WI the US embraced Korean nationalists from 1943 onward?

raharris1973

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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?
 

raharris1973

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Wallet

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What were his plans you think? Pretty much what happened in OTL, "socialism in one zone" https://www.amazon.com/Socialism-On...7167235&sr=8-1&keywords=socialism+in+one+zone

What do you think was the most Stalin hoped for on the peninsula, and the least he would accept, and his most likely response to the United States displaying much more initerest in the peninsula than OTL?
Lenin had the policy of a pan communist society, of equal revolutions worldwide.

Stalin turned communism back to Russian nationalism. He changed the red army back to the Russian army, and kept pursuing old tsar foreign policy like controlling the Turkish strights, manchaia, and Korea.

The US and Stalin agreeded to divide Korea. Stalin planned on taking all of Korea. He would have too had Japan not surrendered allowing American troops to move into the south before Stalin could.

After that he kinda stopped caring, he cared more on Europe and Berlin. He almost stopped the order to invade the south in 1950, fearing a war he didn't think he was ready for, but he gave the go once he got the bomb.
 
If the US accepted Kim Gu's Korean Provisional government as the future status of Korea in 1943, it would certainly impact what would happen in Korea postwar. It would put Korea in the position of a temporarily occupied country but with a recognized government, rather than a blank slate where each occupation governor could do what he wanted. Stalin would probably follow US recognition of the provisional Korean government in discussion of Soviet entry against Japan. Likely there will be some sort of treaty signed giving Stalin certain economic concessions in the run up to August 1945.

Any occupation zone the Red Army had would have all sorts of troublemakers in it, but the country would not have been partitioned de facto and then de jure. Instead, a united Korean government, likely based in Seoul, would take over probably in mid to late 1946.

Korea would probably be similar to Czechoslovakia between 1935-1948 before the Prague coup. Foreign policy would be accommodating to the Soviets, but domestically it would be on its own. I assume there will be some kind of power struggle as Stalin ends West-East cooperation, but I think there is a much better than 50-50 chance that the Korean communists will be defeated and non-Communists remain in charge of the country.

Korea may become effectively Finlandized though, especially after Mao wins the Chinese civil war.
 

raharris1973

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Any occupation zone the Red Army had would have all sorts of troublemakers in it, but the country would not have been partitioned de facto and then de jure. Instead, a united Korean government, likely based in Seoul, would take over probably in mid to late 1946.

Korea would probably be similar to Czechoslovakia between 1935-1948 before the Prague coup. Foreign policy would be accommodating to the Soviets, but domestically it would be on its own. I assume there will be some kind of power struggle as Stalin ends West-East cooperation, but I think there is a much better than 50-50 chance that the Korean communists will be defeated and non-Communists remain in charge of the country.

Korea may become effectively Finlandized though, especially after Mao wins the Chinese civil war.


If that is the outcome, a united Korea that is not fought over, even if a neutral or "Finlandized" and not a US ally, the Americans of the OTL 1950s and 1960s would have considered it a win. America was grumpy about having to occupy Korea and fight in it. They just couldn't tolerate anything that would be seen as an obvious "win" for the Communist powers.

If there is a "Finlandized" non-communist united Korea and no Korean War, the country will matter as much to US foreign policy in the Cold War as Burma, which is to say it won't matter much at all or be very well-known to the American public.
 
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