Internal Warfare in Korea, 1948—1950: JOHN MERRILL 1983

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in  Child Of Conflict : Bruce Cumings, Editor: Internet Archive

Internal Warfare in Korea, 1948—1950: 

The Local Setting of the Korean War 

JOHN MERRILL 

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in Child Of Conflict by Bruce Cumings, Editor

Publication date 1983

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LITTLE IS KNOWN, EVEN YET, ABOUT THE ORIGINS OF THE KOREAN WAR, IT 

has become commonplace, in fact, to preface discussions with the 

disclaimer that, like the morning fog that covers that not so peaceful 

land, there is much about the war that remains clouded, obscure, and 

wrapped in mystery. It is not for lack of theories. The war has been 

variously attributed to the perfidy of Syngman Rhee, factional disputes 

within the North Korean leadership, the first stirrings of the Sino-Soviet 

conflict, and the imperatives of either U.S. or Soviet foreign policy. 

Political satirists have begun to exploit the potential of this confusion, 

Kim Tong-gil’s recent best seller, The President’s Laughter,! which 

barely made it past the Korean censors, is one example. The book 

spins a surrealistic tale of how Stalin, his senses numbed by an excess 

of wine and beautiful P’ySngyang kisaeng (geisha, entertainer), finally 

agreed to Kim Il-sung’s persistent requests to support an attack on the 

1, Kim Tong-gil, Taet'ongny3ng iti usitm [The president’s laughter] (Seoul 

1975), 

138 

134 JOHN MERRILL 

South, As history, Kim’s satire is probably not much worse than many 

of the more serious attempts to explain the war put forth by both 

scholars and propagandists. 

There are several reasons for this lack of understanding, but perhaps 

most important is that our images of Korea were set at the height of 

the cold war in the mold of our World War II experience with surprise 

attacks across international boundaries. There was an understandable 

tendency to interpret Korea in these same terms, and to relate it 

exclusively to the global pattern of interaction between the United 

States and the Soviet Union. This inclination was reinforced by the 

long history of great-power involvement on the peninsula that made 

it natural to see events in Korea as determined by what went on else- 

where in the international system. 

Information on Korea has also been limited. Interest in Korea has 

never been great, and during the years preceding the war both Syngman 

Rhee and the American Military Government took care to censor 

news leaving the country. The public was thus not prepared for the 

North Korean attack. Moreover, until recently primary sources neces- 

sary for a study of the origins of the war have not been available. 

Karunakar Gupta’s article, which appeared in the China Quarterly, is 

a good example. His account is based entirely on newspaper clippings 

he collected during his student days in Europe on events that occurred 

during the first days of the war.” 

The two Koreas have not been forthright in their versions of the 

origins of the war.> The history of these years poses special problems 

since it raises questions concerning the legitimacy of the two states, the 

role of leading personalities in prewar events, and responsibility for 

the war. Most North Korean accounts have been either official white 

papers on alleged U.S. aggression or party histories of Kim Il-sung’s 

struggle against factional elements in the Workers’ party. South Korean 

accounts have tended to be military histories compiled by committees 

of scholars that are less than candid about the extent of violence in 

the Republic of Korea (ROK) before the war. The problem is com- 

pounded by the reluctance of North Korea’s allies to discuss any- 

thing about the war that might damage their relations with the Demo- 

cratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). 

Authors have begun to examine previously neglected local factors 

and to reconsider the relationships of the two Koreas to their allies. 

2. Karunakar Gupta, “How Did the Korean War Begin?” China Quarterly, 

October-December 1972, pp. 699-716. 

3. Recent accounts are Kim Chum-kon, The Korean War (Seoul: Kwangmy6ng 

Publishing Co., 1973); and The U.S. Imperialists Started the Korean War (P’yong- 

yang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1977). 

INTERNAL WARFARE IN KOREA 135 

This trend has been strengthened by the burgeoning literature on the 

“big power of small allies” and the growing volume of revisionist 

histories of the cold war. Nevertheless, the lack of primary sources 

on the war has caused some authors to resort to exercises in textual 

exegesis to extract from the available material (sometimes in transla- 

tion) more than is there. There is also the difficulty of choosing an 

appropriate time frame. The question of the origins of the war can be 

completely sidestepped if, as is often true of Communist accounts, one 

talks only about the subsequent U.S. intervention, Viewing the North 

Korean attack as an impulsive decision also ignores the need to ex- 

amine the local background. Where is the best place to begin? With 

the liberation in 1945, when the American Military Government’s 

decision to suppress the People’s Committees becomes the crucial 

event? With the outpouring of popular discontent evident in the dem- 

onstrations against the military government in October 1946? Or 

later? Finally, there is the failure to place the war within some wider 

theoretical framework, a failure characteristic of many recent West- 

ern works. This is a problem especially if one sees the war as the re- 

sult of a complex interplay of local and international factors and 

not simply of U.S. imperialism or Communist aggression, which tell 

us nothing about the timing of the attack except in the most round- 

about way. The words ‘‘civil war’ and “intervention” are frequently 

used to describe the war and they offer a useful starting point, but 

no attempt has yet been made to place the Korean case within the 

extensive literature on these subjects. 

Korea continues to be a major trouble spot, with the highest 

concentration of weapons and men under arms anywhere in the world. 

The Carter administration’s aborted plan to withdraw U.S. ground 

forces from the peninsula focused new attention on the issue of Korean 

security. Critics of Carter’s policy appealed to the lessons of the past 

by pointing to the disastrous consequences of our troop withdrawal 

from Korea in 1949. But, given the controversy that still surrounds 

the war, it is not clear just what these lessons are. American liberals 

are poorly equipped to come to grips with either the war or present 

policy toward Korea, They have always been somewhat ambivalent 

about our involvement in Korea, and their unease has grown with 

recent revelations of influence buying in Washington and human 

rights violations in Seoul, Many American liberals, otherwise committed 

to internationalist views of collective security, are troubled by the 

difficulty of reconciling the negative consequences of our involvement 

in Korea with the ideals that it once so clearly represented, The Korean 

War fits neither the World War Il model nor our more recent experience 

in Vietnam, A better understanding of the history of the war may not 

136 JOHN MERRILL 

resolve present policy dilemmas, but it is a necessary first step to any 

new departures. Finally, the Korean War is important as the forerunner 

of a type of intervention by lesser powers that has become increasingly 

common in the post-World War II international system, A long-run 

trend toward greater equalization of military power has permitted 

smaller states, acting independently or with the support of their allies, 

to intervene much more frequently in neighboring countries disrupted 

by civil strife. Korea is a useful test case for theories of interventionary 

behavior and a means to explore its early stages. 

The following discussion examines the outbreak of the Korean War 

in the context of domestic political violence. The relationships between 

local and international factors are explored, and the North Korean 

attack is studied from the perspective of theories of interventionary 

behavior, Rather than adopting a decision-making approach that would 

require data unavailable for North Korea, the analysis will look at the 

background of the North Korean attack in broad situational terms. 

PATTERNS OF NORTH-SOUTH INTERACTION BEFORE THE WAR 

The most striking characteristic of Korean domestic politics in the 

years before the war was a persistent pattern of political violence that 

resulted in approximately one hundred thousand casualties before 

June 1950. This civil war between Left and Right has received only 

little attention, but it is impossible to understand the origins of the 

war without considering it. Gregory Henderson points out that the 

October 1946 uprisings in the American zone established ‘‘an enduring 

pattern of subversion and repression . . . from which an unbroken 

chain stretched to the subversion attempts of Communists in later 

months, the infiltration of the constabulary, the revolt of Ydsu in 

1948, and the rise of guerrilla activity thereafter, which ebbed only 

in the spring before the Korean war.’* The account presented here 

begins somewhat later, with the arrival of the United Nations Tempo- 

rary Commission in early 1948, and takes Henderson’s analysis a step 

further by viewing the war itself as the last link in the chain of internal 

violence, 

U.S. Army data contain a great deal of information about internal 

warfare in Korea during this period. The most accessible is the Far 

Eastern Command’s daily Intelligence Summaries, which about every 

two weeks listed in tabular form information on both guerrilla activity 

in the ROK and incidents along the thirty-eighth parallel. The notorious 

“body counts” of Vietnam have put us on guard when examining such 

4. Gregory Henderson, Korea: The Politics of the Vortex (Cambridge; Harvard 

University Press, 1968), p, 147 

INTERNAL WARFARE IN KOREA 137 

statistics, and it would be foolish to deny that there are similar prob- 

lems with the army data for Korea. Every border incident, for instance, 

is reported as initiated by the North, although we know from other 

sources that the majority were started by the South. Moreover, casualty 

figures on the northern side must have been virtually impossible to 

determine, Finally, the border clashes seem to have been deliberately 

played up by the South to demonstrate their need for more arms. 

For these reasons, statistical data on border incidents have not been 

presented here. 

The army data on guerrilla incidents in the South are better, yet 

they should not be viewed as indicating the absolute magnitude of 

political violence in South Korea before the war. They greatly under- 

state the seriousness of these incidents for several reasons, First, many 

incidents from remote rural areas (where the guerrillas were strongest) 

were not reported due to inadequate communications facilities. Second, 

the FEC data are several stages removed from the actual events, and 

many incidents may have been filtered out in the reporting process. 

Where field reports by American observers are available as a cross 

check—such as for some periods of the Cheju-do Rebellion—they 

indicate a much higher level of guerrilla activity, Third, since the 

data were conveyed through army channels they probably do not 

fully reflect casualties caused by the Korean police, Finally, the report- 

ing system itself seems to have broken down during periods of es- 

pecially heavy fighting, such as at YOsu. Nevertheless, the data do 

reveal the seriousness of internal violence and its general trend. 

The data are summarized in figure 1. Looking at the figure, three 

things become apparent: first of all, it is clear that the level of political 

violence surged after the establishment of the two governments in 

Korea in the fall of 1948, specifically with the YOsu Rebellion in 

October, two months after the establishment of the ROK. (Although 

not shown, border incidents also increased markedly as the August 15 

date for the transfer of authority to the Rhee government approached, 

and American troops began to turn over their positions on the parallel 

to their South Korean counterparts; the last U.S. tactical forces, how- 

ever, did not leave until June 1949.) Second, the intensity of fighting 

increased greatly in the months after YSsu and peaked during the 

winter of 1949-50. Thereafter, guerrilla activity declined sharply in a 

period of artificial quiet in the months before the war. Third, the chart 

shows a number of distinct periods in the development of internal 

warfare in South Korea between 1948 and 1950, Used in conjunction 

with other information, they can serve as a guide to the changing 

pattern of interaction between the two Koreas in the years before the 

war. The broad outlines of six such periods can, in fact, be identified, 

138 JOHN MERRILL 

Y Osu rebellion 

Number killed 

2000 

ROK counterguerrilla drive 

1500 

1000 

May 10 elections 

1948 1949 1950 

Fig. 1, Far East Command data on guerrilla activity in South Korea, 1948-1950 

(data on YOsu rebellion from MBC and Dong-a Ilbo, Sinydn Kwa yongkwang ii 

minjok-sa |Seoul, 1975] ). 

In each of them, the extent and type of foreign involvement, the issues 

around which the political struggle revolved, and the military balance 

on the peninsula were different. 

In general, the approach used here in describing the interaction 

between North and South Korea before the war is similar to Charles 

McClelland’s in his analysis of the Taiwan Strait crisis. McClelland 

found that the development of a crisis is not random, but exhibits 

patterns of action and reaction, temporary status quos, and systems 

of tacit communication that can be uncovered by charting the flow 

of events. Once the main stages in the evolution of a crisis are identified 

and their characteristics described, the reasons for the transitions from 

one to another can be analyzed. This approach has the advantage of 

bypassing the thorny problem of trying to determine the real motives 

of statesmen in situations where sufficient information is unavailable. 

We can summarize the stages in the development of the Korean 

crisis as follows: 

1. A period of rapidly escalating political violence and polarization 

of opinion between Left and Right, precipitated by the arrival of the 

INTERNAL WARFARE IN KOREA 139. 

UN Commission in January 1948, and culminating in the Cheju-do 

Rebellion in April. 

2. A lull in guerrilla activity during the summer of 1948 as both 

the South Korean Labor Party (SKLP) and the American Military 

Government concentrated on preparations for the establishment of 

rival governments. 

3. A period of acute crisis for the new ROK government after the 

Y6su Rebellion during which its very survival seemed at stake. 

4, An upsurge in border clashes and naval incidents in the spring 

and summer of 1949 caused primarily by a much more aggressive 

southern policy vis-i-vis the North. 

5. A period of heavy fighting in South Korea during the winter of 

1949-50 in which the military arm of the SKLP was virtually de- 

stroyed. 

6. A period of artificial quiet just before the war when the political 

situation in the ROK and the regional balance of power in East Asia 

underwent major changes. 

The first period (fall 1947-spring 1948) began with the establish- 

ment of the UN Temporary Commission, which made the Korean 

question no longer a matter of bilateral Soviet-U,S, negotiations and 

began the process that led to the setting up of separate governments 

in the two occupation zones. The Commission’s presence in the South 

prompted an opposition campaign by the SKLP that escalated from 

demonstrations to sabotage to a major popular rebellion on Cheju-do, 

The period also saw the isolation of moderate and right-wing opponents 

of Rhee, who alone among major political leaders supported separate 

elections in the South, The pull of Korean nationalism was great 

enough to attract many of Rhee’s opponents to a North Korean- 

sponsored unification conference held in Haeju, The U.S. government, 

anxious to pull out of Korea, pushed hard for UN involvement.> The 

decision to hold separate elections ran counter to the opinion of most 

members of the UN Commission and Korean political leaders. The 

SKLP campaign against separate elections plunged Cheju-do into 

more than a year of bloody internecine warfare, resulting in the deaths 

of 15 percent of its population (some thirty to forty thousand people), 

The complexity of the Communist response to the UN Commission 

5. I have relied on three recent Ph.D. dissertations for details on the evolution 

of American policy towards Korea during the 1948-1950 period: Charles M. Dobbs, 

“American Foreign Policy, the Cold War, and Korea” (Indiana University, 1978); 

James I, Matray, “The Reluctant Crusade; American Foreign Policy in Korea, 

1941-1950" (University of Virginia, 1977); and Kenneth R, Mauck, “The Forma- 

tion of American Foreign Policy in Korea, 1945-1953" (University of Oklahoma, 

1978). 

140 JOHN MERRILL 

reflected deep divisions within the Korean leadership over the proper 

strategy to adopt toward the commission. The initial reaction to its 

formation in the North Korean press was relatively mild. And although 

the commission was not admitted into the Russian zone, the P’ydng- 

yang authorities ordered a sprucing-up drive to prepare the city for a 

possible visit. Most SKLP leaders believed that a wave of arrests 

earlier in the year had left the party too weak to actively oppose the 

work of the commission, but Pak Hdn-ySng’s more militant view was 

that the SKLP should lead a mass campaign against it ‘‘modelled on 

the October 1946 People’s Resistance.’” He was later criticized for 

leading an ‘‘adventurous charge” that needlessly exposed the party 

organization to attack, but his position made sense at the time. There 

was widespread public speculation about the extent of divisions within 

the commission, and Pak may have felt that a show of opposition 

would influence its decision.® 

The SKLP called a three-day general strike beginning on February 7 

that was accompanied by sabotage, mass demonstrations, and attacks 

on police boxes. More than forty railroad locomotives were disabled 

in one night, and communications links were cut in hundreds of places. 

Several thousand demonstrators were arrested and more than forty 

people killed. Such incidents continued sporadically through late 

February.? 

These tactics had some success. Unable to gain entrance to the 

North and faced with the opposition to separate elections by most 

southern leaders, the commission deferred to the UN Interim Assembly. 

There, in a virtual coup that ran counter to the ‘‘nearly unanimous 

opinion of the members of the Commission,” the United States pushed 

through a resolution calling for ‘‘elections in that part of Korea acces- 

sible to the (UN) Commission.”!° Thereafter, the UN group confined 

itself to doing what it could to ensure a free atmosphere for the elec- 

tions. The elections were held on May 10 amid great tension, with the 

main responsibility for “processing voters” entrusted to the right-wing 

6. Far Eastern Command (hereafter FEC) Intelligence Summaries (hereafter 

IS), Jan, 17, 1948, National Archives, Washington, D.C, 

7. IS, Jan. 30, 1948. 

8. See Glenn D, Paige, ‘‘Korea,’’ in Communism and Revolution, ed, Cyril E. 

Black and James P. Thornton (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), p. 222. 

Also, Kim Min-ju, ed., Cheju-do inmin dill ii 4.3 mujang t’ujaeng sa—charyejip 

[Materials on the April 3 armed uprising of the Cheju-do people] (Osaka, 1963), 

p. 7. 

9. U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, ‘Communist Capabilities in Southern 

Korea’ (ORE-44-48), Oct. 28, 1948, Record Group (hereafter RG) 319, ORE-44- 

48, National Archives, Washington, D.C. 

10. 7S, Mar. 15, 1948. 

INTERNAL WARFARE IN KOREA 14] 

Community Protective Associations formed by the American Military 

Government. Polling places were ringed by members of this group, 

police, and constabulary men, who searched all voters before allowing 

them to cast their ballots.!! 

On Cheju-do, at least, all these precautions were needed. On April 

3, a popular rebellion broke out as guerrilla units descended from 

Halla-san, the volcanic peak that dominates the island, and occupied 

most of the coastal towns. Seoul newspapers speculated that U.S. 

tactical forces would have to be called in to contend with the “three 

thousand armed rioters” who controlled most of the island.!2 Voting 

was disrupted in two of the three electoral districts on Cheju-do where, 

“during election week, there were fifty assorted demonstrations, 

disorders, arson cases, and attacks on rightists’ offices and houses, 

Sixty-three towns were attacked, in addition to three government 

buildings,’*}8 

Although the official casualty figures were low, many “‘stories were 

told of raided villages where there were found the bodies of hanged 

women and children run through with spears. Tales of villages nearly 

wiped out kept coming in. Numbers of rightists and police were kid- 

napped, then hanged or beheaded.”!* Additional police and right- 

wing youth association members were rushed to the island to restore 

government control, A U.S. destroyer took up station between Cheju-do 

and the mainland to prevent guerrilla infiltration, and planes flew over 

the island in a show of force. 

The fighting subsided once the elections were over, but flared up 

again in the following October and January. Before it ended, the 

rebellion claimed some 30,000 lives, about 10 percent of the island’s 

population. Throughout the rebellion, the guerrilla forces persisted 

in the face of extremely adverse circumstances. (This was in marked 

contrast to the peasant rebellions that occurred on the island at the 

turn of the century, which tended to melt away at the first show of 

government force.) Class divisions on the island do not appear to have 

been as important as the tight clan structure and social solidarity of 

the islanders in contributing to the rebellion. Many of the leaders of 

(he uprising were returnees from Japan and teachers in the island’s 

schools, The SKLP also had considerable support among the locally 

recruited constabulary forces stationed on the island, The efforts of 

11. JS, “Special Edition on the Korean Elections,” May 30, 1948, 

12. United States Armed Forces in Korea (hereafter USAFIK), South Korean 

Interim Government Activities (Seoul, May 1948), pp. 156-57; and April, p, 179 

13, FEC, “History of USAFIK,” pt. 3, p. 18, ms, on file at the U.S, Army 

Genter for Military History, Washington, D.C, 

l4, Ibid, 

142 JOHN MERRILL 

government troops were hampered by information leaks, assassinations 

of key officers, defections to the guerrillas, and a poor relationship with 

police and rightist groups, which made coordinated action impossible, 

Some Japanese arms were probably available on Cheju-do, which was 

heavily garrisoned during World War II. The importance of this factor, 

however, is greatly exaggerated in South Korean accounts. The SKLP 

probably did not plan the rebellion; more likely it was the result of 

the island’s remoteness, the weakness of government control, and the 

long-standing grievance against the mainland authorities. 

During the second period (summer, 1948) internal violence in Korea 

subsided markedly. The elections were over and both sides were preoc- 

cupied with laying the foundations for the governments to be estab- 

lished in the Soviet and American zones, While the South was embroiled 

in a constitutional debate in the newly elected National Assembly, the 

SKLP attempted to carry out an underground election in late July and 

August to select delegates to the conference that would formally estab- 

lish the DPRK in early September. With the formation of two rival gov- 

ernments in Korea, each claiming exclusive jurisdiction over the whole 

peninsula, the process begun by the UN Commission was nearly complete. 

The SKLP was busy with three main tasks throughout the summer. 

The first was a shake-up of the party organization to make it more 

responsive to central control. Pak HOn-ySng was reported to be greatly 

dissatisfied with the party’s performance in the February resistance 

campaign. Local cadres were reassigned and a greater centralization 

imposed on provincial party branches to ensure that future directives 

would be more effectively implemented.!® The second goal was the 

creation of guerrilla ‘‘flying columns’? in mountain bases to provide 

the party with the strong military arm that was lacking during the 

February campaign. The most important task, however, was the August 

underground elections, Communist claims that elections were held 

to establish the DPRK in the southern zone as well as in the North 

have usually been received with extreme skepticism, if not entirely 

dismissed. Nevertheless, U.S. sources indicate that the SKLP did 

organize a signature-gathering campaign in the summer of 1948 to 

select delegates to the conference that established the DPRK. As much 

as 25 percent of the rural population may have participated in this 

drive, whether they voted “knowingly” or out of fear.!” 

15. For details see my article, ‘The Cheju-do Rebellion,” Journal of Korean 

Studies, vol. 2 (1980), pp. 139-98. 

16. IS, Sept. 27, 1948; and USAFIK, Weekly Report, Sept. 6, 1948, copy in 

Supreme Command, Allied Powers (SCAP) Adjutant General’s File, RG 331, 

National Archives. 

17. Exchange of messages between Department of the Army (Sept. 10, 1948) 

Jv. (Ret.), “Pre-War South Korea Questionnaire Response,’ 

INTERNAL WARFARE IN KOREA 143 

As this period drew to a close, a fundamentally different situation 

emerged. Two hostile governments now faced each other across the 

parallel, Tensions began to mount along the border as U.S. and Soviet 

troops turned their positions over to their Korean counterparts. Rumors 

were rife of an imminent invasion from the North. The presence of 

wecupation forces still prevented direct military conflict, but the 

Soviets announced that their troops would be withdrawn by the end 

of the year and the United States began a similar pullback, Another 

diplomatic round remained to be fought in the General Assembly 

debate in the fall of 1948, but the lines of the future conflict in Korea 

were now essentially drawn. 

The third period (fall 1948-winter 1948-49) was a time of acute 

crisis for the ROK government with its very survival at stake. The 

period opened with the October 19 Ydsu Rebellion. Two thousand 

South Korean constabulary troops mutinied as they were about to 

embark for Cheju-do. The rebellion revealed a widespread Communist 

penetration in the constabulary, undermining public confidence in 

the security forces and widening the gulf between the police and the 

urmy. The South Korean leadership was poorly equipped to handle 

the crisis. The cabinet was split by dissension and personal rivalries, 

und President Rhee, according to one report, was showing signs of 

“incipient senility.’? Moreover, there was fear that the United States 

was about to abandon the South; this anxiety was aggravated by a 

steady stream of invasion rumors floated by the North. The DPRK’s 

policy toward the South seemed to follow a dual course, On the one 

hand, it attempted to undercut the legitimacy of the Rhee government 

by unsettling the domestic situation in the South. On the other, it 

launched a diplomatic offensive against the ROK with the aid of the 

Soviet bloc in the fall General Assembly debate. 

Renewed fighting on Cheju-do in early October led to the decision 

to reinforce the constabulary forces operating on the island with the 

Vourteenth Regiment from YOsu. As it was about to embark, the 

regiment rebelled.!8 The uprising seems to have been prematurely 

und General Hodge (Sept. 30, 1948) on the elections in SCAP Adjutant General’s 

Vile, National Archives. 

18. The account of the Yosu Rebellion is based on the following sources: 

Maj. John R. Reed, ‘The Truth About the Yosu Incident,’’ ms. on file at the 

U.S. Army Center for Military History, Washington, D.C. Maj. Bernie W. Griffith, 

> ms. in answer to the 

author’s inquiries, January, 1979; Capt, James H. Hausman, ‘‘History of Rebellion, 

idth Constabulary Regiment,’ interview with a “long-time observer of Korean 

security affairs,’ Seoul, Nov. 30, 1977; and the JS reports on the incident in the 

weeks following the rebellion. 

144 JOHN MERRILL 

precipitated by a special set of local circumstances. The regiment had 

been reinforced for duty on Cheju-do with light mortars and machine 

guns drawn from other constabulary units. It also had just been sup- 

plied with M-1 carbines but had not yet turned in the japanese rifles 

with which it was originally equipped. A statement by the Soldiers’ 

Committee published in the YOsu papers while the city was under rebel 

control explained that the soldiers “refused to murder the people of 

Cheju-do [fighting] against imperialist policy.” SKLP cells in the 

regiment and neighboring towns cooperated in staging the rebellion, 

People’s courts were established in YSsu and Sunch’dn, and police 

and rightists were searched out and executed. The rebels never intended 

to hold the two towns, and retreated to the nearby Chiri massif to 

carry on protracted guerrilla warfare. Since two American combat 

divisions were still stationed in Korea, it seems unlikely that the rebel- 

lion sought the immediate overthrow of the Rhee government. Its 

main goal was to obtain a large supply of arms and set up a guerrilla 

infrastructure in the Chiri mountains. The absence of immediate 

support to the guerrillas from the North also suggests that the rebellion 

was not centrally planned. 

The rebellion had immediate and far-reaching consequences, YSsu 

was a major embarrassment to the ROK in the fall UN debate and 

produced a tremendous sense of insecurity among the South Koreans. 

The military situation was touch and go for the first few days after the 

rebellion, No one was sure whether the revolt was planned and if it 

would spread to other constabulary regiments. Enough incidents 

occurred elsewhere to keep alive doubts about their reliability. The 

Soviet announcement of its troop withdrawal from the North put 

pressure on the United States to make a similar move. American with- 

drawals after YOsu slowed down on the entreaties of the Rhee govern- 

ment, but it appeared for a time that the United States might leave 

the ROK to face its fate alone. A CLA study made shortly after YOsu 

mirrored this pessimism in its title—‘‘Prospects for the Survival of the 

ROK.” Its conclusion was that the Rhee government would flounder 

without substantial amounts of American military and economic 

aid, and that even then its chances were no better than even.!9 Exact 

casualty figures for YOsu are not available, though South Korean 

accounts state that about 1,200 civilians and progovernment forces 

were killed, as against 1,500 rebels and their supporters.2° Warning 

19. U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, ‘‘Prospects for the Survival of the Re- 

public of Korea,” Oct. 28, 1948, RG 319, ORE 44-48. 

20. Dong-a Ibo, Siry¥n kwa y¥nggwang Wi minjok-sa [History of the trials 

and glories of the nation] (Seoul, 1975), 

INTERNAL WARFARE IN KOREA 145 

that Korea had never before in its history had as many traitors, Rhee 

also pushed a National Security Act through the National Assembly, 

tightened control of the press, and embarked on a widespread purge 

of the constabulary in which over a thousand persons were arrested. 

The fourth period (spring through summer of 1949) was charac- 

terized by an outbreak of large scale fighting along the parallel and the 

opening of a major guerrilla offensive in the South. The border fighting, 

which began in the midst of discussions between the ROK and the 

United States over troop withdrawal, reflected a new assertiveness 

by the Rhee government towards the North. This so-called ‘policy 

of bluff” involved a series of military, diplomatic, and propaganda 

activities designed to secure an American security commitment, pry 

loose additional aid, and maintain pressure on the North?! 

By the spring of 1949, the Rhee government was prey to a mood 

of self-confidence that verged on bravado. The new ROK had success- 

fully weathered the difficult challenges that faced it in its first months. 

The Y6su Rebellion had been suppressed. On Cheju-do, an all-out 

pacification drive begun in February had prepared the island for Rhee’s 

April visit. Accompanied by a large entourage of foreign and domestic 

reporters, Rhee scored a “‘public relations home run’’ on his swing 

through the troubled southern provinces.?? Furthermore, the South 

had been successful in winning widespread recognition among the 

Western powers after the fall UN debate. Most likely, the southern 

leaders felt that they had been too long on the receiving end of Com- 

munist attacks and that they were now in a position to return the 

fire. There were several aspects to this much more active southern 

policy. 

For one thing, Rhee and his ministers made repeated public calls 

for a march north. All that held Rhee back was the knowledge that 

this would result in a break with the United States, and the South’s 

lack of sufficient offensive weapons (especially an air force). To attract 

more American military aid, the Ministry of Education mobilized tens 

of thousands of students to participate in ‘‘give us arms’’ demonstra- 

tions in front of the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, A parallel effort in Wash- 

ington involved lobbying congressmen and Defense Department of- 

ficials. 

A diplomatic offensive was also begun as Rhee threw his support 

behind a Philippine initiative for a Pacific pact. Modeled on NATO, 

21. Yi Ho-jae, Han’guk oegyo ch®ngch'aek ti isang kwa hyBnsil: Yi Stingman 

vegyo wa miguk [The ideal and reality of Korean diplomatic policy: Syngman 

Rhee’s diplomacy and America (1945-1953)| (Seoul, 1975), 

22. Roberts to Wedemeyer, May 2, 1949, in U.S. Department of the Army, 

G-3 Plans and Operations Viles (hereafter ? & O Piles), National Archives, 

si JOHN MERRILL 

the goal of the proposal was to draw a reluctant United States into a 

more definite commitment to the security of its allies in Asia. Discus- 

sions progressed to the point of a visit by Chiang K’ai-shek to Chinhae 

in August for a conference with Rhee. Although Chiang offered fighter 

squadrons in return for Korean bases to bomb the mainland, Rhee 

wisely balked at becoming involved in the Chinese civil war. The 

release of the U.S. White Papers on China on the final day of the 

conference killed any chances of agreement with the Nationalists. 

Ultimately, the proposal for a Pacific pact turned out to be a major 

embarrassment that further isolated the ROK when it was excluded, 

along with the Nationalists, from the Baguio Conference early in 1950. 

But more was involved than threats, lobbying, and diplomacy. 

Serious fighting also broke out for the first time along the parallel. 

Three points should be made. First, unlike previous incidents, these 

were not spontaneous outbursts. Some were undoubtedly started on 

the initiative of local commanders, particularly on the southern side; 

General Roberts feared that these “boy scout tactics” might provoke 

a major conflagration. Not much seems to have been done, however, 

by the Rhee government to control these commanders. In at least 

some cases, they were acting on the direct orders of political leaders, 

not on their own. The North exercised much tighter control over its 

forces along the parallel. While the DPRK started its share of incidents, 

these were limited engagements designed to drive home political points. 

The North had a relatively restrained posture, concentrating on the 

build-up of a “revolutionary base” in the North and supporting a 

limited guerrilla offensive in the South. A second point about the 

border incidents is that they were closely related to political events: 

the withdrawal of American occupation forces, the formation of a 

Democratic Front for the Unification of the Fatherland (DFUF), the 

visit of Chiang K’ai-shek, and a propaganda campaign against “South 

Korean border provocations.” Finally, a close examination of the 

pattern of these incidents reveals a complex sequence of actions and 

reactions as each side adjusted and responded to the moves of the 

other. Since only fragmentary newspaper accounts of these battles have 

been available in English, it is necessary to examine them in some detail 

here, 

The fighting started in early May 1949 when ROK forces began a 

“general consolidation of the parallel” in the midst of discussions with 

the United States over troop withdrawal. The first incident occurred 

near Kaesong on May 4 when North Korean border guards pushed 

South Korean troops from newly occupied positions straddling the 

parallel, touching off four days of heavy fighting that eventually 

involved battalion-sized units, On May 5, elements of two ROK bat- 

INTERNAL WARFARE IN KOREA 147 

tallions, in the most serious instance of disaffection in the security 

forces since Y8su, defected to the North in the Ch’unch’Sn area. 

Unsettled by these incidents, Rhee went public with his doubts on 

troop withdrawal, demanding that the United States “sit down im- 

mediately and state its policies and plans in respect to the immediate 

future of Korea.” In an attempt to offset the effects of the defections 

the South Korean media played up the deaths of “ten brave soldiers” 

killed in a suicide charge on the North Korean positions during the 

Kaesng fighting. The heroism of the “ten human bombs” received so 

much publicity, in fact, that the phrase entered the language in the 

South, ROK forces also attempted to ambush North Korean border 

guards in the UijSngbu area on May 7 by baiting them with a staged 

defection. During the course of this unsuccessful operation, South 

Korean units penetrated ‘four kilometers into the North and shot up 

several villages,”’ 

The North responded on May 18 with an attack by several com- 

panies of border guards in the Packch’Sn area that carried almost ten 

kilometers south of the parallel before it was repulsed by South Korean 

reinforcements rushed to the scene, A more serious incident occurred 

three days later when a series of minor clashes escalated into a major 

attack by two North Korean battalions in the Turak mountain area 

on the Ongjin peninsula. The South poured reinforcements into the 

peninsula by landing ships from Inch’Sn, rapidly expanding its forces 

from a few companies at the onset of the fighting to more than eight 

battalions by early June, Despite this massive build-up, adverse terrain 

and North Korean superiority in artillery made it difficult to dislodge 

the DPRK forces from their five-kilometer deep salient. During the 

course of the fighting, a South Korean guerrilla unit attacked T’aet’an 

some ten kilometers north of the parallel, in an attempt to put pressure 

on the rear of the northern forces, The ROK forces finally succeeded 

in retaking most of their positions and occupying Unp’a-san, a moun- 

tain several hundred meters north of the border dominating the ap- 

proaches to the North Korean city of Haeju. By the end of June, the 

situation on the peninsula had stabilized, About half the southern 

lorce was withdrawn, and the chief of staff of the ROK Army guided 

members of the UN Commission and reporters on a tour of the area 

declaring that the South had “recovered the initiative on all fronts,” 

Serious fighting continued through June and July in numerous 

small unit engagements, In June, a company of South Korean guerrillas 

lrom the Ho-rim (Forest Tiger) unit was captured while on a deep 

penetration raid into the North, According to American sources com- 

menting on northern propaganda on their trial in P’ySngyang in Sep- 

tember, ROK guerrilla units had previously been reported attacking 

148 JOHN MERRILL 

targets as far north as the outskirts of Wdnsan on the east coast, al- 

though the exact extent of their operations was unknown, In July, 

elements of an ROK batallion were also beaten back in an attack ona 

guerrilla base at Yangyang, just across the parallel. The minister of 

national defense may have been referring to the ROK’s ability to 

stage successful incursions on the east coast when he told reporters on 

July 17 that the army was “awaiting an order from President Rhee 

and [was] confident of completely occupying Yangyang or Wdnsan in 

a day.” ' 

Heavy fighting flared up again in August as clashes involving bat- 

talion-sized units broke out at Ongjin, Kaesdng, and Ch’unch’dn. The 

incidents began on July 25 when a South Korean battalion attacked a 

northern observation post on Hill 488, a few hundred meters north 

of the parallel, overlooking Kaesdng. The position changed hands twice 

over the next few days. KaesOng itself was shelled in a fierce artillery 

duel between the two sides that lasted a week. The incident was sig- 

nificant since it demonstrated an overwhelming northern superiority 

in artillery, and marked the first major involvement by the North 

Korean army in support of the border guards. Another battle broke 

out on Ongjin on August 4, causing a brief panic among the southern 

forces in which an order was nearly given to evacuate the whole penin- 

sula. A third incident began two days later when North Korean forces 

occupied several strategic hills along the parallel near Ch’unch’dn. Two 

weeks of heavy fighting followed before ROK troops retook the heights 

in a regimental assault supported by artillery. General Roberts, the head 

of the Korean Military Advisory Group (KMAG), described these 

August clashes as follows: 

Each was in our opinion brought on by the presence of a small South ‘Korean 

salient north of the parallel, Each was characterized by the CO’s screaming “in- 

vasion, reinforce, ammo!” . . . The South Koreans wish to invade the North. We 

tell them that if such occurs, all advisors will pull put and the ECA spigot will be 

turned off. In case they’d lost the Ongjin peninsula, they felt they’d have to invade 

to Chorown about twenty miles in, in order to save face. . .. Most incidents on the 

parallel are due to needling by opposing local forces. Both North and South are at 

fault. No attacks by the North have ever been in serious proportions. 

These Kaesdng battles appear to have been designed by the South to 

exploit the attention focused on Korea by the upcoming visit of Chiang 

K’ai-shek to discuss a Pacific pact. The Ongjin and Ch’unch’6n incidents 

may have been Northern attempts to embarrass the ROK during the 

Chinese leader’s visit. 

23. Roberts to Bolte, in ‘Personal Comments on KMAG and Korean Affairs," 

Aug. 19, 1949, in P & O Files, National Archives, 

INTERNAL WARFARE IN KOREA 149 

There was no ambiguity about the causes of several serious naval 

engagements that also took place during this month, South Korean 

intelligence personnel disguised as fishermen sailed from Inch’5n early 

in August to raid North Korean coastal shipping. ROK vessels also 

shelled shore installations near the mouth of the Taedong River on 

August 11. The most serious incident occurred six days later when a 

ROK task force of six mine sweepers attacked the military harbor of 

Monggump’o, capturing one North Korean ship and sinking four, 

The naval chain of command was bypassed in this attack with the 

commander of the ROK ships, Lee Yong-woon, acting on the direct 

orders of the minister of national defense, an ex-navy man, After the 

incident, Lee was quickly reassigned by his patrons to an obscure port 

command to get him out of harm’s way as Ambassador Muccio and 

KMAG advisers clamored for disciplinary action,*# Although American 

advisers seem to have been kept in the dark, learning about these ac- 

tions only after the fact, port calls by U.S. warships over the summer 

and ROK-initiated discussions concerning basing agreements may have 

contributed to the South Korean naval offensive. 

The parallel remained relatively quiet after this until mid-October. 

In the midst of a North Korean campaign against ROK border provoca- 

tions, two battalions of the DPRK’s forces pushed southern troops 

from the positions they still held on Unp’a-san on the northern side of 

the parallel. Concerned about the continuing fighting on Ongjin, where 

ROK forces would be trapped if war broke out, KMAG pressured the 

South Korean military to pull back from the exposed peninsula. ROK 

strength was further reduced to two battalions and Colonel Paek In-ydp 

was assigned as the new commander with orders to keep things quiet. 

Despite these instructions, Paek staged a surprise attack in mid-Decem- 

ber on the North Korean positions to “increase morale,” Briefly retak- 

ing Unp’a-san, Paek brought the northern forces into a hasty counter- 

attack in which one of their battalions was badly mauled in a ROK 

ambush, After this, the Ongjin peninsula, and the border in general, 

was quiet until just before the war. 

24, This account of the border clashes is based upon the following sources: 

Committee for the Compilation of War History, Han’guk ch¥njaeng-sa I, Haebang 

kwa k&n’gun [History of the Korean War, vol. 1: The liberation and the establish- 

ment of the army] (Seoul, 1967), pp. 506-37; Sasaki Harutaka, Han "gukch&n-bisa, 

sang-gwon: kon’gun kwa sirydn [Secret history of the Korean War, vol. 1: The 

establishment of the army and its trials} (Seoul: Py&nghaksa, 1977), pp. 417-62; 

and U.S, Military Attache (USMILAT), and /S reports for the period. Interestingly, 

the second edition of Han'euk ch Unjaeng-sa omits all reference to the border Clashes 

since they were regarded as being “too political.” Interview with Yi HySng-sdk, 

chairman of the Gommittee for the Compilation of War History, Seoul, 1978. 

150 JOHN MERRILL 

While these border incidents clearly marked a major escalation in 

the confrontation between the South and the North, it is difficult to 

gauge their seriousness, General Roberts believed that the clashes were 

deliberately exaggerated by the South to obtain more aid and “a 

general rule of thumb” was to discount casualty figures by a factor 

of ten. KMAG estimates, on the other hand, were biased in the opposite 

direction and tended to downplay the seriousness of the military 

situation in Korea, The size of the units involved and the weapons 

employed suggest that some of those border engagements were major 

battles. Reliable casualty figures are not available, but they must 

have been heavy. Intelligence reports mentioned North Korean trains 

crowded with wounded after some engagements and a KMAG observer 

reported seeing South Korean dead ‘‘stacked in a tent like cordwood” 

during one phase of the Ongjin fighting. 

It is apparent that both sides initiated some engagements and that 

neither considered the parallel an international boundary. The North 

seems to have gotten the worst of it in the actual fighting. The reason 

for this was that it garrisoned its border with a lightly armed police 

force under the ministry of the interior, like most Communist states, 

while holding its main forces in reserve. The South was often able, 

therefore, to achieve local superiority in the initial stages of an engage- 

ment before the North could bring its army into play. But the fighting 

was a costly diversion for the South. It reduced the readiness of ROK 

forces by cutting down on training and using up scarce supplies. Sus- 

picion of Rhee’s motives among American policy makers growing out 

of these incidents also contributed, along with economic constraints 

and consideration of responsibilities elsewhere, to the decision to 

limit military aid to “defensive weapons.’’ The border incidents, more- 

over, made it more difficult to read the DPRK’s intentions. The gradual 

deployment of North Korean forces toward the parallel that began in 

the fall could easily be interpreted as a defensive reaction, The North 

was clearly worried by the border fighting: rumors of an invasion from 

the South began to be heard in the North for the first time as the 

DPRK began a major campaign against southern “‘border provocations.” 

One conclusion follows from these border incidents. Although one 

of the best arguments against the Gupta thesis that the war began with 

a small South Korean incursion at Haeju is the relatively restrained 

response of the North to the incidents during the earlier period, the 

cumulative effect of these incidents may well have been to create an 

image among the northern leadership of a long-term threat from the 

South, Therefore this may have lent a certain preemptive quality to 

the June 1950 attack, 

At any rate, North Korean and Soviet policy underwent a decisive 

INTERNAL WARFARE IN KOREA 151 

shift early in this period, By the spring of 1949, the DPRK had aban- 

doned any hopes it might have had of gaining support for its position 

in the United Nations. The North suffered a major diplomatic setback 

when the General Assembly adopted a U,S. resolution recognizing 

the ROK as the only legitimate government on the peninsula, Pak 

H6n-y6ng, the DPRK’s foreign minister, announced soon after that 

the North would henceforth “rely on its own resources” to unify the 

country. Soviet policy also changed. In March 1949, Kim Il-sung and 

Pak headed a high-level North Korean delegation that traveled to 

Moscow for negotiations with the Soviet leadership. The trip resulted 

in cultural and economic treaties as well as a secret military aid agree- 

ment. It is apparently to these meetings that Khrushchev refers in his 

memoirs, when he recalls how Kim pushed for an attack that would 

touch off a domestic uprising in the South. That something unusual 

was afoot seemed to be indicated by the failure to sign a mutual se- 

curity treaty. Observers surmised that this departure from normal 

practice might indicate a Soviet unwillingness to become involved if 

a conflict flared up in Korea, It is doubtful, however, that a decision 

(o attack the South was reached at this point. Stalin had a reputation 

lor extreme caution in his foreign policy initiatives, and was unlikely 

to commit himself irrevocably to such a course of action so far in 

advance. The initial Soviet arms deliveries were limited, probably not 

yreatly exceeding the standard satellite level and certainly not bringing 

the North Korean forces up to the strength of the Soviet occupation 

troops formerly in the country, That the Soviets were not munificent 

in their initial aid to the DPRK is also suggested by the formation of 

u Military Sponsorship Committee in July to solicit contributions 

\o purchase arms. The main build-up of the North Korean forces did 

not occur until the fall, and arms were still arriving in the spring of 

1950 when war broke out, The main thrust of North Korean policy 

was a renewed emphasis on armed guerrilla struggle in the South, 

The major unification initiative on the northern side during this 

period was the formation of the DFUF on June 25 in response to an 

appeal by leftist groups in the South for a united front against the 

Khee government. Despite its name, the formation of the front re- 

‘lected the intensified suppression of leftists in the ROK, which made 

open political action in concert with opponents of Rhee impossible. 

Sull, the president was taking no chances. The day after the establish- 

inent of the DFUF, his chief opponent on the Right, Kim Ku, who 

had been in touch with the North in an attempt to form a Peaceful 

Unification Conference, was assassinated, The DFUF was also an 

attempt to capitalize on the pull-out of the last American combat 

troops (five hundred KMAG advisers remained behind) in June, The 

152 JOHN MERRILL 

main proposal to come out of the inaugural meeting of the DFUF 

was a call for elections in the North and South to form an all-Korea 

legislative body by September. 

Along with the formation of the DFUF, the SKLP opened a large- 

scale guerrilla offensive in the South. Aided by the diversion of ROK 

forces to the parallel clashes, the remnants of the Chiri-san guerrillas 

succeeded in regrouping and breaking out of the remote mountainous 

areas to which they had been confined over the winter by the pressure 

of ROK operations. In a ‘‘surge of activity,” the guerrillas began to 

expand their base areas ‘‘and increase their hit-and-run attacks on 

villages, police boxes, police stations, and small government installa- 

tions, such as power stations. Roadblocks were established in remote 

areas and other transportation was harassed. Atrocities became com- 

mon practice ... by late spring or early summer of 1949, these guerrilla 

bands had become a real problem.””° 

The North supported the offensive by infiltrating several guerrilla 

units trained at the Kangdong Political Institute into the South. A 

second base area was established in the Odae mountain area, just below 

the parallel on the east coast, with the dispatch of some six hundred 

guerrillas in June and July. The revival of the insurgent movement 

was reflected in a shift in casualty figures, which began to tilt in the 

guerrillas’ favor. The police also began to pull back from isolated 

outposts, and formed special units to guard railroad and other com- 

munications links, By midsummer, guerrilla bands were ‘‘attacking at 

will” in many areas of the South, 

A more serious wave of attacks came in early August as the SKLP 

attempted to implement the call for all-Korea elections in September. 

A captured directive urged the guerrillas to make an all-out effort, 

stating that “‘the final reckoning was at hand.” The offensive was 

supported by two more infiltrations of guerrillas on the east coast. 

Three hundred guerrillas, commanded by Kim Tal-sam, the leader of 

the Cheju-do rebellion who had fled to the North, penetrated into the 

Andong area in early August to establish a third base area. Three 

hundred and sixty guerrillas infiltrated into the T’aebaek mountains 

under Yi Ho-je in five separate groups a month later. With these 

new infiltrations, the guerrilla movement reached a peak strength of 

some three thousand men, with three to five times as many supporters 

in the base areas. Why the September elections were never held remains 

something of a puzzle. While some accounts have speculated that the 

25. USMILAT, Weekly Report, Sept. 24, 1949; and the captured North Korean 

newsfilm of the trial, “Ho Rim Army Group Trials, Oct. 1949,” MID 5402, RG 

242, National Archives, 

INTERNAL WARFARE IN KOREA 153 

SKLP may have been encouraged by Kim Il-sung to exhaust its strength 

in futile attacks to undercut the position of Pak Hdn-ySng, or was 

forced to call off a planned attack under Soviet pressure, neither 

explanation seems convincing. The most likely explanation is that the 

guerrillas were unable to demonstrate enough strength to make a 

northern initiative possible, Although the guerrilla groups were ap- 

parently in contact with the North by radio, they were isolated from 

each other and unable to effectively coordinate operations. The guer- 

rillas, all of whom were originally from the South, received almost no 

support from the North after their infiltration and had to rely on a 

greatly weakened SKLP organization. When it became clear that the 

offensive was not achieving its objectives, Radio P’ySngyang simply 

dropped all mention of the elections. 

Guerrilla activity also fell off in mid-September, but picked up 

again early the next month. Responding to calls for a ‘‘winter offen- 

sive,’ the guerrillas shifted tactics to large-scale attacks on towns. 

On October 2, Kim Tal-sam’s unit launched coordinated assaults on 

the police station, prison, and army barracks at Andong, Later in the 

month, on October 27, several hundred Chiri-san guerrillas mounted 

an attack on Chinju, the base of the newly formed ROK Marine Corps. 

Guerrilla units on the east coast also began to consolidate their forces. 

The badly mauled remnants of Yi Ho-je’s guerrilla unit joined up 

with Kim Tal-sam’s group in the P’ohang area, when they were re- 

inforced on November 6 by one hundred men infiltrated by sea. De- 

spite the continuing play given by radio P’ySngyang to their activity, 

it was apparent that the North was losing touch with the guerrillas. 

The truth was that the guerrillas were falling back as an ROK counter- 

offensive, launched in October, gathered momentum, 

During the fifth period (winter of 1949-50), most of the fighting 

shifted to the interior of the ROK. To deal with the revival of guerrilla 

activity, the South Korean government launched a major offensive 

against the guerrillas that succeeded over the winter in breaking the 

back of the insurgent movement. The substantial SKLP party organiza- 

tion also came under increasing attack by ROK security agencies 

utilizing the National Guidance Alliance, a network of former Com- 

munist informants. But if the internal situation in the ROK was improv- 

ing, its international position seemed to be increasingly in question. 

Doubts about the American security commitment were raised early in 

the new year by Secretary of State Acheson’s speech excluding the 

ROK from the U.S. defense perimeter in Asia and the vote of the 

House of Representatives to cut off Korean aid. The military balance 

on the peninsula, meanwhile, was tilting sharply in the DPRK’s favor 

as large quantities of Soviet aid arrived and Korean veterans of the 

Chinese Communist forces returned to the North, 

154 JOHN MERRILL 

The South Korean offensive against the guerrillas began in early 

September and continued throughout the winter. Several hundred 

separate counterguerrilla operations were conducted by the ROK 

army and police, some of them involving several battalions of troops. 

The offensive was designed to break the hold of the guerrillas on the 

countryside by employing a classic strategy of area clearance. The 

first step was to blockade the base areas by setting up check points, 

roadblocks, and a coast watcher system to prevent the guerrillas from 

moving freely and to stop reinforcements from reaching them, In 

the second stage, the rural population in areas of guerrilla activity was 

relocated by the police to villages under government control, thus 

depriving the insurgents of food, shelter, and manpower. Along the 

western margins of the Chiri mountains alone, more than ninety thou- 

sand persons were moved out of villages exposed to guerrilla attacks, 

Village guard forces were established to watch fields at night, man 

roadblocks, and assist in operations against the guerrillas. The evacuated 

areas were considered “‘free fire zones” in which anyone remaining 

behind was assumed to be associated with the guerrillas. During the 

final phases of the operations, government forces conducted sweeps 

of the isolated base areas one by one. The increasingly desperate 

situation of the guerrillas was reflected in their changing pattern of 

activity as the winter continued. Avoiding contact with the ROK 

forces whenever possible, the guerrilla units began to conduct foraging 

raids over wider areas to secure food and supplies. Winter operations 

in the South Korean mountains were extremely difficult, even for 

the government task forces, with many deaths from exposure, 

The military operations were coupled with highly effective meas- 

ures to undercut popular support for the guerrillas. An amnesty pro- 

gram begun in late October, lasting five weeks, succeeded in inducing 

over forty thousand defections. The activities of the 200,000-member 

National Guidance Alliance also helped to uncover SKLP sympathizers 

and assisted the police in maintaining surveillance of former Com- 

munists. The stepped-up pressure began to pay off in late March when 

Kim Sam-nyong and Yi Chu-ha, the two top-ranking leaders of the party 

remaining in the South, were arrested in Seoul. Their prominence is 

suggested by the DPRK’s proposal to exchange them for Cho Man-sik, 

a nationalist purged by the Soviets in 1946 for refusing to go along 

with trusteeship. The swap fell through because of suspicions of both 

sides. In fact, the SKLP organization was beginning to crumble, Even 

though CIA reports and Khrushchev’s memoirs agree in placing the 

SKLP’s strength at half a million members, widespread arrests had 

badly disrupted its communications and seemed to render it incapable 

of taking coordinated action. 

INTERNAL WARFARE IN KOREA 155 

Things were not going so well, however, for the Rhee government in 

its relations with the United States, As mentioned, in a still contro- 

versial speech delivered to the National Press Club on January 12, the 

U.S. Secretary of State Acheson seemed to exclude the ROK from the 

American defense perimeter in Asia. The speech seemed to represent 

a new departure in policy, and its delivery by an authoritative spokes- 

man to an audience of news editors gave it much greater prominence 

than any previous statement on the subject. For some weeks after- 

wards, Rhee made a habit of buttonholing every American that he 

encountered to lecture him on the inconstancy of U.S, policy with 

the aid of a pocket map with Acheson’s defense perimeter outlined 

in red ink,*6 According to a former North Korean journalist, Kim Il-sung 

was also “much excited’? when informed of wire service reports of 

Acheson’s remarks.*” The rejection of the Korean aid bill by the House 

of Representatives a week later, though subsequently reversed, only 

compounded the adverse impact of the speech, Serious tensions were 

also developing in the Korean-American relationship over Rhee’s 

drift towards authoritarianism and his casual handling of economic 

problems, Rhee was seen by many Americans as a “little Chiang K’ai- 

shek”? whose government was likely to go the same way as the Kuomin- 

tang in China. Increasing strains in the relationship culminated in an 

aide-mémoire on April 25 threatening a cut-off in assistance if National 

Assembly elections were not held on schedule and if steps were not 

taken to curb inflationary pressures on the ROK economy, 

At the same time the DPRK’s conventional military capabilities 

were rapidly expanding. In addition to the flow of arms from the 

Soviet Union, the DPRK’s forces were augmented by the return of 

Korean veterans who had served with the Chinese Communists. The 

victory of the People’s Liberation Army over the Nationalists in the 

fall of 1949 made possible the repatriation of as many as forty thou- 

sand of these troops to the DPRK. These experienced and ideologically 

committed volunteers were incorporated as units into the North Korean 

army in a major addition to the DPRK’s military strength. There 

were several signs, moreover, that DPRK policy was in a state of flux. 

The North apparently began to reassess its strategy toward the South 

at a three-day meeting attended by several members of the SKLP 

faction in P’ySngyang at the end of the year. A North Korean delega- 

tion headed by Kim Tu-bong also reportedly attended an ‘Asiatic 

26. Interview with a “long-time observer of Korean security affairs,” Seoul, 

Nov. 30, 1977. 

27. According to the story of Han Ghae-ddk, now deceased, as recounted in 

interviews with Yi Chong-hak, Seoul, July 28, 1978 and James Lee, Seoul, June 16, 

1978. 

156 JOHN MERRILL 

defense discussion” held in Moscow in late December. Future courses 

of action in Korea may have been discussed, moreover, during Mao’s 

visit to the Soviet Union early in the year, although there is no definite 

evidence one way or the other on this point. 

The sixth period (spring 1950) was characterized by an artificially 

quiet military situation and a series of fast-breaking political develop- 

ments, Guerrilla activity and border clashes fell off dramatically in the 

months before the war. The only border fighting occurred when the 

remnants of the east coast guerrillas attempted to exfiltrate to the 

North in early March. Two heavily armed units of over six hundred 

men assigned to escort them were almost completely wiped out by 

ROK forces. The political atmosphere in the South also heated up 

during this period with opposition proposals for a constitutional 

amendment leading to a cabinet-dominant system, disputes between 

the legislature and Rhee over the budget and scheduling of elections, 

and the May 30 National Assembly elections. Radio P’ySngyang made 

increasingly strident attacks stating that Korea was at a crossroads 

and only through the overthrow of Rhee could the country be saved. 

In late March, the guerrilla units that had been sent South over 

the previous summer attempted to make their way back to the North, 

Much reduced in size, the guerrilla bands came under heavy pressure 

as they tried to reach the parallel. On March 24 and 26, two groups 

of about three hundred members each were sent to guide the remnants 

of the guerrillas to the North. The relief columns were unable to carry 

out their mission and were almost totally wiped out by the ROK Army. 

The exfiltration of these east coast guerrillas, who would have been 

ideally placed to support a North Korean attack, suggests to some that 

the decision to invade the South was made after this point. 

The National Assembly elections were finally held on May 30 

after strong representations by the United States. While the election 

results represented a setback for Rhee, their importance in the timing 

of the North Korean attack has been greatly exaggerated. The 

composition of the new legislature was still not clear on the eve of the 

war. While the main winners were independent candidates who had 

sat out the 1948 balloting, this was not necessarily a defeat for Rhee. 

Rhee himself had encouraged independents to run, realizing the weak- 

ness of his own organization and the lack of a leader of comparable 

stature around whom opponents could rally. The main conservative 

opposition group, in fact, had lost even a greater percentage of its 

seats than had supporters of the president. Moderate and progressive 

candidates had captured about a quarter of the seats. What the election 

results seemed to show was the existence of considerable latent dis- 

satisfaction with the government and greater willingness to explore 

INTERNAL WARFARE IN KOREA 157 

an accommodation with the North. But Rhee had been in tight spots 

before, and still had ample resources to bring the new assembly into 

line. 

The North made two unification proposals in the weeks before the 

war. The first proposal was made by the DFUF on June 7 as a counter 

to the South Korean elections. It called for new all-Korea elections to 

choose representatives to a unification conference to be held either in 

Haeju or Kaesdng, the goal being to unify the country by August 15, 

the fifth anniversary of liberation. The second unification initiative 

calling for the merger of the two Korean legislatures into a single body 

was made by the Supreme People’s Assembly on June 19. The initiative 

probably represented an attempt to feel out the opinion of the new 

assembly, whose members might be more receptive to a scheme that 

did not call for a new round of elections. 

The final decision to attack was apparently made sometime in 

April or May. Three days after the first unification proposals were 

made, a hundred heavily armed guerrillas were infiltrated into the 

South with orders to split up and contact provincial SKLP committees 

to organize uprisings when war broke out. There is no mention of an 

attack in captured Central Committee and cabinet documents dated 

early in the year. That the decision to intervene in the South came 

suddenly does not necessarily mean that the North “jumped the gun” 

on an invasion scheduled for later in the year.7® The same factors 

determining DPRK policy (one step removed, with somewhat different 

weight, and combined with considerations of global strategy) would 

also have influenced a Soviet decision. Even if the exact moment of the 

attack could not be foreseen, the Korean crisis had been building 

toward an explosion for several years. Little was required to set it off, 

TOWARD A MODEL OF THE NORTH KOREAN INTERVENTION 

In light of the widespread violence in the South before the war, it 

is useful to look at the North Korean attack as a case of intervention 

in a situation of civil strife. No claim is made for the exclusiveness of 

this approach, but it does seem able to bring out aspects of the war 

that are obscured in other accounts. Admittedly, the divided-country 

context makes Korea an extreme case. But the theoretical issues in- 

volved may stand out with greater clarity for just that reason, and 

Korea, after all, may not be so different from other third world coun- 

tries where arbitrarily drawn borders cut across ethnic, racial, and 

28. Robert R. Simmons, The Strained Alliance: Peking, Pyongyang, Moscow 

and the Politics of the Korean Civil War (New York: Free Press, 1975); Wilbur 

Hitchcock, ‘‘North Korea Jumps the Gun,” Current History (March 1951) 

158 JOHN MERRILL 

religious groups. Looking at the war from this perspective can also 

facilitate comparison with similar interventions by lesser powers else- 

where. These have become increasingly common in recent years and 

Korea seems to have been one of the first. The most important reason 

for looking at the war in this way, though, is that it may help resolve 

several issues in the literature: Was the war primarily civil or interna- 

tional in character? Was the DPRK acting as a proxy for the Soviet 

Union, or is Korean nationalism the key to understanding the attack? 

How important was the group centered on Pak Hdn-ySng in the North 

Korean decision? Were the border clashes in the summer of 1948 a 

factor in the North Korean decision? What determined the timing of 

the attack? 

A starting point in answering these questions is the framework of 

four variables proposed by C. R. Mitchell for the comparative study of 

interventions.” The factors, which would seem to apply to any dyadic 

relationship, are: (1) the progress of the guerrilla struggle in the dis- 

rupted state; (2) the linkages between it and the potential intervening 

state; (3) the structure of the latter’s decision-making process; and 

(4) how conducive the international environment is to intervention. 

Mitchell suggests that all four factors are systemically related in deter- 

mining the ‘‘threshold of violence’’ at which intervention is likely to 

occur, That is, neither “‘civil war’ nor “unprovoked aggression’? is 

likely to prove helpful, by itself, in understanding intervention in 

general, or the North Korean attack in particular. 

As for the first factor, the most important conclusion to be drawn 

is that the war came at a time when the guerrilla movement in the 

South had been virtually destroyed. The SKLP organization was also 

crumbling under successive waves of arrests and was a rapidly wasting 

asset for the DPRK. North Korean hopes of achieving unification 

29. C. R. Mitchell, “Civil War and the Involvement of External Parties,” 

International Studies Quarterly 14, no, 2: 166-94. The venturesome reader is also 

referred to C.A. Insard and E,C. Zeeman, ‘Some Models from Catastrophe Theory 

in the Social Sciences,” reprint from The Use of Models in the Social Sciences 

(London: Tavistock Publications, 1976); Zeeman et al., “A Model for Institutional 

Disturbances,” British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology 29, 

no. 1: 66-80; and Rodney G. Tomlinson, ‘“‘The Application of Catastrophe Theory 

to International Events Flows,’ paper presented at International Studies Asso- 

ciation meeting, March 1977. I have been working with Professors John Deiner 

(political science) and Stanley Samsky (mathematics) at the University of Dela- 

ware to see if similar models may be developed for interventions by ‘‘outside 

parties” in situations of civil strife. The FEC data on internal warfare events in 

Korea have been coded (by type of incident, date, location, initiator, weapons 

used, forces involved, and casualties) for some 1,800 incidents. The analysis, 

however, has only begun and results are not yet available, 

INTERNAL WARFARE IN KOREA 159 

through a united front with opponents of Rhee, through the Soviet 

initiative for simultaneous troop withdrawal, and through armed guer- 

rilla struggle had been successively dashed. The only weapon remain- 

ing was its conventional military force, which held an overwhelming 

advantage over the South. So long as the guerrilla movement seemed 

to have a chance of success, the DPRK held back from exercising 

this option, exhibiting some restraint in the border clashes over the 

summer of 1949. But by the spring of 1950, a conventional military 

attack was the only alternative left. 

With regard to the second factor, it is possible to distinguish several 

types of linkage operating in the Korean case, The most important of 

these was the pull of Korean nationalism, The country had been liber- 

ated from thirty-six years of Japanese colonial rule only to find itself 

divided into two hostile states. All political groups considered unifica- 

tion to be an immediate and pressing goal. The strength of this commit- 

ment was strong enough to induce many non-Communist political 

leaders in the South, at some personal risk, to boycott the 1948 elec- 

tions, and to come to the P’ySngyang Conference instead. A more 

volatile linkage was the interaction of the two Koreas along the parallel. 

An obvious counterpoint to the North’s view of the potential of the 

guerrilla movement was its perception of the threat from the South, 

The border clashes in the summer of 1949 left no doubt about the 

bellicose stance of the Rhee government. North Korean pique over 

these incidents and nervousness concerning southern intentions was 

evident during a campaign in the early fall focused on “border provoca- 

tions.”” The Rhee government’s future course of action as it increased 

its military capabilities, moreover, must have been clear to the North, 

There was also a “penetrative” linkage between the two halves of the 

country based on a partially overlapping leadership. Members of the 

SKLP faction involved with Pak H6n-ySng continued to direct guerrilla 

operations in the South while holding positions in the North Korean 

party and state structure. 

The third set of variables, the decision-making characteristics of 

the intervening state, is a difficult subject to research. Little informa- 

tion is presently available on the day-to-day operation of the North 

Korean political system, and decision-making approaches demand 

large amounts of inside information that must be analyzed anew for 

every policy shift. There is also the thorny question of the degree of 

autonomy of the North Korean leadership. Probably, neither the 

“puppet” nor “independent actor” model wholly applies. Instead 

the relationship was most likely characterized by a broad middle 

range of influence and consultation, 

We do know that there was a factional debate within the North 

Korean leadership over the proper strategy to pursue toward the 

160 JOHN MERRILL 

South. This suggests that the DPRK had some independence in for- 

mulating policy. The outlines of this debate are far from clear, but 

most speculation centers on the role of Pak Hdn-ydng. There seem to 

be three main views.°° Kim Chum-kon, Kim Ch’ang-sun, and the 

Japanese ‘‘Neighboring Countries Research Institute” maintain that 

Pak advocated a two-pronged strategy of keeping up pressure on the 

South through the guerrillas, and seizing border areas to discredit 

Rhee and force the ROK into political negotiations. The position 

of Kim Nam-sik is that Pak pushed for the war, assuring the DPRK 

leadership and the Soviets that the SKLP would rise up to support 

a North Korean attack. The third opinion, held by Pak Kap-dong and 

Kim Sam-kyu, is that Pak opposed the war as “leftist adventurism,” 

saw the role of the guerrillas as keeping the South tied down so as to 

prevent an attack on the DPRK, and continued to advocate united 

front tactics. 

Caution is necessary in sorting through these differing interpreta- 

tions, Although most of the accounts assume that factional positions 

remained constant over time, it seems reasonable to expect that they 

would change in response to a developing situation. The first view of 

Pak’s role is particularly open to criticism since U.S. intelligence 

reports indicate that this position had jelled as early as February 1949. 

It also seems, at least on the surface, to be somewhat self-serving to 

place responsibility for the border incidents solely on the North. The 

main objection to the third account, which seems to be a minority 

opinion, is that it appears to contradict what is known about Pak’s 

character. The problem with Kim Nam-sik’s view, which otherwise 

seems the most plausible, is that there is considerable evidence to 

indicate that the North was well aware of the desperate plight of the 

SKLP. It may be, however, that the DPRK leadership felt that the 

only way to galvanize the remaining SKLP organization into action 

was through a military thrust across the parallel. Kim Nam-sik’s views 

of Pak’s role are supported to some extent by the accusations leveled 

against the SKLP leader when he was purged after the war. The grava- 

men of the charges against him was that he had “engaged in circulating 

false reports” that misled the DPRK about the strength of the Com- 

munist movement in the South. What is most interesting about this 

charge is its implication that the North indeed started the war. In 

evaluating the importance of factionalism in the origins of the war, 

30. Kim Chum-kon, The Korean War (Seoul: Kwangmyong Publishing Co., 

1973), pp. 197-211; Sasaki, Han’gukchon-bisa, pp. 470-74; Han’guk chonjaeng-sa, 

pp. 503-5; interviews with Kim Nam-sik, May 22, 23, and June 1, 1978; /S and 

USMILAT reports for the period, 

INTERNAL WARFARE IN KOREA 161 

it is necessary to keep in mind that it was only one of the factors 

bearing on the decision to intervene. Its importance has probably been 

overblown in some accounts. In general, its effect seems to have been 

to bias North Korean decision making toward a somewhat more active 

policy vis-a-vis the South, 

The final factor influencing the threshold of violence at which 

intervention will occur is the conduciveness of the international environ- 

ment, International factors were obviously very important in the Korean 

case. The initial division of the peninsula owed to outside interference, 

The superpowers sponsored the establishment of rival governments 

in their respective occupation zones, and lent the two Koreas political, 

economic, and military support. At the same time, as Okonogi Masao 

points out, their continuing presence led to a kind of “stabilization by 

deterrence,’ which temporarily froze the inherently unstable situation 

they had created on the peninsula. With the disengagement of the two 

superpowers, however, the status quo began to come unstuck as the 

confrontation between the North and South escalated in its intensity 

and directness. The situation had developed by the spring of 1950 to 

a point where a major conflict was virtually inevitable. In addition 

to this “built-in’’ pattern of outside interference, support, and dis- 

engagement, sudden changes in the international environment in the 

winter and spring before the war produced a situation that was ex- 

tremely permissive of North Korean action. The victory of the Chinese 

Communist movement, the Soviet explosion of the atomic bomb, and 

the increasing tensions in the Korean-American relationship all worked 

to remove the barriers to North Korean action, Several possible com- 

binations of domestic and international events may have triggered the 

North Korean attack. But there is little point in speculating on these 

precipitating events without also considering the mix of factors that, 

over a period of years, had built the situation in Korea to the point 

of an explosion. 

In this paper, I have attempted to sketch the pattern of political vio- 

lence in Korea before the war and to outline the complex interaction of 

local and international factors influencing it. Looked at against this 

background, the Korean war appears as merely the last and most 

serious escalation in the increasingly violent confrontation between 

the two halves of the divided country. After the establishment of 

separate regimes and the pull-out of occupation forces, it was only 

a matter of time before a major conflict broke out. Both sides were 

deeply committed to unification and tried their best, with the instru- 

ments available to them, to achieve it on their own terms. The North’s 

162 JOHN MERRILL 

decision to resort to conventional warfare came only after other policy 

options had been tried and had failed. Far from being crazy or irra- 

tional, northern behavior seems to have been closely keyed to develop- 

ing events on the peninsula and the situation it found itself confronted 

with by the spring of 1950. 

Commentary by JON HALLIDAY 

JOHN MERRILL IS TO BE COMPLIMENTED ON HIS EXCELLENT PAPER, IT NOT ONLY introduces important new material, but also handles the evidence with 

scrupulous fairness, His contribution destroys numerous stereotypes 

about the background of the Korean War and helps set it in its correct 

context. 

My comments are limited to a few key points. 

1, Merrill opts for a methodology based on work by Charles Mc- 

Clelland that, he says, “has the advantage of bypassing the thorny 

problem of trying to determine the real motives of statesmen where 

sufficient information is unavailable.” Later, he introduces a model 

developed by C. R. Mitchell to determine “the threshold of violence 

at which intervention is likely to occur.” 

Neither McClelland nor Mitchell contributes anything substantial 

to Merrill’s discussion, which, in my opinion, would be strengthened 

by eliminating reference to them, McClelland’s approach is weak 

because it does not address the necessity of examining as thoroughly 

as possible, and however sketchy the information, why a people, or 

a political movement, or a state do fight. Neither the guerrilla war in 

Korea prior to June 1950, nor the Korean War itself—any less than 

say, the Vietnam War—can be understood without tackling the question 

of why the people were fighting. Merrill posits as an essential precondi- 

tion for his own method identifying the characteristics of a given 

crisis. Yet a failure to examine and assess the motives behind the 

light is likely to lead to the sort of manipulative approach widespread 

among technocratic U.S. policy makers in the mid-sixties. Strong 

evidence to this effect is provided by Merrill who does not fail to 

speculate on motives when it comes to June 1950. Mitchell’s model 

presents a different problem: as Merrill acknowledges, Korea was a 

divided country, not a country threatened from without, This is a 

crucial point; surely the very specificity of the Korean situation is that 

it was one country, Finally, the third of Mitchell’s variables, the struc- 

ture of the intervening state’s decision-making process is, by Merrill's 

own admission, of little use regarding the Democratic People’s Republic 

of Korea (DPRK) given present knowledge, 

164 JON HALLIDAY 

2. Merrill raises the fundamental question of the legitimacy of the 

two states and also notes the difficulty of choosing an appropriate 

time frame. These two issues go together. On the latter, one must 

go back to 1945, however cursorily, This is when Korea was divided, 

and the question of ‘North versus South” or “Left versus Right” 

cannot be answered fairly without going back this far. Without due 

emphasis on the division and its origins, it is hard to answer the main 

question: Why the Korean War? If one compares Korea with Vietnam, 

it is striking that no one asks who started the Vietnam War. It is simply 

not deemed relevant. The repeated emphasis in the West (and in the 

socialist countries, too) on who started the Korean War dehistorizes 

the issue of class struggle in Korea. 

A discussion of the Korean War must be set firmly in the con- 

text of class struggle from 1945 on, and it must also consider fairly 

the legitimacy of the two Korean regimes, The reasons for the war— 

and the nature of the war itself—are integrally tied to the legitimacy 

of the two regimes. To his great credit, Merrill does raise this issue, 

but in my opinion fails to explore it deeply enough. If one takes just 

three basic criteria—political origins, social policies, and degree of 

dependence on outside forces—the DPRK had an incomparably 

stronger claim not only to legitimacy, but to represent the Korean 

people as a whole. The DPRK leadership emerged out of the anti- 

Japanese struggle and guerrilla warfare; the Republic of Korea (ROK) 

regime, including the army and police, was heavily staffed by former 

members of the Japanese occupation and collaborators, The DPRK 

carried out a major land reform and formally recognized the equality 

of women in 1946; in the South, although some land reform did 

take place, social and economic relations were not changed substan- 

tially. As for foreign dependence, the Soviet Red Army had with- 

drawn from the North by 1949, certainly formally and perhaps de 

facto. (This is controversial; the evidence is inconclusive, but even 

by hostile Western estimates, its presence was considerably weaker than 

the U.S. military’s in the South.) The United States left behind a major 

military organization in the South in 1949, the Korean Military Advi- 

sory Group (KMAG), which, according to official U.S. Army history, 

expanded as U.S. troops withdrew.! 

Unlike most commentators and analyists, Merrill also mentions 

a number of episodes in 1948 that bear directly on the claims of 

P’yongyang and Seoul to represent the Korean people. In particular, 

Merrill provides valuable information on the summer 1948 underground 

1, Robert K. Sawyer, Military Advisors in Korea: KMAG in Peace and War 

(Washington, D,C.: Office of Chief of Military History, 1962), p. 42. 

COMMENTARY 165 

plebiscite, and also refers to the Haeju Conference, attended by leaders 

from both South and North. By now the evidence that the majority 

of Korea’s population was against separate elections in 1948 is over- 

whelming. But | think two further points need to be made, First, the 

discredit and political ostracism cast on the Rhee regime as a result of 

its collaboration with an operation devised and imposed by outside 

forces, and that split the country—perhaps the greatest crime in the 

eyes of the Korean people—must not be underestimated, The Haeju 

and P’yongyang conferences (the latter was attended by virtually 

every political leader in Korea except Rhee,” all of whom agreed on 

a basic minimum platform) gave, I believe, tremendous legitimacy to 

the DPRK’s claim to represent the Korean people and, conversely, 

delegitimized the Rhee regime. Second, it is also necessary to scrutinize 

the DPRK’s claims as they were put forward. The DPRK has always 

centered its case on the summer 1948 underground plebiscite. This has 

usually been dismissed in the West either as never having taken place 

at all, or as an overwhelmingly fraudulent claim. Merrill’s most valuable 

information (from U.S. sources) helps to put this claim into perspective 

and confirms that a referendum did indeed take place. But can this 

be considered good grounds for the DPRK claim? In my opinion it 

cannot, on the basis of current evidence. The whole point of the DPRK 

claim is to establish legal grounds for its legitimacy. But such grounds 

need firm proof. It is not only a question of whether the DPRK claims 

are true or not; it is also a question of the essentially nonverifiable 

nature of the evidence, and the inherently unsatisfactory conditions 

in which the poll took place (of course, the DPRK cannot be blamed 

for this). My point is that it is necessary to consider all of this evi- 

dence—the Haeju and P’ySngyang conferences, plus the underground 

plebiscite—and weigh each aspect independently. In my opinion, the 

Haeju and P’ySngyang conferences are compelling evidence in favor 

of the DPRK’s claims, and the plebiscite is not. 

3. Closely related to this is the role of the United Nations. Merrill 

notes that “the decision to hold separate elections ran counter to the 

opinion of most members of the UN Commission and Korean political 

leaders.’ I would have liked to see more emphasis on this important 

point, which is still not generally given adequate attention in the 

West, For the UN role in 1947-48 ties in directly with its role in 1950. 

In 1947-48, the UN intervened in Korea in tremendous ignorance and 

sanctioned the division of Korea against the wishes of the Korean 

2. George McCune, Korea Today (Cambridge; Harvard University Press, 1950), 

p. 263; John Gunther, The Riddle of MacArthur (New York: Harper and Bros.,, 

1951), p. 170, 

166 JON HALLIDAY 

people. Not only that, it lied in order to do so. Its claim to have “ob- 

served” the 1948 elections when the team briefly visited only 2 per- 

cent of the polling stations? is like a referee for a jousting match 

who, without making a proper check of the weapons each side carried, 

looks at part of the field for less than two minutes, Anyone claiming 

to have “observed” such a match would be called a liar, and his evi- 

dence treated with circumspection, The UN role deserves even more 

attention because its sloppy work was repeated in 1950, as was its 

use by the United States to swing world opinion. 

4. Merrill’s paper leads up to the start of the Korean War in June 

1950, The author gives us very valuable information about both the 

guerrilla warfare in the South and the level of fighting along the thirty- 

eighth parallel prior to June 25, 1950—especially the letter from 

General Roberts to General Bolté (Aug. 19, 1949), which pins the 

responsibility for heavy fighting across the parallel in the summer of 

1949 squarely on the ROK. Nevertheless, the information about the 

fighting near the parallel could be drawn more tightly together with 

information about the guerrilla warfare, and the latter with the high 

level of general political struggle throughout the South from 1945 on. 

The war was not just a military episode, and in my opinion its causes 

are found at the political level. The 1946 Taegu riots and the popular 

uprisings of 1948 are two links in a long chain of political struggle, 

which is the essential background of the guerrilla struggle and the 

outbreak of full-scale warfare in June 1950. Second, Merrill does not 

properly categorize the decision by the DPRK to cross the parallel in 

force in June 1950, nor set this decision in context, Given that Korea 

was one country, that the legitimacy of the Rhee regime was open to 

serious question, and that there had been heavy fighting across the 

parallel initiated by the ROK, it would seem fair to compare the North’s 

“invasion” of the South to the 1944 “invasion of France’? (as it is 

called, interestingly). In other words, whatever one’s reservations about 

the DPRK regime in 1950, what was the political nature of the attempt 

to topple the Rhee regime, remembering that the DPRK (like the 

ROK) claimed to represent all of Korea? Did de Gaulle invade France 

in 1944 or help to liberate it? Or both? 

5. Merrill discusses relations between the southern and northern 

Communists prior to June 1950. Evidence on this issue is flimsy, but 

it is an important question, not least because the North’s decision to €x- 

ecute the top southern Communists at the end of the war continues to 

affect the attitudes of the Left in the South toward the northern 

$3, Jon Halliday, ‘“The United Nations and Korea,” in Without Parallel: The 

American-Korean Relationship Since 1945, ed, Frank Baldwin (New York; Pan- 

ee TY | ee Gr ) | 

COMMENTARY 167 

regime, and deeply influences the attitudes that outsiders sympathetic to 

the Korean people hold toward the DPRK leadership and reunification. 

Without going too deeply into the strength of the evidence, it 

must be said that the case made by the DPRK on this issue is uncon- 

vincing. In a verbal presentation, Merrill noted that U.S. intelligence 

reports indicate that Pak Hdn-ydng had a cautious policy. In any event, 

it is hard to believe the accusation that Pak misled the DPRK leadership 

as to the political situation in the South. First, as a southern emigré 

once put it to me, ‘Pak Hon-ydng knew the South like the back of his 

hand.” Given the lack of evidence that Pak was in any way an adven- 

turer, plus his acknowledged close awareness of the situation in the 

South, it is unlikely that he was responsible for giving misleading 

information or advice. But, second, the content of the accusation is 

completely irrelevant. The evidence (e.g., in General Dean’s memoirs)* 

is that popular support for the overthrow of Rhee and for the Korean 

People’s Army (KPA) was high, even if actual political organization was 

poor (as claimed by Kim Il-sung, for example, in his speech to the 

Aliarcham Academy in Indonesia in 1965).° But in any case, this was 

not the factor that led to the failure of the DPRK to reunify the 

country. The crucial factor was the scale and swiftness of the U.S. 

intervention. If Pak had been accused of failing to predict this, the 

accusation would at least have been relevant (although it could still 

have been misplacing the blame). 

Moreover, if the accusation about misleading the DPRK leadership 

were true, then Pak should have been fired in 1950, as was Mu Jong, 

for example (another important case that raises disturbing questions). 

That Pak was not removed in 1950, but only tried with the other 

top southern leaders after the end of the war, raises questions about 

the relationship between northern and southern Communists that 

badly needs further study. The timing makes it tempting to think that 

the problem had more to do with the ending of the war (although this 

could be misleading, since it might have been thought best to postpone 

the trials until after the war was over, even if the accusations referred 

to earlier events). 

Last, and most interesting, the upshot of the accusation is that 

the North did indeed ‘‘invade” the South. The DPRK decision to cross 

the parallel in force on June 25 was based on criteria other than the 

very narrow one adduced then and now by the DPRK—namely repelling 

4. William F. Dean, General Dean’s Story (New York: Viking Press, 1954), 

p. 68. 

5, Kim Ilsung, “On the Socialist Construction in the DP RK and the Revolution 

in South Korea,”’ Lecture at the Aliarcham Academy of Social Sciences, Indonesia, 

Apr. 14, 1965, in Kim, Selected Works, 2 (P’yongyang, 1965): 554-55, 

168 JON HALLIDAY 

an ROK Army invasion earlier that morning. The DPRK has never 

produced evidence to show that whatever the ROKA did early on the 

morning of June 25 was anything out of the ordinary, in a military 

sense. Indeed, the information given me by KPA officers (who had 

been on the front line on June 25) whom I interviewed in P’yS6ngyang 

in July 1977 was that the ROKA advance did not get very far—only 

some two kilometers.® In other words, the accusation against Pak is 

indirect confirmation that the DPRK decision was based on political 

criteria—namely, cross the parallel and topple Rhee—and that the size 

of any military action initiated by the ROKA on June 25 is of second- 

ary importance (which does not rule out the possibility that there 

was indeed some fairly major ROKA assault, or that the North inter- 

preted some ROKA action to be particularly serious). 

6. Finally, two points of detail. First, I cannot quite agree with 

Merrill’s criticism of the study by Karunakar Gupta in China Quarterly.’ 

Admittedly, Gupta did present limited evidence, but his basic claims 

were not dented by his critics, and he raised important, still unanswered 

questions, The second point concerns the famous Acheson speech of 

January 1950 about Korea and the U.S. “defense perimeter.” I am not 

at all sure that the conventional interpretation of this speech—either 

what Acheson meant, or how the speech was read in P’yongyang or 

Moscow—is accurate. After all, the United States had KMAG going 

strong in Korea and was training Koreans in Japan. There may have 

been room for serious doubt about U.S. intentions, but I think if 

the Acheson speech is to be relied on as a major piece of evidence, 

then it must be weighted both against U.S. deeds in Korea and sub- 

sequent acts, particularly the appointment of John Foster Dulles in the 

spring of 1950 to supervise U.S. Far East policy, and his specific 

activities and commitments in Korea immediately before June 25. 

6. Interview with six senior KPA officers, P’yOngyang, July 26, 1977. 

7. Karunakar Gupta, ‘How Did the Korean War Begin?” China Quarterly, 

no. 52 (1972); Gupta’s critics in China Quarterly, no. 54 (1973), with Gupta’s 

reply.