[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Platapus

Today marks the 72nd anniversary of an event that could be considered the start of this whole Korean mess.

I have a half facetious hypothesis that if there is a messed up place in the world, if you delve into its history you will find a British guy, a map, and a pencil arbitrarily drawing a border. In many cases it has proven true.

But the event of 10 Aug 1945 refutes that hypothesis slightly. In this case it was not a Brit, but two Americans with a pencil and a map .... of Korea.

The following is an abbreviated synopsis of what happened.

As WWII was ending the Soviet Union and the Americans were in agreement about what was going to happen with Korea. Neither Japan nor China would get it, nor would it be left alone to be gobbled up by either. There was no way the Soviet Union would allow the US to control all of Korea and there was no way that the Americans would allow the Soviet Union to control all of Korea, so it was tentatively agreed that the two nations would split Korea into two areas with the good guys on one side and the bad guys on the other side. But where the actual division would be was TBD.

On 10 Aug 45 two US army officers Dean Rusk and Charles Bonesteel were ordered to designate the division. There was little expectation that the Soviets would accept this so it was just an initial negotiating point.

Neither Rusk nor Bonesteel had any experience with Korea and its culture or history, nor did they consult any Korean experts or anyone from Korea. They did know that they wanted Seoul to be in the South portion.

So they took an old National Geographic map of Korea and roughly measured out two somewhat equal size portions of land. This incidentally fell on the 38th parallel. which matched a previous agreement concerning the disposition of Soviet forces.

Since Korea is more a NW/SE oriented country, they slanted their division line SW/NE.

They did not consider geography, population nor culture in this division. It was just a line for initial negotiations.

It came as a surprise when the Soviets accepted this division line. The US really expected a dispute.

Unknown to Rusk and Bonesteel, The Russian Empire in 1905 had negotiated with Japan about dividing Korea and independently came up with a similar division of a slanted line around the 38th parallel.

So this spur of the moment initial draft suddenly became a fact.

Korea was divided, but hardly equally. While the general land masses were similar, the geography was very different. North Korea had most of the mountains and the minerals and the South had the most of the arable fields.

The south had approximately twice the population of the North. But the majority of the Japanese nuclear weapon program facilities were in the North and that was a very attractive prize for the Soviets.

So two guys just drew a line on a map with no real research on what they were doing or what the effect might be was a big starter in this North/South Korean issue. What could possibly go wrong?

I might have to modify my hypothesis to read a foreigner with a map and a pencil making arbitrary borders.

The attempt to draw parallels to the splitting of ethnic groups by line-drawing in the ME, and by forcing together ideoliogy camps that do noit match, does not work here. You did not had that in case of the split of Germany, and you did not have that in Korea. What separates the South and the North, as it separated the East and the West of Germany, was not ethnciity, nor religion, but political ideology of those in power, and the dramatic differences in economic policies resulting from that. It were the Northkorean regime being responsible for the short supplies and lacking food that spelled esaster repeatedly.

I know it from first hand that the ethnic argument does not work that well inc ase of Korea becasue I once had tweo friends from soiuthkorea, who studied Germanistik in Germany. When we had one of the many histoir and poltical discussions at long nights around the kitchen table, they often were asked to tell about Korea, and they saw no reason why not to do so.

The major difference in both Koreas that decides everything else beyond, is not differfent tirbal cultures or ethncities or relgions, but - polticla dieology by the governments. Communism versus Capitalism. It was like this in Germany as well.

Of course it also became a proxy war between the major powers, too.

Interesting sidenote: until today, there is no peace treaty in place. Officially, formally, both Koreas still are at war with each other.