the North invaded the South without provocation
There is an alternative to the mind-numbing pro-business anti-socialist line dished up by Gipper and his
fellow-travellers.
It is called history and is usually beats the standard model everytime.
"...
At the
Potsdam Conference (July–August 1945), the Allies unilaterally decided to divide Korea—without consulting the Koreans—in contradiction of the Cairo Conference.
[41][42][43][44]
On 8 September 1945, Lt. Gen.
John R. Hodge of the United States arrived in
Incheon to accept the Japanese surrender south of the 38th parallel.
[27] Appointed as military governor, General Hodge directly controlled South Korea via the
United States Army Military Government in Korea (USAMGIK 1945–48).
[45] He established control by restoring to power the key Japanese colonial administrators and their Korean police collaborators.
[10] The USAMGIK refused to recognise the provisional government of the short-lived
People's Republic of Korea (PRK) because he suspected it was communist. These policies, voiding popular Korean sovereignty, provoked civil insurrections and guerrilla warfare.
[19] On 3 September 1945, Lieutenant General Yoshio Kozuki, Commander,
Japanese Seventeenth Area Army, contacted Hodge, telling him that the Soviets were south of the 38th parallel at
Kaesong. Hodge trusted the accuracy of the Japanese Army report
[27]
In December 1945, Korea was administered by a US–USSR Joint Commission, as agreed at the
Moscow Conference (1945). The Koreans were excluded from the talks. The commission decided the country would become independent after a five-year trusteeship action facilitated by each régime sharing its sponsor's ideology.
[46][47] The Korean populace revolted; in the south, some protested, and some rose in arms;
[19] to contain them, the USAMGIK banned strikes on 8 December 1945 and outlawed the PRK Revolutionary Government and the PRK People's Committees on 12 December 1945.
On 23 September 1946 an 8,000-strong railroad worker strike began in
Pusan. Civil disorder spread throughout the country in what became known as the
Autumn uprising. On 1 October 1946, Korean police killed three students in the Daegu Uprising; protesters counter-attacked, killing 38 policemen. On 3 October, some 10,000 people attacked the
Yeongcheon police station, killing three policemen and injuring some 40 more; elsewhere, some 20 landlords and pro-Japanese South Korean officials were killed.
[48] The USAMGIK declared
martial law.
The
right-wing Representative Democratic Council, led by nationalist
Syngman Rhee, opposed the Soviet–American trusteeship of Korea, arguing that after 35 years (1910–45) of Japanese colonial rule most Koreans opposed another foreign occupation. The USAMGIK decided to forego the five year trusteeship agreed upon in Moscow, given the 31 March 1948 United Nations election deadline to achieve an
anti-communist civil government in the US Korean Zone of Occupation.
On 3 April what began as a demonstration commemorating Korean resistance to Japanese rule ended with the
Jeju massacre of as many as 60,000 citizens by South Korean soldiers.
[49]
On 10 May, South Korea convoked their
first national general elections that the Soviets first opposed, then boycotted, insisting that the US honor the trusteeship agreed to at the Moscow Conference.
[50][51]
North Korea held
parliamentary elections three months later on 25 August 1948.
[52]
The resultant anti-communist South Korean government promulgated a national political constitution on 17 July 1948, elected a president, the American-educated
strongman Syngman Rhee on 20 July 1948. The elections were marred by terrorism and sabotage resulting in 600 deaths.
[53] The Republic of Korea (South Korea) was established on 15 August 1948. In the Russian Korean Zone of Occupation, the USSR established a Communist North Korean government
[50] led by
Kim Il-sung.
[54] President Rhee's régime expelled communists and
leftists from southern national politics. Disenfranchised, they headed for the hills, to prepare for guerrilla war against the US-sponsored ROK Government.
[54]
As
nationalists, both Syngman Rhee and Kim Il-Sung were intent upon reunifying Korea under their own political system.
[55] With
Joseph Stalin and
Mao Zedong fighting over the control of the Korean Peninsula,
[56] the North Koreans gained support from both the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. They escalated the continual border skirmishes and raids and then prepared to invade. South Korea, with limited
matériel, could not match them.
[55] During this era, at the beginning of the Cold War, the US government assumed that all communists, regardless of nationality, were controlled or directly influenced by Moscow; thus the US portrayed the civil war in Korea as a Soviet
hegemonic maneuver.
[57]
In October 1948, South Korean left-wing soldiers rebelled against the government's harsh clampdown in April on
Jeju island in the
Yeosu-Suncheon Rebellion.
[58]
The Soviet Union withdrew as agreed from Korea in 1948. U.S. troops withdrew from Korea in 1949, leaving the South Korean army relatively ill-equipped. On 24 December 1949, South Korean forces killed 86 to 88 people in the
Mungyeong massacre and blamed the crime on communist marauding bands.
[59][60]
more on next post
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_war#cite_note-OhMyNews2009-59
