2. This and other details of Kim’s stay in the Soviet Union are taken from a remarkable nineteen-part series in the Seoul daily Hanguk Ilbo beginning November 1, 1990. The series presents the reminiscences of Yu Song-chol, a former colleague of Kim Il-sung’s who had been purged in 1959 and since then had lived in the Soviet Union, as told to Prof. Chay Pyung-gil of Yonsei University in Seoul.
Installments of the series ’were translated by Sydney A. Seiler. They form an appendix to his book, Kim Il-song 1941–1948 (see chap. 2, n. 18). Besides citing Yu’s testimony, the valuable Seiler book marshals an array of additional primary sources to establish beyond question that Kim Il-sung did indeed live in the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1945 and served there as a Soviet Army officer— a point that had been questioned by some Western historians and obfuscated by Kim Il-sung and other North Korean sources. I am greatly indebted to Mr. Seiler for having provided, before publication, a copy of his Yonsei University thesis of the same title, on which the book is based.
In addition to Yu’s recollections of the 1941–1948 period covered by the Seiler study, I make considerable use of the translated Yu testimony from the Seiler book’s appendix for my treatment, in the following two chapters, of the Korean War and the purges that followed.
3. See McCormack, “Kim Country” (see chap. 3, n. 44). Kim Il-sung’s unit history was eventually published as “Kanglian diyi lujun lueshi” (Brief History of the First Anti-Japanese United Army), in Zhongguo gongchandang lishi ziliaocungshu, ed., Dongbei kangri lianjun zilao (Materials on the History of the North-Eastern Anti-Japanese Army), vol. 2 (Beijing, 1987), pp. 665–679. McCormackreports that “the revelation of the authorship of these materials was made in various Japanese sources in 1991.”
Sydney A. Seiler (Kim Il-song 1941–1948, p. 31) relates that Zhou had sought to keep the old Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army units intact under Chinese Communist Party command, even though operating from Soviet soil to launch actions against the Japanese across the border: “Yet the NEAJUA remnants ’were essentially unable to survive, let alone operate, without Soviet assistance, and the Soviets ’were reluctant to support such actions especially after entering a non-aggression treaty with Japan in April 1941. An eventual compromise in which former units of the NEAJUA were allowed to operate under CCP directives but had to receive approval from the Soviets for all operations placed those units veritably under the ‘domination and guidance of the Soviets.’” Seiler here cites Kim Chan-jong’s interviews for the South Korean magazine Shindonga (July 1992, p. 368) with Korean-Chinese who had been members of the Eighty-eighth Brigade.
4. See Kim’s memoirs, With the Century (see chap. 2, n. 2), vol. 2, pp. 42–43, where Kim recalls criticizing, at a 1930 meeting, an anti-Japanese colleague’s argument that “if the great powers help us, we will win our independence.” Based on the historical record, Kim had a point. When Japan had moved to dominate and take over Korea, no other great power—most disappointingly at the time, not even the United States—had stood in the ’way, even though Korea’s King Kojong sent a secret emissary to appeal to the nations assembled at the Second In ternational Peace Conference at The Hague in 1907.
In a later volume of memoirs, published posthumously, Kim did discuss having spent time at a “training base” in the Soviet Union, but in such a ’way as to suggest he had been back and forth between there and a secret guerrilla base on .Mount Paektu in northern Korea. The Paektu “secret base” is where the official North Korean literature, since the 1980s, has claimed that Kim Jong-il was born. See Kim Il-sung, With the Century, vol. 23, “Alliance with International Anti-Imperialism Camps, January 1941–July 1942,” sec. 9, “Nurturing the Root of the Revolution” (translated by Lee Wha Rang for Korea Web Weekly, http://kimsoft.com/war/r-23-9.htm).
5. Hankuk Ilbo, November 1, 1990, translated in Seiler, Kim Il-song 1941-1948.
6. See Seiler, Kim Il-song 1941–1948, p. 40.
7. Hankuk Ilbo, November 1–3, 1990. Chay Pyung-gil, who compiled Yu’s testimony, adds, “From the aspects of both character and physical strength, Kim Il-sung was a political soldier more than a professional career soldier. He had more of an interest in organizational matters than in guerrilla or conventional warfare training” (“Following the Conclusion of the Serialization ‘Yu Song-ch’ol’s Testimony, ” Hankuk Ilbo, December 1, 1990).
8. Hankuk Ilbo, November 3, 1990.
9. Hankuk Ilbo, November 4, 1990.
10. The quotation is from a War Department cable paraphrasing the views of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific theater, cited in Joseph C Goulden, Korea: The Untold Story of the War (New York: .McGraw-Hill, 1982), p. 18.
11. Van Ree, Socialism in One Zone, p. 65. The author asserts that a Korean report of heavy fighting at the port of Unggi is not borne out in the Soviet literature. He adds, “I did not come across information on how many of those [4,717] casualties were wounded or died in Korea (as opposed to Manchuria). Perhaps the Red Army lost only very few men in Korea, so few that the ‘heroics’ of its Korean war are lost if the numbers become known. … It was truly a micro-war, barely scratching Korea.”
12. Historian Kathryn Weathersby based on analysis of recently declassified Russian documents, says Stalin mainly wished to ensure that the Korean peninsula would not be used as a staging ground for future aggression against the USSR and that a “friendly” government would be established there. See Weathersby “Soviet Aims in Korea and the Origins of the Korean War, 1945–1950: New Evidence from Russian Archives,” Working Paper No. 8, Cold War International History Project, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C, November 1993.
13. Van Ree acknowledges (Socialism in One Zone, pp. 125–128) that there were various reasons why it might have been difficult for the Soviet authorities to arrange deliveries, but asserts that it was their refusal even to discuss the matter that showed, as early as October of 1945, a conscious Soviet policy of “closing off the northern zone.” The Russians, he says, “wanted to put their zone into order and they did not want American lookers-on, or American interference in the economic process within their zone. In order to achieve that, they ’were willing to give up … the delivery of rice from the South.”
14. O Yong-jin, a defector cited by Suh (Kim Il Sung, p. 50), quoted Kim as having told him ruefully that the speedy Japanese surrender had spoiled a plan for his band of former guerrillas to parachute dramatically into Pyongyang. On the other hand, Seiler (Kim Il-song 1941-1948, p. 46) says Stalin himself apparently refused to permit the Eighty-eighth to join in the fighting—perhaps thinking that having fought would entitle the Koreans to more say in the occupation government north of the 38th parallel than Soviet policy envisioned granting them. Seiler here cites Kim Chan-jong, “Bbalch’isan manga, kim il-song kwa 88 tong-nip yodan” [Funeral march of the partisans, Kim Il-song and the 88th Independent Brigade], Shindonga (Seoul, July 1992): p. 381. Van Ree (Socialism in One Zone, p. 66) conjectures that .Moscow wanted to use Kim’s group to help administer the occupation zone, and on that account did not wish to risk their lives in battle. See footnote 83 on that page for van Ree’s summary of sources that assert, vaguely, that Kim’s men did participate in the fighting.
15. “Other, better-known or older Korean guerrillas such as Kim Chaek and Choe Yong-Gun trusted him and chose him as their leader. Chinese, Soviet and Korean anti-Japanese forces at the Khabarovsk camp in the Soviet Union reached a common view in appointing Kim leader of the ‘Korean Task-force’ (Chaoxian gongzuotuan) detachment sent in September 1945 to spearhead the process of takeover from Japan” (McCormack, “Kim Country,” citing Wada, pp. 330 ff).
Seiler reports (Kim Il-song 1941–1948, pp. 46–47), based on testimony in JoongAng Ilbo, August 19, 1991, “The Soviet Far East Command did dispatch one officer to the 88th Brigade to interview a handful of potential leaders from among the Koreans there. Toward the end of August 1945, Lt. Col. Grigori Konovich Mekrail, then a political off
icer with the Soviet Far East Command who would later serve with the 25th Army that occupied North Korea, was suddenly ordered by his headquarters to go to Pyongyang. On the way, he stopped in Khabarovsk to visit the members of the 88th Brigade. There, Mekrail claims to have met Kim Il-song and three or four other leaders among the Korean partisans. He had received orders from his headquarters to evaluate the partisans and attempt to select one among them to be a leader. Mekrail, playing down the significance of the meeting, emphasized, ‘Prior to the meeting in Khabarovsk, I had not received any special mention of Kim Il-song by name.’ ”
16. Hanguk Ilbo, November 6, 1990. Seiler notes (Kim Il-song 1941–1948, p. 58, n. 21) testimony by the Soviet-Korean interpreter for the Soviet officials who greeted the ship, Chong Sang-jin (JoongAng Ilbo, August 26, 1991), that Kim introduced himself by his birth name, Kim Song-ju, when he disembarked.
17. Hankuk Ilbo, November 7, 1990.
Lim Un says Kim’s preliminary appointment was not police or garrison chief, but a position equally high or one step higher: deputy commander of the Pyongyang komendatura, the chief political operative for the city (Lim Un, Founding of a Dynasty [see chap. 2, n. 59], pp. 124–128). Komendatura, or bureaus of local commanders, as van Ree explains (Socialism in One Zone, p. 85), ’were organized throughout northern Korea right after the Soviet troops arrived: “They safeguarded local order and took possession of Japanese military property and armaments. … They ’were headed by a commander. His deputy was the chief of the Political Department. Another important official was the garrison chief”
18. Kim, With the Century, vol. 3, p. 22.
19. Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 293–302.
20. Yu Song-chol’s testimony, Hankuk Ilbo, November 7, 1990. (See Seiler, Kim Il-song 1941–1948, p. 55, for an account of the meeting based on additional testimony.)
21. Hankuk Ilbo, November 7, 1990.
22. O Yong-jin, “An Eyewitness Report,” Pusan, 1952, p. 143, cited in Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea (see chap. 2, n. 28), p. 324. O is identified as personal secretary to Cho Man-shik.
23. Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, p. 338.
24. Baik Bong, Kim Il Sung Biography (II): From Building Democratic Korea to Chullima Flight (Tokyo: Miraisha, 1970; hereinafter cited as Baik II), p. 53.
Once he had taken office as premier, the regime arranged photo opportunities, including one in which the youthful leader, in shirtsleeves, wielded a shovel alongside a work team. “Let us work hard and complete the work as early as possible, so that someday we may have a good time together,” he said to the workers. In another photo op, Kim, wearing traditional Korean garb, bent to join peasants transplanting rice plants. See Baik II, pp. 162, 203.
It was made known that Kim lived fairly simply and rejected elaborate special treatment: “Ryu Woon-hyung, invited to Kim Il Sung’s private residence, looked at the furnishings and furniture with a look of disbelief. It was far removed from what he had imagined. It was clean but the furniture was too simple for the leader of a country. Presently, dinner was served. There ’were no special dishes on table, an ordinary table without mother-of-pearl inlay” (Baik II, pp. 150–151).
“[A]s he was about to enter [a coal-mining] village he suddenly stopped and his eyes followed the road ahead where there lay a long piece of white cloth, about 300 meters long. … He was supposed to walk on the cloth, of course, but having declined all honours offered while going through hardships, he could not do it. He said to the Chairman of the Kangdong County Committee of the North Korean Workers’ Party, who was on hand to greet him: ‘Why do you do such a thing? This is no good. The cloth is to be worn by the people. It is not a thing on which I should walk. Please remove it quickly’ .Moved deeply by his words, the villagers hung their heads. As the cotton cloth was removed, he started walking. The people, still feeling somewhat abashed, praised his lofty moral virtue and then gave him even more enthusiastic cheers” (Baik II, pp. 178–179).
25. Seoul Shinmun, January 10, 1946, p. 2, as cited and translated in Baik Bong, Kim Il Sung Biography (I): From Birth to Triumphant Return to Homeland (Tokyo: Mi-raisha, 1969; hereinafter cited as Baik I), pp. 543–544. Besides that on-the-scene reporter’s guess of five-feet-six, the only other estimate of Kim Il-sung’s height that I recall having seen is a description of him (Bruce Cumings, North Korea: Another Country [New York: New Press, 2003], p. 155) as “standing over six feet.” I would have to call that quite a stretch unless perhaps the Caucasians with whom Kim often stood to pose for photographs after liberation were not Russian officials, after all, but NBA basketball players.
26. Van Ree, Socialism in One Zone, p. 117.
27. Ibid., pp. 117–121.
28. Ibid., pp. 129–130.
29. See Suh, Korean Communist Movement (see chap. 2, n. 56), p. 306.
30. Van Ree, Socialism in One Zone, pp. 130–140. In the conclusion to his book the author adds (p. 276), “In terms of responsibility for the continuation of Korea’s division in the two years after the Second World War, the Russians carry undoubtedly most of the blame, though the logical counterpart of this is that they were much less a threat to the other’s zone than the Americans.”
Kathryn Weathersby argues that, in the short run, publicly supporting trusteeship “was a perfect solution to .Moscow’s dilemma regarding Korea. It allowed the Soviet Union to meet its security needs by maintaining control over the northern half of the peninsula and at the same time protect its position politically by posing as the true defender of the agreement on Korean unification. In the long run, however, this crude solution to the Korean question, which completely disregarded the strong desire of the Korean people for unity and independence, created such a volatile situation on the peninsula that .Moscow was eventually persuaded to risk supporting an attempt at reunification by military means—an outcome that had profoundly negative consequences for Soviet security interests” (Kathryn Weathersby, “Limits to Revisionist Interpretations: New Russian Archival Materials and Old American Debates”; for permission to cite her paper I am grateful to Dr. Weathersby, who, at the time she presented the paper, was with the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies of Washington’s Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, where she was involved in the Cold War History Project).
31. Weathersby, ibid., argues that Korean division was “the product of American and Soviet strategies toward Korea that were unworkable and that ignored the fundamental aspirations of the Korean people. President Roosevelt’s proposal for a joint trusteeship ignored Korean national sovereignty, the American occupation command’s focus on thwarting leftists in Korea ignored the political desires of Koreans, and the Soviet Union’s decision to protect its borders by maintaining the division of Korea ignored the most basic desire of the Korean people for national unity.”
32. Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, p. 340; Cumings, Origins II (see chap. 3, n. 16), p. 488. A North Korean account says vaguely but chillingly that Cho and other “alien and accidental elements in the people’s committees … were completely eliminated” (Baik II, p. 102).
33. The Soviet authorities had helped Kim by disarming this pro-China group upon its return to Korea, observes Suh (Kim Il Sung, p. 101). “Furthermore, any reference to their military hero Mu Chong as a leader in the North was immediately denounced as promotion of individual heroism by the Soviet-Koreans and the occupation forces.”
34. See van Ree, Socialism in One Zone, pp. 76–81. “A Seoul-based People’s Republic promised to make Syngman Rhee president over ‘Russian’ North Korea, from a comfortable position in ‘American’ South Korea,” van Ree says on p. 81. “This plan from Pak Hon-yong was something which Stalin could never accept. Moscow was not, in any circumstances, prepared to sacrifice its northern zone, not even in favour of a united front initiative which might provide the southern communists with a more secure position in the political life of the capital.” Van Ree adds (p. 131) that .Moscow “gave priority to northern consolidation over penetr
ation of the South.”
35. Speech at the November 15, 1945, second meeting of the North Korean Bureau of the Korean Communist Party, quoted in van Ree, Socialism in One Zone, p. 132.
36. From a speech published in the 1963 edition of Kim’s selected works and cited in Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, p. 339.
37. Wayne Patterson and Hilary Conroy observe that “Wilsonian idealism, missionary support and American public opinion [favoring Korea against Japanese imperialism] stood in sharp contrast to government policy, which did not ‘come around’ until Pearl Harbor. The fact that it was not until World War II that the United States supported Korea lends credence to the view that this support came only because it coincided with the interests of the United States. While the United States was a Johnny-come-lately to the cause of Korean nationalism, the Soviets and the Chinese supported the Koreans and Korean nationalists to a greater extent than the United States had. This led, at least in part, to divided loyalties among Koreans when liberation came, after thirty-five years of colonial rule. The United States, which had not opposed Japan in Korea, began by relying on the Japanese in Korea during the early months of the occupation. By contrast, the Soviet Union (in the north) did not. It is hardly surprising, then, that many Koreans, perhaps still hoping to depend on a stronger foreign power, began to look to the Soviet Union and the Communist bloc for support after the war” (“Duality and Dominance: A Century of Korean-American Relations,” in Lee and Patterson, One Hundred Years of Korean-American Relations, 1882–1982 [see chap. 2, n. 6], pp. 7–8).
38. Yu Song-chol’s testimony, Hankuk Ilbo, November 7, 1990.
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