Meaning of August 15

By Kim Yun-sik

On August 15, 1945, the Hiroshima blast shed its light on the Korean Peninsula. No one, Korean or Japanese, was aware of the blaze that would follow, changing the destiny of the Korean people and bringing the olive branch to the Japanese island.

The news of the initial surrender negotiations on Aug. 11 and of final capitulation on Aug. 1 shocked the Japanese governor-general and he started to burn files. The Japanese were shocked, almost disbelieving of the imperial radio announcement, fearing Korean revenge.

Thousands of Korean people poured into the central part of Seoul. The city ran with cries of ``mansei'' (longevity for Korea) from a hundred thousand throats. Korean flags flew from every building. Students, workers, and farmers from towns and villages swamped the streets.

Concealed Korean flags were whipped out, prominent figures and dignified professors stripped and danced in Bacchus-like glee. Suddenly Koreans were treating the Japanese as foreigners. The old masters bowed to Koreans on the streets and kept out of sight.

The Japanese Gen. Abe took immediate steps to turn over powers to the transitional government. He hoped that he could obtain assurance of minimal security for Japanese lives and property in Korea until the incoming forces arrived.

On September 7, U.S. Army Lt. Gen. John Hodge landed in Incheon. He drove to the capital building in Seoul to accept the surrender of the Japanese commander and to establish the occupational forces headquarters.

A Conference of People's Committees made up of local and provincial leaders was held in Seoul to form a temporary government to replace the Japanese. Yo Un-hyong was elected as chairman. Later in the revolutionary time, many of these leaders founded leftist or communist cells. Gen. Hodge, however, did not recognize the local government and announced that the existing Japanese administration would continue in office for the moment.

On December 28, 1945, the U.S. and the Soviet Union announced that a Trusteeship Agreement to govern Korea had been reached at a meeting in Moscow, bringing an immediate angry reaction from the Korean people.

Prominent leaders, including Syngman Rhee and Kim Koo, joined together in promoting an anti-trusteeship movement, as resentment swept the country. On December 31, the Communist Party began plans for its own anti-trusteeship demonstration.

However, in January 1946, it switched its posture to support the trusteeship, when specific instructions arrived from North Korea supporting the Moscow agreement.

About 200,0000 Japanese soldiers and 1.5 million Japanese civilians, 700,000 of whom occupied the upper economic, political and technical strata, were repatriated.

South Korean's population, estimated to be over 16 million in 1945, grew more than 21 percent during the next year. Prior to 1950, 1,108,000 Koreans, mostly forced laborers, returned from Japan. Also 120,000 returned from China and Manchuria, and 1,800,000 from North Korea. By the end of 1945 there were 500,000 North Korean refugees in the South.

Inflation, which started during World War II, spilled over into the postwar period. Retail prices rose 10 times and wholesale prices 28 times between August 1945 and December 1946, adding to the chaos. The fares of streetcars rose 100 times in two years.

Refugees and repatriates, without jobs and without the social constraints of their home communities, joined gangs. These gangs stole, black-marketed, and spread corruption, which invaded every office. Crime rose to frightening proportions from the late summer of 1945.

An age of youth groups came to the homeland, as social chaos broke out on the Korean Peninsula. South Korea now became politically agitated _ several groups grew out of the Korean Communist Young Man's Association, which had been active in the underground, and began to gain supremacy in the South.

In the autumn of 1945 local rightist politicians were also organizing youth groups under the banners of the Korea Democratic Party, the Unification Party, and later the Independence Party.

The country was on the brink of a major rebellion, and arrests of those involved mounted. By June 1947, there were some 7,000 political prisoners. At the time, young Koreans were anomic forces discontented with society, and as long as violence and disorder continued, they flourished in terror and lawlessness until society settled down after the 1950-53Korean War.

An unbroken chain stretched between the subversive attempts of communists _ in October 1946, harsh labor demonstrations in Daegu; the army revolt at Yeosun in October 1948; and the rise of guerrilla activity thereafter.

Crowds of citizens participated in a food riots, while brutal battles between mobs and police ensued.

Now let me review these thoughts based on the burning experience of my middle school years. The rise of violence was an inevitable result, not of the Cold War, but of the rushed urbanization, industrialization, and mobilization of 1937-45.

This also spurred the economic collapse, population dislocations, and lack of leadership during the early stages of the formation of the Republic of Korea.

After industrialization and democratization of the country, we then began to move toward peaceful unification. Fortunately the second summit meeting between North and South, will be held in Pyongyang from Aug. 28-30.

I hope the summit will successfully achieve the enhanced reunification of Korea.

The writer is a professor at the Asian division, the University of Maryland in Yongsan, Seoul.