Blowback - S3 Episode 4 - "Red Island"

Episode Date: October 17, 2022

The war before the war on a self-reliant island off South Korea.Soundtrack: https://open.spotify.com/album/4e9hkmGdDhycmgcGKe3bF0?si=d97_H1fvS5CV84ZvcEhZqQAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

He who can destroy a thing controls a thing. Episode 4, Red Island 1948 would be the year that the Republic of Korea, the half of Korea, the half of Korea south of the 38th parallel, sprang into existence. That same year, President Singhman-Reed declared a national emergency, the decree through which his dictatorship would kill, imprison, and torture anyone it wanted. All it had to do was make sure to call them communists. And the label communists could apply to many in South Korea.

There were those who were self-identified communists, like the Soviet-allied revolutionary government, shaping up in the north. There were communists in the south, without many ties to the north, some with no ties to the USSR. And there were the Koreans who practiced an older yet still communal life that didn't identify as communist, capital C. And then there were people who didn't particularly identify with any of this at all, people who happened to know someone, or know of someone, who was a communist. The government of Singh-M-Rie, backed by the United States, would punish them all the same. House by house, village by village, Rhee's government and his cronies across South

Korea snatched people away. This campaign kicked up a guerrilla war in the South, culminating in an uprising in a place called Jeju Island, a rebellion that spread to the mainland. The South's government solved the problem with the simplest solution. Killing. By the end of this violence, as many as 100,000 people were dead. And the thing we now call the Korean War, was only months away. 1984 also saw the founding of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in the north. The social revolution that had begun during liberation from the Japanese was increasingly shaped now by a sense of national defense against threats from the South, but also in

increasing impatience with the division of the peninsula. Apart from seeing their countrymen slaughtered in the South, border clashes and constant threats from the Republic of Korea pushed the North to consider a permanent. solution to the partition of their country. So in this episode, we'll look at these uprisings in the South, the war before the war. The state-sanctioned slaughter in the South, with its awful climax on Jeju Island, put some strain on the official line that the Korean War sprung out of nowhere in June of 1950. We'll also take stock of a very important development for everyone involved here,

the success of the Chinese communists, their victory in the Chinese Civil War in October of 1949, not only changed the equation of revolutionary potential in Asia and China's relationship with both the USSR and Korea, it also landed like a lead balloon in Washington, D.C., where an already embattled Truman administration suddenly had to answer for the so-called loss of China. All of this should set us up well to see where things lay in the months leading up to June in 1950 on the 38th parallel. Sound 37.

However you tell us the story, just as a complete story of Wallace. Well, I think that's the best way to do it. I was, whatever you're ready. Right now. I was very well acquainted with Henry Wallace. I liked him very much. And whatever in the world got into him,

to run and try to beat the best friend he ever had, the government of the United States, I'll never know, but it doesn't make any difference because everything was worked out. The Red Scare that overtook America in the 1950s was only a sequel to the decades of anti-communism dating back to World War I. The growth of socialist, anarchist, labor, and anti-war agitation inside the U.S., paired with the seismic Bolshevik revolution on the other side of the world, was met with suppression and violence as the century rolled on.

Even in the days of FDR, a president who was considered positively pinko by Republicans and some Democrats, you had congressional bodies like the Dyes Commission, dedicated to investigating suspected communists. FDR did not exactly consider the Reds a part of the New Deal coalition. Like the Japanese who were interned, communists were offered up on the sacrificial altar of imagined American unity in wartime. One particular example. Someone who was later called before the House Un-American Act. Committee was an Illinois woman named Florence Gowgiel. An organized communist whose address was listed on page two of the Chicago Tribune because she had fought against segregated schools in

Chicago, Gagiel was also a supporter of Henry Wallace. As we mentioned last episode, Wallace had been a popular FDR cabinet member and vice president who was dumped in place of Harry Truman for looking a little too pink inside. Here's Harry Truman in a clip we played moments ago, talking about his relationship with Wallace years later. Sir, could you tell us about Wallace's political ideals? Well, Wallace was supposed to be a Democratic liberal. I guess he was, but his liberality in mind didn't jive. That's all there was to that.

And what about his attitude towards our handling of Russia? I don't know. I never talked with him about that because it didn't want to. I don't think we could have agreed at all on that anymore than we could about his ideals and politics in the United States government. And so I never did talk to him on that subject. After he was tossed off the ticket in 1944, Wallace had become a folk hero among a committed minority of Americans who supported him in 1948 on his progressive party ticket. Wallace's bid failed, but the campaign was a last-ditch effort to wrench the New Deal legacy back from Truman

and his moderates. Wallace inspired other candidates to run further down ticket, but with anti-communism thick in the air in 1948, the Progressive Party failed spectacularly. What happened to Florence Gowgiel in downstate Illinois in September of 48 offers a strong example of why and how this happened. That September, two months before Election Day, the Associated Press ran a story on the campaign of one Dr. Curtis McDougal, a Northwestern University professor, and a Progressive Party candidate in Illinois for U.S. Senate. Quote, the candidate was the target of Flying Stone. the AP reported. McDougal said his tour had been crippled by the smashing of loudspeaker equipment and the loss of campaign posters at West Frankfurt. Now, Florence Gowgiel had been campaigning

with McDougal. The candidate said Gowgli had been forced to return to Chicago. Quote, he said Ms. Gowgiel was slugged in the face when she stepped between him and the crowd at Frankfurt. McDougal scrapped his campaign plans in the area in the rural stretches of Illinois, where the progressives were supposed to have a fighting chance. Quote, I am certainly not going to really the safety of the people with me unless city authorities promised protection, the candidate said. But the police chief, according to the AP, quote, declined comment on the charge, but said his reports showed, quote, only that a bunch of fellows broke up the meeting because they apparently did not like what was being said. By the end of 1948, Truman would eke out an election victory

over the Republican New York Governor Thomas Dewey. It was a surprise victory, perhaps the last exhaust fumes of the New Deal coalition, putting Truman over the edge. But in his victory, Truman had already thrown his lot in with anti-communism, the force around which the country could organize. Michael Brennis, the historian of the U.S. defense industry, concludes, quote, while anti-communism proved unable to do much for Democrats in terms of strengthening labor unions or creating universal health care, it allowed them to funnel federal funds to localities and individuals to further job creation and economic growth in the private sector under the ulterior motives of national security. In the years to come, as we've already seen on this show, the stage of the United Nations will

assume great importance, and it was at this time, right after the Second World War, right after the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that the United Nations sprung into existence. The Security Council of the United Nations would have five permanent members, China, which was at that point going through a civil war, France, the United Kingdom, the USSR, and of course, the United States. And author Vijay Prashad writes about this founding moment of the United Nations and the Security Council in particular. It was a council of the five rather than of the 51 founding members of the UN. The Charter of the UN reads that the Security Council, may decide what measures not involving the use of armed force are to be employed to give effect to its decisions. These were things like disrupting trade or communications or severing

diplomacy. If these did not work, right to Prashad, Article 42, under Chapter 7, allowed the member states to use armed force against sovereign nations. Some member states had more power than others. One sought preponderant power. That was the United States. From 1945 to 1989, Prashad writes, the USSR operated as an umbrella against the fully lawless usage of UN loopholes. And sure enough, we will see one of those loopholes exploited on the matter of Korea. Now, Truman wasn't the only one electioneering in 1948. Over in South Korea, after an openly fraudulent prelude, there were elections on the way to elect President Singh-Men-Ree.

This particular event is the story of another one of those shenanigans at the United Nations, and it was led by ex-Wall Street lawyer and eternal warrior for Christ, John Foster Dulles. As we remember last episode, the state, The stated goal of the U.S. and the Soviets in the so-called Moscow decisions had been to reunify the Korean Peninsula, in part, through national elections, to produce a national government in Korea. But by now, it was clear the American leadership was planning to keep Korea divided for the foreseeable future. At the behest of John Foster Dulles, a new Rump Assembly of the UN was designed to legally justify the creation of a separate South Korean state through U.S.-sponsored elections.

describes the plan. Dulles was, in a sense, the godfather of the South Korean Republic. In 1947 and again in 1948, as he said, quoting Dulles now, I had the responsibility in the United Nations General Assembly of representing the United States in the sponsorship of the resolution which led to the reestablishment of Korea's independence under a representative government administering the free part of Korea. Jesus, what a mouthful. This is Stone again. He might have added that the South Korean Republic was also the first fruit of another institution he had successfully sponsored at the UN, the Interim Committee, or Little Assembly, a device for circumventing the Soviet veto power on the Security

Council. It was the interim committee which, despite the serious misgivings of Canada and Australia, voted to authorize the separate elections in South Korea that led to the creation of the Republic. This committee was, of course, packed with allies of the United States. Some enthusiastic, some, as Stone just noted, less so, Canada, Australia, the Philippines, and these still just hanging on nationalists in China. Quote, since the Americans had walked away from talks held to work out a mutually agreeable plan for elections, right, Stephen Gowens, and since the UN committee members could be counted on to follow U.S. directions, Koreans of the North and the Soviets refused

to endorse the U.S. initiated UN-approved plan. All the same, the elections would go ahead in the U.S. U.S. occupation zone alone. And here's the kicker. Even though the elections were only in the U.S. zone, they would, per this resolution, apply to the entire peninsula. Needless to say, this override of not only the elections in the North, but the entire political existence of the North, that all happened without any consultation with existing North Korean leaders or delegates of the people's committees. And so it is unsurprising that many Koreans ended up protesting these U.S. opposed elections in the South, demanding instead an end to occupation and immediate unification

with the North. The U.S. and South Korean police would not take kindly to that. The growing menace of communism arouses the House of Representatives Un-American Activities Committee. Among the well-informed witnesses testifying is J. Edgar Hoover, head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Mr. Hoover speaks with authority on the subject. The Communist Party of the United States is a fifth column if there ever was one. It is far better organized than were the Nazis in occupied countries prior to their capitulation.

Last episode, we discussed some of the larger dynamics that shaped the Cold War in the U.S. The emerging military industrial complex, the Beltway politicking and lobbying, all of which only escalated in hostility toward all things supposedly communist. over the course of the 1940s. The biggest scandal of this period was the allegation from one Mr. Whitaker Chambers, one-time Soviet spy, that his former friend,

senior State Department official Alger Hiss, had confessed to passing information to the communists. A former Communist Party member turned senior Time magazine editor, an inside man of the right-wing DC establishment, Chambers alleged that the moderate Nancy Boy Democrat Alger Hiss

was himself a spy. Journalist Anthony Summers writes, quote, In July 1948, days before the House on American Activities Committee started the Hiss probe, the fledgling CIA reportedly ensured that Richard Nixon, the committee's youngest member, would be given inside information. Its intelligence passed to him through Thomas Dewey, the Republican candidate in that year's presidential election, was that Hiss was indeed a communist. The following month, as the House on American Activities Committee faltered in the face of Hiss's denouement,

Isles, Nixon received confirmation that Hiss had indeed known chambers. It came, according to CIA sources, from Alan Dulles. I am holding in my hand a microfilm, a very highly confidential secret State Department documents. These documents were fed out of the State Department over 10 years ago by communists who were employees of that department and who were interested in seeing that these documents were sent to the Soviet Union, where the interests of the Soviet Union happened to be in conflict with those of the United States. In April 1948, a month before the Korean elections,

a guerrilla war broke out on Jeju Island, off the coast of South Korea. Jeju Island, a scenic and remote volcanic formation off the peninsula's southern coast, had long been a society unto itself, with strong communal traditions going back to the Chosan dynasty. Jeju was so self-sufficient, in fact, that despite its perceived communistic tendencies, the U.S. military government left it alone for at least several months, accepting that there was no evidence there of Soviet influence. The People's Committees, seen as red mobs elsewhere in Korea, were on Jeju considered a, quote, harmless expression of political liberty.

One American military government report describes the People's Committees as a functioning government. Another report sized up the island as about two-thirds, quote-unquote, moderate leftists, and no less than U.S. military chief General Hodge described the island as, quote, a truly communal area, peacefully controlled by the People's Committee, without much common-turn influence. But this understanding would not last. President to be Singh-Menri was building up what would become his South Korean state, and the stubborn Jesuit islanders were not getting with the program. As the feared national police force matured in size and power, Rhee's proto-state began its attempt to break up the separate yet peaceful administration on

Jeju Island. It led to the most staggering explosion of violence since Korea's liberation. Juan Sukyang, whose book recounts in painstaking detail the war on Jeju Island, calls this, quote, the first major political confrontation between leftists and rightists in South Korea. What began as a local revolt involving some 350 people ended with the deaths of 10,000. percent of the island's population. What formerly classified American materials document is a merciless wholesale assault on the people of this island. The U.S. military government called Jeju, among other things, quote, one large nest of communists and a cancer of the trouble in South Korea. Others simply called it Red Island.

So just a month before the 1948 elections, the rebellion broke out in Jeju. How did this happen? The year earlier, on March 1, 1947, the anniversary of the Korean independence movement, tens of thousands of islanders demonstrated against the announced U.S.-backed elections in the South and called for unification with the North. The police fired into a crowd and, in the ensuing crackdown, arrested as many as 2,500 people. Many were subsequently killed and or tortured.

A general strike followed the massacre, demanding justice for the slain protesters and an end to police brutality. Huang Suu Kyiung writes, The protest nearly paralyzed the island as the management and labor sectors of all transportation, shipping, and factory concerns, as well as teachers and students of all schools,

joined the strike. Even worse news for the Americans, quote, approximately 75% of Koreans working for the occupation there also participated in the strike. And within weeks, this strike spread nationwide, culminating in a general strike that lasted for 24 hours. And so by April of 1948, the Jeju Islanders, once left alone in relative autonomy, were now the victim of a, quote, miniature police state. This entailed, as Sukhung writes, quote, the radicalization of local insurgents. strengthening of counterinsurgency forces and eradication of the people's committees. The U.S. military government also found that in recent days, the police had been terrorizing

the population. I saw how the governor was a, quote, extreme rightist who oversaw the brown shirts of Korea, quote-unquote, terrorists, as one American report described them. For the governor's part, he freely admitted this, claiming there was no middle line to be found here. On April 3rd, 350 rebels declared a war on the island's police state, demanding an end to repression and a return to the Jesu's people's government. Under the leadership of one Kim Tel-Sam, quote, the rebels raised torches before dawn on the island's mountaintops and began to attack a dozen police stations, end quote. Despite this escalation, things actually looked ready to resolve by the end of the month. Quote, by April 28th, Kim Ingill, the regiment commander, and Kim Tel-Sum,

reached a peace agreement, Sukheng writes. Quote, the Jeju uprising could have ended in 25 days without further bloodshed. But General William F. Dean, we'll meet him again soon, of the U.S. military government, rejected the peace agreement and continued the suppression campaign to ensure the establishment of the Republic of Korea. By the end of the month, Jeju is in a state of siege, quote, sealed off from the outside world. The national police unleashed not only its own forces, but criminal gangs and paramilitary squads, groups that did the dirty work that even the cops didn't want.

The most infamous was the Northwest youth, a terrorist youth group, as Sukhung describes them, quote, made up of disposed North Korean refugees who had fled to the South during the North Korean Revolution. Now, these guys were trained up as strikebreakers, what with their particular disdain for communism and all. Reporters in Seoul wrote that the gangs, quote, exercised police power more than the police itself, and their cruel behavior has invited the deep resentment of the inhabitants. In Jeju, they exercised an indiscriminate terrorism, Sukhung writes, that prompted many islanders to flee to the mountains, which became a breeding ground for new resistance groups. Now, the notorious police chief from the mainland, Cho Pyongok, presided over torture,

lynchings, and extrajudicial imprisonment. The entire island was subject to raids, aerial surveillance, and cut off from sea routes, and schools were turned into spaces for public executions. The likelihood of conflict between the police and a village was directly related to the power of a people's committee. And in South Chola, southwestern Kyeongsang, Kuan, and Jeju Island, the left and its institutions across South Korea were very strong. U.S. intelligence estimated 15 to 20 percent of the communities there were, quote, openly hostile to the Americans.

According to Sukhung, the South Korean army waged extensive warfare against local guerrillas hiding in the mountains and adopted a program of mass slaughter against civilians suspected of aiding the guerrillas. Villagers living in the mountainous areas fell prey to indiscriminate violence, which sometimes inspired a crop of new rebel converts. Historian Kim Pang Hyun found that a distinctly American tradition of repression had made its way into at least one district of South Korea. lynching.

So these rebels, they were a rag-tag lot, courageous, sometimes ruthless in their methods, with varied but frequent support from the islanders. Their tactics fit into the gorilla mold with an even more stripped-down character. They attacked with limited means, usually with handmade spears or swords, old Japanese rifles, and confiscated American carbines. The Inman Gunn, that is the People's Army, was three to four thousand strong eventually in a loose network. It lacked any central command. Bruce Cummings writes, quote, the guerrillas attacked from up on the mountains around the roads by the coast,

utilizing old arms, caches, bunkers, and tunnels left by the Japanese occupation. The sharpest tip of the rebel movement was pretty sharp. The revolutionary terror of the rebels left hundreds of policemen, officials, and landlords dead. As many as 500 members of the Korean National Police may have been murdered, often brutally. But American G2, that's intelligence sources, nonetheless reported that the attacks on the police met with the, quote, satisfaction of a large portion of the local population. Quote was thrown into police boxes, registration boxes were attacked, police stations were burned down, and rightists' homes were bombed.

There were also reports of heavy police casualties during this period, and, in rare instances, kidnappings of the police, youth group members, and civilians occurred. Tsukyung adds, quote, based on historical causality, the police families were targeted because of the rebels' anger at police brutality since the colonial era. The insurgents were a populist movement, but this war could make for complicated relationships with the masses. Quote, villagers were often caught in between the constabulary and communist raiders,

Kidnapping of villagers also occurred, and some were beaten to death for not complying with the rebels' demands. Some villagers resented guerrilla attacks and collaborated with the police. However, compared with the police or youth groups, the rebels were more discerning in their use of violence, limiting their targets to the right and their families. Most of the survivors Sukhung interviewed confirmed that the rebels rarely targeted villagers, mostly relying on them for food and aid. For this, villagers risked their lives, and many were arrested, imprisoned, and tortured as a result.

And against the full force offensive by the government, by June 1948, the guerrillas controlled most of Jeju's interior. By the end of the year, the ROK tallied 5,000 fighters on both sides, with 6,000 people arrested and around 422 guerrillas dead. By the spring, you could add 20,000 homes destroyed to that count, primarily by the state. Slowly but surely, the insurgents lost their positions and the state took back the island in what was described by one historian as an orgy of slaughter. A full year after the uprising started, an American official wrote,

The All-Out guerrilla extermination campaign came to a virtual end in April, with order restored and most rebels and sympathizers killed, captured, or converted. quote, between 1948 and 1949, Sukhung writes, Jeju was singled out as the site where terror was concentrated with such an intensity and on such a scale that the memory was ingrained into the provincial identity. She sums up the event another way. The Jeju Massacre happened to be the last incident of mass violence

under the U.S. military government and the first under the South Korean government. So what was the role here? of the U.S. military government. The U.S. occupation, after accepting the nascent People's Committee for a time, then began, quote, resurrecting fascist residues from the colonial era. Historian Ho-Hu-Jun sees a, quote, invisible hand. Sook-Yung sees the U.S. as a, quote, omniscient gazer, overseeing the entire operation from

the air, making sure that everything proceeded in an orderly fashion. The constabulary march into villages, the pace of detrucking arrests, and interrogations from district to district. What could not be seen from the air was off the record. But the Americans did not simply observe. They authored the counterinsurgency plan in Jeju. The U.S., provided powerful garland rifles to the Korean constabulary and personally advised the Korean police,

but managed to give the impression that they were not involved. It was the U.S. military government that resurrected the Japanese-trained police force after the liberation of Korea, while anticipating a constant danger that the Korean right would make it open season on hunting and catching any or all of their political opponents. Sukhung describes how the Americans can be seen, quote, laying out the strategies, providing resources and equipment, allocating the personnel, and overseeing the entire operation while placing Korean commanders in the front line.

It's hard not to see here a recreation of the Japanese colonial model in carrying out the violence. In fact, one of the commanders of the Jeju operation, Kim Miguel, in his memoir, wrote that Japan's tactics were used again in the U.S. military occupation. Quote, once the military government gave a tacit go-ahead to using the scorched earth policy, the police began to burn villages one after another without inhibition. Most of the residents in the hillside villages fled to the mountains and joined the rioters. As a result, the number of rioters increased exponentially to hundreds and thousands. thousands, such that we could no longer estimate them.

Moreover, they began a desperate resistance against police. Sukhung writes that few, if any, Americans admitted to any of this then or since. Quote, there are also only a limited number of written documents concerning American direct involvement that are available to the public even to this day. Generalissimo Chiang Kajek and the American State Department clash with Korean communist elements who look to Soviet Russia for approval. This brief history,

which in South Korea remains deeply controversial and in some cases under attack for being unearthed, is not how the slaughter in Jeju was reported by the American press. During this resistance to the Americans and the South Korean police, the New York Times declared, quote, it may decide the future of Korea and whether that unhappy nation is to be free and united or divided and enslaved. By every means in her power, the New York Times wrote, short of open warfare, Russia is seeking to enslave Korea.

The origins of this war in the South, that is, the months and months of the police terrorizing the island and submission, this was left out of the equation. Tukyong notes, quote, at the height of the scorched earth operation of January to March in 1949. The theory of the Soviet conspiracy flourished. The New York Times liberally quoted hearsay eyewitness accounts that purportedly cited Russian submarines and Soviet flags off the shores of Jeju, the witnesses were the South Korean military and government officials, whose accounts American journalists took at face value. In addition to the submarine claims, there were tall tales of Russian weapons supplied to the rebels, North Korean fighters supposedly training them.

Such reports, Tukyong writes, later proved to be false. Nonetheless, they worked as a powerful rhetorical tool in pushing for the anti-communist counteroffensive. Laying out a model not only for a wider war in Korea, but the Cold War itself, rebel violence in Jeju was by the press in America, exaggerated, sometimes fabricated, while police and U.S. violence was ignored, denied, or euphemized. Quote, some news reports even speculated that the communists might attack Americans and mentioned the evacuation of the families of American personnel from the island. No American was actually attacked.

In Tokyo, General MacArthur welcomes Korean President Reed. Dr. Rhee's visit is suddenly cut short, for word is received of a revolt of 4,000 troops in southern Korea. Jeju fever spread to the mainland. In the middle of the fighting, in October 1948, ROK army regiments refused to sail to Jeju and attack the guerrillas there. This battleship Potemkin moment touched off the new rebellion in the port city of Yasu so that a few days later, a couple thousand rebels at Yasu took the city.

For a wild and violent week, a storm of resistance, quote, spread to other counties in the southwest and southeast, and for a time seemed to threaten the foundations of the fledgling Southern Republic, writes Bruce Cummings. Thongs of people were, quote, parading through Yasu. waving red flags and shouting slogans. At a mass meeting on October 20th, the town's people's committee was restored, and People's Courts proceeded

to try and execute a number of captured policemen, as well as some other government officials, landlords, and rightists. Speakers called for a Korean People's Republic, the very thing the Americans had decided to stamp out. And some demonstrators also showed the DPRK flag and pledged loyalty to Kim Il-sung. The return of the people's committees, previously shut down, spread to smaller villages nearby,

and there, again, was that ominous demand. Quote, rebel leaders told followers that the 38th parallel had been done away with and that unification with the North would soon follow. While the North was busy undergoing radical, sometimes painful but indisputable revolution, the demands of these people in the South could have come straight out of the era of Japanese colonialism. Quote, a rebel newspaper referred to a three-year fight against the American occupation and demanded withdrawal of U.S. troops. They called for, quote, land redistribution without compensation to the landlords, a purge of police and other officials who had served

before the U.S. the Japanese, and opposition to a separate government in the South. Like in Jeju Island, the American and South Korean authorities blamed these rebellions on the north. And like Jeju, the crackdowns were run by the U.S. military government. Here's Bruce Cummings, quote, secret protocols placed the operational control of the Republic of Korea in American hands, and American advisors were with all ROK Army units. American C-47 transport planes

ferried Korean troops, weapons, and other material. American intelligence organizations worked intimately with Army and Korean National Police counterparts. Now, here's an interesting detail. Bruce Cummings notes that, quote, meanwhile, during the rebellion, the 38th parallel was quiet for the longest period in recent months, suggesting that North Korea did not want the incipient rebellion to spread.

Perhaps, but evidence shows that the leaders of the DPRK took careful note of the groundswell of opposition to the southern regime and began thinking about how to defend itself and do away with this situation altogether. One thing is for sure. More violence meant more contempt for the Americans. Captain James Hausman, an American tasked with forming the R.O.K. Army and indeed of cracking down on this revolt, recorded that police were, quote, out for revenge and are executing prisoners and civilians. Several loyal civilians already killed, and people beginning to think we are as bad as the enemy.

Now, the tools in the counter-insurgency toolbox that Singhman-Ree, the Korean National Police, and the U.S. military government were resorting to were not just, you know, run-of-the-mill violence and surveillance and other thuggery, but also good old-fashioned concentration camps. The U.S. State Department, for example, saying the praises of President Rees' National Guidance Alliance, which was a nationwide network that aimed to delegitimize communism. In fact, writes Bruce Cummings, it was actually a way to, quote, set up concentration camps for political prisoners, to do conversion and re-education work among anyone at all suspected of leftist activity to the tune of perhaps 3,000 prisoners per week.

One of the chiefs of this operation in South Korea said, quote, in order to be sure that conversions are sincere and complete, each individual upon surrendering himself to the alliance, is required to prepare a complete written confession. Most importantly, he must set down to the names of all individuals who served in the same cell. For a period of one year, those confessions are subject to constant recheck, largely by matching name lists. If a confession proves false or deficient at any time during that year, the person who made it becomes liable to the full legal penalty for his action and for his leftist affiliations. The rebellion in Jeju, Yosu, and elsewhere had been exterminated by spring 1949.

President Singman Rhee toured Jeju and invited the surviving rebels to, quote, become loyal citizens of the Republic. The body count on Little Jeju Island surpassed by tens of thousands what both the Americans and the North Koreans had calculated. Quote, the governor of Jeju privately told American intelligence

that 60,000 people had died. Meanwhile, 40,000 fled to Japan, almost 40,000 homes had been demolished, of 400 villages, only 170 remained. In other words, one in every five or six islanders had perished, and more than half the villages had been destroyed. Bruce Cummings writes that, quote,

the primary cause of the South Korean insurgency was the ancient curse of average Koreans, the social inequity of land relations, and the huge gap between a tiny elite of the rich and the vast majority of the poor. For this, as many as 100,000 died. Huang Sukyeng, in her deeply felt and researched book, interviewed one Mrs. Kim Oknyo, a survivor of police torture,

specifically electrical torture. Quote, I was stripped naked in the police yard and beaten senseless with a log, everywhere. My hands were tied with cables, and before they switched on the electricity, they would run the water and fill the tank up. I rejoiced at the thought of being killed. The level of horror inflicted here has led to a denialist strain of literature inside of South Korea.

In America, things are a little easier. It's not even acknowledged. Months before the South Korean elections, a report from the CIA revealed quite the fly in the nation-building ointment. Quote, the current political, economic, and military, situation in the U.S. and Soviet zones, respectively, make it unlikely that any government erected in South Korea under U.N. auspices could long survive the withdrawal of U.S. forces, unless it were to receive continuing and extensive U.S. economic, technical, and military aid. Present indicators are that a government dominated by the extreme rightists under Sigmund Rhee

will emerge from the forthcoming U.N. observed elections. Such a regime, if left to itself, would be incapable of withstanding ideological and military pressure from North Korea. The CIA was adamant that these May elections simply would not produce a government that could hold its own against the North without a significant American troop presence. But at the same time, the agency could not deny reality. Quote, the continued presence of foreign occupation forces on Korean soil has resulted in chronic native resentment at the delay of the long-promising promised independence of Korea and at the protracted artificial split of the country.

Who did that leave as plausible candidates to lead a government? According to the CIA, the Korean right wing. Here's the agency. The leadership of this group of parties is provided by that numerically small class which virtually monopolizes the native wealth and education of the country. Since this class could not have acquired and maintained its favorite position under Japanese rule without a certain minimum of, quote, collaboration, unquote, it has experienced difficulty in finding acceptable candidates for political office

and has been forced to support imported expatriate politicians, such as Singman Rhee and Kim Koo. These, while they have no pro-Japanese taint, are essentially demagogues bent on autocratic rule. Acceptance of this extremist leadership has forced the right to discard its more moderate elements and has served to widen the gulf between the two opposing camps. Confirming the CIA's account is an ideologically opposed polemic

from the National Council of Arts, Sciences, and Professionals. Quote, these elections excluded all parties, but Rees and an ally of Rees, and they were assailed not only by the left and the center, but also by hard-line conservatives and nationalists. Violence preceded these elections as the youth groups and gangs squared off with anti-American and anti-Ree Koreans. Unlike the elections in the North, we do not have a great idea

of how many people participated in these southern elections. And so by July 1948, well into the slaughter on Jeju Island, Singhman Rie won the presidential runoff and was inaugurated that August as the first ever president of the Republic of Korea.

He was handed power by U.S. General John Hodge. General Liebom Suk, chief of what even the Americans had privately described as fascist gangs, was approved as Rhee's first prime minister. In December 1949, Jung Kajek and the nationalist government flee to the independent island of Formosa, 100 miles from the China mainland. Here, Jung waits, vowing to return. The future remains uncertain.

The past, the fall of China to the communists, remains a subject for intensity. debate. How did this happen? In the year 1949, there were two victories, one for the Democrats in America, and one for the communists in China. Mr. Vice President, Mr. Chief Justice, fellow citizens, I accept with humility the honor which the American people have

conferred upon me. We will strengthen freedom-loving nations against a dangers of aggression. We are working out with a number of countries, a joint agreement, designed to strengthen the security of the North Atlantic area. We make it sufficient to clear in advance that any armed attack affecting our national security would be met with overwhelming force. The armed attack might never occur.

Henry Wallace had some thoughts on Truman's inauguration. He said it, quote, comes closer to a declaration of war than the inaugural address of any peacetime president in our history. His statement that capitalism and communism cannot live together in the same world makes war the only eventual alternative. The conspicuous failure of American policy in China and Greece, not mentioned in the president's address, is convincing proof that we cannot successfully fight ideas with guns. Yet the president's only answer. answer, is to call for more guns. I hope soon to send to the Senate of Treaty, respecting the North Atlantic Security Plan.

In addition, we will provide military advice and equipment to free nations, which will cooperate with us in their maintenance of peace and security. Five months after the inauguration in the summer of 1949, I.F. Stone observed that, quote, the Truman inaugural address was drafted in the State Department, largely by Chip Bolin and reflected the views of the Cold War clique. The prose was bad, the political analysis pure aisle, and the effect, poisonous. That September, Mao Zedong delivered a speech to the first plenary session of the People's Political Conference in China.

The address came after and summed up the decades of war. China against the imperialists, China against Japan, and the Chinese communists against Chiang Kai Shack's nationalists. The wars were finally about to be over. Mao's speech was titled, The Chinese people have stood up. November 1949 49. Congressman Richard Nixon,

member of the House on American Activities Committee, declares his candidacy for the Senate. Here's how the Escondido, California, Weekly Times Advocate, wrote it up. Declaring that the issue in next year's election is, quote, simply the choice between freedom and state socialism, Congressman Richard Nixon of Whittier announced his candidacy for Senator from California here Thursday night. Quote, they can call it planned economy, the fair deal, or social welfare, Nixon said.

It's still the same old socialist baloney anyway, you slice it. Believe me, I am well aware of the communist threat, and I do not discount it. But I am convinced that an even greater threat to our free institutions is presented by that group of hypocritical and cynical men, who, under the guise of providing political panaceas for certain social and economic problems in our society, are selling the American birthright for a mess of political pottage. Slowly but surely, they are chipping away the freedoms which are essential to the survival of a healthy, strong, and productive nation, Nixon continued. Nixon told an enthusiastic capacity audience, quote,

there is only one way we can win. We must put on a fighting, rocking, soaking campaign, and carry that campaign directly into every county, city, town, precinct, and home in the state of California. As a junior Republican congressman, Richard Nixon wasn't in on the great foreign policy debates of the day, but he was attuned to the political currents of his time, and what Nixon understood, regardless of his personal feelings about it, was that anti-communism was a valuable political tool.

It rebutted the left-wing agenda and offered an alternative in one fell swoop. The Alger Hiss case had brought him closer to being a statesman than ever before. The events of late 1949 and his Senate campaign would elevate him further. After the conclusion of the Chinese Civil War, the victory of the communists in Chiang Kai Shack fleeing to Taiwan, Nixon's hawkishness only benefited him further. That the Chinese government hadn't gotten much from Japanese reparations, that Chang's fall had happened under a Democratic president, and that a, quote, red China was now a reality.

And what's more, Chang's fall wasn't the only thing scaring the U.S. In late September 1949, just a week before Mao officially declared the establishment of the People's Republic of China, based in Beijing, the United States government told the public that what Truman had once said would never happen had actually come to pass. President Truman's dramatic announcement that Russia has created an atomic explosion sends reporters racing for Flushing Meadow where Russia's Voshensky arrives to address the United Nations. The Soviet Union had exploded their own atomic bomb. Faced with this fact, as well as the discovery of Soviet mole auto-fewks, in January 1950, Truman decided to pursue development of the hydrogen bomb.

This was the first major technological escalation of the nuclear arms race, the leap to thermonuclear war. From the final days of 1949 into January 1950, the victorious Mao Tse-Tung met with Joseph Stalin at long last in a trip that Mao took to Moscow. Mao's goal during these talks was to produce a, a Sino-Soviet Treaty for the New People's Republic of China. Sitting across from Stalin and the Kremlin,

the chairman allegedly said that the terms of this treaty must be, quote, both beautiful and tasty. There was an awkward silence. In Mao's careful language, writes Zubak and Pleshikov, beautiful things stood for world revolution, and tasty things for Chinese national. national interests. And the two communist giants had been walking this tightrope, balancing the beautiful and the tasty, for many years now. And both leaders had some not-so-fond memories

of each other. Mao, of course, had dealt for years with Stalin's hands-off approach toward the Chinese communists all through the Civil War. For many years, Stalin had insisted that the CCP partner up with the more prestigious nationalists of Chiang Kai Sheck, and only really through his weighed in with his fellow communists in the final years of the conflict. And Stalin, for his part, recalled a crucial moment in World War II when he pleaded with Mao for Chinese troops to cover his eastern flank against Japan. Mao denied him this and left the Soviets defend for themselves. But at this point, in 1950, with a victorious Mao across the room, Stalin was interested in boosting a strong, if subordinate, communist China. The Soviet leader was particularly interested in

allowing the USSR to retain a base in Port Arthur, and to hold on to rights in Manchuria and Xinjiang. He tried to ease the war-weary Mao's concerns about another imminent war, particularly from the U.S. or a resurgent Japan. Stalin claimed that for now China's enemies were as tame as kittens. He gave Mao a comradly greenlight to liberate both Taiwan, then called Formosa, and Tibet. So after much haggling between comrades, the Sino-Sovia Treaty was born in February 1950. The United States, through Secretary of State Dean Atchison, denounced the treaty as, quote, an evil omen of imperialistic domination. What's important is, important here to our story was the guarantee in this treaty for each party to come to the

others aid in case of attack or invasion, say, by the United States of America. out some old grudge from all into revenge or hatred. I don't hate Mr. Hiss. We were close friends, but we are caught in the tragedy of history. Mr. Hiss represents the concealed enemy against which we are all fighting and I am fighting. I testified against him with remorse and pity.

The conviction of Alger Hiss for perjury for lying about his association with Whitaker Chambers in January 1950 was a new, terrifying high watermark in the American Holy War against communism at home. On January 24, 1st, 1950, Hiss was sentenced to five years in prison. About three weeks later, Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy took the stage in Wheeling, West Virginia. He claimed that in the war between

Christianity and communism, communists had struck a fiendish blow by infiltrating the U.S. government. I think we should keep in mind when we refer to Democrats, we refer to the administration, that there are definitely two groups of Democrats as of today. one, there are the millions of loyal Americans who have voted the Democrat tickets, individuals who are just as loyal, who hate communism just as much, and love America just as much as the average Republican. That's one group. On the other hand, there is that small, closely lit group of administration Democrats who are now the complete prisoners and under the complete domination of the bureaucratic, communistic

Frankenstein, which they themselves have created. Ladies and gentlemen, they shouldn't be called that administration Democrat Party. To call them Democrats as an insult to the millions of loyal American Democrats. They shouldn't be called Democrats. They should be referred to properly as the comicrap party.

And... Who was Joe McCarthy? In short, a young Catholic lawmaker who had switched from Democrat to Republican, and he was close to Joe Kennedy, father of Bobby and Jack. McCarthy vigorously ran the House Un-American Activities Committee with the assistance of one Roy Cohn. But West Virginia, February 1950, was, effectively his national coming-out party. It made him internationally famous. perhaps he had seen Richard Nixon's swift rise by playing the red card, so to speak. McCarthy's story was that Chiang Kai Sheck had been undercut by communist-loving members of the U.S. State Department. This wasn't true. Chang was weak and unable to stop the communists in any case.

But the mainstream press ate up McCarthy's version of events all the same. A very simple explanation for why the U.S. was losing nation after nation to communism was finally being supported. The Saturday Evening Post and many other influential news outlets immediately began cheering McCarthy on. On February 21st, according to the Associated Press, Senate Democrats had agreed, quote, to press a thorough investigation of charges by Senator McCarthy that a spy ring is operating in the State Department. Now, these maneuvers weren't universally celebrated.

A Madison-Wisconsin paper, for instance, the Capitol Times, ran an editorial with the headline, quote, trick of guilt by association. In fact, the Capitol Times was added to McCarthy's list of communist conspirators. The extent to which one of your papers in Madison, the Capitol Times, has been following the Communist Party line. But McCarthy's ostensible opponents, congressional Democrats, they instead appeared to take seriously the idea that the State Department, headed by one of their own party, had been infiltrated by communists, quote, I want to get the honest to God Americans there out from under that

cloud. This is what Democratic Senate Majority Leader Scott Lucas reportedly shouted at a press briefing after a party conference. And if there were communists in the State Department, Lucas said, quote, the president and every senator on this side of the aisle won't rest until they are routed out. In December 1948, the United Press carried this report. The South Korean Foreign Minister declared that his government would not hesitate to go into action against traitors in the North and recover lost territory. The North will be dealt with. Then, the New York Herald Tribune in August 1949, South Korea's army has an outspoken desire to take the offensive against North Korea.

It wants to cross the border. Another UP dispatch, October 1949, Singhman Re boasts the South Korean army would be able to capture the red capital of Pyongyang within three days. Another dispatch later that month, South Korean defense minister said today

that his army is ready and waiting to invade communist North Korea, but has been restrained by American officials. As late as March 2nd, 1950 in the New York Times. President Singman-Ree delivers an Independence Day speech saying the call of our brothers in distress up north would not be ignored. This is one of the most outspoken hints in recent months of a desire to unify the country if necessary by force. Then, that summer, there was, all of a sudden, complete silence.