Korea's tragic history (I)

Today’s struggles for power in international relations make me very often rethink past tragic events. The destiny of the Korean Peninsula has been long-trapped into facing tragedies. The long-dragging tragedies have been swayed by neighboring big powers such as China, Japan and Russia. The peninsula was once even a colony of Imperial Japan.

Historically, the peninsula has been the focus of division by major powers surrounding it on several occasions.

The first instance of division occurred in the 16th century, when Japan and the Qing Dynasty conspired in secret discussions to divide the peninsula along the Han River. That century was a period of Japanese invasion — from 1592 to 1598 — commonly known as the Imjin War.

The second instance involved a plan to divide the northern part of the country under Qing Dynasty influence and the southern part under Japanese control, as the two powers were moving toward war in 1894. This division was initially proposed by Britain in the infamous Kimberly Plan.

The third case was the 1896 agreement made between Russia and Japan in which they agreed to divide the south for Japan and its north for Russia, so as to avoid an eventual war at a time of regional crisis on the Korean Peninsula.

The fourth case is the 1885 Tientsin Agreement arranged by Li Hongzhang of the Qing Dynasty and Ito Hirobumi of Imperial Japan. This plot was made through the Treaty of Tientsin, which allowed both countries to interfere in Korean internal affairs at a time of crisis on the peninsula, but, in the end, Japan expelled China from the peninsula by making the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki. Later Russia involuntarily recognized Japan as the exclusive dominant player on the peninsula through the 1905 Russian-Japanese Peace Treaty.

In addition to these two treaties, the United States and Japan reached two secret agreements: the 1905 Taft-Katsura Agreement and the 1908 Root-Takahira Agreement. Through these accords, the U.S. acknowledged Japan's dominant control over the Korean Peninsula in exchange for Japan's recognition of U.S. interests in the Pacific Ocean. Typically, this was the conventional division of power on the peninsula and in the Pacific area.

The fifth tragic instance was the territorial division that Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin discussed at the Yalta Conference, even though the wartime leaders did not explicitly address the division along the 38th parallel. It is clear that Roosevelt had in mind a trusteeship composed of a U.S., Soviet and Chinese representative. In brief, the three pivotal players had failed to reach a formal agreement on Korean independence. In a way, it can be described as a wait-and-see approach to diplomacy. This type of wartime diplomacy was the deeply seated seed of the Korean tragedy.

As the Yalta Conference had failed to fulfill the Cairo Declaration for the independence of Korea, the territorial division lasted into the 21st century. Moreover, the Moscow Conference failed to fulfill its promise of independence because of their strategically different interests in Korea. As a result, North Korea under Kim Il-sung initiated full-fledged attacks on South Korea, with the logistical and military support of Stalin and Mao Zedong.

Heo Mane, professor emeritus at Pusan National University, is a former president of the Korean Society of Contemporary European Studies.