The surrender terms called for a joint American and Soviet occupation, with the 38th parallel serving as a temporary line of demarcation. Not until 8 September, however, did Lieutenant General John R. Hodge reach southern Korea with the first American troops.
By that time the Russians had gone through their usual routine, and the machinery taken from northern Korea was estimated at 30 to 40 percent of the industrial potential. Looting by Soviet troops went unpunished, and regular supplies of food for the huge army were demanded from an impoverished people just freed of the Japanese yoke.[8]
[8] Ibid., 285.
The Russians had a tremendous advantage over United States occupation forces. Since World War I more than a million Koreans had found a refuge from Japanese bondage on Russian or Chinese soil. Thousands of men had been indoctrinated with Communist principles and given military training to aid the Chinese Reds fighting the Japanese invaders of China. Thus in 1945 the Russians could count on the efforts of Korean revolutionists to establish Communist rule in their homeland behind a façade of democracy.
KOREA
The United States forces, on the contrary, did not even have enough interpreters. They impressed the Koreans at first as being alien occupation troops setting up a military government. Meanwhile, the Russians had installed an interim civil government at Pyongyang. Korean Reds filled the key positions, and Stalin’s portraits and the hammer and sickle emblem were seen at political rallies.
Koreans of all persuasions opposed the division of their country into two zones on either side of the 38th parallel. The Reds at Pyongyang contrived to lay the blame on the Americans. They made a further appeal to Koreans on both sides of the boundary by announcing a land reform in the northern zone. Ever since 1905 a Japanese landlord had been the hated symbol of oppression. Pyongyang won a great propaganda victory, therefore, by announcing the confiscation of all large estates, Korean as well as Japanese, and the division of the land among the peasantry.
The bait was so tempting that the hook did not become apparent until too late. Then the beneficiaries of the Agrarian Reform discovered that they could neither sell nor rent the land, nor could they use it as security for loans. If anyone ceased to work his holding, it reverted to the People’s Committee, which allocated it to some other family. The State retained possession, in short, and the peasant remained as much of a serf as ever. Worse yet, the taxes disguised as “production quotas” eventually amounted to 60 percent of the total crop, which was more than the Japanese had extorted.[9]
[9] Robert T. Oliver, Why War Came to Korea (New York: Fordham University Press, 1950), 149.