived in exile outside the capital, and they used their superior knowledge of the Confucian classics to condemn the excesses of the ruling families, who were backed by Mongol power.
The overthrow of the Mongols by the founders of the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) in China gave a rising group of military men, steeled in battle against coastal pirates from Japan, the opportunity to contest for power. When the Ming claimed suzerainty over former Mongol domains in Korea, the Kory court was divided between pro-Mongol and pro-Ming forces. Two generals marshaled their forces for an assault on Ming armies on the Liaodong Peninsula. One of the generals, Yi Sng-gye, was pro-Ming. When he reached the Yalu River, he abruptly turned back and marched on the Kory capital, which he subdued quickly. He thus became the founder of Korea's longest dynasty, the Yi (1392-1910). The new state was named Chosn, harking back to the old Chosn kingdom fifteen centuries earlier; its capital was built at Seoul.
One of General Yi's first acts was to carry out a sweeping land reform long advocated by Confucian literati reformers. After a national cadastral survey, all extant land registers were destroyed. Except for land doled out to loyalists called merit subjects, Yi Sng-gye declared everything to be owned by the state, thus undercutting Buddhist temples, which held vast farm lands, and locally powerful clans. Both groups had exacted high rents from peasants, leading to social distress in the late Kory period. These reforms also greatly enhanced the taxation power of the central government.
Buddhist influence in and complicity with the old system made it easier for the Confucian literati to urge an extirpation of Buddhist economic and political influence, and exile in the mountains for monks and their disciples. Indeed, the literati accomplished a deep Confucianization of Chosn society, which particularly affected the position of women. Often prominent in Kory society, women were now relegated to domestic chores of child-rearing and housekeeping, as so-called inside people.
As neo-Confucian doctrines swept the old order away, Korea effectively developed a secular society. Common people, however, retained attachments to folk religions, shamanism, geomancy, and fortune-telling, influences condemned by both Confucianism and the world at that time. This Korean mass culture created remarkably lively and diverse art forms: uniquely colorful and unpretentiously naturalistic folk paintings of animals, popular novels in Korean vernacular, and characters like the mudang, shamans who summoned spirits and performed exorcisms in kt, or shamanistic, rituals.
For more than a century after its founding, Chosn flourished as an exemplary agrarian bureaucracy deeply influenced by a cadre of learned scholar-officials who were steeped in the doctrines of neo-Confucianism. Like Kory, the Chosn Dynasty lacked the typical features of a feudal society. It was instead a classic agrarian bureaucracy.
Chosn possessed an elaborate procedure for entry to the civil service, a highly articulated civil service, and a practice of administering the country from the top down and from the center. The system rested on an agrarian base, making it different from modern bureaucratic systems; the particular character of agrarian-bureaucratic interaction also provided one of Korea's departures from the typical Chinese experience.
James B. Palais, a widely respected historian of the Chosn Dynasty, has shown that conflict between bureaucrats seeking revenues for government coffers and landowners hoping to control tenants and harvests was a constant during the Chosn Dynasty, and that in this conflict over resources the landowners often won out. Controlling land theoretically owned by the state, private landed interests soon came to be stronger and more persistent in Korea than in China. Although Korea had a centralized administration, the ostensibly strong center was more often a façade concealing the reality of aristocratic power.
One interpretation suggests that Korea's agrarian bureaucracy was superficially strong but actually rather weak at the center. A more conventional interpretation is that the Chosn Dynasty was ruled by a highly centralized monarchy served by a hereditary aristocracy that competed via civil and military service examinations for access to bureaucratic office. The state ostensibly dominated the society, but in fact landed aristocratic families kept the state at bay and perpetuated local power for centuries. This pattern persisted until the late 1940s, when landed dominance was obliterated in a northern revolution and attenuated in southern land reform; since then the balance has shifted toward strong central power and top-down administration of the whole country in both Koreas. The disruptions caused by the Korean War magnified the sociopolitical consequences of these developments.
The scientific Korean written alphabet han'gl was systematized in the fifteenth century under the greatest of Korean kings, Sejong (r. 1418-50), who also greatly increased the use of metal moveable type for book publications of all sorts. Korean is thought to be part of the Altaic group of languages, which includes Turkic, Mongol, Hungarian, Finnish, Tungusic (Manchu), and possibly Japanese. In spite of the long influence of written Chinese, Korean remains very different in lexicon, phonology, and grammar. The new han'g l alphabet did not come into general use until the twentieth century, however. Since 1948 North Koreans have used the Korean alphabet exclusively while South Koreans have retained usage of a mixed Sino-Korean script.
Confucianism is based on the family and an ideal model of relations between family members. It generalizes this family model to the state and to an international system--the Chinese world order. The principle is hierarchy within a reciprocal web of duties and obligations: the son obeys the father by following the dictates of filial piety; the father provides for and educates the son. Daughters obey mothers and mothers-in-law; younger siblings follow older siblings; wives are subordinate to husbands. The superior prestige and privileges of older adults make longevity a prime virtue. In the past, transgressors of these rules were regarded as uncultured beings unfit to be members of society. When generalized to politics, the principle mean that a village followed the leadership of venerated elders and citizens revered a king or emperor, who was thought of as the father of the state. Generalized to international affairs, the Chinese emperor was the big brother of the Korean king.
The glue holding the traditional nobility together was education, meaning socialization into Confucian norms and virtues that began in early childhood with the reading of the Confucian classics. The model figure was the so-called true gentleman, the virtuous and learned scholar-official who was equally adept at poetry and statecraft. In Korea education started very early because Korean students had to master the extraordinarily difficult classical Chinese language--tens of thousands of written ideographs and their many meanings typically learned through rote memorization. Throughout the Chosn Dynasty, all official records and formal education and most written discourse were in classical Chinese. With Chinese language and philosophy came a profound cultural penetration of Korea, such that most Chosn arts and literature came to use Chinese models.
Confucianism is often thought to be a conservative philosophy, stressing tradition, veneration of a past golden age, careful attention to the performance of ritual, disdain for material goods, commerce, and the remaking of nature, combined with obedience to superiors and a preference for relatively frozen social hierarchies. Much commentary on contemporary Korea focuses on this legacy and, in particular, on its allegedly authoritarian, antidemocratic character. Emphasis on the legacy of Confucianism, however, does not explain the extraordinary commercial bustle of South Korea, the materialism and conspicuous consumption of new elites, or the determined struggles for democratization by Korean workers and students. At the same time, one cannot assume that communist North Korea broke completely with the past. The legacy of Confucianism includes the country's family-based politics, the succession to rule of the leader's son, and the extraordinary veneration of Kim Il Sung.
The Chosn Dynasty had a traditional class structure that departed from the Chinese Confucian example, providing an important legacy for the modern period. The governing elite continued to be known as yangban but the term no longer simply connoted two official orders. In the Chosn Dynasty, the yangban had a virtual monopoly on education, official position, and possession of land. Entry to yangban status required a hereditary lineage. Unlike in China, commoners could not sit for state-run examinations leading to official position. One had to prove membership in a yangban family, which in practice meant having a forebear who had sat for exams within the past four generations. In Korea as in China, the majority of peasant families could not spare a son to study for the exams, so upward social mobility was sharply limited. But because in Korea the limit also was specifically hereditary, people had even less mobility than in China and held attitudes toward class distinction that often seemed indistinguishable from the attitudes underlying the caste system.
Silla society's "bone-rank" system also underlined that one's status in society was determined by birth and lineage. For this reason, each family and clan maintained an extensive genealogical record, or chokpo, with meticulous care. Because only male offspring prolonged the family and clan lines and were the only names registered in the genealogical tables, the birth of a son was greeted with great felicitation.
The elite were most conscious of family pedigree. A major study of all those who passed examinations in the Chosn Dynasty (some 14,000) showed that the elite families were heavily represented; other studies have documented the persistence of this pattern into the early twentieth century. Even in 1945, this aristocracy was substantially intact, although it died out soon thereafter.
Korea's traditional class system also included a peasant majority and minorities of petty clerks, merchants, and so-called base classes (ch'ommin), that is, castelike hereditary groups (paekchng) such as butchers, leather tanners, and beggars. Although merchants ranked higher than members of low-born classes, Confucian elites frowned on commercial activity and up until the twentieth century squelched it as much as possible. Peasants or farmers ranked higher than merchants because they worked the land, but the life of the peasantry was almost always difficult during the dynasty, and became more so later on. Most peasants were tenants, were required to give up at least half their crop to landlords as tax, and were subject to various additional exactions. Those in the low-born classes were probably worse off, however, given very high rates of slavery for much of the Chosn period. One source reported more than 200,000 government slaves in Seoul alone in 1462, and recent scholarship has suggested that at one time as much as 60 percent of Seoul's population may have been slaves. In spite of slavery being hereditary, however, rates of escape from slavery and manumission also were unusually high. Class and status hierarchies also were built into the Korean language and have persisted into the contemporary period. Superiors and inferiors were addressed quite differently, and elaborate honorifics were used to address elders. Even verb endings and conjugations differed according to station.
Chosn Dynasty Confucian doctrines also included a foreign policy known as "serving the great" (sadae), in this case, China. Chosn lived within the Chinese world order, which radiated outward from China to associated states, of which Korea was the most important. Korea was China's little brother, a model tributary state, and in many ways the most important of China's allies. Koreans revered things Chinese, and China responded for the most part by being a good neighbor, giving more than it took away. China assumed that enlightened Koreans would follow it without being forced. Absolutely convinced of its own superiority, China indulged in a policy that might be called benign neglect, thereby allowing Korea substantive autonomy as a nation.
This sophisticated world order was broken up by Western and Japanese influence in the late nineteenth century. Important legacies for the twentieth century remained, however. As a small power, Korea had to learn to be shrewd in foreign policy. Since at least the seventh century, Koreans have cultivated the sophisticated art of "low determines high" diplomacy, a practice whereby a small country maneuvers between two larger countries and seeks to use foreign power for its own ends. Although both North Korea and South Korea have often struck foreign observers as rather dependent on big-power support, both have not only claimed but also strongly asserted their absolute autonomy and independence as nation-states, and both have been adept at manipulating their big-power clients. Until the mid-1980s, North Korea was masterful not only in getting big powers to fight its battles, but also in maneuvering between the Soviet Union and China to obtain something from each and to prevent either from domination. And just as in the traditional period, P'yongyang's heart was with Beijing.
Nonetheless, the main characteristic of Korea's traditional diplomacy was isolationism, even what scholar Kim Key-hyuk has called exclusionism. After the Japanese invasions of the 1590s, Korea isolated itself from Japan, although the Edo Shogunate and the Chosn Dynasty established diplomatic relations early in the seventeenth century and trade was conducted between the two countries. Korea dealt harshly with errant Westerners who came to the country and kept the Chinese at arm's length. Westerners called Korea the Hermit Kingdom, a term suggesting the pronounced hostility toward foreign power and the deep desire for independence that marked traditional Korea.
Data as of June 1993
A combination of literati purges in the early sixteenth century, Japanese invasions at the end of the century, and Manchu invasions in the middle of the seventeenth century severely debilitated the Chosn state, and it never regained the heights of the fifteenth century. This period also saw the Manchus sweep away the Ming Dynasty in China, ending a remarkable period when Korean society seemed to develop apace with China, while making many independent innovations.
The doctrinaire version of Confucianism that was dominant during the Chosn Dynasty made squabbles between elites particularly vicious. The literati based themselves in neo-Confucian metaphysics, which reached a level of abstraction virtually unmatched elsewhere in East Asia in the writings of Yi Hwang, also known as Yi T'oe-gye, who was regarded as Korea's Zhu Xi after the Chinese founder of the neo-Confucian school. For many other scholar-officials, however, the doctrine rewarded arid scholasticism and obstinate orthodoxy. First, one had to commit his mind to one or another side of abstruse philosophical debate, and only then could the practical affairs of state be put in order. This situation quickly led to so-called literati purges, a series of upheavals beginning in the mid-fifteenth century and lasting more than 100 years. The losers found their persons, their property, their families, and even their graves at risk from victors determined to extirpate their influence--always in the name of a higher morality. Later in the dynasty, the concern with ideological correctness exacerbated more mundane factional conflicts that debilitated central power. The emphasis on ideology also expressed the pronounced Korean concern with the power of ideas; this emphasis is still visible in Kim Il Sung's chuch'e doctrine, which assumes that rectification of one's thinking precedes correct action, even to the point of Marxist heresy in which ideas determine material reality. By the end of the sixteenth century, the ruling elite had so homogenized its ideology that there were few heterodox miscreants left: all were presumably united in one idea.
At the end of the sixteenth century, Korea suffered devastating foreign invasions. The first came shortly after Toyotomi Hideyoshi ended Japan's internal disorder and unified the territory; he launched an invasion that put huge numbers of Japanese soldiers in Pusan in 1592. His eventual goal, however, was to control China. The Chosn court responded to the invasion by fleeing to the Yalu River, an action that infuriated ordinary Koreans and led slaves to revolt and burn the registries. Japanese forces marched through the peninsula at will until they were routed by General Yi Sun-sin and his fleet of armor-clad ships, the first of their kind. These warships, the so-called turtle ships, were encased in thick plating with cannons sticking out at every point on their oval shape. The Japanese fleets were destroyed wherever they were found, Japan's supply routes were cut, and facing Ming forces and so-called righteous armies that rose up to fight a guerrilla war (even Buddhist monks participated), the Japanese were forced to retreat to a narrow redoubt near Pusan.
After desultory negotiations and delay, Hideyoshi launched a second invasion in 1597. The Korean and Ming armies were ready this time. General Yi returned with a mere dozen warships and demolished the Japanese forces in Yellow Sea battles near the port of Mokp'o. Back in Japan, Hideyoshi died of illness, and his forces withdrew to their home islands, where they nursed an isolationist policy for the next 250 years. In spite of the victory, the peninsula had been devastated. Refugees wandered its length, famine and disease were rampant, and even basic land relationships had been overturned by widespread destruction of registers.
Korea had barely recovered when the Manchus invaded from the north, fighting on all fronts to oust the Ming Dynasty. Invasions in 1627 and 1636 established tributary relations between Korea and the Manchu's Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). The invasions, however, were less destructive than the Japanese invasions, except in the northwest where Manchu forces wreaked havoc. Thereafter, the dynasty had a period of revival that, had it continued, might have left Korea much better prepared for its encounter with the West.
The Confucian literati were particularly reinvigorated by an intellectual movement advocating that philosophy be geared to solving real problems of the society. Known as the Sirhak (Practical Learning) Movement, it spawned people like Yu Hyngwn (1622-73), from a small farming village, who poured over the classics seeking reform solutions to social problems. He developed a thorough, detailed critique of nearly all the institutional aspects of Chosn politics and society, and a set of concrete reforms to invigorate it. Chng Yag-yong (1762-1836) was thought to be the greatest of the Sirhak scholars, producing several books that offered his views on administration, justice, and the structure of politics. Still others like Yi Su-kwang (1563-1628) traveled to China and returned with the new Western learning then spreading in Beijing, while Yi Ik (1681-1763) wrote a treatise entitled Record of Concern for the Underprivileged.
A new vernacular fiction also developed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, much of it taking the form of social criticism. The best known is The Tale of Ch'unhyang, which argues for the common human qualities of lowborn, commoners, and yangban alike. Often rendered as a play, it has been a favorite in both North Korea and South Korea. An older poetic form called sijo, which consists of short stanzas, became another vehicle for free expression of distaste for the castelike inequities of Korean society. Meanwhile, Pak Chi-wn journeyed to Beijing in 1780 and authored Jehol Diary, which compared Korean social conditions unfavorably with his observations of China.
The economy diversified as the transplant of rice seedlings boosted harvests and some peasants became enterprising small landlords. Commercial crops such as tobacco, ginseng, and cotton developed, and merchants proliferated at big markets like those in Seoul at East Gate and South Gate, at the gate to China at iju, and at the gate to Japan at Tongnae, near Pusan. The use of coins for commerce and for paying wages increased, and handicraft production increased outside government control. The old Kory capital at Kaesng became a strong center of merchant commerce and conspicuous wealth. Finally, throughout the seventeenth century, Western learning filtered into Korea, often through the auspices of a spreading Roman Catholic movement, which especially attracted commoners by its creed of equality.
The early nineteenth century witnessed a period of sharp decline in which most of these new developments were extinguished. Harsh persecution of Roman Catholics began in 1801, and agricultural production declined, forcing many peasants to pursue slash-and-burn agriculture in the mountains. Popular uprisings began in 1811 and continued sporadically throughout the rest of the century, culminating in the Tonghak (Eastern Learning) Movement of the 1860s, which spawned a major peasant rebellion in the 1890s.
Korean leaders were aware that China's position had been transformed by the arrival of powerful Western gunboats and traders, but they reacted to the Opium War (1839-42) between China and Britain by shutting Korea's doors even tighter. In 1853 United States Navy Commodore Matthew C. Perry and his "black ships" entered Edo Bay, beginning the process of opening Japan to foreign trade. Korea, however, continued its isolationist policy. Japan's drastic reform of its institutions--the Meiji Restoration of 1868--and subsequent industrialization was attributed by Korean literati to Japan's alleged inferior grasp of Confucian doctrine. Through its successful rebuff of French and American attempts to "open" Korea, the regime was encouraged to think it could hold out indefinitely against external pressure. (The U.S.S. General Sherman steamed up the Taedong River in 1866 almost to P'yongyang, whereupon the natives burned the ship and killed all its crew; Kim Il Sung claimed that his great-grandfather was involved in this incident.)
Reforms from 1864 to 1873 under a powerful leader named the Taewn'gun, or Grand Prince (Yi Ha-ung, 1821-98), offered further evidence of Korean resilience; Yi Ha-ung was able to reform the bureaucracy, bring in new talent, extract new taxes from both the yangban and commoners, and keep the imperialists at bay. Korea's descent into the maelstrom of imperial rivalry was quick after this, however, as Japan succeeded in imposing a Western-style unequal treaty in February 1876, giving its nationals extraterritorial rights and opening three Korean ports to Japanese commerce. China sought to reassert its traditional position in Korea by playing the imperial powers off against each other, with the result that Korea entered into unequal treaties with the United States, Britain, Russia, Italy, and other countries. These events split the Korean court into pro-Chinese, pro-Japanese, pro-United States, and pro-Russian factions, each of which influenced policy until the final annexation of Korea by Japan in 1910. Meanwhile, various Korean reform movements sought to get underway, influenced by either Japanese or American progressives.
A small group of politically frustrated Korean aristocrats in the early 1880s came under the influence of the Japanese educator and student of Western knowledge, Fukuzawa Yukichi. This group of Koreans saw themselves as the vanguard of Korea's "enlightenment," a term that referred to their nation's release from its traditional subordination to China and its intellectual views and political institutions. The group, led by Kim Ok-kyun, included Kim Hong-jip, Yun Ch'i-ho, and Yu Kil-chun. Yun became an influential modernizer in the twentieth century, and Yu became the first Korean to study in the United States--at the Governor Drummer Academy in Byfield, Massachusetts. Kim Ok-kyun, impressed by the Meiji Restoration, sought to stage a coup d'état in 1884 with a handful of progressives, including Philip Jaisohn (S Chae-p'il, 1866-1948), and about 200 Japanese legation soldiers. Resident Chinese troops quickly suppressed it, however, and Kim fled to Japan. Philip Jaisohn, a Korean who had studied in the United States, was the first Korean to become a United States citizen. He had returned to Korea in 1896 to publish one of its first newspapers.
For a decade thereafter, China reasserted a rare direct influence when Yuan Shikai momentarily made China first among the foreign powers resident in Korea. He represented the scholar- general and governor of Tianjin, Li Hongzhang, as Director- General Resident in Korea of Diplomatic and Commercial Relations in Seoul in 1885. A reformer in China, Yuan had no use for Korean reformers and instead blocked the slightest sign of Korean nationalism.
Japan put a definitive end to Chinese influence during the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95, seizing on the reinvigorated Tonghak Movement, which spawned a large rebellion in 1894. Uniting peasants against Western pressure, growing Japanese economic penetration and their own corrupt and ineffectual government, the rebellion spread from the southwest into the center of the peninsula, thus threatening Seoul. The hapless court invited China to send troops to put the rebellion down, whereupon Japan had the pretext it needed to send troops to Korea. After defeating Chinese forces, Japan declared Korea independent, thus breaking its long tributary relationship with China. Thereafter, Japan pushed through epochal reforms that ended the old civil service examination system, abolished traditional class distinctions, ended slavery, and established modern fiscal and judicial mechanisms.
Korean reformers influenced by the West, such as Philip Jaisohn, launched an Independence Club (Tongnip Hyphoe) in 1896 to promote Westernization. They used the vernacular han'gl in their newspaper, the Tongnip simmun (The Independent), publishing alternate pages in English. The club included many Koreans who had studied Western learning in Protestant missionary schools, and for a while it influenced not only young reformers but also elements of the Korean court; one of the reformers was Yi Sng-man, otherwise known as Syngman Rhee (1875-1965), who later served as the first president of South Korea. The club was repressed, and it collapsed after two years.
The Korean people gradually became more hostile towards Japan. In 1897 King Kojong (r. 1864-1907), fleeing Japanese plots, ended up in the Russian legation; he conducted the nation's business from there for a year and shortly thereafter declared Korea to be the "Great Han [Korean] Empire," from which comes the name Taehan Min'guk, or Republic of Korea. It was a futile last gasp for the Chosn; the only question was which imperial power would colonize Korea.
By 1900 the Korean Peninsula was the focus of an intense rivalry between the powers then seeking to carve out spheres of influence in East Asia. Russia was expanding into Manchuria and Korea, and briefly enjoyed ascendancy on the peninsula when King Kojong sought its help in 1897. In alliance with France and Germany, Russia had forced Japan to return the Liaodong Peninsula, which it had acquired from China as a result of its victory in the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-95). Japan promptly leased the region from China and continued to develop it; shortly thereafter, in 1900, Japanese forces intervened with the other imperial powers to put down the Boxer Uprising, a xenophobic conflict in China against Christians and foreigners. Russia continued to develop the railroad system in Manchuria and to exploit forests and gold mines in the northern part of Korea. The United States, fearing complete exclusion from the region-- especially from China--had declared its open door policy in 1900, but lacked the means to assert its will. During this period, however, Americans also were given concessions for rail and trolley lines, waterworks, Seoul's new telephone network, and mines. Japan briefly pulled back from the peninsula, but its 1902 alliance with Britain emboldened Japan to reassert itself there.
Russia and Japan initially sought to divide their interests in Korea, suggesting at one point that the thirty-eighth parallel be the dividing line between their spheres of influence. The rivalry devolved into the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) when Japan launched a successful surprise attack on the Russian fleet at Port Arthur (Dalian; or Japanese, Dairen). Japan electrified all of Asia by becoming the first nonwhite country to subdue one of the "great powers."
Under the peace treaty brokered by Theodore Roosevelt in a conference at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and signed in 1905, Russia recognized Japan's paramount rights in Korea. Japan would not question the rights of the United States in its colony, the Philippines, and the United States would not challenge Japan's new protectorate, established in 1905 to control Korea's foreign policy. Japan installed a resident-general and, two years later, deposed King Kojong. Significant Korean resistance followed this deposition, spreading through several provinces as local yangban organized militias for guerrilla warfare against Japan. In 1909, An Chung-gn, a Korean assassin, shot It Hirobumi, the former Japanese resident-general who had concluded the protectorate agreement; two expatriate Koreans in San Francisco also gunned down Durham Stevens, a foreign affairs adviser to the Japanese who had lauded their efforts in Korea. It was too little and too late. In 1910 Japan turned Korea into its colony, thus extinguishing Korea's hard-fought independence, which had first emerged with Silla and Kogury resistance to Chinese pressures.
Under Japanese imperial pressure that began in earnest with Korea's opening in l876, the Chosn Dynasty faltered and then collapsed in a few decades. The dynasty had had an extraordinary five-century longevity, but although the traditional system could adapt to the changes necessary to forestall or accommodate domestic or internal conflict and change, it could not withstand the onslaught of technically advanced imperial powers with strong armies. The old agrarian bureaucracy had managed the interplay of different and competing interests by having a system of checks and balances that tended over time to equilibrate the interests of different parties. The king and the bureaucracy kept watch over each other, the royal clans watched both, scholars criticized or remonstrated from the moral position of Confucian doctrine, secret inspectors and censors went around the country to watch for rebellion and assure accurate reporting, landed aristocrats sent sons into the bureaucracy to protect family interests, and local potentates influenced the county magistrates sent down from the central administration. The Chosn Dynasty was not a system that modern Koreans would wish to restore, but it was a sophisticated political system, adaptable enough and persistent enough to have given unified rule to Korea for half a millennium.
Korea did not escape the Japanese grip until 1945, when Japan lay prostrate under the Allied victory that brought World War II to a close. The colonial experience that shaped postwar Korea was intense and bitter. It brought development and underdevelopment, agrarian growth and deepened tenancy, industrialization and extraordinary dislocation, and political mobilization and deactivation. It also spawned a new role for the central state, new sets of Korean political leaders, communism and nationalism, and armed resistance and treacherous collaboration. Above all, it left deep fissures and conflicts that have gnawed at the Korean national identity ever since.
Colonialism was often thought to have created new countries where none existed before, to have drawn national boundaries, brought diverse tribes and peoples together, tutored the natives in self-government, and prepared for the day when the colonialist power decided to grant independence. But all this had existed in Korea for centuries before 19l0. Furthermore, by virtue of their relative proximity to China, Koreans had always felt superior to Japan and blamed Japan's devastating sixteenth-century invasions for hindering Korean wealth and power in subsequent centuries.
Thus the Japanese engaged not in creation, but in substitution after 19l0: substituting a Japanese ruling elite for the Korean yangban scholar-officials, colonial imperative coordination for the old central state administration, Japanese modern education for Confucian classics, Japanese capital and expertise for the budding Korean versions, Japanese talent for Korean talent, and eventually the Japanese language for Korean. Koreans never thanked the Japanese for these substitutions, did not credit Japan with creations, and instead saw Japan as snatching away the ancient regime, Korea's sovereignty and independence, its indigenous if incipient modernization, and above all its national dignity. Koreans never saw Japanese rule as anything but illegitimate and humiliating. Furthermore, the very closeness of the two nations--in geography, in common Chinese cultural influences, and in levels of development until the nineteenth century--made Japanese dominance all the more galling to Koreans and gave a peculiar intensity to their love/hate relationship.
Japan built bureaucracies in Korea, all of them centralized and all of them big by colonial standards. Unlike the relatively small British colonial cadre in India, there were 700,000 Japanese in Korea by the 1940s, and the majority of colonizers worked in government service. For the first time in history, Korea had a national police, responsive to the center and possessing its own communications and transportation facilities. The huge Japanese Oriental Development Company organized and funded industrial and agricultural projects, and came to own more than 20 percent of Korea's arable land; it employed an army of officials who fanned out through the countryside to supervise agricultural production. The official Bank of Korea performed central banking functions such as regulating interest rates and provisioned credit to firms and entrepreneurs, almost all of them Japanese. Central judicial bodies wrote new laws establishing an extensive, "legalized" system of racial discrimination against Koreans, making them second-class citizens in their own country. Bureaucratic departments proliferated at the Seoul headquarters of Japan's Government-General of Korea, turning it into the nerve center of the country. Semiofficial companies and conglomerates, including the big zaibatsu (commercial conglomerates) such as Mitsubishi and Mitsui, laid railroads, built ports, installed modern factories, and ultimately remade the face of old Korea.
Japan held Korea tightly, watched it closely, and pursued an organized, architectonic colonialism in which the planner and administrator were the model, not the swashbuckling conqueror. The strong, highly centralized colonial state mimicked the role that the Japanese state had come to play in Japan--intervening in the economy, creating markets, spawning new industries, and suppressing dissent. Politically, Koreans could barely breathe, but economically there was significant, if unevenly distributed, growth. Agricultural output rose substantially in the 1920s, and a hothouse industrialization occupied the 1930s. Growth rates in the Korean economy often outstripped those in Japan itself; one estimate suggested an annual growth rate for Korea of 3.57 percent in the 1911-38 period and a rate of 3.36 percent for Japan itself.
Koreans have always thought that the benefits of this growth went entirely to Japan and that Korea would have developed rapidly without Japanese help. Nonetheless, the strong colonial state, the multiplicity of bureaucracies, the policy of administrative guidance of the economy, the use of the state to found new industries, and the repression of labor unions and dissidents provided a surreptitious model for both Koreas in the postwar period. Japan showed them an early version of the "bureaucratic-authoritarian" path to industrialization, and it was a lesson that seemed well learned by the 1970s.
The colonial period brought forth an entirely new set of Korean political leaders, spawned by both the resistance to and the opportunities of Japanese colonialism. In 1919 mass movements swept many colonial and semicolonial countries, including Korea. Drawing on Woodrow Wilson's promises of self-determination, on March 1, 1919, a group of thirty-three intellectuals petitioned for independence from Japan and touched off nationwide mass protests that continued for months. These protests were put down fiercely by the Japanese, causing many younger Koreans to become militant opponents of colonial rule. The year was a watershed for imperialism in Korea: the leaders of the movement, predominantly Christian and Western in outlook, were moderate intellectuals and students who sought independence through nonviolent means and support from progressive elements in the West. Their courageous witness and the nationwide demonstrations that they provoked remained a touchstone of Korean nationalism. The movement succeeded in provoking reforms in Japanese administration, but its failure to realize independence also stimulated radical forms of anticolonial resistance. In the 1930s, new groups of armed resisters, bureaucrats, and--for the first time--military leaders emerged. Both North Korea and South Korea were profoundly influenced by the political elites and the political conflicts generated during colonial rule.
The emergence of nationalist and communist groups dates back to the 1920s; it was in this period that the left-right splits of postwar Korea began. The transformation of the yangban aristocracy also began during the 1920s. Although the higher scholar-officials were pensioned off and replaced by Japanese, landlords were allowed to retain their holdings and encouraged to continue disciplining peasants and extracting rice. The traditional landholding system was put on a new basis through new legal measures and a full cadastral survey shortly after Japan took over, but tenancy continued and was systematically deepened throughout the colonial period. By 1945 Korea had an agricultural tenancy system with few parallels in the world. More traditional landlords were content to sit back and let Japanese officials increase output; by 1945 such people were widely viewed as treacherous collaborators with the Japanese, and strong demands emerged that they share out land to their tenants. During the l920s, however, another trend began: landlords became entrepreneurs.
Some Korean militants went into exile in China and the Soviet Union and founded early communist and nationalist resistance groups. A Korean Communist Party (KCP) was founded in Seoul in 1925; one of the organizers was Pak Hn-yng, who became the leader of Korean communism in southern Korea after 1945. Various nationalist groups also emerged during this period, including the exiled Korean Provisional Government (KPG) in Shanghai, which included Syngman Rhee and another famous nationalist, Kim Ku, among its members.
Police repression and internal factionalism made it impossible for radical groups to exist for any length of time. Many nationalist and communist leaders were jailed in the early 1930s (they reappeared in 1945). When Japan invaded and then annexed Manchuria in 193l, however, a strong guerrilla resistance embracing both Chinese and Koreans emerged. There were well over 200,000 guerrillas--all loosely connected, and including bandits and secret societies--fighting the Japanese in the early 1930s; after murderous but effective counterinsurgency campaigns, the numbers declined to a few thousand by the mid-1930s. It was from this milieu that Kim Il Sung (originally named Kim Sng-ju, born in 1912) emerged. By the mid-1930s, he had become a significant guerrilla leader whom the Japanese considered one of the most effective and dangerous of guerrillas. They formed a special counterinsurgent unit to track Kim down and put Koreans in it as part of their divide-and-rule tactics.
Both Koreas have spawned myths about the guerrilla resistance: North Korea claims that Kim single-handedly defeated the Japanese, and South Korea claims that the present-day ruler of North Korea is an imposter who stole the name of a revered patriot. Nonetheless, the resistance is important for understanding postwar Korea. Resistance to Japan became the main legitimating doctrine of North Korea: North Koreans trace the origin of their army, leadership, and ideology back to this resistance. For the next five decades, the top North Korean leadership was dominated by a core group that had fought the Japanese in Manchuria. (Kim Il Sung's tenure in a Russian reconnaissance brigade also would have had an influence.)
Japan declared war on China in 1937 and on the United States in 194l. As this war took on global dimensions, Koreans for the first time had military careers opened to them. Although most Koreans were conscripted foot soldiers, a small number achieved officer status and a few attained high rank. The officer corps of the South Korean army during the Rhee period was dominated by Koreans with experience in the Japanese army. At least in part, the Korean War became a matter of Japanese-trained military officers fighting Japanese-spawned resistance leaders.
Japan's far-flung war effort also caused a labor shortage throughout the empire. In Korea this situation meant that bureaucratic positions were more available to Koreans than at any previous time; thus a substantial cadre of Koreans received administrative experience in government, local administration, police and judicial work, economic planning agencies, banks, and the like. That this occurred in the last decade of colonialism created a divisive legacy, however, for this period also was the harshest period of Japanese rule, the time Koreans remember with the greatest bitterness. Korean culture was quashed, and Koreans were required to speak Japanese and take Japanese names. The majority suffered badly at the precise time that a minority was doing well. This minority was tainted by collaboration, and that stigma was never lost. Korea from 1937 to 1945 was much like Vichy France in the early 1940s: bitter experiences and memories continued to divide people, even within the same family. Because it was too painful to confront directly, the experience became buried history and continued to play on the national identity.
In the mid-1930s, Japan's colonial policy entered a phase of heavy industrialization that embraced all of Northeast Asia. Unlike most colonial powers, Japan located heavy industry in its colonies and brought the means of production to the labor and raw materials. Manchuria and northern Korea got steel mills, automotive plants, petrochemical complexes, and enormous hydroelectric facilities. The region was held exclusively by Japan and tied together with the home market to the point that national boundaries had became less important than the new transnational, integrated production. To facilitate this production, Japan also built railroads, highways, cities, ports, and other modern transportation and communication facilities. By 1945 Korea proportionally had more kilometers of railroads than any other Asian country save Japan, leaving only remote parts of the central east coast and the wild northeastern Sino-Korean border region untouched by modern means of conveyance. These changes were externally induced and served Japanese, not Korean interests. Thus they represented a kind of overdevelopment.
The same exogenous changes fostered underdevelopment in Korean society as a whole. The Korean upper and managerial classes did not develop; instead their development was retarded or swelled suddenly at Japanese behest. Among the majority peasant class, change was advanced. Koreans became the mobile human capital used to work the new factories in northern Korea and Manchuria, mines and other enterprises in Japan, and urban factories in southern Korea. From 1935 to 1945, Korea began its industrial revolution with many of the usual characteristics: uprooting of peasants from the land, the emergence of a working class, urbanization, and population mobility. In Korea the process was telescoped, giving rise to comparatively remarkable population movements. By 1945 about 11 percent of the entire Korean population was abroad (mostly in Japan and Manchuria), and 20 percent of all Koreans were either abroad or in a province other than that in which they were born, with most of the interprovincial movement being southern peasants moving into norther
