WI the US embraced Korean nationalists for wartime and postwar purposes from the time of the 1943 Cairo Declaration onward?
In OTL both during and in the early period after WWII the US was very reluctant to support any political faction or future path for Korea.
Washington favored the concept of international trusteeship, basically global or multipower supervision not granting independence that was somehow supposed to more acceptable for the locals because it would not be single-power colonialism.
Washington in OTL was very hesitant to back Korean exile figures, judging the various players non-representative. This probably is because they were powerless, not in the country and probably bad-mouthed each other alot, making them all look bad. (although, by contrast, some Korean exiles living in the US had some influence in supporting the Japanese-American internment policy).
What if instead the US from 1943 on backed either Syngman Rhee from Hawaii, or, more likely, the Korean Provisional Government based in Chungking, China and headed by Kim Ku?
The motive to do so could be to cause wartime inconvenience for the Japanese by creating a rallying point for Koreans in the Japanese Empire for spying and sabotage, and for recruiting an exile Korean force among willing ethnic Korean PoWs who had been captured among Japanese forces on any of the war fronts.
The concept for postwar would be to have the KPG be the nucleus for a postwar national Korean government under whatever amount of American tutelage it could accept, that could be part of the postwar formula for guarding against Japanese revanchism.
What results, however, meager, could have been achieved by such a policy from 1943 onward?
As we go through 1944 and 1945, the negotiations for Soviet entry into the war against Japan and and actual Soviet invasion and occupation of Japanese-held territories, what will Stalin be doing?
Will he match US moves by just as strongly patronizing his own, alternative Communist Koreans? Or would he be more cautious in the face of America's greater demonstrated interest in Korea, and establish its own ties to the Korean Provisional Government and non-communist nationalists to advance Soviet interests with whoever wins, regardless of the fate of Korean communism?
In OTL both during and in the early period after WWII the US was very reluctant to support any political faction or future path for Korea.
Washington favored the concept of international trusteeship, basically global or multipower supervision not granting independence that was somehow supposed to more acceptable for the locals because it would not be single-power colonialism.
Washington in OTL was very hesitant to back Korean exile figures, judging the various players non-representative. This probably is because they were powerless, not in the country and probably bad-mouthed each other alot, making them all look bad. (although, by contrast, some Korean exiles living in the US had some influence in supporting the Japanese-American internment policy).
What if instead the US from 1943 on backed either Syngman Rhee from Hawaii, or, more likely, the Korean Provisional Government based in Chungking, China and headed by Kim Ku?
The motive to do so could be to cause wartime inconvenience for the Japanese by creating a rallying point for Koreans in the Japanese Empire for spying and sabotage, and for recruiting an exile Korean force among willing ethnic Korean PoWs who had been captured among Japanese forces on any of the war fronts.
The concept for postwar would be to have the KPG be the nucleus for a postwar national Korean government under whatever amount of American tutelage it could accept, that could be part of the postwar formula for guarding against Japanese revanchism.
What results, however, meager, could have been achieved by such a policy from 1943 onward?
As we go through 1944 and 1945, the negotiations for Soviet entry into the war against Japan and and actual Soviet invasion and occupation of Japanese-held territories, what will Stalin be doing?
Will he match US moves by just as strongly patronizing his own, alternative Communist Koreans? Or would he be more cautious in the face of America's greater demonstrated interest in Korea, and establish its own ties to the Korean Provisional Government and non-communist nationalists to advance Soviet interests with whoever wins, regardless of the fate of Korean communism?