Looking at Japan inside out

By Yang Dong-hee

On Dec. 7, 1941, when the news of the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor was on the air across America, the first thing that struck the mind of a young New York lawyer named Maxwell Cohen was Dr. Syngman Rhee's book, "Japan Inside Out," which was published about five months prior to the attack.

In that book, Dr. Rhee precisely predicted the sneak attack on the U.S. naval base in the very near future.

Cohen called Dr. Rhee in Washington, D.C. and said, "Dr. Rhee, you were prophetic about the attack on Pearl Harbor. Frank (U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt) must be deeply regretful for not listening to you."

"Now that the Japanese hit America, the war will soon be over. America too will have to pay the price. Our interim government has a lot to do from now," said Dr. Rhee in a surprisingly calm voice. Cohen recollected the 40-year-old memory like yesterday.

I met Cohen in the fall of 1981 at a graduate school evening class in New York City.

He was, at 73, the oldest student of Dr. Donald Zagoria's popular class, "Soviet Foreign Policy."

He invited my wife and me to a dinner at his apartment near Columbia University.

Cohen was living with his only daughter, who was teaching literature at the university.

He showed me several letters from Dr. Rhee and the first-print edition of "Japan Inside Out," which he later generously gave to me.

Cohen first met Dr. Rhee in the fall of 1935 in New York in the small apartment of a Korean student named David Namgoong (he was attending NYU and later became the first Korean Consul General of New York).

He recollected the small living space in the upstairs of the Korean Commission, where Dr. Rhee and his Austrian wife Franchesca lived. He still remembers the humble life of the couple with used furniture and few groceries.

Unlike the Americans' deep-rooted favoritism toward the Japanese, before and even after the Second World War, the attitude of the American government to Dr. Rhee was very cold and his independent movement was "awfully rebuffed," Cohen still remembered.

Despite this cool attitude of the American government toward Korea, several Americans sympathized with Dr. Rhee and Korea's independence movement.

Among the Americans around the young Cohen, James Cromwell, chairman of Korean American Council, history professor Robert Oliver of Penn. State University, the New York Times editor-in-chief John Oakes and Washington businessman John Trotter were very sympathetic to Dr. Rhee, according to Cohen.

Dr. Rhee could return home on Oct. 16, 1945, two months after the liberation of Korea, on a U.S. military airplane. Cohen said, "The delay was entirely due to the ambiguous attitude of the U.S. government."

For years after Dr. Rhee returned to Korea, Cohen would monitor news articles about Korea from major American newspapers.

On a letter dated Aug. 24, 1948, President Rhee expressed his sincere gratitude toward his old American friend:

"Dear Mr. Cohen, Your letter of Aug. 6th with the clipping from the New York Times showing the inauguration scene and an account of it, has been read with much to my attention. It gives me a great deal of pleasure to know that friends like you on the other side of the Pacific often think about our country and people with a deep sympathy for the difficulties into which we were innocently thrown by the international benefactors. Let me thank you … Sincerely yours, Syngman Rhee."

President Rhee asked Cohen to work for the Korean government for legal issues in foreign affairs in January 1953, and Cohen took the job on the condition that he would not receive any payment.

On June 18, 1953, President Rhee released 27,000 self-declared anti-communists out of 37,000 prisoners of war (POWs) from Geoje Island and six other POW camps, despite the agreement between North Korea and the United Nations to return the POWs within the next 60 days.

Both North Korea and the United States immediately condemned President Rhee for this surprise conduct.

Cohen advised President Rhee that South Korea would parole all the released prisoners, if they continue to make this an issue.

Thanks to this bluff, the ROK-U.S. Mutual Defense Agreement was signed according to the initial demand of President Rhee, shortly before the ceasefire agreement on July 27, 1953.

"Up until 1945, Korea was the only power in the world which ever defeated Japan, by making the world's first iron-clad turtle ships.

Korean symphony orchestras and drama troupes didn't stop performing even during the peak of the Korean War," said Cohen, emphasizing, Seoul is really the "Cultural Capital of Far East."

During this Chuseok holiday, I thank Maxwell Tillman Cohen who I associated with in New York City 35 years ago.

The writer, former reporter of The Korea Times, worked 10 years at the Hankook Ilbo New York and returned home to be in sports marketing and show business. He was the first managing director of Korea of the U.S.-based International Management Group.