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THE LIBRARY
OF

THE UNIVERSITY

OF TEXAS

AT
AUSTIN

IN NORTH KOREA

FIRST EYE-WITNESS REPORT

By ANNA LOUISE STRONG

Published by

SOVIET RUSSIA TODAY
New York, 1949

The Author

Anna Louise Strong, writer, lecturer and
world traveller, was the first correspondent
to report from North Korea and the only
American correspondent to travel exten-
sively through that country interviewing
people in all walks of life. This booklet is
based on her observations there. Miss Strong
has achieved international eminence as a
correspondent for her reports from the major
capitals of the world and her coverage of
some of the most historic events of our
times. Among her many books are The So-
viets Expected It, Peoples of the USSR,
and I Saw the New Poland. Her latest,
just published, is Tomorrow's China.

Foreword

There is a striking difference today in the two zones in Korea,
which is noticed by all peoples of the Far East.

In the north, in the Soviet zone, the Soviet Army is withdrawing
in the midst of tremendous popular demonstrations of the Korean
people honoring troops which liberated them from Japan. Three
hundred thousand Koreans turned out in Pyongyang, capital city,
and hundreds of thousands in other cities, to bid farewell and
thank the Soviet troops.

Meanwhile, in the south, American troops clearly intend to
remain at the request of the local "government" which the Amer-
icans set up, but the Korean people show their displeasure by
strikes and uprisings, including revolts of armed forces which
are ruthlessly put down with the help of American troops.

Few facts about Korea are allowed to reach the American peo-
ple. Information from South Korea is heavily censored by Gen-
eral MacArthur s Tokyo headquarters, while facts from North
Korea never appear at all. This pamphlet is an attempt to bring
such facts.

The most important present fact is that today two governments
exist in Korea. The only government Americans are allowed to
hear about is that of Syngman Rhee in Seoul. Rhee is an aged
reactionary who spent his entire life outside of Korea, chiefly in
America, and was brought back by American military plane. His
government was confirmed last May by the "election ' which most
Korean political parties boycotted, leaving only Rhee's ticket,
while voters were dragooned by the police and forced to attend
the polls under threat of losing their land and ration cards. This
election was held only in the American zone in South Korea be-
cause its forms and methods— devised by America— were refused

in the north. All observers state that police terror was widely
used.

[The United Nations General Assembly in Paris passed a reso-
lution, strongly opposed by the Soviet Union, recommending the
recognition of the Rhee Government, and giving the United States
discretionary powers as to how long its troops should remain in
South Korea.-Ed.]

In contrast was another election of which Americans heard
little. It was held last August 25 in all parts of Korea. Prepara-
tions were made by two conferences, representing scores of po-
litical parties and public organizations from both north and
south zones of the country— all parties dedicated to unity of
the Korean nation.

In the northern zone the election took place peacefully and
with tremendous enthusiasm. Many people went to the polls in
the middle of the night in order to be first to greet the dawn of
a new day at elections whose results should unify Korea, free for
the first time in forty years. Over 99 per cent of the electorate
turned out. In many places voting finished long before noon.

In the southern zone, Americans declared these elections
illegal, but nonetheless they were held under harsh conditions of
police terror. Unable to hold them openly, they were held partly
by house to house canvas, partly by meetings in villages, and
partly by underground meetings of trade unions and other public
organizations. According to a statement made by Syngman Rhee
himself to correspondents on September 2, many thousands of
people were arrested for participating in these "illegal" elections.
Because of police terror, these elections in South Korea were held
in two stages. First, 1,080 delegates were elected by popular
vote by various methods; then these delegates held a special
congress in the city of Kaishu to select 360 deputies to represent
South Korea in a joint Assembly of the entire country. That there
were desperate efforts by the American military to stop this
election is shown by the fact that of 1,080 elected delegates,
seventy-eight were unable to reach Kaishu because forty-two
were jailed and quite a number killed.

Despite all repressions, Koreans estimate that 77.5 per cent of
the electorate of South Korea took part in choosing these
deputies.

The "Supreme National Assembly" met September 2 in Pyong-
yang, consisting of 572 deputies, of which 360 were from South
Korea and 212 from North Korea, thus representing in proper
proportion the population of the entire country. In contrast
to Syngman Rhees Assembly which contains a handpicked group
of landlords, capitalists and former Japanese puppets, the "Su-
preme National Assembly" meeting in Pyongyang contained a
normal cross section of the population: 194 peasants, 120 work-
ers, 152 white collar workers, 29 employers, etc.

This "Supreme National Assembly" adopted a Constitution for
the entire country, elected a presidium for continuous admin-
istrative work and requested both America and the Soviet Union
to withdraw their troops. The Soviet Union complied and began
withdrawal, to be completed by January 1, 1949; and also ex-
changed ambassadors with the new Korean government. Amer-
ica, however, evidently intends to keep troops in Korea indefi-
nitely to support Syngman Rhee who asks them to remain, since
he could not otherwise keep power.

This is the reason why the Soviet Army, withdrawing, wins
plaudits of the great masses of Korean people while the United
States Army, remaining, finds opposition, unrest, constant strikes
and uprisings against its armed control.

It is time the American people learned how their military
representatives and the policies of their State Department are
discrediting America in Asia. Manchuria and North China were
the first lesson; Korea will be a second lesson, proving to all
Asiatic peoples that American armed forces intervene to support
reactionary rulers against the will of the people. The peoples of
Asia also are learning another lesson—that American armed sup-
port cannot succeed in maintaining these puppet rulers against
an outraged peoples will.

Anna Louise Strong
November, 1948

IN NORTH KOREA

1* From many witnesses

"Korea is a major responsibility which we [Americans] as a
world power have voluntarily assumed. . . . We have committed
here some of our most excruciating errors. . . . Opinion polls show
that 64 out of every 100 Koreans dislike us." Mark Gayn in New
York Star, November, 1947.

The American zone of South Korea was called a "police state" by
Roger Baldwin, chief of the American Civil Liberties Union, who
visited Korea by special invitation of General Douglas MacArthur,
and— after this one indignant outburst— kept silent about the place.

"The United States now has a puppet state in South Korea.
Elections held under a 'protecting umbrella' of U. S. troops have
put a discredited rightist, Dr. Syngman Rhee, in power. . . . This
probably marks the birth of a new civil war in which American
forces are likely to be heavily involved." Israel Epstein in Gazette
and Daily, York, Pa., June 8, 1948.

"It gives most Americans a start to realize that we are rapidly
losing the cold war in Korea. . . . Many of the facts have been ob-
scured by congenital American optimism. . . . Others have been
suppressed by censorship and bad news reporting." Maxwell S.
Stewart in The Nation, May 22, 1948.

In days to come, Korea will continue to supply headlines. Yet
there is little public knowledge about the country and most of
the headlines distort rather than reveal the facts.

On the basis of accounts by the above writers, I condense the
following background:

Korea is a country of 85,000 square miles and close to 30,000,-

000 people. It is mostly a land of farmers. What large industries
the Japanese built in twenty-five years of control and exploita-
tion are largely in the north.

In February, 1945, when the USSR agreed at Yalta to join the
Allies in the war on Japan, it was decided to divide Korea into
two zones for purposes of military action. The Russians took the
north, the Americans the south. The following July, at Potsdam,
the 38th parallel was chosen as the "great divide."

Korea was a victim of Japanese aggression, not an enemy. We
would come as liberators, not as conquerors. The military occupa-
tion was to end within a year of victory, followed by about five
years of civilian trusteeship in which all the Big Four Powers,
America, the Soviet Union, Great Britain and China, should help
Korea to her feet.

That was the plan. The reality proved otherwise. The growing
cold war against the Soviet Union made Korea also a base. The
two zones solidified into two areas of military occupation. Fric-
tion continues to grow.

When American troops landed in South Korea, September 7,
1945, thousands of Koreans danced and cheered and shouted:
"Mansai," or "Live a Thousand Years." Within six months surly
Koreans were demanding how soon the Americans would go
home. Within a year great uprisings took place in eighty cities
and in hundreds of farming villages against the "police state"
that the American armed forces kept in power.

When the Americans landed in Korea, the Koreans had already
a de facto government. A "People's Republic" had been declared a
day earlier by a congress of Koreans themselves. General John R.
Hodge, commander of the U. S. armed forces, dissolved this
"People's Republic," and drove most of its members underground.
Two days after landing, Hodge announced to the Koreans— who
had waited a quarter of a century for liberation— that Japanese
officials would temporarily continue to run Korea. Korean dele-
gations waiting to greet Americans were fired on— by Japanese
police!

The Russians pursued an opposite policy. They recognized the
"People's Committees" that the Americans were suppressing. They
encouraged Korean initiative when it took the form of ousting the
Japanese-appointed puppets, dividing the landlords' lands, and

nationalizing the Japanese-owned industry as the "property of the
Korean people/' They especially looked with favor on what they
called "mass organizations,"— farmers' unions, labor unions, wom-
en's associations and unions of youth. The Russian zone in the
north fairly blossomed with such organizations energetically
building their country after their own desire.

From time to time the Americans and Russians held confer-
ences to determine Korea's future. Nothing came of these talks
but increasing bitterness for two years. The Americans insisted on
including pro-Japanese quislings and returned exiles in the pro-
visional government. The Russians refused. The Russians insisted
on including representatives of the trade unions, the farmers'
union and other similar organizations. The USA would not hear
of this.

The talks finally failed both locally in Korea, and directly be-
tween Secretary of State George C. Marshall and Soviet Foreign
Minister V. M. Molotov. Then the USSR proposed that both
Soviet and American troops leave Korea, permitting the Koreans
to run their own show. The United States refused, fearing that
the ideas and methods of North Korea would prevail. It used its
United Nations majority to form an international commission to
observe elections in Korea. The Russians boycotted this com-
mission and the elections took place in the American zone alone.

The United Nations Commission was of two minds about
holding this election. All the members opposed the establishment
of a "national government" in South Korea, lest it "harden and
perpetuate the existing division." The Commission insisted that
fundamental reforms were needed in South Korea before an hon-
est election could be held. It produced a mass of evidence on the
denial of civil rights in that area. The report was delivered to the
"Little Assembly," a part of the United Nations whose exact
legal status has never been clear, and whose power to act on the
matter was questionable. However, on the insistence of the United
States, the "Little Assembly" acted, and ordered that Korean
elections be held unilaterally in the American zone.

The Americans had underestimated the Korean passion for
unity and independence. Much to American surprise, two out of
three of South Korea's outstanding conservative leaders-the very
men whom Americans had picked to run the zone-denounced

the elections as a device for partitioning the country. Kimm
Kiu-sic, chairman of the South Korean Interim Legislative As-
sembly—a post for which he had been handpicked by the Ameri-
cans—resigned his position in protest, and accepted an invitation
from the Koreans of the Soviet zone to come and confer. Kim
Koo, leader of the right-wing terrorists, also boycotted the elec-
tions, and went to the northern conference instead. So did the
representatives of fifty-seven different political parties and social
organizations of South Korea.

The elections were held in South Korea in May, 1948 in the
midst of police terrorism and political murders, and revolts and
uprisings on the left. Right-wing terrorists destroyed newspaper
offices and even attacked the YMCA. Instead of suppressing the
"Youth Corps" for its acts of lawlessness the American military
authorities used 25,000 of its members, armed with lead-tipped
clubs, to supervise the election.

Meanwhile a "National Unity Conference" was held at Pyong-
yang, in North Korea, on April 22, 1948. It was attended not only
by delegates from North Korea, but by 240 delegates from fifty-
seven organizations of South Korea. This "Unity Conference"
declared itself irrevocably opposed to the holding of separate
elections in South Korea and the setting up of a separate govern-
ment there. It declared that Korea could be unified by the Korean
people on the following basis:

1) Withdrawal of the two occupation armies.

2) Organization of a provisional government by a national
political conference.

3) Adoption of a national constitution and formation of a
united national government by representatives elected
through a national election.

The two right wing leaders from the south who attended this
unity conference— Kim Koo and Kimm Kiu-sic, had no difficulty
in getting the reassurance they wanted from the North Koreans
that private capitalism would be permitted. They agreed on a
plank which rejected "private monopolies" but recognized pri-
vate "property rights." They agreed also to permit no dictator-
ship but establish a "democratic government."

It is on this basis that the "Supreme National Assembly "elected
on August 25th by the Korean people, has started to function in

the North, while Syngman Rhee holds power in the American
zone.

So much for the general situation in Korea, attested by many
witnesses.

In the Soviet zone

Korea, which is occupied by the American Army in the south
and the Soviet Army in the north, is the center of acrimonious
controversy on a basis of very few known facts. The few corre-
spondents who have visited South Korea have had glimpses of
great strikes and farmers' uprisings ruthlessly suppressed under
an American Military Government. No correspondent until my
visit, had travelled through the Soviet zone of North Korea at all.

The whole of Korea is thus what is called "iron-curtained"
country. But who, one wonders put the curtain up? After I ap-
plied for a visa to North Korea and got it, I learned that the big
American agencies did not want the news. They told me flatly
that they preferred to get the tales of the Soviet zone from the
refugees who ran away from it, which is about like getting one's
facts about London from Berlin during the war. They assured me
that I myself would get no real facts in the Soviet zone, but
would be watched and handicapped at every turn.

It is therefore necessary to state first how I got my facts in
North Korea. When I reached the airport in Pyongyang, the capi-
tal, a courteous Russian major of the army's press department
offered me his services in getting about. He arranged a room for
me in a hotel with western style beds and food and was useful
for first routine contacts. Then I told him that too much guidance
would invalidate my observations, and that I wanted to go around
alone among Koreans. He got the point; thereafter I made my
own plans.

I travelled from coast to coast across the country, visiting vil-

lages, industrial plants, rest homes of the social insurance system.
I picked up interpreters where I found them; some had learned
English in American missionary schools. I talked freely to farm-
ers, workers, factory managers, women, writers, officials. I got
my facts entirely from Koreans, all of whom seemed glad to talk
and unconstrained. If and when I met Russians they usually
declined to comment on Korean affairs, saying: "It is the Koreans'
country; ask them." I had freer and closer contact with Korean
people in the Russian zone than any correspondent has reported
from the American zone.

My strongest impression was that the Koreans seemed to think
that they were running things. They were even naive about it.
Again and again I was told that the "democratic government,''
the universal suffrage, the land reform, the expanding agriculture,
industry and education was the work, as one farmer put it, "of
our own hands." The Russians, they insisted, were just there be-
cause of a treaty with the Americans, and only to give advice.

"The Russians liberated us from the Japanese," said one, "but
we Koreans did all the rest."

If I remarked that the Russians still handled their foreign con-
tacts and supplied their defense— for North Korea had, in autumn
of 1947, no army of its own*— they would brush this aside as if
foreign relations and army didn't matter. "In all the running of
the country," they would say, "in elections, in police, in courts,
in acts of government, we Koreans are the boss."

The only concentration of Russians was in the capital, Pyong-
yang, and they were not very conspicuous even there. The only
time I saw Russians much in evidence was at the anniversary
celebration of the date of liberation, August 15, 1947. Russian
generals stood beside the President Kim II Sung in the tribune in
Pyongyang to review the floats of factories and organizations and
receive the plaudits of the marching crowd. In the banquet that
followed, Russians and Koreans mingled on equal terms, drank
alternate toasts, sang in turn the folk songs of their people— I was
struck by the fact that the Russians responded with old Ukrain-
ian love songs rather than with Bolshevik propaganda — and

* Since my visit the North Koreans have organized their own army, stating that this was
necessary because of the large force of "right reactionary terrorists," armed by Americans in
South Korea. The Americans were justifying their action by claiming that the North Koreans
had an army of 250,000, but there was no army at all in the north at the time — late 1947.

11 "

danced with each other's womenfolk. It was a natural, joyous
celebration of a joint victory. But it was hard for me to imagine
an American occupying army mingling in such easy equality with
an Asiatic race. That is one of Russia's strong points in Asia.

RUSSIANS AND KOREANS

As far as I could see, the Russians were popular. What was
more important, their popularity had grown. There had been
some complaint against them at first, in 1945, for the first troops
that came in fighting were tough babies from the German front;
liberating armies, even when they are of one's own people are
not easy for a civilian population to take. But these shock troops
were quickly replaced by small numbers of selected experts in
farming, industry, engineering and government, who were dotted
around the country, and whose functions were quite clearly cir-
cumscribed.

A Korean farm inspector on the east coast told me that there
were only ten or twelve Russians in his provincial capital and
three or four in his county seat, and that their job was "just to
give advice."

"For instance I got the job of farm inspector because I know
farming. But I don't know inspecting for no Korean had such
jobs before. So I go and ask one of the Russians how to make
out reports for the government. They have specialists in all lines.
They are good-hearted, simple people who have more experience
of government than we."

This almost amusingly naive attitude towards the Russian oc-
cupation is partly the brag of a newly liberated people but it
must also be credited to the shrewd technique of the Russians.
Unlike the Americans in the south, who were always discussing
which candidate to support and who, as their own chosen chair-
man of the Legislature, Kimm Kiu-sek, himself stated, "were
always interfering in every little thing," the Russians never ap-
pointed or even discussed a single governing official in North
Korea nor have they ever discussed the merits of any proposed
Korean laws. They took very firmly the position that these things
were the Koreans' own affair. The Russians have their own tech-
nique of influence— we shall see as we proceed further— but it is
always in terms of influence, not of domination. I could not find

a Korean who felt that the Russians were "over him" in any sense
at all.

I found in fact an almost mystical belief in the "power of the
Korean people." One farmer actually told me that the landlords
submitted without resistance to the confiscation of their lands,
not because of the Red Army but because "it was a just law and
the will of the Korean people." A factory worker told me that the
"pro-Japanese traitors ran away to the south," not because of the
Russians but because "they feared the wrath of the people." The
North Koreans seem hopeful adolescents in politics who still have
to learn some international facts of life. But their attitude showed
an awakened sense of their own political power.

This North Korean atmosphere is not due to Russian control
of the news reaching the Koreans. Every village has plenty of
radios that can listen to American army broadcasts from Tokyo.
They are ex-Japanese radios especially geared to Tokyo propa-
ganda; they can't get Moscow programs at all. There are also
twenty-four newspapers of three political parties, including one
privately owned paper run merely for profit. There is— if one
can believe the unanimous assurance given me by reporters,
writers and editors at a banquet they threw in my honor— no
censorship in North Korea at all!

"It is not needed in the north, for everyone here is progressive
and patriotic," was the incredible claim they made!

The idyllic, and rather unrealistic self-assurance that one finds
among the North Koreans is due, in my judgment, to the ease
with which farmers got land and workers got jobs and the people
got the Japanese industries, houses and summer villas without
any class struggle. And this in turn is due to the events of the
last month of the war.

When the Red Army entered Korea in early August, 1945,
heavy battles took place in the north, but the Japanese rule re-
mained tranquil in the south, for the Russians stopped by the
Yalta agreement at the 38th parallel, while the Americans came
several weeks after the surrender of Japan, and ruled at first
through the Japanese and then through the Japanese-appointed
Korean officials and police. So naturally all of the pro-Japanese
Koreans— former police and officials, landlords and stockholders
in Japanese companies— fled south to' the American zone.

The flight of all these right-wing elements amazingly simplified
North Korean politics. The Russians did not have to set up any
left-wing government, assuming that they wanted one. They
merely set free some ten thousand political prisoners and said,
by implication: "Go home, boys, you're free to organize."

Under Japanese rule all natural political leaders either served
Japan or went to jail. With the pro-Japanese gone, the ex-jailbirds
became the vindicated heroes of their home towns. They were
all radicals of sorts, including many Communists. Anyone who
knows what a tremendous reception was given to Tom Mooney
when he was released to come home to the workers of San
Francisco, may imagine the effect on the small towns and vil-
lages when ten thousand of these political martyrs came home.
North Korea just naturally took a great swing leftwards, and the
Russians had only to recognize "the choice of the Korean people."

Peoples Committees sprang up in villages, counties, and prov-
inces and coalesced into a provisional government under the
almost legendary guerrilla leader Kim II Sung. Farmers organ-
ized, demanded the land from the landlords and got it in twenty-
one days by a government decree. ( Compared to the land reforms
of other countries, this sounds like a tale of Aladdin s lamp!)
Ninety per cent of all big industry— it had belonged to Japanese
concerns— was handed over by the Russians "to the Korean peo-
ple" and nationalized by one more decree. Trade unions organ-
ized, demanded a modern labor code, and got it without any
trouble from their new government, with the eight-hour day,
abolition of child labor, and social insurance all complete. An-
other decree made women equal with men in all spheres of ac-
tivity and another expanded schools. Then general elections were
held and a "democratic front" of three parties swept unopposed
to power. The natural opposition had all gone south, to be shel-
tered—and put in power— by the Americans.

This is the reason, I think, for the almost exaggerated sense of
"people's power" that the North Koreans express. Their real
class struggle is coming; it hasn't fully hit them yet. The reaction-
aries all fled south, where they are bloodily suppressing strikes.
In North Korea the farmers are building new houses and buying
radios because they no longer pay land rent, while the workers
are taking vacations in former Japanese villas.

The North Koreans assume that this is just what naturally hap-
pens when once you are a 'liberated land." "They aren't yet lib-
erated down south," they told me. "The Americans let those pro-
Japanese traitors stay in power."

The American Military Government of South Korea will
consider this charge fantastic. They have been hunting for rulers
who were not compromised by association with the Japanese.
But the Americans are thinking of a few figureheads at the top,
whom they call the government. The Koreans think of the whole
civil service and police apparatus that served Japan and that re-
mained to serve America with the same brutal technique.

All this apparatus was thrown out in the north by what they
call the "people's rule." And since it was thrown out, all North
Koreans that I met insisted that they were "free."

B# Government and elections

Believe it or not, there is no Communist Party in North Koreal
It was rather a shock to me to discover this, for the American
press cannot refer to this area without labeling it all as "Com-
munist." That press is strictly out of date. Two years ago there
was a Communist Party, a thriving one. It combined with the
equally thriving "Farmers' Party" (People's Party) into the
"North Korean Labor Party," which, as far as I could judge,
seems more like America's last century "Populists" than like to-
day's Russian Communists.

North Korea has had a vivid political history since the Japa-
nese war. While the American press ignorantly dismissed it all
as "totalitarian," or "Russian puppet," the Koreans have been en-
ergetically forming and reforming political parties, civic organi-
zations, and holding elections of various kinds.

The clearest account of what occurred was given me by Lee
Kang Kuk, head of foreign affairs. I checked it from other

sources, but Lee put it most succinctly. He has a trained legal
mind. He was born in Seoul in the Korean royal family, of that
Lee dynasty that Japan overthrew in 1910. ("Some spell it 'Lee,'
some 'Yee,' some 'Rhee,'" he told me, "for the Korean letter
resembles all of these.") He graduated at Seoul University in
1930, studied law in Europe, came home to practice and was
jailed by the Japanese. After the surrender of Japan, Lee lived
for a year in the American zone of South Korea, which had
always been his home. Then he fled north because the Ameri-
cans were going to jail him again.

Lee is thus a European-trained lawyer, familiar with the
politics of both zones and able to explain them in terms of the
Western world. He himself belonged to the "Farmers' Party,"
or "People's Party," under leadership of the veteran patriot
Lyuh Woon Heung.

"After the surrender of Japan," Lee stated, "we organized
People's Committees and set up local provisional governments
all over Korea. We made no division between north and south
for the Americans had not yet come and we did not know that
they would suppress us. On September 6, 1945, three weeks after
the surrender of Japan, we held our first congress in Seoul, of
about one thousand representatives from all parts of the country.
They had been chosen quickly and without full formality, but
they were a fair representation of all the political tendencies
in Korea, except the pro-Japanese. We took the name 'Korean
People's Republic' and set up a 'People's Committee' of seventy-
five members to hold provisional power and prepare for general
elections. We even chose the very reactionary Syngman Rhee
as chairman, because we knew that he would be the American
candidate and we wanted unity with all our allies. Rhee came to
Korea then in an American plane, waited around to see what
the Americans wanted and then decided to repudiate our Teo-
ple's Committee' and rule as dictator with American aid. Since
then, of course, we have no use for him.

"The American armed forces landed two days after we had
declared our 'Korean People's Republic.' We sent delegations to
greet them. They refused to deal with us, choosing rather to
recognize the Japanese rule. The Americans disregarded and
finally suppressed our People's Committees all over their zone.

The Russians recognized these committees as our local provi-
sional governments. Thus began the great split between north
and south.

"The split was not immediate. Not only the first provisional
government but the first political parties and civic organizations
—trade unions, the Farmer's Union, the Union of Youth, the
Women's Union— formed first on a nationwide base. These or-
ganizations became in the north the centers of political life
and the base of government; in the south they were attacked
by right-wing terrorists, assisted by the Japanese-appointed (and
now American-recognized) police.

"Thus all of these organizations and political parties were
finally forced to divide into northern and southern organizations,"
Lee concluded, "since they are suppressed in the south while
in the north they flourish as centers of political life.

"Today there are some 20,000 political prisoners in the Ameri-
can zone," Lee added, "twice as many as under Japan. I myself
had to flee north to escape. It is well that I did, for our beloved
leader Lyuh, head of the Farmers' Party, who remained in the
south and cooperated with the American-installed government,
was assassinated by right-wing terrorists a month ago" (in
June, 1947).

THE POLITICAL PARTIES

There were no organized political parties of any kind when
those first "People's Committees" were formed. There were men
of many political views, but all political organization had been
suppressed under the Japanese, so political parties had still
to take organized legal form. These parties also began on a
nationwide base. The "Democratic Party," small in number
but containing many prominent intellectuals and businessmen,
was quickly formed. It was followed at once by the Commu-
nists. For a time the largest party was the Farmers' Party
(People's Party) but its organization was neither disciplined nor
clearly defined. Finally in North Korea it merged with the
Communists to form the North Korean Labor Party, which is by
far the largest party now.

The second largest party, the Chendoguo, is based on a re-
ligious sect peculiar to Korea. It is a humanist religion, that de-

veloped in Korea before its subjugation by Japan, and continued
under Japanese persecution. It has a wide following among
farmers. It proclaims that I am God and you are God, and we
should behave as such. The Chendoguo is a democratic re-
ligion, since Koreans are as much God as Japanese are. It was
the Chendoguo that led the famous and naive pacifist revolt
in 1919 when hundreds of thousands of Koreans rushed through
the streets in white robes, proclaiming Korean independence
and telephoning to the Japanese police that Korea was inde-
pendent now. They were shot down by guns. The Chendoguo
has thus its heroic tradition of martyrs; most of the political pris-
oners under Japan were either Chendoguo or Communist.

The Democratic Party of North Korea is small in size but in-
fluential, composed largely of business and professional men. The
chief of the health department and the vice-president whom I
interviewed were of this party.

The first acting government in North Korea as a whole was
known as the "Provisional Peoples Committee of North Korea."
It was formed by delegates from the six northern provinces to
handle their joint problems, on February 8, 1946, when it had
become clear that a government for all Korea was impossible
at the time. It was composed of leading citizens of many po-
litical views but was non-partisan in nature, since the political
parties were not yet fully organized.

This government faced many bitter problems.

The problem of food! North Korea was a land of mines and
heavy industry, that had not fed itself for decades. It was de-
prived of food by its separation from South Korea.

The problem of industry! All Korean industry had been tied
to the Japanese war industry, and had also been thoroughly
wrecked by the Japanese before their surrender.

The problem of education! There must be schools in the
Korean language, which had been discouraged under the Japa-
nese.

Under the dynamic leadership of Kim II Sung, who had fought
the Japanese for fourteen years in the mountains north of
Korea, the People's Committee accomplished a whirlwind pro-
gram in a year. The land reform in March, 1946, transferred
more than half of the lands of North Korea to new ownership.

The big industries were received from the Russians and na-
tionalized "for the Korean people." A modern labor law was
adopted; women's equality was proclaimed and schools were
promoted. A furiously active political life went on.

THE FIRST GENERAL ELECTIONS

In November, 1946, North Korea held its first general elections,
to approve or disapprove of what the provisional government
had done. By this time there were three political parties: the
North Korean Labor Party, which was by far the largest; the
Chendoguo and the Democrats. These parties formed a "demo-
cratic front" and put up a joint ticket, the "single-slate ticket" so
criticized in the west.

I argued with the Koreans about it but they seemed to like
their system. Ninety-nine per cent of them came out to vote, and
everyone with whom I talked declared that there was no com-
pulsion but they came because they wanted to.

I discussed the question with a woman miner.

"Did you vote in the general elections?" I asked.

"Of course," she said. "The candidate was from our mine
and a very good worker. Our mine put him up as candidate."

I explained the Western form of elections. What was the use
of voting, I argued, if there was only one candidate. Her vote
could change nothing.

It would be a great shame for the candidate, she replied, if
the people did not turn out in large numbers to vote for him.
He would even fail of election unless at least half of the people
turned out. "Of course I knew that our candidate would be
elected without me," she added with a self-deprecating smile,
"for he is very popular and has plenty of votes without mine.
But I wanted him to have more votes and to know that every-
body is for him, for he is a very good worker from our mine.
Besides, it was our first election, and nobody would stay away!

"We all knew the candidate. We all liked him, we all discussed
him," she concluded. "The political parties held meetings in
our mines and factories and found the people's choices. Then
they got together and combined on the best one, and the people
went out and chose him. I don't see what's wrong with this or
why the Americans don't like it." She paused and then added,

with a touch of defiance. "I don't see what the Americans have
to say about it, anyway!"

Voting technique was simple. There was a black box for
"no" and a white box for "yes." The voter was given a card,
stamped with the electoral district; he went behind a screen and
threw it into whichever box he chose. The cards were alike; no-
body knew how he voted.

Were any candidates black-balled? I learned that there were
thirteen cases in the township elections in which candidates were
turned down by being thrown into the black box. This fact,
which westerners may approve as showing "freedom of voting,"
was regarded with shame by the Koreans since it meant that
"the local parties had poorly judged the people's choice." In
one case a candidate was elected but received eight hundred
adverse votes, organized by a political opponent. He at once
offered to resign, as he had "failed to receive the full confidence
of the voters"; the three political parties all jointly urged him to
accept the post.

The Koreans are familiar with the competitive form of voting
also. This was used in village elections and in many of the town-
ship elections in March, 1947. These elections were largely non-
partisan, nominations being made not by parties but in village
meetings. Secret voting followed, choosing the village govern-
ment from competing candidates.

VOTING IN THE VILLAGE

The black and white boxes were also used in the village com-
petitive elections, in a highly interesting manner. In one village
there were twelve candidates, of whom five were to be chosen
for the Village Committee. Each voter was given twelve cards,
bearing the names of the candidates. He then cast his chosen ones
into the white box and the rejected ones into the black.

"What prevents him from casting them all into the white
box?" I asked.

"Nothing at all, but in that case he is voting against himself,
for his votes do not advance any candidate beyond the others.
He can do exactly as he likes. He can put as many as he likes
in the white box, as many as he rejects in the black box, and
if he wants to, he can take some of the cards home with him,

without either voting for them or against. If he has a single
very strong choice, he will vote for one and against eleven; this
strengthens his single vote, by giving black to all the rest. He
can vote for three or four or six or seven, instead of five. The
laws of mathematics insure that he weakens the strength of each
vote if he votes for more than five. When all the ballots are
counted, and the white checked against the black, we get the
exact preference of the villagers."

Men who could not read and write also voted by this system.
A man who could read would take all twelve cards at once. But
if a voter felt that twelve cards would confuse him, he could
take them one or more at a time, go to the boxes and cast them
and come back for the rest.

I was intrigued by these village elections, which seemed to me
exact and subtle in expressing the voters' choice. The Koreans
with whom I talked, however, considered them rather primi-
tive. To them the single slate, put up by agreement between the
parties, and then ratified or rejected by the people, was a "more
developed form." They argued that it was more likely to secure
the best representatives in government, since the candidates
were first widely discussed in public meetings and then examined
by the leaders of all the parties before being finally proposed.

The election day became a tremendous festival. Priests held
religious services and led congregations to vote. Farmers washed
their hands ceremoniously and put on clean linen "to make gov-
ernment with clean hands." People who were sick in bed had
the boxes taken to them, and their attendants were instructed
to "turn their backs while the citizen voted." One case of a dying
man was recorded who refused to die till he could get his vote
cast! They brought him the boxes; he used his last energy to
cast his ballot, then fell back and succumbed.

SOME LEADING PERSONALITIES

The devotion and zeal shown by the North Koreans in their
first election went far beyond that known in older democratic
lands. No North Korean with whom I talked doubted that he was
living in a liberated country that was ruled by the "people's
power."

Kim II Sung, president of North Korea, is thirty-six years old,

less than half the age of Syngman Rhee, who holds power in the
south. He is likely to outlast all the southern contenders for
power, being not only much younger but much more of a
fighter than they. Kim spent all his adult years from the age of
nineteen fighting the Japanese. He built a guerrilla army of
10,000 men, which defended 'a hill government of more than
300,000 Koreans, holding the Japanese at bay for years.

I talked to President Kim in his bright spacious office in
Pyongyang. He has a quick flashing smile under a mop of
bushy, black hair. He wore the thin white coat that is the usual
Korean summer garment. For more than an hour he told the
story of his life.

President Kim came from a patriotic revolutionary family. His
father was jailed in the uprising of 1919, when young Kim was
seven years old. After the father's release the family moved to
Manchuria, as many Korean patriots did, to escape Japans
control. Young Kim went to school in Manchuria, and got into
trouble for organizing Korean students against the increasing
power of Japan.

When Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931, Kims father was
dead and the lad was nineteen years old. His mother buckled
on him the two pistols of his father, and young Kim went to the
hills to organize a "Korean Patriots' Band." He began with
eighty men, but he captured Japanese arms and increased his
followers until he had ten thousand. He made contact with the
Chinese "Manchurian Volunteers" in their war against Japan,
and he organized an "autonomous Korean government" of five
counties in the Manchurian hills on the Korean border. He
raided across the border into Korea, destroying Japanese garri-
sons. Then he sent agitators into Korean cities and organized
the "Union for Liberation of the Motherland." They had a ten-
point program, including national independence, political democ-
racy, land reform and the eight-hour day. At the age of
twenty-three, young Kim was president of this "Union" and
commander of its armed forces, based on the northern hills.
All of this was ten to fifteen years ago, when America and
Chiang Kai-shek still recognized Japan as the lawful overlord
in Manchukuo.

The Japanese wrote in their press of "that anti-emperor bandit

Kim II Sung." They spread legends about him: that he could
fly, that he could contract the earth and step from one place to a
distant one. They put a price of 200,000 Yen on his head; it was
$100,000 in those days. An assassin killed a Korean and turned
in a head, claiming that it was the head of Kim II Sung. The
Japanese press announced him dead. A year later they ad-
mitted that he was still very much alive.

Kim did not appear publicly in Korea in the first weeks after
Japan's surrender. Many of his band returned, and the people
were asking: 'Where is he?" It was then discovered that Kim
had been travelling about under an assumed name, taking part
in the organization of local governments, in order to get ac-
quainted with his native land, from which he had been an en-
forced exile so many years. A tremendous ovation greeted his
first public appearance in Pyongyang and he was unanimously
chosen first provisional president at the first assembly of dele-
gates from the northern provinces. He was a member of the
Communist Party and is now a member of its successor, the
North Korean Labor Party, which is the largest party in North
Korea.

"The government of North Korea is ready to take part in setting
up a joint democratic government for a united Korea," Kim II
Sung told me. "The people of South Korea also desire this, but
a wave of terrorism, arrests and murders in the south prevents
the expression of the people's will."

He cited the assassination of the aged leader of the Farmers'
Party, Lyuh Woon Heung, who had been one of the creators
of that early short-lived "Korean People's Republic," whom the
Americans had then installed as a left-wing balance in their right-
wing government, and who had been killed by terrorists just two
months earlier than this interview. Kim claimed that, in July,
1947, six weeks before our talk, when the Joint Commission of
Americans and Russians was met in Seoul by a great popular
demonstration, the police dispersed the crowd and made arrests
in the meeting. Later, in August, reporters of left-wing papers
were arrested as they left a press conference with the Soviet
delegate to the Joint Conference in Seoul.

"Despite these difficulties created by the reactionary and pro-
Japanese terrorists," said President Kim, "the Korean people

will eventually attain a united, democratic government. For this
is the Korean peoples will."

CHURCHMEN LEADING FIGURES

It will startle my readers to know that the next two highest
figures in the North Korean government-after the Communist
Kim II Sung-are two Protestant preachers, both the product of
American missionary schools! Vice-president Heong Ki Doo is
a Methodist minister, while the Secretary of the Committee,
Kang Lang Ook, is a Presbyterian minister. Both of them still
preach on Sundays to large congregations, and attend to their
government business during the week.

Secretary Kang remembers a little English from the days when
he studied it twenty-three years ago under an American mission-
ary named Moffett. It was hard at first to learn what denomina-
tion he belonged to, for he did not know the word "Presbyterian"
in English, while the Korean name is not the same. Finally he
said: "Calvin, Calvin," and the picture was clear. Kang taught
for many years in a mission school and then completed the
theological course, becoming a fully ordained pastor in 1940. He
then experienced first hand the Japanese suppression of Ameri-
can missions, which grew as the war developed.

Today Pastor Kang preaches to a large Pyongyang church.
He belongs to the Democratic Party. He is better known, how-
ever, as one of the creators of the "Union of Protestant Faith,"
organized to take part in "progressive politics." He believes that
churches should take part in promoting democracy and progres-
sive laws. He wanted to know whether "preachers do this in
America," and was much pleased when I replied: "Some of them
do."

"Under the Japanese," said Kang, "religion and politics had
to be very separate. Some people think they should be separate
still. But I think that all citizens and organizations in a demo-
cratic state should take part in promoting good laws."

Kangs "Union of Protestant Faith" had enrolled about one-
third of all Protestants in North Korea at the time of my visit.
It included a large proportion of the pastors. "Many of them
take a leading role in local governments, being elected to the
People's Committees," he said. Kang regretted, however, that

the Protesants on the whole are "more reactionary than the
average run of the population." This, he thought, was because
they are more wealthy than the average Korean.

There were many Protestant landlords, Kang told me. He was
indignant at the way they "ran away to the south and told lies
about religious persecution in the Soviet zone."

"It wasn't religion but land that worried them," he said. "Ac-
tually, religion is now free for the first time in forty years. The
Japanese took our churches for offices and warehouses, but the
Red Army gave them back in August, 1945. Now the churches
belong to the believers whose number is growing."

If any dispute arises over church property, Kang told me, the
Red Army protects the believers. During the elections, for in-
stance, when enthusiastic citizens were posting pictures of can-
didates, some people in Kandon County wanted to put these on a
church, which was the best placed building there. The believers
objected to this, and the non-believers called them "undemo-
cratic," unwilling to take part in the elections of their country.
Both sides at last sought the advice of the local Red Army
commandant. The latter supported the church members, stat-
ing that they alone could decide whether the placing of election
banners "insulted their religion," and that if it did, no outsiders
had the right to put anything on their church.

Kang smiled when I asked what position the Protestant clergy
had taken towards the land reform. "Some of them spoke pri-
vately against it, because they had landlords in their congrega-
tion, but none of them dared oppose it very openly."

"Were they afraid of the government?" I asked.

Kang was shocked. "Oh, no, they were afraid of what the
farmers in their congregations would say. The farmers would
say that they went against religion. Does not the Bible tell us:
'Give to the poor and 'He who does not work, shall not eat?
How then could a pastor openly oppose the land reform? He
would be going against the Bible!"

Kang had suffered martyrdom for his convictions. A year ago
a terrorist gang from South Korea threw a bomb into his home,
killing his son and daughter and wounding both Kang and his
wife. His face grew grim as he told me about this: He has
kept right on fighting for "religion and progressive politics."

• Land for the farmers

For the first time in many decades North Korea grows all its
own food. It has to. It is shut off from its natural source of food
in South Korea by the American-versus-Russian occupation and
the 38th parallel.

North Korea is mountainous country where the Japanese de-
veloped mines, water-power and war industries, feeding them
from the farm areas of South Korea and Manchuria. But Man-
churia is today cut off by the Chinese civil war— while the
Americans refuse rice from South Korea. So North Korea has to
feed itself. And does!

It was not easy the first year. The harvest of 1946 was a poor
one, so North Korea tried to get food from South Korea in pay-
ment for half a billion kilowatt hours of electric power they
had supplied by that time from their great power plant on the
Yalu River. (It has grown to more than a billion kilowatt hours
now in 1948. ) They also tried to get rice in payment for irriga-
tion water which the north sent into the south to water some
60,000 acres. In both of these efforts they failed. So the North
Koreans ate scantily on about one pound of grain per person
per day, and many people— chiefly city folk without land who
couldn't get on the ration list— went south in search of cheaper
food.

By summer of 1947, the time of my visit, the land reform was
well established, the cultivated area had been increased some
17.5 per cent over that of 1945 and the fields were better fertil-
ized and better worked. So the big news in autumn of 1947
was that North Korea could feed itself properly on a harvest
of two million metric tons, which was about a pound and a
quarter of grain per person per day. The farmers incidentally
had profited handsomely from the land reform and the high
food prices. And hundreds of thousands of people were moving
from South Korea into the north.

It began with the land reform. This threw the landlords out
in twenty-three days and relieved three-fourths of the North

Korean farmers from a crushing burden of rent. This was fol-
lowed by the "production drive/' with a Farmers' Bank making
cheap loans for seed and fertilizer. These two factors, together
with the incentive of a pretty good price for food in the open
market, stimulated the expansion of the farms. The cultivated
area in the three northernmost provinces (whose boundaries
have not changed and whose figures are therefore comparable
with those of Japanese days ) show an increase in the cultivated
area from 3,015,500 acres in 1945 to 3,549,250 acres in 1947, a
growth of 17.5 per cent in two years, which would be remark-
able in any land. Even more striking was the increase in the
farmers' standard of living, now that they no longer pay rent.

In the days of Japan's rule, by official figures of 1943, there
were some three and a half million farming families in all Korea,
owning some 8,750,000 acres of cultivated land. That's less than
three acres per family. But they didn't have it equally. Some 62
per cent of the land was in the hands of landlords. Most of the
soil tillers were share-croppers, and their rent was from 50 to
80 per cent of their crop.

To be precise, of all those three and a half million farming
families, some 17.3 per cent owned all the land that they tilled.
Some 52 per cent were fully sharecroppers, 21 per cent owned
small bits of land but share-cropped additional land to keep go-
ing, while 4 per cent were farmhands.

Landlordism grew worse in the decades of Japanese rule. The
Japanese took for themselves the land of Korean feudal lords;
they put in irrigation systems and charged the farmers more
than they could pay; then the Japanese-owned banks took over
the lands on mortgages. Japan used Korea as her granary. Of a
total rice harvest of 18 million "koku" in 1938, 11 million, or 60
per cent, went to Japan. The Japanese ate seven times as much
rice per capita as the Koreans, condemning the latter to eat
rice huskings and cheaper grains such as kaoliang.

Under the Japanese rule there were many farmers' uprisings.
According to Japanese sources, 15,000 insurgents were killed
and 10,000 jailed in uprisings between 1905 and 1907. Several
hundred thousand Koreans took part in the Great Uprising on
March 1, 1919, led by the religious pacifist sect, the Chendoguo.
Of these 300,000 were arrested, beaten up or killed by the Japa-

nese police. Yet farmers' uprisings again took place in 1930
and 1933, and were again suppressed.

The Japanese overlords knew that they were sitting on a vol-
cano in the Korean rural areas. So they quickly and ruthlessly
jailed anyone who spoke a word of discontent or freedom. Al-
most everyone of influence in North Korea today has thus a
prison past.

Lee Shun Kin, present minister of agriculture, came from a
prosperous farming family which was able to give him an educa-
tion in Tokyo University. Nonetheless he landed in jail twice,
a total of seven years. His record is just an average one among
Korean patriots.

PRESIDENT OF THE FARMERS' UNION

The real jail-bird hero of Korea's farmers is Kang Chin-kuan.
He is president today of the Farmers' Union of North Korea,
elected in tribute to his heroic past. From Kang's story one gains
a picture of the Korean farmers' struggle through the years.

Kang and Minister Lee came to see me, to tell me the tale of
Korea's farmers. The two men were an interesting contrast.
Minister Lee had the quick brain of the educated man, the gradu-
ate in political economy, the statistician. Sixty-two year old Kang
said little; he listened, considered and nodded. He has had little
chance for education. But he knows and voices the needs and
hopes of the farmers. His dark oval face expressed not only his
own unusual endurance, but the suffering tenacity of genera-
tions of Korean share-croppers.

Old Kang was born in 1885 in a share-cropper family. He was
a share-cropper all his life. He never went to school. At the age
of fifteen he married. "My grandfather wanted to see my bride
before he died, so they got me a wife," he said. "There was no
ceremony. They just got her for nothing from a family that
couldn't feed her." The short and bitter bridal of the poor!

Kang took part in the great 1919 uprising. When the uprising
was crushed, he fled to Manchuria and continued to organize
farmers. The soldiers of the warlord Chang Tso-lin caught him
and gave him to the Japanese in 1921. He was in jail till 1940.
"In a tiny cell," he said, "with a high-up grated window." Some-
times they took him under a guard to work.

"Could you ever talk to anyone?"
"Of course not," Kang laughed.

In 1940 they let him out as a man who was broken, no longer
a danger to Japan. For Kang's limbs had grown atrophied in
jail, and he could no longer walk nor even stand but only crawl.
He was carried to his village home and dumped there. After a
year he was walking a little. But even before he could walk he
was doing illegal propaganda among the share-croppers again.

THE LAND REFORM

One of the first acts of the newly formed provisional govern-
ment was the Land Reform Law. The rapid organization of
"People's Committees," described in the previous section, went
hand in hand with the organization of Farmers' Unions. Farm-
ers formed some 60 per cent of the citizenry in North Korea,
and they were also 60 per cent of the membership of the govern-
ing "People's Committees." The Provisional People's Committee
for North Korea, under Kim II Sung as president, took power
on February 8, 1946, stating that its chief task was "to fulfill
the farmers' demands."

At once the Farmers' Union of North Korea, which had grown
by that time to 1,500,000 members, held a congress at Pyong-
yang, the North Korean capital, and demanded land reform on
the basis of "land to the tiller." Two days later, on March 5, in
the midst of a storm of letters and resolutions from farmers, the
provisional government passed the Land Reform Law. It was
announced on March 7 over the radio. Some 197,000 organizers
were sent at once to the rural districts, where some 11,500 local
committees were elected by landless farmers to apportion the
newly acquired lands. The distribution was completed in twenty-
three days, by April 1, 1946. The farmers, who demanded land
in the first week in March, began their spring plowing in April
on their newly acquired lands.

Probably no land reform in all history has been accomplished
so swiftly and with so little turmoil.

The Land Reform Law was sweeping. It confiscated all Japa-
nese lands, whether public or private, all landlords' lands, if
the landlord owned more than twelve acres, or if, owning less,
he systematically rented the land and did not work it himself,

all lands of churches and monasteries that exceeded twelve acres.
The lands were given to village committees to distribute on the
basis of the number of people in each farm family, and also with
reference to the number of adult workers. Landlords also might
get land to till but not more than twelve acres, and this must be
in another county where they would have no traditional influ-
ence. Of the 70,000 landlords in North Korea, 3,500 took advan-
tage of this permission.

Some 724,522 farming families got land, 72 per cent of all the
farmers of North Korea. Of these 442,975, or more than half,
had been landless share-croppers or farmhands, while the rest
had possessed small bits of land supplemented by share-cropping.
Of the 4,950,000 arable acres in North Korea, some 2,625,000-
more than half— was thus distributed.

Before the land reform the average holding of poor farmers
was half an acre; after the reform it was five acres. Before the
land reform over half a million farming families could not feed
themselves till the next harvest, but were forced to borrow
food at usurious rates. After the reform, every farming family
could feed itself. Even though 1946 was a bad crop year be-
cause of excessive rains, the farmers had much more food than
formerly. They now gave 25 per cent of their crop to the govern-
ment in tax, instead of the former 50 to 80 per cent to the land-
lords in rent.

UNREST IN THE SOUTH

Nothing could keep the news of this land reform from seeping
into the rural areas of South Korea, where, under the American
occupation, the landlords still held the lands. This was why
the general strike in South Korea in autumn of 1946, which be-
gan with the city workers, spread swiftly into the rural areas,
until there were farmers and workers demonstrations and up-
risings in eighty centers, put down bloodily by the South Korean
police, with the help of the American military.

An air of success spread over North Korea in autumn of
1947. It was especially noticeable on the farms. Almost every
village had extended its sown area and had worked its fields
better— with government loans for seed and fertilizer. The
weather had been favorable and there was a good crop.

My trip from coast to coast across the peninsula showed every
inch of arable land well sown. Fields came so close to the rail-
road that a casual glance through the window gave the illusion
that we were riding over the crops. Rice fields were thick
with sharp blades of that dark blue-green color that shows well-
fertilized soil. One heard that the fields in South Korea had gone
yellow for want of the fertilizer, which comes from a chemical
works in North Korea. This fertilizer plant once supplied South
Korea and sent fertilizer to Manchuria and Japan as well. At
any time in the past two years North Korea would gladly have
exchanged fertilizer with the South for food. Something always
got in the way. Perhaps the Americans needed the surplus
South Korean rice for Japan, or perhaps there wasn't any surplus.
North Koreans wouldn't know. Anyway, unable to trade it to
the South, they put all the fertilizer on their own fields, with good
result.

A VILLAGE IN THE EAST

Let us take two sample villages that I visited, one near the east
coast and one near the west coast, not far fom Pyongyang.

Driving out from Wonsen on the east coast, with a Korean
farm inspector, I came to the village Shinchunghi, a cluster of
thatched-room clay houses buried under green vegetation. We
took off our shoes to enter the village committee-room, for the
floor was of soft mats. We talked here with Pak I Ho, village
chairman, a man in his early thirties who was "head of a family
of twelve." These were not all his own children, but included his
parents, brothers and brothers' wives, as Oriental families do.

This village, said Pak, had 150 households, with 278 acres of
"wet field" suitable for rice and 310 acres of "dry field" suitable
for wheat. It thus averaged about four acres per family. Before
the land reform, only twelve families could live from their own
land. Fifteen were part-tenants, owning in all fifty acres, but
renting more. Thirteen were landless laborers. One hundred
and ten families were share-croppers. All of the landlords lived
outside the village, some in the county town, some in the pro-
vincial capital.

"There had been many small revolts by tenants against land-
lords" said Pak. "Usually these took the form of a demand by the

around, nodded as he mentioned each of the new things in turn.
There was the land reform, and the teaching of children and illit-
erates— "Formerly only the rich studied but now we have forty
children and sixty grown-ups going to school." There was the
electricity and the radios. And taxes were of many kinds for-
merly but now are only three: for the government, for the prov-
ince and for the school. Then there are the secret elections and
the right of everyone to be elected. 'We have a People's Com-
mittee of five elected by the villagers, instead of the former
'gugen appointed from the county. Then there is this Women's
Union that is getting equality."

"Of all these new tilings which is the most important?" I
asked, while a dozen villagers clustered close to hear.

The chairman considered for a moment and then answered
with decision: "The land reform— and the free speech."

Such are the changes in land ownership and in daily living
that have made the farmers of North Korea a solid bulwark of
the new regime.

With the factory workers

When stkikes occur in the American zone of South Korea, one of
the workers demands is usually for a Labor Code like that in the
Soviet zone of North Korea. This naturally annoys the American
Military Government, which sees in such strikes the work of the
Communists. The demand, however, raises the question: What
are the labor conditions in North Korea?

All the industrial workers I met in North Korea like to brag
that they were the first workers in the Far East to enjoy a "fully
modern labor law, with the eight-hour day, collective bargaining
and social insurance." Their claim is not strictly correct for the
Liberated Areas of China and Manchuria just over their border
have an equally good labor code. Nonetheless the North

Koreans have the right to feel proud of their achievements. In
one respect they can claim to surpass their Chinese brothers—
their well-equipped social insurance. The Japanese had more
health resorts and summer villas in Korea than in China and the
present Department of Labor has taken them over. The North
Koreans have also a larger amount of publicly owned industry
than the nearby Chinese, for Korea was highly industrialized
by the Japanese.

Minister of Labor Oh Ki-sup, with whom I went on a four-day
trip to health resorts, is one of those typical patriots who spent
the greater part of his adult life in Japanese jails. At the age of
sixteen he joined the underground movement for Korean inde-
pendence. He has spent thirteen years and eight months in
jail. In telling about his imprisonment he mentioned casually
what seemed to me its most amazing feature. He had organized
four revolutionary study circles inside four different jails and one
outside at a time when he was in "solitary" confinement!

Minister Oh's account of how he did it throws sharp light on
the inner weakness of imperialism. The facade of Japanese con-
trol seemed imposing and strong, but there were weak places
in it ready to crack. The night watchmen and night warders in
the jails were Koreans, because the Japanese conquerors dis-
dained these least desirable jobs. Prisoner Oh played upon the
patriotism and also upon the cupidity of these jailers. He would
find some watchman who would take messages to his friends
outside, either through anti- Japanese patriotism or for the money
the outside friends would give. On this slender basis Oh built
his study groups, one in each of the jails to which he was trans-
ferred. In all of this time Prisoner Oh was never permitted
legally to have a pencil or a scrap of paper. He saved bits of toilet
paper— of which he was allowed two pieces a day— and he had
a tiny sliver of hidden lead that served as a pencil. Through
such difficulties the revolutionary movement of the Korean pa-
triots grew. Prisoner Oh managed to organize illegally right up
to the day of national liberation.

As soon as the Red Army arrived and liberated Oh and the
other political prisoners, the liberated men hastened to the fac-
tories and workshops where they were known— others of course
were hurrying to the farms— and called workers' meetings. These

workers' meetings at once took part in setting up city and
provincial government; they also organized trade unions, first by
factories, then by cities, counties and provinces.

There was a fury of organization throughout Korea in those
first months of Japans defeat. By November, 1945, the All-
Korean Federation of Trade Unions was organized, covering both
north and south. Four months later the Korean trade unions
reluctantly divided themselves into a North Korean Labor Fed-
eration and a South Korean Labor Federation. "It was the
American policy in South Korea that compelled this division,"
said Minister Oh.

"In the first months after Japan's defeat all Korea felt united,"
he continued. "The 38th parallel did not seem to be a barrier
to the Koreans but only a temporary convenience of the occupy-
ing powers, until they should impose their peace terms on Japan.
We Koreans organized our trade unions, farmers' unions, local
governments on an all-Korean basis. The first headquarters of
the All-Korean Federation of Trade Unions was at Seoul, in
South Korea, while North Korea had only a branch office. Then
the American Army began to suppress trade unions in the south.
The chairman of the All-Korean Federation was imprisoned in
Seoul. Meanwhile in the north the trade unions grew rapidly,
operated openly, had collective agreements with all factories, took
part in the production plans for industry and put up labor can-
didates for government. In the south they had to work on a semi-
legal or a completely underground basis. These different condi-
tions forced a separation of the trade unions into northern and
southern federations."

There were some 430,000 workers in North Korea, of whom
380,000 were members of trade unions, according to Minister Oh.
This number does not include seasonal workers such as fisher-
men, lumbermen and building workers who farm in summer and
take odd jobs in winter. Nor does it include farm laborers,
because the land reform turned these into farmers owning their
own land. The largest trade union is that of miners with 52,000
members, then transport workers and chemical workers with
some 45,000 each. About one hundred thousand belong to unions
of white collar workers including office workers, teachers, sani-
tary workers and so on.

"What do you do about unemployment?" I asked the minister.

"There isn't any," he replied. "There is, on the contrary, a great
shortage of workers because we have so much reconstruction to
do and we are expanding our industry. We need thirteen million
more work-days than we can count on for just the reconstruction
of roads and bridges. This means that in this reconstruction alone
we could absorb 45,000 more workers."

Many workers, said Minister Oh, were migrating from the
American zone of South Korea into North Korea because of the
unemployment in the South and the better chance of jobs in the
North.

NATIONALIZATION OF INDUSTRY

The labor conditions of North Korea are built on publicly
owned industries. The nationalization of industry was a rela-
tively simple problem for 90 per cent of all big industry belonged
to Japanese concerns. The Japanese made of Korea a military
base against China and the USSR. They constructed strategic
railways and highways, a powerful war industry and big power
plants that supplied not only Korea but part of Manchuria with
electric power.

All of this Japanese-owned industry was seized by the Rus-
sian victors and then turned over to the Koreans. By a decree
passed August 10, 1946, by the North Korean provisional gov-
ernment, all industry "belonging to Japanese and traitors" was
nationalized. There was nobody to oppose this decree for the
Japanese and their supporters had either gone back to Japan
or fled south to the American zone. The Korean people of the
north thus came into possession of the banks, railways, commu-
nications and 90 per cent of all big industry more simply and
with much less turmoil than usually attends such nationalization.

Two serious problems at once confronted the industries. First,
all industry had been hitched to Japan. All Korean plants pro-
duced parts and semi-finished products that were sent to Japan
for completion. There was not a single finished product in all
Korean industry. Now that Korea had become independent, her
industry must be remodelled and reconverted from a war indus-
try serving Japan to a peace-time industry serving the needs of
the Koreans.

The second problem was posed by the fact that the Japanese
destroyed everything they could before they surrendered. The
Korean workers' underground does not seem to have been strong
enough to prevent this. The Japanese wrecked 80 per cent of all
locomotives on the railways, and damaged the rolling stock, re-
pair shops and even the right of way. Some 64 mines were flooded
and 178 were otherwise made unusable. All blast furnaces and
coke batteries and most of the open-hearth furnaces in the coun-
try's iron and steel works were destroyed by the simple process
of letting them cook with the charge inside.

I visited, for instance, the largest iron and steel works in the
country, the Kensiko Steel Works, located a short distance north
of Pyongyang. Under the Japanese it had three big blast fur-
naces, three open-hearth furnaces and employed seven or eight
thousand workers making pig iron, steel, sheet steel, rolled steel
and coke for the Mitsubishi concern of Japan. At the time of my
visit there were some 6,800 workers but most of these were still
engaged in rebuilding the works. All the three blast furnaces and
the three open-hearth furnaces, they told me, had been spoiled by
allowing the molten metal in them to cool and harden. When I
asked why the Korean workers had not prevented this, they re-
plied that the Koreans had held unskilled jobs and had not been
in charge of the technical processes.

HUGE CHEMICAL PLANT SAVED

The big chemical works in Jeungnam was, by contrast, saved
by its workers. This plant was the largest industrial enterprise
in Korea, employing 20,000 workers. Among other things, they
made one of the constituent elements of the atom-bomb on which
the Japanese were experimenting. When the Japanese surren-
dered, they planned to blow this factory up with its own explo-
sives. There was, however, an alert underground Korean trade
union in the chemical works. The workers discovered the plot,
and expelled the Japanese from the works in an armed struggle
lasting four hours. They then located the explosives, which had
been set with time fuses, and threw them into the sea.

"If those had gone off, they would have wiped out not only the
entire works, but a city of 150,000 people," I was told by a group
of those chemical workers whom I met in a seaside health resort.

They added that, as soon as the Japanese were expelled, the
trade union came out into the open, set up guards over the fac-
tory and took an active part in electing the local government.

The new labor code was passed June 24, 1946, some six weeks
before the industries were nationalized. It provided the eight-
hour-day— seven in hazardous work— and two weeks vacation
with pay for ordinary workers, but one month vacation for youths
and those in hazardous trades. (Under the Japanese the work
day sometimes ran to fifteen or sixteen hours and there were no
paid vacations. ) The new law forbade child labor, gave women
equal pay for equal work and introduced a safety code.

One of the most appreciated innovations was the Social Insur-
ance. It began to function in January of 1947. Nearly 200,000
workers were given free medical treatment in the first six months
of the year. Many houses and summer villas formerly owned by
the Japanese were turned over to the Ministry of Labor and made
available to the Korean workers through the Social Insurance.
By summer of 1947, the time of my visit, the Social Insurance
possessed 85 summer villas with 1,400 beds, and expected to give
free vacations to 25,000 workers during the season.

Many workers' families also received new houses through the
trade unions, for the homes of the former Japanese owners, man-
agers, and technical staff were turned over to the workers and
distributed through the unions to those who made special rec-
ords or had special needs.

AT A HEALTH RESORT

I spent four days in a health resort of the Social Insurance. I
went swimming three times in one day on one of the finest
beaches in the world. It was on the east coast and the water was
warm with gently sloping sands and the charm of a tropical
beach without the dangerous sea animals and plants of the
tropics. Two years earlier this beach with its villas belonged to
the ruling Japanese; Koreans were not permitted to use it. To-
day the villas belong to the Ministry of Labor and are used
through the Social Insurance for the vacations of industrial
workers.

Five shy but self-possessed women came to my room when I
asked for an interview with some women workers. There were

two weavers from the Hamheung Textile Mills, a young spinner
from the silk filature mill of Pyongyang, and a fifteen-year-old
orphan—she looked barely twelve— who lived in a factory dormi-
tory, worked six hours daily in the factory and went for two
hours to the factory school.

One woman of thirty-six sat demurely looking at the ocean in
a figured white silk gown. I postponed interviewing her, for she
looked such a typical housewife that I thought her the wife of
some official or engineer. When I asked her what she did, I got
a shock.

"I am a gold miner," she said, "working three hundred feet
underground. I am a skilled worker; I operate a drill/'
"Isn't that heavy work?" I asked.

She smiled a bit apologetically and replied that it was. "But
not as heavy as the work I used to do. Under the Japanese I
loaded ore and pushed the cars, working thirteen hours or more
a day. Now, as pneumatic drill operator, I work only seven hours
and get very good pay."

Lee Mai Hwa was her name. She had worked many years in
the mines. But she had only been a driller for one year; under
the Japanese rule women were not allowed to learn the higher
skills. She was proud of her job.

"How did you get this work?" I asked. "Did you replace a
man?"

"I got my job because we are expanding production and be-
cause I studied the work. Under the Japanese we had only 1,000
workers in our mine, but now we have 2,500." Among the 2,500
workers, Lee said, there were 206 women but only two of these
were drillers. Lee Mai Hwa was the first.

Lee was proud of her wages. They are twice what her husband
gets. He works for the same mine but on the surface. He sharpens
drills. He makes at most 2,000 yen a month.

"But I made 4,000 last month," bragged Lee. "For women now
get equal pay for equal work and my work is very skilled ... I
also set many records. Formerly a driller drilled one car of ore
a day, but once, for a record, I drilled twenty cars in one dayl
It takes four and even six loaders to load all the ore I drill."

"You must be the head of your family," I commented.

"That's what my husband says," replied the complacent Lee.

"Is he jealous?"

"No, he's proud," she assured me.

I inquired into her standard of living. Just what can she buy
with the 6,000 yen that she and her husband make?

Under the Japanese, said Lee, the food was very bad. "Now I
get rationed food, 750 grams of rice a day for my ration and the
same amount for my husband. We are both first category work-
ers." This rationed rice costs only five yen a kilo. So the basic
rice food costs only 230 yen a month from the family wage of
6,000 yen.

"We have a good house now," Lee added. "It formerly be-
longed to a Japanese official. It has a warmed floor." (This is
the Korean way of heating good houses.) "We have two big
rooms and four closet-rooms and a little hall."

"Did you ever have a nice silk dress like that under the Japa-
nese?" I asked.

"Oh, never," smiled Lee with a touch of amusement, stroking
her white, silk gown.

Lee also told me about the general elections held in her town
where the candidate was "a worker from our mine." But this I
have given in the chapter on government and elections.

LABOR HEROES

The modern labor law and the nationalization of industry
aroused loyalty and energetic devotion among North Korea's
workers. When they understood that the industries were now the
property of the Korean people, they began to work like mad
to repair them.

At the Seisein Spinning Mills the workers contributed nearly
9,000 hours of voluntary labor to repair the mill. The Tonchen
wharves were rebuilt nearly 200 days before the date called for
in the plan.

At the Kensiko Steel Works they introduced to me proudly
two "labor heroes," Chi Sam Zon and Lee Sam Zon, who had re-
mained in the shop for thirteen days so that the rolling mill
would not stop.

"We Koreans have very few technicians or skilled workers,"
they explained, "so we had to stay on the job until we could
train in substitutes."

'What is the biggest change in your lives made by the libera-
tion?" I asked a group of workers in the Kensiko Works. They dis-
cussed it among themselves and combined on these three answers.

"First: Formerly we worked thirteen hours a day and had no
time to think; now we work eight hours and we know all kinds
of things about the world.

"Second: Formerly we ate no rice but only husks of soya
beans; now we have a good rice ration of a pound and a half
daily and we live in better houses too.

"Third: Formerly we had no voice in anything; now we have
a voice in management through our trade union and a voice in
government through our votes/'

These are the changes that have made the industrial workers
of North Korea a solid bulwark of the new regime.

• And now?

And now that I have returned to America, and look back at
North Korea from the events of today, as shown in the American
press, I think that my trip to that country throws light on some
of the recent reports.

In May of 1948, Korea broke once more into headlines because
the Northern Koreans had shut off the electric power from South
Korea. According to the American press, it was all the fault of the
Russians. The Russians had shut it off. General Hodge, com-
mander of the American armed forces, demanded that the Rus-
sians turn the electricity on again. When the Russians referred
him to the Koreans, he appealed to Moscow. One more battle in
the cold war.

Yet the facts were really very simple. General Hodge and the
American press chose to shut their eyes to them, but the facts
were there. The great power stations on the Yalu River were
built by the Japanese. The Russians seized them as war booty and
42

promptly gave them "to the Korean people" in the summer of
1946. The provisional government of North Korea— known as
the "People s Committee of North Korea"— operated them, send-
ing power to North and South Korea and far into Manchuria, to
Mukden, Port Arthur and Dairen.

Two years went by. South Korea didn't pay for this electric
power. Mukden paid its bills, Dairen paid its bills, North Korea
paid its bills, but the American occupation in South Korea did
not pay. There were two reasons for this: a technical reason and
a top-flight political reason. But even the technical reason was
flavored with politics.

The technical reason was that the North Koreans demanded
payment in electric equipment from the United States. General
Hodge offered to pay in dollars, but how could the North Ko-
reans use those dollars when the American Congress was boycot-
ting Soviet trade? North Korea was perhaps the one spot on earth
that scorned dollars. "Give us electric equipment to repair the
power plants," they said.

The Americans offered nylon stockings and tobacco and Holly-
wood movies. But the North Koreans stood pat on getting elec-
tric equipment. The reason was plain: so much electric develop-
ment was going on in all the farming villages of North Korea
that they simply couldn't spare power for South Korea unless
they got more equipment. It was as simple as that.

The top-flight political reason was that General Hodge
insisted on treating the Russians as the owners of the power
plant, while the Russians insisted that it had belonged to "the
Korean people" for a couple of years. General Hodge does not
want to admit that the North Koreans have a legal existence,
even as power-plant owners. It is American policy to consider
that only the South Koreans have a government administration,
while the North Koreans are "Russian puppets." Hodge is like
an industrialist who sticks on the point of recognizing the union,
but the union also stays pat till it gets recognized.

At the time of my visit to North Korea, August, 1947, South
Korea had run up a bill of some 700 million kilowatt hours. (It
is more than one billion today.) Any ordinary capitalist electric
company would long since have cut such a customer off. I asked
the North Koreans why they didn't. The answer is revealing:

"You see, the Russians gave the power plant to 'the Korean
people.' That means also the Koreans of the south. We north-
erners have the management of it, but the power belongs to all
Korea and not to us alone. We do not wish to injure our fellow
Koreans. We only want them to pay their bill. We want them to
pay with equipment, so that we can supply more customers. We
are giving them time because their situation is complicated. But
some day we'll have to shut off the power, if they don't pay."

In April, 1948, after South Korea had enjoyed two and a half
years of electric power without paying, the North Korean radio
announced that the power would be shut off unless some respon-
sible people from South Korea came north to discuss the bill.
General Hodge refused to recognize this "irresponsible radio,"
as representing the owners of the power plant. He continued to
curse the Russians. So the North Koreans shut off the power and
waited for their pay.

That is the simple tale of the power plant, which the American
press views as a new Moscow intrigue.

AN INCIDENT EXPOSED

I also note in the press the continuous friction over a certain
irrigation dam. On May 26, an American soldier was wounded
near the border of the Soviet zone. The headline read: "Russ
Wound American." The news story made no mention of any Rus-
sians present, but said the American was wounded by "shots from
the Russian zone." A careful further reading disclosed that the
American had been in a jeep riding along the frontier, near a
dam of an irrigation project that straddles the two zones.

Now I think I can throw some light on that incident. When I
was in North Korea, they told me that there was an irrigation
project in North Korea which supplied water to irrigate 60,000
acres in South Korea.

"We've tried for two years to get paid for that water, but we
haven't succeeded yet," they said. They did not blame the South
Korean farmers; they blamed the "friction between the zones."

Months later I read a news item to the effect that "the Rus-
sians" had turned off the water for a place in South Korea, and
that angry South Korean farmers were trying to smash the North
Korean dam, which was guarded closely by North Korean con-

stabulary. Since every village in North Korea is today increasing
its cultivated fields, and especially its irrigation, it is clear that
the water which once went south-and wasn't paid for-is now
being used in the north, while the southern farmers angrily try to

get it back. . . . ,

If an armed American in a jeep drives up to an irrigation dam
over which such a local fight is going on, he is looking for trouble.
There is no proof that any Russian was within a hundred miles
when the man was wounded. Some over-suspicious Korean was
protecting his dam. Or was he so over-suspicious after all?

WHO RAN FROM WHERE

-But if everything is so good in the Soviet zone, why do they
run away to the American zone?" is a question asked me, both at
lectures and by the press.

The answer is, as far as I can give it, that there has been big
migration both ways. The first migration went south. It con-
sisted of pro-Japanese officials, former police, former landlords
holders of shares in Japanese companies and also, I imagine, ot
city people without ration books who found the cost of food very
high that first year in the north and thought it would be cheaper
in the south. No farmers seem to have fled south, and no indus-
trial workers. , , _ . . j.m i

The Americans in South Korea complained that their difficul-
ties were increased by the necessity of "feeding these refugees
from the north " But South Korea always fed those people, tor
South Korea always produced food for the north. When the
Americans refused to let the food come north, the people had to

go south for it. , ,

By the second year, 1947, the year of my visit, the situation had
changed. Farms had expanded in North Korea, there was a good
crop, and a half million people moved north. They were counted
at the quarantine stations at over 1,500 per day.

The people coming north were workers looking for jobs, and
farmers looking for land. I met them in factories and on farms.

The north was the gainer by this exchange of populations. The
north lost ex-policemen, ex-officials and city folk living on rents
and profits; it gained workers and farming people, eager to build
and develop the land.

I talked to two of these workers. 'Why did you come north?"
I asked.

They told me they fled the American zone because there was
so much disorder and so much unemployment there.

"The tireworks did not open," said one, "because they can
bring tires cheaper from America."

"The textile mill closed down," said another, "because the
Korean who bought it found more profit in selling the raw mate-
rial and machines."

The picture was clear. South Korea, under American control,
was becoming a market for American goods and a source of raw
material for America. The American Army had taken over Japa-
nese lands and become the greatest landlord in the south. Amer-
ican capital was taking over Japanese factories and tying them
into American needs. So there was unemployment in the south,
and unrest, and strikes, and revolts.

In the north the Russians had taken nothing for themselves.
They had given the Japanese industries to the Korean people as
a public possession. And the lands of the Japanese landlords and
the Korean landlords had become the property of the men who
tilled them.

So there is food in the north and increasing production of
factory goods, and repairing of the ravages of war.

UNITY OR CIVIL WAR?

Will the north and south come together? Or will there be
civil war?

The 38th parallel, at first used only as a military convenience,
has become a barrier dividing two worlds. It has polarized the
Korean people; the reactionaries fled south, while the left-wing
workers and farmers migrate north. Many observers think the di-
visions are growing and are pregnant with civil war. In the year
since I left North Korea there has developed a "People's Army"
while South Korea has also developed armed forces, with former
soldiers of the Japanese Army as a base.

There are possibilities of dangerous friction. But I think people
who expect civil war here fail to reckon with the passion for
unity and for independence that the great majority of Koreans
feel.

It was this passion that led Kim Koo, a right-wing terrorist but
none the less a Korean patriot-and Kimm Kiu-sic, a former em-
ployee of an American firm and an American appointee in gov-
ernment, but none the less a Korean patriot also, to go north to
the Unity Congress, leaving the plums of government and graft
in South Korea to the Syngman Rhee machine. I think the Unity
Government of the north will outlast Syngman Rhee's machine,
with all its American backing.

Soviet statement on

evacuation of troops

The statement of the Foreign Min-
istry of the USSR on the evacua-
tion of Soviet troops from Korea,
as published on September 19, 1948,
by the Moscow press:

On September 10 the Supreme Na-
tional Assembly of Korea issued an
appeal to the Governments of the
USSR and the USA requesting the
simultaneous withdrawal of Soviet
and American troops from Korea.
It declared that the formation of
the Supreme National Assembly of
Korea, and the creation by that As-
sembly of a united Korean Govern-
ment composed of representatives
of various political trends of North
and South Korea, representing the
overwhelming majority of the popu-
lation of North and South Korea,
was a guarantee that during and
after the withdrawal of foreign
troops complete law and order
would be preserved all over Korea.

It is known that in the autumn
of 1945, after routing the Japanese
Kwantung Army, the Soviet troops

liberated Korea from the Japanese
occupationists, and in conformity
with the agreement between the
Allies, remained in Korea north of
the 38th parallel, while American
troops remained on Korean territory
south of the 38th parallel.

Remaining in North Korean terri-
tory, the Soviet troops gave the
North Korean population ample op-
portunity to create organs of demo-
cratic administration, and constantly
rendered friendly assistance to Ko-
rea's national revival. The number
of Soviet troops in North Korea
was steadily reduced.

In September, 1947, the Soviet
Government proposed to the United
States Government that there should
be simultaneous withdrawal of So-
viet and American troops from Ko-
rea. It has subsequently confirmed
on many occasions its readiness to
withdraw Soviet troops from North
Korea at once if the United States
Government simultaneously with-
drew the American troops from
South Korea. The United States

Government has not so far agreed
to these proposals.

The request put forward by the
Korean Supreme National Assembly
for the simultaneous withdrawal of
Soviet and American troops from
Korea was referred by the Soviet
Government to the Presidium of the
Supreme Soviet of the USSR, which
examined the request of the Ko-
rean Supreme National Assembly
and decided that it was time to
evacuate the Soviet troops from
North Korea. The Presidium ex-
pressed the hope that the United
States Government will agree to
withdrawal of the United States
troops from South Korea, in accord-
ance with the desire of the Su-
preme National Assembly of Korea.

In conformity with the decision
passed by the Presidium of the Su-
preme Soviet of the USSR, the
Council of Ministers of the USSR
has decreed:

1. To withdraw to the territory
of the USSR the Soviet troops re-
maining on the territory of North
Korea.

2. To instruct the Ministry of the
Armed Forces of the USSR to begin
the evacuation of Soviet troops from
North Korea not later than in the
second half of October, 1948, and to
complete it by January 1, 1949.

On December SO, the Moscow
radio announced that withdrawal of
Soviet troops from North Korea had
been completed by December 25.

^ 0 5917 30^276910_

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