육군성차관 드래퍼(Draper) 일행을 위한 오리엔테이션

[illegible] AND PARTY, AT LT GEN HODGE AT OSEI 23 SEPTEMBER 1947. General Hodge: Gentlemen: I will try to give you a brief resume of our past and the set-up on our present, what we are up against. If you have any questions to ask, please break in. This is informal entirely. We came into Korea and we have inherited certain things here that are basic, beyond our control, and which we have to face and adjust to or slide around. The first of those inheritances is the 38th Parallel, which was made on a military level so far as we know, and without any follow-up as to when the occupation forces would get out, or any planned adjustment. The second thing that we inherited was the Moscow Decision made in December, 1945, at Moscow at a time when we, our people, still believed that we had built up some good will with the Soviets, and possibly could do business with them. The third thing that we inherited was a part of what had been a nation, and only a small part of what the Japanese had used in their economic pattern when they had Manchuria, Japan and Korea - we have only half of Korea. This part of Korea was extremely run-down. The Japs had done no maintenance in this area for the duration of the war, beginning for them long before we got into it. Everything had been allowed to go down gradually. There had been deterioration and cannibalization of all equipment and communications were badly run down; the roads, for example, the road from here to the airport took over two hours and a half to travel with a jeep when we came in and the springs in your jeep were in danger every hundred yards. The same was true of the general set-up all over. Stock piles of materials were very low. They did leave some furnished goods in here, some of which we got hold of, and a lot of it the Koreans got hold of and wasted or put it in the black market. We inherited only the agricultural part of Korea. The industrial part is mostly in North Korea. There are some textile mills and some coal here, but not enough for our needs. There is no bituminous coal, and almost SECRET DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 826518 no metals of any ki[illegible] The people that we inherited here claim four thousand years of culture, but that four thousand years of culture operates against them rather than for them in learning democratic ways. They learned nothing constructive from an industrial standpoint, or a practical standpoint, and their own government during their independence was a very corrupt government -- it was a government of the many, by the few, a monarchy with little integrity anywhere in the government, and no interest in the people. They were taken over by the Japanese. The Japanese put a veneer of industry over the area here, utilizing Korean labor but not giving the Koreans any opportunity to learn knowhow in technique or in government. They established a Japanese Government here, and had in here at the end of the war, in all of Korea, probably a million Japanese civilians who were running the government and all industry, in addition to their armed forces. They took out of Korea several million Koreans for laborers. They pushed the Koreans up into Manchuria to develop the farm lands; they pushed them into the South Sea Islands, and, finally, they took a lot of them into Japan for manual labor. That was their pattern for developing the ability of the Koreans, and that is about where they kept them. We also inherited a very strong desire for independence, which has b n built up in the minds of these people during all the years of operation by the Japanese, and a revolutionary spirit which had developed even under the operation of their own government in the past. They are very individualistic; they are hard to deal with, uncooperative. They can't get along among themselves. You put ten of them in a room to solve a problem, and you will have a four or five-way fight [illegible] within a half a hour. They have difficulty in agreeing. I mean that literally. We have inherited a people who have a chain of broken promises from outside nations. They don't trust any nation or group of nations. They have been promised many things, the Japanese treaties that were made with them; the 1905 Treaty and the 1910 Treaty, were beautifully worded treaties that indicated everything was going to - 2 - SECRET **DECLASSIFIED** Authority NND 82651B be lovely for the Ko[illegible]n now, but none of it has worked out in t way. They feel that the US-Korean agreemtn of 1882 was broken by us in 1905 when we helped give them to Japan. They feel that recent promises of independence are not being lived up to. We inherited here a well-organized, well-established Communist Party. The Russians have always been more or less interested in Korea even in the Czarist days, and after the Russian Revolution, that interest was renewed. The Russian interests are very similar today to Czarist times if you will notice the pattern. As early as 1921 we have record that they took Korean neophyte Communists to a Comintern meeting in Moscow and, in 1922, to a branch meeting of the Comintern in Vladivostok. The Russians worked through Yenan where the Chinese and other Oriental Communist elements were trained and established. Then in about 1925 the Russians came directly into Korea and established the Communist Party of Korea. I bring that out because it has a material effect in our set-up. The Communist party took over the underground - the popularity of it was because it was the underground against the Japs. Most of the Koreans who followed Communism in those days thought they were Nationalistic. They didn't realize, except the key ones trained by the Soviets--the Comintern Communists--that they were working for the Soviets. The Comintern followers are the ones who are always the leaders. They are well disbursed throughout our entire area and have increased. When the Russians saw the end of the war, they increased them, and have increased them since they have been in here, under the guise of refugees. That movement was quite popular among the Koreans. They established it themselves all through Korea and took the technique of the Communists to work underground against the Japanese, and drew into their following a large number of real, patriotic Koreans--highly patriotic, who wanted Korean independence. When we came in, the Communists had established, with the aid of the Japanese Governor General, or his assistant, the People's Committee type of government, a Communist type of government. They had worked hard on it and they were pretty well set up. They called it the Korean People's Republic. Apparently, the Japanese thought the - 3 - SECRET DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 826513 Russians were going to occupy the whole area, and they helped in the establishment of a Soviet patterned government, hoping that they could get out a little easier, and the Russians would not be too rough on them. There is some indication that they tried to retrench when they found that Americans were coming in here, but they made no headway. If they did actually try to retrench on, they had gone too far. That was the famous "Liberal" Government that you heard the newspapers talk about back in the old days when all of the correspondents believed in Santa Claus and ultra liberal "Democracy." Our directive was not to accept any defacto government here, but to establish a new government, utilizing the machinery that existed, overhauling it for democracy as rapidly as possible. In other words, the directives were initially the same as General MacArthur operated under for Japan, treating Korea as a part of Japan initially, though handling the people as a liberated people. Of course, when we came in we became very unpopular, because we didn't try to kill all the Japanese in sight. Koreans hate the Japanese. That was partially corrected though when, in a short time, we threw out the Japanese government, putting in a few Americans. We had no military government units as such but we had picked up a few people at Okinawa that had been trained in Military Government affairs by the Navy and gathered up a Coast Artillery Anti-aircraft Headquarters and Headquarters Company, for an administrative unit. With those as a nucleus, I took a Division Commander and put him in as the Military Governor. We were last priority on getting into Korea when we came in here and on the establishment of our troops in the occupation. Of course Japan was first. That had to be. But the Navy established priority to get to Shanghai before somebody beat them to it, and their priorities in getting to China were so much higher than Korea that it took most of the shipping available. It was mostly a matter of shipping. Shipping was scattered all over the Pacific and either loaded or being loaded for the Kyushu operation in November. - 4 - SECRET DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 82651B We didn't get [illegible] with all our troops and [illegible] military government units until about the end of December of that year (1945). I bring up these points because it all weaves into the history and what we are up against today. After we got in, the taking of the surrender was very simple. We disarmed the Japanese and got them out with no trouble. The armed forces were out in a few weeks. We found that we could not keep the Japanese civilians because of Korean hostility, so we had to get them out. They were largely out by early 1946. As to the early dealings with the Soviets--we soon found out that there was no dealing with those people. We soon found out that the 38th Parallel was the iron curtain, and that we couldn't do business with them even in the early days. Just one small example: one of the first things we ran into was a prisoner camp north of the 38th with allied prisoners of war in it. We tried to get them out, and the Russians informed us first that the prisoners were already out. We found out later that they were not out and then we spent two we[illegible]s dickering with the Russians on that. I had my Deputy Chief of Staff working steadily on the thing with good assistants for fully two weeks before we got those prisoners out. We finally got them down here by train and we got them on the ship. Things like that from the beginning showed a high suspicion and the attitude that they always show that they were not interested in any cooperation whatever. The first year we were here we didn't get our troops in in time to get an effective rice collection program going. The fact is, in the early months, we had only a tenuous hold on any governmental administrative functions. This Communist outfit as set up here had almost taken over. They thought they were governing, and in the Provinces and in far-flung areas they did govern for a good while, until we could get them disestablished and put on the basis of a political party. The main point here is that we couldn't collect grain when harvested. We started in after the first of the year, after we got out people in the rural areas so we could try a grain collection. - 5 - SECRET DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 826518 But it was too late; the grain had disappeared and we gained very little by it. We got less than a million suk, one suk being about four bushels. That failure set up a condition here. Koreans had wasted their grain of the 1945 crop, thinking that when the Japs took none, they would have all they wanted. They had all lived for the day when they wouldn't have to share the grain with the Japs. Well, they did share it with the Japs. They smuggled a lot of it to Japan, also they ate themselves sick. A lot of them ate more than they had ever eaten before. That lasted for 3 or 4 months. They also made liquor and saki out of a lot of it. By March of that year they were getting hungry; by April it was critical--following a fair crop that year and before the great population increase. Facts and figures developed that although South Korea had exported some rice to Japan, it was not in grain surplus areas, particularly after the influx of refugees. Before we came in, we didn't know the story-- that the Japs had been exporting rice from here and had imported from Manchuria quantities of coarser grain--corn, wheat, barley, etc., to replace to great extent what they took out. Some grain was surplus in the old days when they had a smaller population and good fertilizer, but there again is the rundown condition of the land. For a period of almost six years here they had had little fertilizer brought in, and the soil, which has been used for thousands of years, is inadequate without fertilizer, and, naturally, it had been drained out. We soon got over the idea that we could work with the Russians to eliminate the 38th parallel boundary and unite the country and we had to look forward to higher levels to take care of that division. The ministers of the Big Three met in Moscow in December 1945 to set up some plan for the Oriental adjustments. Back in October, 1945, the Koreans here began to get wind of the matter of "Trusteeship" as set up by the United Nations. They didn't like it. It was a provision to take care of former enemy territories which provided for governing of that territory by the United Nations. They began to talk about and against "Trusteeship" around here in October and November quite strongly. Between the time this began to - 6 - SECRET DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 826518 build up and the time the Moscow Decision was made, I sent in two dispatches, requesting the administration not to use the word "trusteeship" in any agreements for Korea and that in any case to get it sugar-coated or to use some other name or use definite wording rather than the word itself. The translation Koreans made of Trusteeship was the same as the Jap "Protectorate" that took over in 1905. However, when the Moscow Decision was made it used the word "Trusteeship." Out here we got headlines by United Press, --"Five Year Trusteeshi, for Korea." Well, they went wild, all of them, completely. I didn't know what the Moscow Decision was. I didn't see it for about three days after the report first came in. It took that long for the wording to get here, and all I knew was the press report. By the time I got the text, Koreans were pretty well along in their rioting and their disorders and protests against "trusteeship" and the Moscow Decision; Rightists, Leftists, Communists, everybody. When I got the text of the decision I called in all the political leaders I could get my hands on and tried to convince them that the world had no end and to show them that this was a sound setup that would provide for their independence. One old chap, head of the Democratic party, I managed to convince that it wasn't too bad; and he went out and talked to some of his followers in that vein. The next morning he was found in his bed shot full of holes. The Communists were the hardest headed of all. They wouldn't listen. They just shut their ears and shook their heads. They weren't interested. About the turn of the year was our worst period on that occasion. The old "Provisional Government" group had come in in November from China on a pledge that they would operate as individuals. This pledge they did not keep, and made an attempt at this time to seize the government. It was a rather weak attempt. The police didn't go along with them, and we were able to hold together. But the Koreans had demonstrations one after another. I was getting extremely tired of it. The Communists had a great demonstration set for the 3d of January. It was to be the one big demonstration to end all demonstrations. I called the Communist leaders in on 1 January and told SECRET DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 826518 them that I was getting tired of this rat-race and wished they wouldn't hold this demonstration, but they were adamant. They said they had to hold it; that they were losing face; that the other groups were having bigger demonstrations than they had. On the next day, the second, at about three o'clock in the afternoon, they came in and told me "it is all right. We are going to hold our demonstration for "trusteeship'." That was the day they got their orders from the Russians. This is very significant, because it has formed the basis of the pattern and method of ruling out all but Communists by the Soviets all the way through. The reason I spent a little time on "Trusteeship," is because that is the nub, it is the key center feature of most political activity around here which appears to be almost all for or against trusteeship. Of course, the real basis of political struggle is the Communist group in conflict with the Rightists. However, the simple Korean mind is all cluttered up with "trusteeship." Being for trusteeship means you are a Communist, and this has aggravated the left-right split and made it almost impossible, once a man gets on one side of the fence, to ever get him back on the other, and if he gets in the middle of the road and says he will talk with the Joint Commission on the subject of the Moscow Decision, he is branded by the extreme Rightists as being a traitor and a turncoat, etc. Just makes it almost impossible to talk political sense to these people. It also gave the extreme right and the entire patriots a slogan to hang on to. They hung on to that when they found they had nothing else to talk about except that they don't want "trusteeship." They still raise the point. If you were to go out here to day and say there will be a trusteeship imposed on Korea for one year, they would tear the place apart, with the power of extreme Rightists and the Rightists groups to use that word on the simple mind of the Korean, who has no political acumen. They are infantile politically, the whole bunch of them. Even the emigres are infantile, except in stirring up trouble in demagogic fashion. They are good at that, but as far as political acumen and international affairs are concerned, it is almost impossible to talk to them. SECRET DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 826518 The directives that we have had, the first directive we got of anything more than just to take the surrender and start the occupation, we got in December, 1945, dated in November. It more or less continued what we were doing. But we have had all throughout all of our directives the directive to attempt to build a middle-of-the-road party, and to handle all political parties as legal. Nobody could be barred from the government because of his political belief, and they would be put into the government in proportion to their strength. The American idea of democracy and written policies have forced us to let the Communists ride, and ride pretty high, and let them build up. We asked the question when the Moscow Decision was made--it talked about democratic parties and organizations, and we asked what is a democratic party or organization; is the Communist party a democratic party? The answer indicated that anything other than a royalist party would be considered democratic. We had to deal with the Russians and certainly we couldn't say the Communist party as undemocratic if you are going to deal with them on any basis. That helped the Communists up pretty well. It gave them a lot of face, and their line is excellent. Their window-dressing fits the minds of a lot of these people who have been oppressed. It finds a place in the minds of hundreds of thousands of refugees who have come back into this area out of work and out of a place to live. Of course, in North Korea, with the Russians's tommy guns pointing down their throats, it fits the minds of the men because they want to live and they want to eat and they want clothes. The Communist elements and followers have consistently fought everything we have done all the way through. They have been highly subversive. Their activity has been to discredit the Americans and praise the Russians. They have been directed by the Russians all the way through--there is no question about their direction. It has been closely handled and it has been effective. However, many patriotic Koreans began to find out not long after we came in that the Communists called Russia their fatherland and Lenin and Stalin their saviors. They displayed the Russian and the Red flag, and for a while they - 9 - SECRET DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 826513 didn't display the Korean flag. They had sense enough to stop that soon. They found that the Koreans didn't follow that. However, the early propaganda through to the Koreans that the Russians had liberated the Koreans alone and unaided in six or eight days, so powerful they were. The Americans didn't come in here fighting and got more a month after the Japanese were licked to grab part of Korea. If we had come in and killed a few thousand Japs and done a lot of shooting, we would probably have been a lot more popular, and probably have convinced the Koreans that we had at least helped to conquer the Japs. But there again the ignorance of the Koreans comes in. He saw the Russians come in here and fight. The Russians played up their stuff up a lot. As they moved on south, hundreds of thousands of them, tanks and heavy equipment, the Koreans readily believed that the Russians all whip the Japs alone. The Koreans had no news of the outside world during the War, and at first anything that trickled in after the war is just bunk. They didn't know anything about it. They had lived through the Russian invasion. I bring that up to show that they might have thought it wise to follow Russia immediately. But the strong pro-Russian line, the "Russia, the Fatherland" line, began to wear out its welcome, and a lot of the patriotic Koreans who had worked with the Communists and thought they were Communists withdrew from the Communist party and began to slice out to what could have been "middle-of-the-road" liberals except for the "Trusteeship" issued. Well, they had their troubles, because there were friendships and families tied in there, close personal friendships that were difficult to sever and made quite a complex political situation. The Communists had a good plan, the usual plan given them by the Cominterns to get their political fronts built up, and they used it. They built up their "democratic peoples" front which takes care of all the infiltrated parties, all the cultural societies and everything of that nature, including the Farmers' Union, the Trade Unions and the Laborers' Union. Then they got caught counterfeiting in the spring of 1946. That rather upset them and further hurt their popularity. - 10 - SECRET DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 826518 we convicted several of them, and that disgrace, with the non-liking of the name Communist party, decided them to change the name. They combined two or three of the strongest Communist-controlled groups, including the Communist party and the Revolutionary party and made the South Korea Labor Party and North Korea Party. Rember these parties, every one of the parties and satellites has identically the same organization in North and South Korea, all allied under Communist control. North and South, they are the same party tied together, and they carry on their passing of orders and reports between the two. The orders all come from North Korea. In the early days while we had the Russian Consulate here, orders were passed from the Russian headquarters to the Consulate and then to the South Korean Communists. That, we think, is going on at present to a great extent through the Soviet Delegation of the Joint Commission. We think they are getting their orders direct at the present time, although we have never been able to get anything written in Russian that is passed out. That gives you a little background of the build-up of the leftist or Communist groups, and gives you some pattern of the practice that they had in the early days. The patriots, many of them, were tied in with these people and had been working with them, and a lot of those birds were good Comintern Communists. They have stayed patriots and they have stayed Comintern Communists, and they drew a considerable following, particularly from refugees, farming and laboring classes. Their following is much greater--the influence of Communism here -is much higher than the Comintern Communist strength would indicate. We don't know what the Comintern group is--probably 30,000 or 40,000 in our zone. I may be more now because many agents have come in recently, but the influence of that controlled group with all of these satellite splinters, the labor unions and the farmer unions and the cooperative associations, and everything that they build up, probably affects well over a third of the farmers, the peasants and the refugees in this area. On the other side of the picture is the group tied in with the old emigre patriots, and who led the 1919 Revolution here against the Japs. When they made a Declaration of Independence on the first of - 11 - SECRET DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 826518 March -- that, by the way, is one of their greatest of all holidays, the first of March; it is the same as our 4th of July--it gained them a net of about twenty thousands of Koreans killed, and a group that called themselves the Provisional Government who took off for China. Syngman Rhee was not here at that time, although he is closely tied to the group, and they are alleged to have selected him as their first president. He was the leader of a revolutionary group here in the early days and is reportedly a great patriot. Thirty-three Koreans signed the Declaration of Independence and selected the Provisional Government. The government got to China, where the Chinese eventually, more or less, recognized them and gave them haven and Chiang Kai Shek, for political purposes and some idea of the future, helped support them. Syngman Rhee represented them in the United States. He set up what he called the Korean Commission in the United States, and he set himself up as representing the Korean Government in exile. No other nation that we have been able to find out ever gave any lip service to this government-- only the Chinese, who fitted it in with the oriental psychology. Although they tried to get representation to various countries--they went to France--and sent some representatives to Versaille in France, and have been very active, holding themselves up as representatives of the Korean people, their sole claim to being a government comes from governing a small Korean following in China. These groups, of course, wanted to come back here as soon as the Japs surrendered. There was a strong local demand for them to come back when we got here, so we brought them back. Syngman Rhee came back in October, 1945. The Kim Koo Group came back in November, 1945, under the promise to operate as individuals, and not as official government authorities, with the clear cut understanding that they would not be recognized as a government. We felt that with the demand for their return, we could never get the political situation settled until they got back in the country; also that they might help unite the people. When they got back, their popularity was not as great as they had expected, and their maneuvering was on a level that we couldn't go with in efforts to set up a government. - 12 - SECRET DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 826518 They could not coalesce with anybody, except a group of wealthy men that they wanted to have support them. We couldn't get them to make any effort to get unity of purpose among the people, to get the real patriots out of the clutches of the Communists. We wanted to get away from Communist control the people who were not Comintern Communists. We made a continual effort to build a middle-of-the-road party, and hoped those emigre elements with their early popularity could head it up, but there was no middle-of-the-road in the books. We might have gotten somewhere except for the matter of the Moscow Decision, when the subject of "trusteeship" came up. That was the wedge which absolutely split them off, and it is a wedge which strengthened the Communists a lot because the extreme rightists, who believed themselves to be a government, would broach no delay for complete independence and sovereignty. They branded as Communist anyone who even thought about working under the frame-work of the Moscow Decision or taking advice and help from other nations. That word "trusteeship" has come now to have tremendous significance. First, it signifies infringement upon Sovereignty. Second, it means Russian control (this, by some reasoning too obscure for us to understand). Third, Trusteeship has come to connote Communism (again obscure reasoning). The strong feeling of anti-trusteeship by the right has been used by the Russians as objecting to the Moscow Decision and as a basis upon which they will not consult with anyone who objects to the Moscow Decision. That is exactly the thing that has blocked the Joint Commission all the way through. We have insisted on consulting with all Koreans, and the Russians do not intend to consult any but Communists and fellow-travelers. They say that the Moscow Decision was made by Democratic nations, that it is a Democratic decision, and anyone who objects to it is not democratic. That is the basis of their thoughts, so they are not going to talk to any parties or organizations who are not democratic (spelled C-O-N-M-M-U-N-I-S-T). Getting back to the matter of achieving some political unity, it looked as though we might have a little success through the emigre group late in 1945, but the announcement of the Moscow Decision split - 13 - SECRET DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 826518 everything wide open. We tried again, tried to get unity before the Joint Commission met in March. The result of that effort was the so-called Representative Democratic Council which split up, as far as any coalition was concerned on the night before its inaugural meeting. It was split up by some derogatory comments passed by one of the Rightists that didn't want Leftists in, so the Leftists lost face and got made and pulled out and didn't meet with the group in its inaugural meeting. We were never able to use that council to any political advantage. We wanted to get a Council that could advise, be a sort of an advisory legislature, and possibly help in consultations with the Russians. We had let the Koreans do their own selecting, but the thing went back to the extreme right, and they went all out against the Moscow Decision, and the Russians would not consult with them. The first meeting of the Joint Commission took place in March, 1946, and it lasted about seven weeks. It wound up in an absolute deadlock on the very first big item it came to. The first thing that comes up in the Moscow Decision is consultation with Democratic political parties and organizations toward formation and the development of a Provisional Government. We wanted to consult all groups, the Russians only communists and followers of the line. After several exchanges of correspondence between me and the Russian Commander on the local level, and no apparent interest on a higher level, we still were where we started. Although I had kept trying to get our high level officials to do something it was of no avail. Things began to get rather difficult all over the world, and I was called back to Washington last February for conference. I got over the idea that our problem would have to be taken up on a high level, and General Marshall did take it up and they reached an agreement to re-convene the Joint Commission here on May 21st of this year. We re-convened, and it looked for a time as though we might get some place. Early progress was good (for dealing with Russians) and we reached agreements all the way through on matters of consultation, and decided who would be eligible for consultation, but when the Russians found that a rightist block came in as eligible for consultation, things - 14 SECRET DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 826518 began to change. We had a difficult time with the Rightist people to get them to come in, but we got a fair representation of them to establish eligibility. When the situation shook down and the Russians found the claimed membership of the Rightists parties, they decided there were some of these parties they would not consult with and that is where we stand today. The impasse is the reason the situation has been turned to the United Nations Assembly. What will be accomplished in the United Nations I have no idea, but, at least it will get the eyes of the world on this place, and maybe the Russians will make some agreement. We may get something for the Koreans. That, in general, covers the political background and the political history, as we understand it today. We have the Left pretty well underground -- oh, I didn't give you the entire history to date. When the Joint Commission met in May of this year, the Leftist Groups were all above ground. They had their headquarters scattered around all over South Korea. They had tried an all-out revolution last fall in September and October, after the key party re-organized as the South Korean Labor Party. It is definitely their effort at a revolution of South Korea. We captured the critiques of this revolution in their own writings, telling why it failed, how it failed, how they were going to correct all mistakes, build up their strength, etc. They have been working again toward that, setting plans laid and organizations built up. When the Joint Commission met in May, these people became the great heroes because they support the Moscow Decision. They welcomed the Joint Commission and were the leaders among the Koreans who wanted to see the Joint Commission succeed. They got a lot of added following through that line. They had a big meeting out here in July to welcome the Joint Commission, one of the largest meetings that we have had in this area, and they built up tremendous face. They also built up a tremendous underground surge of activity and propaganda that they were going to take over the government and there was a great build-up for the People's Committees to take over, accompanied by a build-up to discredit the Americans. The extreme right became somewhat isolated. They lost some of their following, because moderate Rightist Groups had split **DECLASSIFIED** Authority NND 826518 SECRET away from them to come and work with the Joint Commission. Syngman Rhee and the emigre group, still stood off and would not have anything to do with the Joint Commission. Their sole desire and self selected mission was to see it break up, and, of course, that desire has in effect come about. It was very difficult for the Americans to get Koreans to work with the Joint Commission and we lost friends in trying to tell them that the Moscow Decision is not too bad, and trying to educate them to go with it. That has made us very unpopular with the extreme Rightist Group who control a lot of people, I am sorry to say. Many people are following them on the basis of anti-trusteeship. In other words, the people have been told by them, "You accept trusteeship and Russia will take you over." They don't tell them, "If you don't take limited trusteeship, where several nations can protect you, Russia will be sure and take you over." They don't seem to get that through their heads. The activity surrounding the work of the Joint Commission, the attitude of the extreme right, branding everybody who felt that the Moscow Decision might succeed as a Communist, drove a tremendous number of people over to this Communist following, and gained the Communists a lot of face. This was as had been planned by the Communist controlled groups. The notorious Lyuh Woon Hyung, who was murdered in July, had among his papers some copies of letters he had written to North Korea Communist leaders. He was dealing with the Communists in the government up there. In these letters he brought out that it was essential that the Joint Commission re-convene in order that the Communist group here could reorganize and rebuild their strength and respectability, following their debacle of the failure in the Revolution last fall. There is little doubt but that the Russians had that in mind in agreeing to reconvene. In my own mind, watching this thing, and from information that we pick up in North Korea, I don't think the Russians have ever intended that the Moscow Decision be carried through, except on one basis, and that is that we give in to them, and do everything that they want done, and that we help set up a Communist government. The Leftist build-up that started after the Joint Commission reopened was - 16 - SECRET DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 826518 carried to the point where it looked as though the Communists might try to embarrass us by rather high-powered disorders. I can't say that it was to be an all-out revolution, but certainly disorders on a high-powered basis were being planned. Lyuh Woon Hyung was killed on the 19th of July. We know the man that killed him, but who was back of it, we don't know. We can only guess. The man who killed him came down from North Korea. That does not mean necessarily that he was sent by the Communists, because we happend to know that Kim Koo has a murder factory in North Korea, in South Korea, in China and in Japan, so Kim Koo might have been behind the killing. Another factor is that at that moment Lyuh Woon Hyung was not in the hair of the Rightists too much but he was getting in the hair of the Communists, Comintern Communists, quite heavily. He had been attacked previously --he had been kidnapped, beaten by Communist groups, and he had been attacked by somebody else, we don't know who. Many of his alleged attacks that they talked about so much were potently pure frauds. Any time he needed a little publicity, he would come in and report that somebody had shot at him, had kidnapped him, or something, with no evidence to support it. In late June, the North Korean Communist papers and Communist radio gave Lyuh Woon Hyung hell. He was branded a "traitor," he was this, that and the other, and we had reason to believe that he perhaps was not too friendly with them at that time, that he was trying to get away [illegible] to the middle of the road, but when he was killed, it was a different story! The North Korea radio let out blasts of eulogies and threats to South Korea to retaliate for the death of the great patriot, Lyuh Woon Hyung. The Communist groups were too over -- lock, stock and barrel--all arranged [illegible] for the Lyuh funeral and they made tremendous fuss on it. Lyun's organization and a couple of members of Lyuh's party who were set up as the funeral committee came in to me and complained bitterly, saying that the Communists had taken over the funeral, and that they themselves had no control over it. I couldn't give them too much sympathy. I asked them "why they had been playing with these Communists all the time, didn't they know that was the way it would be?" - 17 - SECRET **DECLASSIFIED** Authority NND 826518 The Communists made big "hay" of the funeral. They held it two weeks after Lyuh's death, spent the time on a build up and pulling in all persons they could hire, coerce, or convince that Lyuh had been a patriot; including all Koreans who had even worked with the underground. They gathered a large crowd and it helped them build face. When I say "build face," you have to understand what a show of power means in Korea and in the Orient. The one that can get the biggest crowd is the most powerful man. They turned out, oh, probably one hundred and fifty, one hundred and seventy-five thousand people for the funeral here in town, and they had memorial services out through the provinces. During all the Communist build up, the Joint Commission was becoming more firmly dead-locked and was growing more and more tense. The comments and press releases coming from the Joint Commission gave the stand of each side, and the people were beginning bitterly to take sides. The Communist (Russian) comments were building up more and more that the Americans were just a bunch of reactionary so and so's who would not agree to democratic government (People's type). The other side was consolidated on their belief that the Russians were trying to force a Communist government on Korea. The build-up indicated that the Communist groups on the 15th of August, which was Liberation Day, the day the Japs capitulated (probably their No. 2 biggest holiday, the first one being March 1st) were really going to move. We picked up a lot of documents on the build-up. To prevent surprise disorders, we had announced that there would be one big mass meeting to celebrate in each town and settled area. They were not to be all split up into competing political meetings. The Communists howled, squalled, screamed, and made open threats. That was announced about the 5th of August. The head of the South Korean Labor Party came in and told General Brown that probably there would be disorders, and told me the same thing in terms that I could only interpret as a definite threat, that if we held to that order and only had one big meeting in an area, and didn't let them have separate meetings, that they were going to raise the devil. We found quite a lot of - 18 - SECRET DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 826518 activity in the local radio station here -- they had practically taken over, and had plans to blow it up if they couldn't take it over. They were sabotaging the broadcasts that were not of their liking. Many, many things were picked up, including several batches of "Molotov cocktails" for arson. We decided to pick up key members of this group about the 12th of August to forestall anything that might happen on the 15th, and as it developed, it was a wise move. The directives, the plans for the meetings had gone out, regardless of the order that we put out but we found that the final word as to just how far they were to go in disorders had not gone out. That was to go out on the 13th, but we picked up the key people before that word went out. The leaders not caught saw the propaganda value of being persecuted and oppressed, with our having some difficulty proving just what they were going to do, although we had plenty of proof on a lot of them. They wanted to make us look bad, so they sent out the orders to quiet down and to hold no meetings. Even so a few leftist disorders did occur on 15th August in outlying districts. Around here they were quiet. At this time the Joint Commission had been stalemated for seven solid weeks with no sign of a break. The arrests gave the Russians something to hop on, and so they said immediately, "You Americans are doing all you can to keep the Joint Commission from succeeding with all these arrests of patriots and so forth," and claimed that this was what blocked the Joint Commission. They are still singing that tune, clear back to Moscow. Actually, under our directives, we have ourselves fostered these subversive groups. We allowed them to build up to the point where last year they tried a revolution, and to where anything can happen today. In so doing, we have built a barrier of misunderstanding between us and Koreans who do not like Communists and know what they are. We have built up in them a strong resentment against our fostering the Communists, and a misunderstanding of what we are trying to do. All they see is that we tolerate the Communists at a time when the Truman Doctrine has announced against Communism and is aimed to stop Communism throughout the world, and in our own SECRET DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 826578 nation we are hunting [illegible] munists in our own government, to throw them out. Yet we still go ahead here and say, "These people are legitimate political parties" — the Korean does not understand that. The feeling has built up among the Rightists to be point where they are ready to take it into their own hands, and they are taking it into their own hands. This resentment comes out in the strong-arm tactics against Reds coming out of these Rightist youngsters right now. They are going around terrorizing everyone they catch, who they think is a Communist. Those disorders are based on that primarily. I talk to the Koreans about the horrible disorders of the Rightists Groups, how bad it is that they are beating up their political enemies, and they say, "Yes, that is right, it's disorder and it's terrorism, and we don't like it, but these communists are illegal, their actions are subversive. The acts of these Rightist Groups, these youngsters, are not subversive. They are just trying to take care of the people that are trying to destroy the country." It is hard to argue with them and convince them that this terrorism is dangerous. It is hard to get the police to act to prevent such acts and we have had to go in and force them to take action against these Rightist groups. We are getting them now to where they are cracking down on some of them, because some of it is very patently just thuggery. I bring this up because it is a situation we have fallen into by our American ideas about democracy and freedom of political expression. Although we are talking a lot about stopping the flow of Communists, we, the American people, haven't yet made up our minds that Communists are illegal, or they are not. We are still fostering the idea the Communists are a legitimate political party and I think it is something we should think about as to whether or not to tolerate subversive activities as democratic politics. In my opinion they are not a political party. We have religiously lived up to the precept of full political freedom. On the other hand, we have the danger that if we turned Korea over completely to the so-called extreme Right, we would have Fascism. We always have that danger of Fascism taking over when you try to fight Communism. It is a very difficult political situation that we run into. Germany was - 20 - SECRET DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 826518 built up by Hitler to fight Communism, and it we[illegible] to Nazism. Spain the same thing. On the other hand, when the Communists build up -when Communism builds up -- democracy is crushed, and the nation goes Communist. Now, what is the answer on the thing? How in the dickens are you going to get political-in-the-middle-of-the-road out of the mess. Just bring it up for discussion. I don't know the answer. I wish I did. UNDERSECRETARY DRAPER: What is the strength of the Rightist Group? You spoke of the Communists probably being a third. GENERAL HODGE: Well, the Rightists are probably well over a third, I mean in activity and influence. The middle of the road is small and many Koreans show no political activity, but are not Communist. If we had a poll, I think the Rightists would win it. The Government we have here is Rightist. There are some middle-of-theroaders in it, but they are not popular at all. The police are not Communists and they are not going to be, so long as they have the same group that were police when the Communist Revolutionists killed a lot of them. The Communists killed about a hundred police in South Korea in the attempt to revolt last year. They mauled, mistreated and mutilated them terribly. The police do not like it, and they are not going to like it. There is no use telling them that Communists are legal, legitimate people. They don't like them, and when any opportunity comes they are going to crack them. We have that situation built up to where it is explosive, and we have difficulty in controlling clashes between the Right and the Left. Those are clashes that are going to continue. How strong they are going to continue, I don't know; and to what extent they are going to do, I don't know. So far, they have been more or less localized. We get a few hundred mixed in and they don't kill too many, but they do an awful lot of beating up. The Rightist youth groups will capture eight or ten Communists and beat them up, break an arm or two, put some of them in the hospital. In General Ward's area, the other day, some of the Rightist labor union thugs went down to clean the Communists out of the railroad and put about eight in the hospital. There was a lot of hell-raising and breaking of windows, and General - 21 **DECLASSIFIED** Authority NND 826513 ward had to stop it [illegible] firm action, because they [illegible] are getting out of hand. It gets to the point where they were not organizing in any legal pattern of union action; that is, going around holding meetings, discussing problems with these people. They started out all right and then they got bolder, and they didn't know where to stop, so General Ward had to chase them out of town. I think that covers in general the political history. I would like to get any questions you have before we go any further, before we jump beyond this subject. If anybody has any questions on it-- UNIDENTIFIED OR MEN PRESENT: I presume someone will go over the development of the Korean government as such, which is a little different from the political slant. General HELMICK: I will give you a brief of that. And then General Helmick this afternoon will see that the group gets the picture. After we got to Korea, as we got our military government units in, we spread them out, put them out in the provinces - the group headquarters usually at the provincial headquarters - and at the largest cities we set up a group headquarters with the companies well dispersed, so as to gain control of the various areas. We selected Koreans to take over the governmental functions from the Japs. We selected them without regard to politics. We weren't interested in their politics; as a matter of fact, we didn't know what their politics were, any of them, for months. The effort was to get a man who could carry out the job. We took over initially the central government and the provincial governments just as they were under the Japs. We kept some Japs in them. We had to for some time. If we had thrown them all out immediately, the whole thing would have collapsed. We kept Japs in the higher clerical positions - not in executive positions, but in jobs on the records. Where you had to have records and functions, we kept some Japs. We still had some well into 1946. The Koreans didn't object to it too much. The big objections they had was to the heads of the bureaus and departments. The one place we cleaned out quickly was the police. Naturally, we had to get the Japs out of there very - 22 - SECRET DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 826518 rapidly, but we had to [illegible] in there Koreans [illegible] nationalized under the Japs. Some weren't too popular. We have had to clean out those more gradually, because without that we would have had no police force. We would have had a mob, that is all, just a mob of Koreans. We had to keep some experienced Koreans to train the police force and keep the structure. Our first Americans in Military Government went in and took the head positions. The provincial governors were American; the heads of the departments and bureaus were Americans. All the way through, in the top positions, the American was designated as key man. The development from that--we appointed a Korean counterpart, what we called a counterpart, for each of these jobs and developed him. In some cases the Korean counterpart was able to take over almost entirely fairly early. The effort we were making, by my directive, was for Americans to try to work ourselves out of a job in all these government functions, but it took a lot of pushing. The Americans are great people to go in and get their fat hands into things and take over completely and manipulate it around. It is all right in certain things, but in many other things the Koreans resent it because the Americans don't know their psychology. We had some rather difficult situations arise over that, particularly in making changes in the pattern of things. The Korean couldn't understand or see any reason for change, and they don't like change anyway. But we gradually worked out what we called Koreanization Program to where we have a situation now where the Koreans are nominally the head of the various departments, bureaus, and sections, and are governors, mayors of the cities, etc., and the Americans act as advisors. In some cases that is actual; in other cases the American still has to handle it himself to a great extent. We formed the legislature last December. It is half elected under the old Korean system of election, and half appointed. The old Korean system of election can produce only a Rightist group, only because it is on the basis where/the family head votes for representatives. The family heads get together and select a couple of delegates to vote in the next higher echelon, etc., up for three - 23 - SECRET DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 826514 eonelons to get the final representative for the Legislature. The type votes for represented citizens, usually conservative property owners. After much discussion with the Korean groups, and getting the best Korean advice from the coalition committee which was established here last year to try to help get a middle-of-the-road party set up, it was decided to elect half the legislative body and appoint the other half to get a broad basis for this thing. Even so, the legislature is a Rightist legislature. The extreme Right - Syngman Rhee and his crowd - say that it is "full of Communists appointed by General Hodge". There is maybe one Communist in it, possibly two. The fact is that the Comintern-line-Commies refused to serve. I appointed some who might be called Communists and they refused to serve. And there were two of People's Committee representatives elected on Cheju island, which is a truly communal area that is peaceably controlled by the People's Committee without much Comintern influence. These were the only ones elected who were not strong Rightists. They came up to attend the first meeting and disappeared right after they got here. The Communists would not let them serve. In other words, in all our efforts at Government here, the Communists have refused any cooperation in working with us at all. They will not. So I don't think that we can say that any admitted Communists are in the government in the higher up, although we have tried to get some able ones that we would have liked to have had under our directives. We tried to get Lyuh Woon Hyung in the early days. However, there is infiltration in working levels of the government which is very strong. We pick it up quite often. Infiltration in the same old places---in education; in communications; in labor; in the press; in farmers cooperative efforts. The radio station is a point in case. There were twenty Communists in there who were trying to take it over or destroy it. In education -- teachers -- we just rounded up about 150 teachers here in Seoul who were in the pay of the Soviets, in the pay of the Communists, to spread Communism. They were being paid more by the Communists than we can pay them from the governmental funds for their services to spread Communism and to keep disturbances and strikes in the schools and to sabotage the school - 24 SECRET DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 826518 facilities. In communications we are getting into the same picture. There are also quite a few in the fire department. We have just picked up a group, celled in the fire department, whose mission was that when the big fires occurred they would see that they were not put out. They were to sabotage the fire equipment, and see that confusion was spread and false leads as to where to go, and all that sort of thing. The top level Korean we have set up in the government to date is the Civil Administrator. QUESTION: With what do you compare him? GENERAL HODGE: He has many of the powers of the president. He is head of the executive branch but has little control over other branches. We have the legislative branch, the executive branch, and the judiciary, with the Military Governor over all. The Judiciary has operated longer on its own than the others. We have almost cut out Provost court cases now and let the Koreans try almost all cases. It doesn't work out too well in some instances, but it gives them "big face" and they are trying hard. The only ones that I have reserved are where Koreans attack an American. We handle that in our own courts. Or in an aggravated case where the thing gets into high sedition and we don't think justice will be done because of politics. In the early days after we turned it over to them, I threatened a couple of times to take it back and try more cases by provost court, but they have corrected their most glaring court errors. The cases of sedition last fall in the revolution were tried by military commission. We convicted some twenty-five or thirty of murder in the first degree. The court sentences were death sentences and were well deserved as death sentences, but political repercussions from hanging would be so great that the reviewing authority commuted them to life. On the other hand, it is a question as to whether or not hanging a few seditionists might not make them understand. But we still have the Russians to consider. We have been working within the framework of the Moscow Decision. So long as we work in that framework we do have to consider Russia and it requires some definite appeasement. I don't know what directives we will get - 25 SECRET DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 826513 when to go out of [illegible] framework--whether the [illegible] Nations will really take this thing over or not, it is rather difficult to say. Going back to my initial statement that we have inherited certain conditions here--one of these things was the Moscow Decision, and I will say this: In my opinion, and in the opinion of most of us who have studied this problem and have been here, we are at least a year and a half behind politically; and we are at least a year behind economically in our zone; behind what we could have been if we had not been tied to the non-functioning Moscow Decision and been holding back to see what the Russians were going to do. I am not criticising; I am just mentioning this as a condition which exists. On the other hand, we might have worked toward a permanently supported South Korea. It may be that this is already a fact. I am not sure that we can ever combine the two halves because the Russians have so strongly communized their area that I don't see very much chance of achieving a combination of the two without civil war. I don't know. It is difficult for me to see how we are going to salvage Korea as a nation, free from the Soviet sphere. It makes little difference when we leave. The Russians can wait five years, or as long as Communism still operates rampant--and then take it over. The only chance, the only possibility, is that we can build up a pattern here to show the Koreans what we think democracy is and an economic [illegible] stability here that might make the Koreans feel that Communism is not undesirable to the extent that the Russians might not want to fool with them. In other words, we might build up in this area a nuisance value of resistance to the Russian control. There is no question about what the Russians want. Anyone who has any false ideas about that might as well get them straightened out. The Russians want Korea as a satellite, if not one of the Soviet Union States. They want the Korean warm-water ports. Wonsan, on the east coast, is one of the finest ports in the Pacific. The Russians are building it up along with Chinnampo, over on the west side. Chinnampo is the port for Pyongyang, the second largest city in Korea--both are good warm-water ports, usable the year around, which the Russians need on the Pacific. Also the Soviets want the Manchurian area. I don't think - 25 - SECRET **DECLASSIFIED** Authority NND 826518 they have any int[illegible]tion of giving it up. Man[illegible]uria combined with Korea here and Siberia would make a pretty good area here and give them complete control of Asia. The Chinese in the South--who cares about them? The Soviets have control of the potential industrial areas, which they could develop here, and their ports to serve the eastern part of the Great Soviet Empire. I am going to declare a short break here. UNDERSECRETARY DRAPER: It has been very interesting. GENERAL HODGE: Now, is there anything more you want on the general political situation and the brief overall of the military government picture? Of course M.G. problems are also political, governed by the overall of the political situation. Primarily, though, they are matters of economics and administration in actual government. Our mission, of course, is to get a united Korea, independent and with an economic basis on which they can stand. Our biggest problems in M.G. are economic but have to be, of course, based on the political situation, whether we like it or not. We would like to divorce it from politics, but that cannot be done. I think a brief on the legislature might be worthy of discussion. The legislature probably represents about as near a cross section of political views as you will get. UNDERSECRETARY DRAPER: Except for the Communists? GENERAL HODGE: Yes, sir - There are certain Leftists in it who called themselves Leftists but we don't believe they are real Communists. They do follow some of its lines, but it is difficult, where you get the reaction from Feudalism and from oppression, to separate these people from what we might call a Communist line. I might give you a little bit on the political platforms. I don't think there is any Korean who has the idea that railroads, for example, should be privately owned, or that big industries should be privately owned. They are all socialist in some degree; that is, sofar as the capitalistic angle of democracy is concerned, they are more socialistic than capitalistic. However, they do want private ownership of small businesses, lands, homes; they don't want all-out state ownership and control. - 27 - SECRET DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 826518 The legislature was the first experience on record of Koreans getting together for open discussion where they had any responsibility themselves for anything to be done. It took an interminable time to get it organized and working. We think they have learned quite a lot in democratic processes and of fighting together and working together. They can't get out of it. They can't break up and go off and form themselves a new legislature. For the first time they have been penned in to some degree; and they have had quite a few bitter fights. It took them from December to June to accomplish the first mission we gave them--that of getting an election law--and when they got it, it was several bugs by our standards. But we are willing to accept it if we are going to go ahead with just South Korea alone, because that is their idea and the way they want to do it. U. [illegible]SECRETARY DRAPER: The legislature? GENERAL HODGE: Yes, sir. It is a cross section of varying views and it was accomplished by compromises with the Right against the Left, and is not too bad. It has some bugs in it that we may have to help them iron out. DRAPER: Do you think the legislature as a whole has been of value? HODGE: It has been beneficial. But we want to get an allelected legislature on a broad basis which we believe will be more valuable. Any election law we put out as an edict is going to be unpopular. One thing about these people is their "anti" spirit, particularly toward new ideas. They are anti-everything that is not what they think is their way of doing it or that someone else thought of. DRAPER: So a poor election law which they thought of will function better than a good one which we thought of? HODGE: That is the way we feel about it. If the Joint Commission should set up an election law it would have to be one agreed to by outsiders and would fail to meet several Korean quirks. I don't think the United Nations could accept our local election law here for all of Korea, because it doesn't fit the Communist idea. There are certain things in the law the Communists don't go for. SECRET DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 826514 One is the age. They [illegible]t an age of twenty-three. [illegible]ne side wanted to set it at twenty, and one side wanted to set it at twenty-five, and they argued about the thing for weeks. They finally compromised on twenty-three. We think it is a little high, but, on the other hand, we have had in our own early history high voting ages. There are many democratic countries today that have an age of twenty-four or twenty-five as the voting age. If you watch some of these wildeyed young Koreans running around here, you may concede that it is not to bad. It is conservative, but I don't think ultra-conservative. Both women and men can vote, and the requirements of residence are not too rigid. Refugees, everybody who is in here, will have a chance to vote. I personally would feel a little clamp on refugees might have good effect. In other words, they can come into an area and vote a few days after they get there. I don't think that is too good. But we have a lot of difficulty in getting the legislature to get on to things that need to be done here. They wanted to get a constitution and they passed a constitution, before the election law. They have passed a Jap collaborator law which shouldn't go into effect until all Korea is united and consulted. We can't get them down to needed reforms like land distribution or labor laws. Mostly we are getting odds and ends pertaining to a small piece of legislation. We have gotten them to get into the grain collection problems, but it is just like making a recalcitrant child eat spinach. They fight and gag, and it is hard to get them to do these little things. They want to do something big, like declare their own Independence or something. But they are learning, and we think they are making headway. How much prestige they have with the people, I don't know; it depends on the area you go into. Some of the people, some of the Koreans, grant them prestige, and others don't. I think the foregoing, generally speaking, covers the political angles. Have you anything you would like to discuss on this, Jake? MR. JACOBS: No, I don't. GENERAL HODGE: You have been here now long enough to get ideas - 29 SECRET DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 826518 of your own, and I would like to have you present anything you have. MR. JACOBS TO DRAPER: You read my telegram, and that is the sum and substance of all I think about it. DRAPER TO JACOBS: You compressed it into two or three pages, and I think it is very good, though. HODGE TO JACOBS: Now, there is one political thing I think. in Washington, we have Syngman Rhee, who has a group back in Washington whom I consider dangerous to the American effort out here, a dangerous group of lobbyists and propagandists. They have no hesitancy to lie, and apparently no interest in the American effort out here, based on some of their stuff we pick up. The background on that group, as near as I can find out from bits of evidence and from statements made at one time or another by Syngman Rhee, or by them, is that they have formed a commerical group, Jerome Williams, John Staggers, Robert Oliver, and a Korean, Ben Limb, who calls himself Colonel. They had formed a commerical group, and when Syngman Rhee gets to be President, they are going to take over the big commercial activities of Korea. That is the reason they are so willing to take over South Korea alone, if they can just get a part of Korea, they can still make their economic penetration. That I think, is the thing that activates the American elements of that group. However, they are having a hard time getting money. Syngman Rhee's money giving followers are dropping off very rapidly. Most of the Koreans in the United States and Hawaii have broken away from him. The lobby I mention in Washington has penetrated into government offices and have gotten audience with various people. Everytime they get an audience with anyone, they distort very highly what is said and they send it out here to Rhee where Rhee publishes it as coming from anyone from the Secretary of State to the entire U.N. He gets it out to the people here as evidence of the high standing he has in Washington as the great Korean diplomatic success, and he takes full credit for it with the Korean people -- or tries to. Every move by U.S. that he does not like, he blames on me as an individual. He hates me, probably worse than any Korean, American, or Russian today, because he thinks I have blocked his complete -- 30 -- SECRET DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 826518 미국자료 II 63 success of being the head of the government in South Korea or all of Korea. I just point that out, because that condition exists. JACOBS: Well, I agree with the General, that it is very bad in Washington to go on as I think both State and War Department have done in the past, and give encouragement to those people over there. They go around and see them and write letters to them in flattering sort of terms, and make them feel that they are somebody, when they only represent one group - they do represent a group, maybe the largest group, I don't know, but they are not an official group, and that hurts us in our relations with those who try to work with us, but they are actually in it - yet, our people in Washington talk to these people, and then it comes back here through the press and correspondence, and it appears to his local followers that Rhee has the blessing of Washington, and then they go ahead and attack General Hodge -- for example, this telegram of this morning, suggesting that General Hodge be removed entirely. DRAPER: Is Syngman Rhee in the Legislature itself? JACOBS: No, he has no official position whatsoever. Yet he makes it appear to the people of Korea that he has the blessing of the people in Washington. For example, he told his little assembly-he calls it an assembly--that Wedemeyer was going to appear before it and talk, but Wedemeyer did not. He was trying to finagle it, and he lost a lot of face because of it. That is not the core at all of troubles, but it is - - DRAPER: Has Syngman Rhee asked to join the Legislature or not? HODGE: He would have lost great face to step down into the Legislature. He is the great self-styled hero leader of Korea. DRAPER: I se-. He is above that. How do they carry on these contacts with the War and State Departments? Do they ask for a meeting and then go and talk to people? JACOBS: Oh, yes, they go and talk, and they exchange letters. Of course, those who won't give them anything they call "dyed-in-thewool obstructionists," and things like that, and those that give them a letter once in a while, they praise. The letters do not mean anything, but . . DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 82651P 64 제주4·3사건 추가진상조사자료집 4 DAPING: but it gives them contact --- JACOBS: It makes it appear that they have channels in Washington. HODGE: I think a little more elucidation may help clarify just how this thing arises. I pointed out the terrific importance of trusteeship and anti-trusteeship. That is where it stems from. The Americans working within the framework of the Moscow Decision have had to try to educate the Koreans that the Moscow Decision was the one way they could accomplish their aim of getting a United Korea, free and independent. Syngman Rhee's group has as their main claim to fame only anti-trusteeship. They have had nothing to offer these people in a constructive program, except his idea of "To hell with the Moscow Decision, we will make South Korea a separate government of South Korea," that is what he is yelling for. I immediately have to disagree with a separate government for South Korea because that is opposed to the Moscow Decision and disagrees with the United States' aims and the agreement made at Cairo. That was the first place that we really tangled, and that occurred about a year ago. He got his idea of a separate government of South Korea, and I smacked him down on it, not too roughly, but I just simply would not go with him, and that started him out on his hate campaign. When he went to Washington last year, I didn't realize his hostility to me until he got there. In fact, I helped him to go, but I didn't realize what he was about; I thought he was over his idea of a separate government for South Korea. We weren't getting anywhere in efforts to solve the Korean problem. There was not much interest in Korea in the United States, and he suggested that he might go there and talk to some people that he knew and let it be know that for over a year and that no progress had been made, and tell them what the story of Korea is from a patriotic standpoint. But he didn't do that. He went, and the first thing he did was to go all out to get the American troops out of Korea, combined with an attack on me. That has been going on now almost a year, including violent efforts to get me out; primarily because I have not agreed with him on a separate government of South Korea and I had tried to educate the Koreans that the Moscow Decision SECRET - 32 - DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 82651P was perfectly sound, which it is, if the Russians would do business under it. It would be a lot sounder if the Koreans had shut up about their opposition to it, and if all of them had come in, I actually believe it might have worked. Of course, there has always been the danger of Communism getting control here and that danger is growing more every day, but the result of the actions of this rightist group is that we have had to fight the battle with the Russians here, not only without the help of the people here we are trying to help, but with their opposition. Led by Syngman Rhee and his crowd, who, when he left here last December, left behind a plan for a revolution in South Korea to set up Syngman Rhee as head of a government. He wanted to be out of Korea when it happened, but Kim Koo carried on his plan to set up their own government unilaterally in South Korea, and they were willing to kill Americans, or do anything else they had to to accomplish their end. They even expressed desire to kill a few Americans and get the people in the United States imbued with the desire to get the Americans out of here, in belief that they were unpopular and failing in the U.S. mission. That still runs in his mind, and his group may try it at any time they believe propitious . I believe they would do anything to get power and set up their unilateral government. A dictatorship is what they want. DRAPER: Of course, if American troops got out, he would not last very long, would he? HODGE: He would not last fifteen minutes. He knows that, on one hand, but on the other hand, he is getting desperate; and his wife is constantly prodding him on it. She is a little vixen, an Austrian. We are not sure sometimes that she is not in Russian pay. There is a desperation in their actions. When he went to Washington, he finally got to see Hilldering of State Department, which gave him great face for returning to Korea as a diplomatic success. They had set it up for him to see the Secretary of War. I think the old man actually came to the meeting, but the Secretary of War was too busy to see him when we got the story to him. The State Department had arranged for him to travel by military plane upon return to Korea. SECRET DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 826571P 66 제주4·3사건 추가진상조사자료집 4 DRAPER: Col. Munson knows about the plane, he didn't arrange it, though. He stopped it. HODGE: The old man got authority to go to China -- where, I understand, Chiang Kai Chek is still helping the old provisional government gang. Wedemeyer had some rumor that Chiang Kai Check had just allotted another two hundred thousand American dollars to the Kim Koo group just about the time Wedemeyer was in China. I know he had made an allotment two years ago of about two hundred thousand dollars. I knew that, because Syngman Rhee was trying to get his hands on it. It was allotted to Kim Koo, but they are trying to get their hands on it. DRAPER: General, they work pretty well together? HODGE: It depends on what they are trying to do. Right now they are separated. Last winter when Syngman Rhee was gone they were in cohorts. We have a thick file on that revolution they were going to stage in the old Chinese war lord tradition. Getting back to Syngman Rhee, he got authority to go to China, and I recommended he travel by boat. If he came in on a plane, the Koreans would know it was an Army plane because all planes coming in at that time were Army planes. So Rhee could say "The United States gave me a plane to come from the United States. The State Department and the War Department gave me this plane to come." In Korean eyes, any plane, I don't care what it is, from an L-5 to a C-54, if he came in here on it, it would be his plane, and he would tell all the Koreans about it, and they would swallow it, and believe he had full backing of the U. S. Government. Anyway, with State's assistance, he went to China by air, and Chiang Kai Chek sent him over here in his personal plane. This capped the climax, and he came back with full honors from Chiang and told all the Koreans that he was going to get me out of here--that I would leave right away, that they would now have a separate government of South Korea; that General Hilldering had promised him this, and that everybody in the U.S. Administration had promised him this, but me. His attacks on me in the U.S. had been so strong that when I was called back to the States in February, I found - 34 - SECRET DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 826518 I was defending myself in high places for being a Communist. I am not joking. With members of Congress, and with groups that I contacted, and with the press, I was a pro-communist, if not an all-out one, so help me! I got that cleared pretty quick, but when I went to New York I found Rhee had made inroads in New York. Henry Luce in New York has backed this gang up, and is still backing them, apparently giving them an office in the Rockefeller Building, an office and some office help free of charge. They have sold themselves as being enemies of Communism. True, they are enemies of Communism, but they are also enemies of the United States in dealing with the Korean problem. That is what it amounts to. We have had that struggle of trying to do a job here with them opposing us on every turn for about one year. That is why I mentioned to you a while ago that it might be a good idea to get someone here that they don't hate so much. Although I would hate to be run out by the bastards, it is a situation that ought to be thought about. JACOBS: There is another aspect in there. They have taken, in addition to the letters and contacts they have attempted, they have taken the grant-in-aid program which our people and State and War both talked about, as an indication that we are going to accept a South Korean government, and they interpret that as an indication that certain people anyway intended to accept a South Korean government. Then with General Hodge out here trying to implement, carry out his directives to see that the Moscow Decision was carried out, and try to re-unite Korea, he became a Communist - you see how they are in their simple minds - keen, but also simple. HODGE: According to them I am not carrying out the Truman Doctrine; I am opposed to it, and also to the Marshall plan. Here is another thing, when we picked up the Communist chiefs of the seditious activities recently, they were happy as could be, tickled to death. But when we started turning loose the small fry which we picked up and knew were not in the planning, I was bitterly attacked again for turning loose the Communists. JACOBS: Of course, they have the same feeling toward General Brown. SECRET - 35 - DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 826518 GENERAL BROWN: There is one other point I verified last night through an American officer - Syngman Rhee wants nothing less than complete sovereignty for South Korea. He wants American troops here when you pin him down as to how he would protect South Korea, he wants to do that with American troops, and yet he wants complete sovereignty. He is obsessed with that idea. He will sell out for no less than complete sovereignty. Of course, that means Americans have got to get out of here. DRAPER: Does he want American financial help as well? HODGE: Oh, yes, absolutely. JACOBS: He expects aid and assistance to be given, and I think the old fool also has the idea that once he can get himself in power in South Korea, that he can deal with the Russians. In other words, we can't, but he can deal with them. If he did ever get control of South Korea and be President, and we pour in money and assistance to him, then he will dicker with them (the Russians), and they will agree with him on certain points, and they will establish a provisional government, and he will be President over all Korea, and they will go along with him for a while, and then after the Communists have gotten themselves in as Chiefs of Police and aides of the police and the Army and everything, with their propaganda, then they will say, "Well, we have shown you here that we can work together. Now, we ought to get the entire government. This is only a provisional government," and they will say, "All right, we will hold an election," and then the Communists will get their man in, and when the assembly holds forth, the Right Hand Communists will come up and say, "This is the Constitution," and they will read out a constitution that is the exact copy of the one the Russians have, and somebody might smell a rat, but if he says too much, his legislative immunity is taken away from him and he goes out to the hoosegow. Then the rest of them get frightened, and they prepare the thing and Rhee is still President, like the President of Yugoslavia. He will be guarded and watched, and the Prime Minister will become the ruler -- Kim Ill Sung, a Russian man. Then it is a satellite nation and it is too late to do anything - 36 - SECRET DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 826518 about it. The old fool himself thinks he can do it, but he doesn't know this other pattern, thought. I have tried to tell him this way. I said, "After all you should want to go along with us under this trusteeship arrangement, which really, after all, may be your protection, because with trusteeship if the Russians try to walk in, we will have legal rules on which to oppose them. If you can't trust the United States, whom can you trust?" I said also, "There are only two powers in the world today that can do anything, Russia and the United States, and if you can't trust us, you have to trust the Russians." Personally, I think the man is mentally unbalanced. DRAPER: To what degree do you think the South Koreans will support him? JACOBS: Well, I think probably, as near as I can figure, he is one of the strongest rightist leaders. ROEM: They would support him a lot if we would let a program go which he would back, and which looked good. They would support him. JACOBS: I think the Rightists would follow anyone to whom we gave our blessing, and if we clearly indicated that we would back him, they would get a lot of support, simply because we were backing him. BROWN: There is something else there. He is the only leader today who has any national appeal. DRAPER: In North Korea as well as South Korea? BROWN: In South Korea, principally. DRAPER: Has he any following in North Korea? BROWN: North Korea is completely Communist controlled. There is a large group of underground Rightists who are not out in the open. If, in any way, you could get rid of the Communists in North Korea, and the Rightists could come out, they would probably follow Syngman Rhee. There is another Korean in North Korea in the protective custody of the Russians, Cho Mansic, who has a great deal of influence. How he and Syngman Rhee would compete against each other, I don't know. He is in a hotel, guarded by the Russians and can't — 37 — SECRET DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 824514 even see his wife or family. DRAPER: Is he the one you said might be Minister? JACOBS: No, Kim Il Sung. DRAPER: What have the Russians done in building up a government in North Korea. Have they formed a legislature, or taken any steps of that kind? Hodge: They have the People's Committee setup. They have committees, central committee, etc. I don't think they call anything a legislature. They have a so-called People's Assembly, but this assembly, as I understand, is composed of the heads of the Communist groups throughout the area. JACOBS: The members are all Democratic Front, and the leader - the Prime Minister who is a member - goes down and reads whatever law he wants introduced, or he has the secretary of the Committee read it, and it is just passed then without debate. There is no voting except for the perfunctory approval. DRAPER: Now, if this proposal is turned down by the Russians, which I suppose is quite likely -- JACOBS: I don't know. They can't veto another assembly, but they will vote against it, and after that they would refuse to participate, so that if the General Assembly adopted the resolution which we will introduce -- we have not actually introduced the resolution yet - but it will be introduced, and probably will be passed, but if the Russians vote against it, and we try to implement it, it will be just like the Joint Commission. How are you going to implement it with the Russians refusing to participate? You still have the 38th Parallel as a barrier, and United Nations would not be effective, and then what are we going to do. That comes to the other point in my recent telegram. We have wasted eighteen months or two years -- not wasted - but just lost, and two years is just too long to continue this uncertainty, so we ought to make up our minds what we are going to do one way or another. Something ought to be done as a positive policy that we are going ahead with, and then forget about united Korea until some day in the future -- DRAPER: If the Russians do accept the proposal and do permit - 38 - SECRET DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 826518 a commission to come in, which is unlikely, in your opinion -- JACOBS: Unlikely, and as far as I can see now, I can't see them agreeing to it. They might somehow or other water it down so that the Russians will accept it, but - DRAPER: The second alternative would be to form a South Korean government after the first step was turned down. JACOBS: Which would be a great tragedy for the South Korean people if our people and Congress are not going to visualize Korea for three or four or five years and go on. It would be a great tragedy if it would be all cut off, say if the Republicans were elected and didn't carry it out. HODGE: There would be more of them killed - DRAPER: The third alternative would be before you take that step to decide that the position is not sufficiently important, and pull out. JACOBS: In other words, to hold our general elections and turn it over to Dr. Rhee, and we go, that is a possibility. That is one course of action that is -- DRAPER: I think we have still others (alternatives), of course, we can begin with the Russians on the Joint Commission and let them set up a Democratic Front Government here, or begin partially -- we could probably go on and work out something with them, and that a last, strong stand on what we call basic principles, but to do it, you would probably have to write off all the rightists and middle-of-the-road elements here, wouldn't you? JACOBS: We probably would, and we would have a dickens of a time getting out. We would be shot at in leaving, but it could be done, of course. Then another thing, of course, is letting the United Nations go ahead and take over South Korea and relieve the United States of doing it. In other words, the resolution that we have introduced for all Korea would be left applicable to only South Koreans. Of course, if the United Nations had a police force, they could probably slide it better, but without it, I do not see how it could work, but we could try it. Of course it is important to say, - 39 - SECRET DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 826518 "Keep the Russians out of this area so they can't build up Asia and infiltrate ..." DRYER: Then you have got to keep an occupation force here. JACOBS: Then I would say "Damn well stay here," but we could go ahead with our South Korean program and darn well pick the leader we want to go with us, and if Rhee is in our way, we could just get him out and pick someone else and give him our blessing and he would soon have followers. HODGE: Part of his strategy is not too bad on the Korean psychology - to get the blessing of the Americans - his strategy is to make the Korean believe that he has the blessing of the United States Government. That is the reason he is so bitter against me, because I don't bear out the fact that the United States Government blesses him, and he is trying to build himself up through his Washington lobby. They send him all the good news, and they don't give him the bad news, except when they cuss somebody they all don't like, or somebody he hates insults one of them. They will run a press release system and get a lot of stuff published in the press in the form of letters. As you know, every paper from the New York Times down will publish any letter that a crack-pot writes in, if it is carefully written. This fellow Oliver, of the Rhee Washington lobby, was a professor from Syracuse, who resigned his job to go to Washington and work for Rhee. He writes most of the letters for publication and gets screwballs around the country to write and build up Syngman Rhee as the great hero of Korea. In other words, it makes sense for Rhee to appear to get the blessings of the United States Government, for if he can get the blessings of the United States he is made because many Koreans will follow him. All Koreans who know anything look to the United States to save them, but mostly they want to be saved in their own way so they can get personal gain. The Democratic Party, the most powerful political party in Korea today probably, back here when we were having the rat-race trying to get the Koreans to come in and work with the Joint Committee agreed to work with it. They came to - 40 - DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 82657B me and disowned Syngman Rhee. They were following him because they need a front. You have got to have a man to follow in this country -- a man with a front and a reputation. They wanted to get Cho Man Sik from the North to replace Rhee, but he is under Soviet arrest. Rhee is their hero, but they are scared to death of the old rascal because they don't know where he will break out. At that time, one reason that they were getting afraid of Rhee was because he will call his "National Assembly" which is composed of a few of his followers here and there throughout the provinces whom he calls in, and who were preparing to set themselves up as a national legislative assembly. He called this group in to form a national government, and they were going to take over South Korea about the time the Joint Commission was beginning to meet. His followers talked him out of that (the sensible ones) but he cut them off and for a long time wouldn't talk to them. Now they are getting back together again because they see the Joint Commission is not going to succeed. There is one thing I would like to mention here. All sorts of announcements come out from Washington, via the press and radio news, this way and that and the other, mostly contradictory, that indicate a lack of unity in thinking in Washington. One example is the matter of the State Department taking over civil affairs in Korea. It is announced they are going to take over, then that they won't. It goes around and everytime it comes up the Koreans jump up and down and get excited, being either pro or con. We should say "yes" or "no" and shut up about it. Things like that keep coming out here to keep the Koreans excited. Rhee and company keep trying to use these to his advantages. When the Joint Commission was announced to reconvene here last spring, Rhee started on us anew, locally. As soon as he found that the meeting was to reconvene, he laid that right at my door. He didn't want it to reconvene. "General Hodge did that against the Truman policy," he said. "While I was in the United States, I talked to all the high officials and they are not going to appease or deal with the Russians any more." "General Hodge is a strong pro-Communist and he has got the Joint Commission to get together again and is going SECRET DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 826518 to try to deal with the Russians and play with the Communists. As always, he keeps trying to get coalition and to let the Communists build up." DRAPER: Disregarding the fact generally that Moscow was the one. HODGE: That did not make any difference, he was telling the Koreans. He doesn't worry about truth or logic. I needed to combat his propaganda. I asked that the State Department make a statement in the U.S. that we were carrying out U.S. policy here, because I wanted to get the Rightist Groups herded into work with the Joint Commission, and to shut up about trusteeship and their hatred of the Moscow Decision. I think I could have got them all to cooperate if I could have had a little high level help. DRAPER: They finally did issue something, did they not? HODGE: Yes, but it was several weeks too late and in the mean- time, the attacks on the American command here had permeated all over Korea and has caused a considerable anti-American feeling. My civil information groups that we send out by train into various areas, in the 6th Division area, has run into a renewed spirit of Syngman Rhee crowd attacking the local American policy. They have built up the general belief that I do not carry out the policy of the U.S. The announcement by the Secretary of State came weeks too late to do any good, because the damage had been done; the propaganda has permeated all through and will take months of effort to correct. They think the Americans out here are not carrying out the policies of President Truman and the Administration. JACOBS: It was two months after I got here before we ever got Washington to say anything. They played into Rhee's hands too. Washington did not speak and so the local Koreans thought we were lying when we attempted to convince them that we were carrying out the policies of the United States here. HODGE: I am not over being bitter about that yet. If I have to stay here and carry on with these people, I must have the apparent support of the Administration. DRAPER: You would like to have some pretty straight support. SECRET - 42 - DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 82651P HODGE: Whoever is out here must have strong support, right or wrong, if he is to stay. If he is wrong get him out. If he is right, give him full support when he asks for it. I, myself, have no career ambitions. I have been ten years without leave or rest and I would like to get out tomorrow, but we are here struggling with this thing. All of us out here are doing the best we can with a very difficult situation and if we yell for help, it is because we really need it. When we made the first request, the State Department said they had not seen it in the papers in the States, and indicated there was no need for anything. The reason they had not seen it in the U. S. press was because I persuaded the American correspondents to keep it down. We have constantly been confronted with the circumstances that we are going to have to deal with old Rhee at some stage because he is a powerful figure and I have tried to keep from an open declaration of war on him -- I'd like to deal with him without somebody back in Washington telling his crowd one thing and us here telling him another. Dr. Pm.: Why did the State Department delay? JACOBS: You are asking me? I never was told. HODGE: General Lerch was in Washington after the thing had built up much too far and he went to bat on it and stayed around there about a week trying to get a statement made. He knew the problem here and the necessity. He was promised that one would be made and came back thinking it would come out before his arrival here. This was weeks after our first request. Dr. Pm.: When was it finally made? JACOBS: On the 16th of August. HODGE: It was well in August, early in August, but irreparable damage had been done. JACOBS: They told me to go and tell Rhee that General Hod[ge] was carrying out his orders, and I told him, but he still thought that we were concocting all of this out of the blue. I couldn't show him actually the telegram but I gave him a paraphrase in writing, just what it was. However, he still went on with his - 43 - DECLASSIFIED Authority [illegible] campaign. HODGE: Actually he used that conference to great advantage. He announced that he met with General Hodge and Mr. Jacobs on important, secret business in connection with a very important telegram from the Secretary of State in Washington. DRAPER: He is a very clever politician. HODGE: Indeed he is. DRAPER: What do you think should be done now? HODGE: The only thing that I see is to go right ahead, by getting those people in Washington alerted to the fact that the Korean Commission (Rhee's Washington lobby) is not representing Korea. They are dangerous foreign agents, in my opinion, who are working solely for their own personal gain. I don't think any of them have enough interest in Korea to give a damn whether the Koreans live or die. DRAPER: If this United Nations effort results in no commission because of Russian blocking, what would you welcome as the next step? HODGE: The decision will have to be on a higher level than mine. There must be some basic policy decisions made as to what our Asiatic policy is going to be. JACOBS: I did not try to answer those questions in my recent telegram. I have absolutely no idea as to the overall strategy on some of them; I don't know what they are working on, and I don't know what we estimate as our capability out here, what we can do. Whether we have to give up something in our struggle, I don't know. I would say that Korea has both prestige and strategic political value in staying here, holding the Russians 250 miles practically away from the Japanese shores. It is worth while, I think. I am not a military man, but I think it is, if you could do it with a reasonable degree of safety. I think it has a certain amount of prestige value to stay, but on the other hand you have got to think of whether we can carry out our promises. Mr Jones and Dr. Bunce will tell you, in economic estimates, that it is going to cost at least a half-billion dollars over 5 years plus the cost of upkeeing - 46 [stamp/seal] DECLASSIFIED Authority [illegible] of the military which is almost another half billion a year, to keep the occupation going; or a total approaching two to two and a half billion. In other words, the prestige and strategic value might be bought more cheaply than two billion dollars, say by doing something in Japan. I don't know. I can't answer that question but those are the factors that have to be considered. Very definitely, Korea has prestige and military value, and you have to decide whether we can go on and hold it even after the American people have spent 2½ billion dollars to do it over a period of five years. DRAPER: I think all the other liabilities for many that have to be made at the same time I think that poses a question. HODGE: As to the steps we can take out here, one is a mutual withdrawal with the Russians. We cannot just pull out of here and leave the Russians in North Korea. Of course there is the possibility that we may be driven out, don't forget that possibility. It is a good possibility if things follow present trends. A mutual withdrawal with the Russians would, I think, be acceptable to the Koreans and the Orient without our losing great face if certain protective arrangements are agreed to beforehand. JACOBS: If, under United Nations blessing, we withdraw from the south and they from the north and the Communists came down and the United Nations howl.... HODGE: If the Russians keep on with their progress as they are now, anything other than staying right here with a heavy military force will give Korea to Communism. We must face that, but I am not so sure that this whole Oriental area is not going communistic anyway. Maybe we are willing to let it go. I don't know what the effect would be on Japan. People in a higher level have to decide that. I can think about it but I don't know all the high level factors. There are just two alternatives I can see. One is to get out, the soon the better, with what face saving we can do; the other is to make up our minds that we are going to stay here for at least five years and really go after it. DRAPER: Pay the price and do the job? DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 826518 SECRET HODGE: Pay the price and do the job. It will be a big price -it is going to be expensive. We have been living here on a shoestring, our pattern is discouraging to our own people and the Koreans and we are losing face. We are on the barest maintenance basis for the Korean economy and we ourselves are living at well below U.S. standards. As for our own living conditions, the buildings that our troops are living in, two years from now will have to be replaced on their present basis or rebuilt on a more permanent basis. On the matter of dependent houses, we have to decide what we will be willing to do. We are limited on the amount of materials that we can get from Japan and we have limitations on our capacity to fabricate. The policy is that building materials will not be shipped from the U.S.-that is even more than just War Department policy. We are short housing in our own country. If we ship stuff out here, we get into political howls from our own people. In order to build here on the basis needed, we are going to get good contractors to come in and build. We are struggling along here with a few engineer troops on a military basis and trying to get Korean contractors to build our housing. They don't have the know-how and no materials. Building material comes from Japan or not at all. Lumber is below any grade sold in the lumber yards in the U.S. today and much of it is green lumber. We are going to have to build up the utilities for our own people as well as for Koreans. This is just our own military bailiwick that I am talking about now. Civilians will not come over here, good civilians, unless we can get their families within a reasonable time. At the present time, we can't do it. We have made every effort we can. The taking over of Japanese houses is ended. We found that for the ones we are taking now, it costs almost as much to rehabilitate the houses as it does to build a new house. In addition to that, on the last bunch we started to take over, we ran into real trouble here. We felt that arrangements were made, and we started to take over in an area of Seoul, but the wild-eyed Koreans were set for us. They fought and screamed, broke up the houses, threatened to burn them, and filled paper bags with - 46 - DECLASSIFIED Authority [illegible] SECRET pepper to throw in the eyes of police and several other things. In other words, they don't understand why the Americans have to take over houses for American families to move out here when there are many tens of thousands of people in South Korea without a cover over their heads. That is part of the refugee problem. I citing these things out to show you the conditions we are running into. If we are going to stay, it is going to cost us a lot, and we are going to have to go into the occupation in a big way. It is up to the higher authorities to decide if the value of keeping part of Korea from the Russians is worth it, even if it is possible to do so. (Note by steno: Break in spacing due to mass typing. Continuity maintained on following page.) SECRET - 27 - DECLASSIFIED Authority [illegible] **80** 제주4·3사건 추가진상조사자료집 4 If we get out in the near [illegible]ture we have lost face here, in my opinion. JACOBS: It is pretty evident what the Russians want, of course. They want a satellite state here, and in Manchuria. They have most of Mongolia, I understand, and from Mongolia are going on to coastal provinces. They desire to build a group of Asiatic satellites, which ultimately would become parts of the Union. DRAPER: Aren't you surprised that they haven't suggested a mutual withdrawal from here? JACOBS: Yes. Sometimes it puzzles me. HODGE: I have expected it for almost a year. JACOBS: I think it is just stupidity on their part. One of the explanations may be that they think they can afford to wait and let us rehabilitate this area and then hand them over a Garden of Eden five years hence. They don't want to get entangled too much in this part of the world, because they couldn't defend it and do much about it. HODGE: If the Congress will give the money and we spend it here and fixed it up for the Russians who may take it over--- DRAPER: Let me ask another question: If we should spend money here to build up South Korea, would the Koreans have the technical ability to operate industries? HODGE: That would have to be a large part of the program - to teach them. That is one of the big problems we would have to contend with, something we are going to have to spend money doing. That will be taken up in this afternoon's conferences. DRAPER: Have they the innate ability? HODGE: They have innate ability. They are very facile with their hands in any mechanical operation of that kind and they have high intelligence. They do not have too much innate ability on planning, but this is a matter of experience and training. DRAPER: Do they have the managerial capacity to run a plant? HODGE: Yes, they have ability along that line. Their integrity and honesty are not too high, however. DRAPER: They haven't done any of that, very little in the last forty or fifty years, have they? HODGE: Very little, and those that have are rated as pro-Japs and collaborators. Of course, anybody who has prospered under the Japs doesn't smell good to the people who didn't. That is the basis of one of the good Communist slogans. DRAPER: In other words, can the Korean race, in the next five years, run an economy, even with some help, of a different from than a rice economy? Can they run a partial industrial economy on their own? SECRET -48- DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 826518 HODGE: I believe they could. What do you think, Bunce? BUNCE: I think they could. HODGE: Not on an industrial economy that we think of as our standards. BUNCE: With what they have, with the private factories and so on, they are going ahead. The thing that saves the economy here is the fact of a lot of little industries having kept going. DRAPER: But if you are talking about South Korea, which that would be, you are talking about largely the agricultural part, are you not? BUNCE: That is one thing we can't overcome. Of course, our basic industries, much of our coal, metals and mining, are in North Korea. DRAPER: As I understand, there is just no trade between the two. BUNCE: There is a little smuggling going on. DRAPER: Have there been attempts to trade one thing for another? BUNCE: They bring stuff down here and sell it, and the money comes back through the Communists. DRAPER: What I meant is, have you made any effort to trade-- BUNCE: We had an economic conference here in the middle of January 1946, and they came down here--literally, their attitude was, they wanted rice badly. They wanted it in any way and in any form they could get it, and that was all they wanted. We met here and the American delegation had authority to do everything to integrate it--to provide for free movement and currency and integrate all the economy. But the Russians came down and wouldn't do a thing. The only thing they wanted was rice. HODGE: If we had had rice to give them at that time we could have gotten anything they had. JACOBS: One thing we have done, we worked out an exchange for electric power. BUNCE: That will all be discussed this afternoon. DRAPER: But if that iron curtain remains and you try to develop South Korea along the lines you are discussing and there is no trade intercourse with North Korea, can South Korea exist without a continued subsidy? BUNCE: No. But if we put in a rehabilitation program we can cut that subsidy to the bone. HODGE: The money to be expended will diminish. BUNCE: We will give you detailed figures this afternoon. We have just been making-- DRAPER: Colonel Munson, you may have some questions. MUNSON: Nothing at this time. DECLASSIFIED Authority N/N 826518 -49- SECRET DRAPER: This has been a very interesting general overall picture of this situation. HODGE: I would like to give you a little bit more, if you don't mind. DRAPER: Not in the slightest. HODGE: I have about wound up the political phase, but I would like to carry on the picture a bit further. DRAPER: I thoroughly agree with you that the commander of a place like this has to have complete support. If they want to change directives, that is one thing, but so long as-- HODGE: Well, Wedemeyer raised this point, that the directives at the present time, under the policy of the United States, should give us more freedom in dealing with the Communists. Under our directive we have no leeway but to encourage them. He was astounded when he read the directive. He wouldn't believe it, when I told him the provisions relating to political parties. DRAPER: I would like to see that also. I haven't read that completely through. HODGE: The directive provides for complete freedom of expression and equality of political parties, even though the Communist-dominated parties are our avowed enemies. They are not political parties. Yes, we call them such. But they are definitely the enemies of law and order and the Government of South Korea. They are working for the Russians, just that. They are losing some of their popularity among the Koreans at large right now, but I am sitting on the verge of a volcano. I don't actually know whether or not my country will back me up if I help them keep on losing popularity, so far as my directives are concerned. I am not taking any active steps myself right now, but the self-respecting Koreans are fed up with the Communists, and I don't know whether I can stop them or not. DRAPER: On the part of the Rightists? HODGE: Yes, sir, on the part of the Rightists and on the part of the police. They pick these Commies up, and I can't say anything until they get the investigation completed and try them in Court. In the meantime, they may have had him for thirty days. We do not let the police hold anyone for more than ten days for investigation, but by that time they got them to the district attorney and he can hold them for another ten days, and then the court can hold them for ten days for trial. Then whether they are tried or not, they are not released until they have been held for thirty days. You can talk habeas corpus here, but habeas corpus only gives the suspect a chance to take off and you never see him again. They go out into the underground and you'll never find them again. [illegible] just no other way you can 50 SECRET DECLASSIFIED Authority [illegible] 226474P 미국자료 II 83 handle them. It is just like handling thugs loose in the United States. You turn a thug loose without bail and see what happens to him. He will take off. The bail system on a yen forfeiture doesn't mean anything to them. They don't mind that. You are cheap for the ones who can dig them up--they cannot make bail of any kind. What I want to get to bring out is this: I look for a lot of increased Communist subversive activity here. If this problem goes to the United Nations we may have a quite sizeable increase in communist activity, even to the extent of all-out revolution, with the idea of embarrassing the United States in this zone. While the United Nations are considering the case - the Communists are building it up already-- sending in letters and complaints to me about the way they, the patriotic and "democratic" people, are being treated. The Russians are backing them and are making propaganda about the terrible oppression in the American zone. Of course they plan that. The United Nations are going to have out here a lot of liberal minded guys comparable to some of our own fellow travelers who are going to favor the Russians. The propaganda is already starting, along with very strong anti-American propaganda. I look for a big increase in Communist activity in this zone just for the purpose of embarrassing us if the United Nations send out an investigating committee. They are going to have a long list of complaints, and they are going to be more active. Their subversive activity is going up, and they are going to show the lack of Korean ability to get along under American rule. We have had one good sample of their labor methods. They made every effort to get control of the Seoul Electric Company. We finally had a regular stateside labor election to see which union would be the bargaining power. The Communists wouldn't play, but pretty nearly eighty percent of the group in Seoul Electric voted for the Rightist Union. Then the Rightist strong-armers threw the Communists all out, physically. That is another thing that goes on over here that embarrasses us--political strong-arm labor methods. When the election occurred we had twenty streetcars running in the City of Seoul. Today we have 110. That was only about two months ago. The Korean who runs the company says that it is due to getting the Communists out of the corporation. He says they would sabotage the cars, break them up, tear off parts, and do many other things to show the lack of progress in South Korea. Of course, that is on the orders of the Russians--no progress in South Korea; break everything up. We constantly get slow down strikes on the railroads and in many key industries. We have a near sit-down strike in the 7th Division housing construction right now; a slow-down run by the Communists who have cells all the way through the laboring class. That calculated embarrassment may go into an all-out effort to start a revolution. They are whipping up people in North DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 832647P SECRET 57[illegible] Korea right now with the idea of liberating South Korea. My liaison officer from North Korea came back recently with information from good sources who said a condition is being developed in every town up there. The group of families system where several families meet two or three times a week, and they are being told that there will be war between North and South Korea in October of this year; in other words, there is a building up going. The increase of spies in South Korea is growing. We are getting more dope on it. We are getting several deserters from the North Korean Constabulary, and other informants coming in now, which builds up. The Russians are fomenting a lot of activity in North Korea. The leading Communists in South Korea are underground at the present time, following this August clean-up, and are just beginning to stick their heads up. But if we don't take positive action, these people who hate Communists are going to take it themselves in the form of terrorism. And they don't do it too subtly. The police don't like the Communists and they are not too anxious to stop it. They look at it this way: The Communists are all subversive and against government, law and order, and do everything that is possible to tear them down. They try to get control of the police. They try to buy the police. They try all kinds of subversive rackets and they revile the police on every turn. It is difficult to get the police to take action when somebody goes and cleans out a cell of Communists. They will make some effort to pick up a few of them, and take them to the hoosegow, but they never have the evidence to convict a group who act against the Reds. The Koreans have always beaten people up. That sort of thing has been routine all their life. There is no sedition mixed with it. They are not operating against the Government, so it is hard to get police to do anything about it. It is hard to get the judges to punish Rightist terrorism enough to let them know that they shouldn't do that sort of thing. We may have to go back to provost courts. The pressure is growing up. During this period when we have given the Communists face and let them come out and support the Joint Commission, we had a big Communist mass meeting and the members of the Joint Commission had to go over and welcome the support that they have given to the Joint Commission. It builds a situation that is absolutely impossible, going against our own interests. It is hard to explain, but when you face it day by day it becomes quite real and we get accused by liberals of being oppressive. We get accused of Fascism, and all that, in line with their propaganda. Everything we do for the Koreans is turned against us by the Communists. It is propagandized as the United States imperialism, making beggars out of the Koreans — giving them stuff, yes, but why? So the Americans can take control and get Korea in debt so that it DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 822657AP 52 can't get out and then they will take over control and keep Korea as a colony. UNDER SECRETARY OF WAR DRAPER: What has the action of the Koreans been to the imported food? Haven't they appreciated the fact that it has kept them from starving? GENERAL HODGE: They have appreciated it. They think about it once in a while. But cut it down and see what happens. They aren't too appreciative, except the ones who think, who know. I am talking about your politicians, your mouthy guys who propagandize the ignorant. I think the best expression for it was by Roy Howard. While he was here he made the comment that one Communist can make more noise than a pig under a gate. They are awful noisy. They keep up a stir, and their propaganda affects a lot of people. It affects Koreans and it affects Americans. It affects the American press. It affects American thinking. It affects a lot of our own Americans here, a lot of our own Americans who think in terms of the United States without considering the bitter, raw Communism that we are up against here. This thing is bitter. It is raw. It is real. And there is nothing fancy about it. It is a bogey man, and he is going to stay. So we should be thinking about that in that light. I now come to our troop situation here. Last year we were at our lowest ebb when the revolution came. This was not an accident. These rascals knew exactly how strong we were. They had their spy system working, and they watched the ships go out and come in; and the troop movements to the replacement depot, out and in. Last year, just about this time of the year, we were at about fifty percent of our authorized strength, which was greater than it is now, when the Communists attempted a revolution. That is in the offing again, from all of our intelligence. We are short right now in officers and men, about 3,100, and we are losing, up to December, about 9,000 more. We have nothing in sight beyond about a thousand promised, over half of them colored. Our strength authorized is 44,000 enlisted. We are now — that is enlisted men — we are now 36,000. Our requisitions are apparently complete and up to date, but the information we get is that they are not on the way. They are not coming. Do you have any information? GENERAL TRUDEAU: That is correct. There will be a growing shortage in this theater. GENERAL HODGE: Our housekeeping here now has grown to the point where it is eating up an awful lot of personnel too. I have cut my combat strength against my better judgement to provide required service troops. Last spring we studied the situation with the Far East Command, and the result was that we had to cut down our DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 826724 5 SECRET combat troops to build [illegible] service troops. In other words the service job and housekeeping here does not go down -- particularly as we increase in dependents and civilians and build to peacetime standards. UNDER SECRETARY OF WAR DRAPER: You have to carry on your housekeeping. GENERAL HODGE: Yes, our service job is taking care of the civilians that come in; taking care of the military governments of our overhead, of our dependents, we have to run the civilian supply program, and help run the railroads. Our non-combatants who have to be cared for increase constantly. The transportation section has had to be strengthened rather than cut down, and it is growing. It is going to continue to grow. And as we get more dependent housing and more of the facilities of stateside conditions, our overhead is going to increase, instead of going down. It will never diminish. We are in a situation where the minimum strength that we can get along with is our TO strength. When it drops below that, even 2,000 or 3,000, we are badly hurt. We have one job for every man, and that is a full time job. We are using a lot of guards to protect our own stuff, valuable equipment, and we can't cut it down, and most of our people are working longer hours and doing more than they do in the States. I don't say what they should do -- it is what a soldier has to do --- but we have got a lot of soldiers doing 50 or 60 hours guard duty a week. Their time-off is not too great and the task gets onerous. I don't mean by that they are actually on post that length of time, but they are on guard duty tied down near the post. The morale of the troops is good. There is no question about it. For the ones we have here now, we have had the opportunity to get them pretty well indoctrinated as to what the job is and they appreciate the conditions they are up against and accept the fact that this is not Stateside. We have a good post exchange service. I hear from people coming from Tokyo that our exchange is better than the exchange over there. But we don't have the resort hotels and we don't have a lot of the things these kids were promised when they enlisted. However, we get help from FEC, and we send several hundred men a week to Japan. We sent over 800 officers and men to China in a spare ship waiting around for a load. They spent a week there and had a lot of fun. As they adapt themselves there they come along all right. It is not a place that everybody is enthusiastic about. They would all like to be at home. But under the conditions in which we operate, I think they are doing very well indeed. We had a bad time of it last winter. We got 50,000 replacements between September and March, most of whom came in in the middle of the cold weather, and we got a lot of bleats out of them. It was cold, and when you land at this place in bleak, cold weather, I don't know anything that will send your heart to the bottom SECRET 54 DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 82651B of your boots more quickly. The conditions are not too happy and it is a shock to these kids, most of them 17, 18, 19 years old. The man that shaves here is almost in the grandfather class. However, after we have them a few months most of them find themselves as good American soldiers. Our officer situation has been complicated by the many, many changes of criteria. We have never known where we stand. They change and change and change. There is no chance of planning ahead, and the turnover per job is terrific, particularly in the company grades, the lower grades. This keeps a constant lowered efficiency and has its affect on the morale. The best I can determine, the average tenure of a company commander is less than four months. It is far too short a time. That doesn't mean that every officer in command of a company changes, but the average change of the command. UNDER SECRETARY OF WAR DRAPER: Why is that big turnover? GENERAL HODGE: We will have completed our fourth complete turnover before the end of this year. UNDER SECRETARY OF WAR DRAPER: What is the reason for that rapid turnover? GENERAL TRUDEAU: I don't know. I don't understand how it can be that great. GENERAL HODGE: We made our first period --- GENERAL TRUDEAU: The rate turnover now is because of all short term enlistments. GENERAL HODGE: As for the officers, the turnover in the officers has not been quite four times. The four times figure is the turnover for the entire command but we have had a lot of officers sent in here who only stayed four or five months. They sent us other officers from other areas in the Pacific to make up our shortages and then their terms are up right away, and they go home. They have sent many of them to us with only four or five months, maybe six months to do. Also changes of criteria will cut them short -- GENERAL TRUDEAU: There have been very few changes of criteria since the beginning of the current calendar year. GENERAL HODGE: All right, now, let's take what we have -- GENERAL TRUDEAU: You have got the reserve commissions. GENERAL HODGE: We have that, but we have several circulars, changing conditions of service with alternates for those who do not accept such as discharge for re-enlistment; discharge to take terminal leave; and allowing changes in categories. In the states these don't affect you too much, but out here, every change means officers leaving. The latest thing to hit us was the change from thirty months to twenty-four months. That is just the same, as far [illegible] concerned, as the change DECLASSIFIED Authority [illegible] SECRET 5-5 88 제주4·3사건 추가진상조사자료집 4 in criteria. But up until now we haven't had a three-months period that I can recall without some change that affected officer personnel materially causing us losses in the hundreds. This terminal leave thing, for example -- GENERAL TRUDEAU: That is law. GENERAL HODGE: There are about three or four hundred in this command affected by that, and that is a jolt to us. All these changes come with our replacements lagging behind. The constant changes of officers has affected materially the efficiency of the command. (Note by Steno: Break in spacing due to mass typing. Continuity maintained on following page.) SECRET 56 DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 826818 General Hodge: When the War ended most of the good combat officers, particularly the good youngsters were due to go home on points. We just lost most of them along with all that experience, all that ingenuity and leadership that had been built up on the battlefields. There were some who elected to stay but most of the good ones wanted to go home and get their jobs back and they had a good reason for it. As replacements we got mostly officers swept up from odd corners of the United States, whom no one wanted in combat units during the War and who hadn't been overseas. Also, as they reduced strengths in other parts of the theater, we got short-term officers to fill out their time before the point system let them out. They were not too high class. Then came the 30 months tour, the many changes in the criteria, changes in the point system, changes in the category system, permission to go home when reduced. All these hit and kept hitting every so often. Many times we felt that we were about set when a new change would take hundreds of key officers. The non-combat replacements from the States did not fill the gaps. And that included from Colonels on down. General Ward there has had his troubles during this period trying to find able regimental commanders. The 7th Division has been in the same situation. The old rump-sprung Colonels who came in here were enough to dishearten any responsible commander. They were/Colonels that nobody had wanted during the War and commanders would not take them out of the States, or they were discarded from this or that unit going out and they stayed right in the States. However, most of the poorest are out now, but we have had all that to go through with. DRAPER: You have got rid of most of those now? HODGE: Yes, sir, and we are at last getting good officers. We are on the up-grade - on the make if we can keep it going. But, I do want to point out the necessity for keeping this command up to its T/O strength in good personnel. If a man is physically weak here, he goes out like that. (snapping his fingers). If a man is mentally weak, he goes psycho. This is a tough racket. The pressure is on here, as no where else in our armed services. DRAPER: This sorts them out from men and boys! HODGE: That's right. It sorts them out and of course any lack of integrity shows up quickly because there is an opening for being SECRET DECLASSIFIED Authority [illegible] crooked, black-market and all that sort of thing, and lack of military integrity also shows up. We have that sort of thing also with civilian personnel. It is sad to say a lot of highly paid civilians haven't been too high-powered. We have had more than our share of queers and fairies and a lot of people morally and mentally unfit for this area who crack up and go to pieces soon after they get out here. The weak ones are unhappy, they don't have the discipline of a soldier and they come out thinking it is just like home. They do not understand why we have to maintain certain standards of behavior and actions if we are to maintain the respect of the Korean people. The whole business of occupation irks a lot of them and they write their congressman and home town papers, and I can't do anything about it. Most of them convict themselves in their own statement of the things they complain about. They complain of everything from having bull-carts in the cities to having too many Orientals on the streets. Actually, one fellow resigned in a complaining gripe letter and he wound up this complaint, "There are too damned many Orientals on the streets". However, sometimes when I go out I am inclined to agree with him. DRAPER: You did not write that letter, did you, General Ward? WARD: No, sir, but it gives me an idea though. HODGE: He was complaining about the dirt and the filth around here and the Oriental customs and everything he did not like. We had another fellow who wrote in because the Government had broken its contract with him in that they had reported Seoul as being a beautiful modern city and upon his arrival here he found bulls on the street and his wife was allergic to the bovines. We had sent him home in a month after he arrived. It is astounding what you will run into in the way of mental weakness and unwillingness to give service. I covered the general picture of the Joint Commission, but if there is any detailed information on the Joint Commission, we have General Brown here, and if there is anything you are not clear on in connection with that, we will let him answer questions. We are giving you our master plan on the needs for building, etc., which General Butler has, and it will go into the report. We are going to add that SECRET 58 DECLASSIFIED Authority [illegible] on our own initiative to the report you asked for, so you can know what to look for if we are going to stay here. DRAPER: About the commission, the Soviet Commission is here, and a question of whether they stay is still a matter for Washington to decide, as I understand it, right now. BROWN: That is correct. DRAPER: Have you always held those Commissions here in Seoul? BROWN: Except for a few days in Pyongyang, when we went up there to meet the applicants for consultation and spent about four or five days there. DRAPER: And are there open matters before the Commission now, or just this one issue? BROWN: Just this one issue. The only open matter: they made a statement last week which proposed that we resume discussion of the question of the formation of a consultative body. They had proposed this several weeks before and we had turned it down. We have to answer that statement. DRAPER: When do you hold the next meeting? BROWN: No date is set yet. I am the Chairman this week, and we have referred to Washington the proposed plan, as we were directed to do. We have not yet heard from Washington. If we hear from Washington and get a clearance, I will call a meeting this week. We have the answer prepared for reading into the record. That should end our current sessions. Of course there is always the possibility that they will come forward with another proposal to keep it alive. If they do, that proposal will be referred to Washington, because we have a directive now which requires that. MR. JACOBS: They might come forward with some new proposal or give in on their adamant stand to undercut what is going on in the UN, and then go back to their old position again. If they are wise, they might well do it. DRAPER: For instance, on the plan that General Butler had, I probably ought to look over that a little before I ask questions, unless General Butler just wants to describe it very briefly. SECRET 59 DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 826518 HODGE: We have planned that for this afternoon. I mentioned it this morning, and had him here so that if anything specific came up under our schedule we set up tentatively last night we can use Thursday morning to give you people any additional information you desire, and we can link things up for you. We have set up a continuance of detailed discussions for this afternoon. DRAPER: This has given me a very good general picture of the whole problem. Is there anything on the tactical disposition that I ought to know about? HODGE: One thing on the tactical disposition here - we are not disposed to tactically fight the Russians. We are not disposed to defend against the Russians. We are disposed to govern this country. It is an occupation where we have our troops tactically disposed to take care of disorders that come up. The communications in this area are so poor that we cannot keep as concentrated as we would like. We have studied that and re-studied it, and we have made minor reconcentrations during this last summer. We have the Government to maintain and the prestige of our own people, and we have military government troops where there are no tactical troops, and we have to be able to back them up and to send soldiers to enforce our orders, if necessary. It is possible that we may have to increase our boundary guard force, but I don't think any increase, even if we put our whole tactical force on that boundary is going to have any real effect, if the Russians with their 200,000 Koreans should sweep down. Our plan, if that should occur, is to get out as best we can, with delaying actions to protect our withdrawal. DRAPER: How many main North-South highways are there? HODGE: There are not many. The only real North-South highway comes through Seoul. The other highways funnel through here. There are four northern highways that feed into Seoul. With this town covered, and the river covered here (pointing), we control about everything that leads into the South. Of course, on the coast line there is a little trail that leads down the coast line, but it has very little significance. We have a company over on this area here (indicating on map). From Seoul down there are several main roads. From Seoul down they fan out. There are only two what you could call main highways to the South from Seoul. The highway system is not good. There are [illegible] trails and bull cart roads you can DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 822474P 미국자료 II 93 see from the air that look like roads, but the main highways are few and very poor. DRAPER: All the rail comes down from Pyongyang down through Seoul? HODGE: Yes, sir, the rail line comes through Seoul, and from here south there is an alternate route to Pusan which comes up around Andong. The main double-track route comes up through this valley (indicating on map). There is a distinct mountain range on this side of the peninsula, though it is mountainous all over. This is a volcanic formation and is very distinctly mountainous with ranges up to seven or eight thousand feet over in there (pointing), and rather narrow coastal plain on this side. It is rather rough and rugged. The main agricultural area is down here in the southern provinces (continually pointing). This province is food deficient; this province is food deficient (indicating on map) because of Seoul. We have to bring in extra food here. This one and this one can almost take care of themselves, that is, on the general balance, I don't mean without the stuff we bring in, but on the general proportional basis they are practically self-sufficient. There are surplus areas. The southern provinces are-- TRUDEAU: General, I don't know whether you would want to discuss the point or not, but have you discussed your plans as to how you would proceed should your shortages go to, say fifteen thousand strength? HODGE: We have been discussing and planning on knocking out one division. Of course, right now we are temporarily in the process of inactivating some units and putting them on a cadre status. We have already gone into that to cut down on the overhead. However, I will state categorically that we can't operate at 15,000 strength. TRUDEAU: You see, Mr. Secretary, this sector here, this area, has been under-strength even when the Pacific Theater, as a whole, has been over-strength. HODGE: The whole theater up to now has been over-strength for sometime, so that we can't get replacements. It is dropping slightly, but it was overstrength up until August, and we were still understrength at that time. Now the theater, as a whole, is understrength. Also, there is something wrong with the War Department/bookkeeping. We have a lot SECRET 61 DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 826372P of people who are charged to us that we do not have. We do not care where they are; if they are not here, they are no help to us. TRUDEAU: Our strength is reported through GHQ. We give them one strength report from the Far East Command. DRAPER: Are they accurate now? TRUDEAU: As far as we know there is a high degree of accuracy. JACOBS: If the United States decides to stay in Korea, and the break with the Russians occurs, they are going to have to keep full strength, if not more, or you are undertaking something which is doomed to disaster. We will have to get the command up to strength and keep it there. They will start actively once this is declared enemy land. You will have to have more strength. HODGE: I might say that the boundary incidents are recently on the increase, decidedly both in viciousness and in number, between the North Korea Constabulary and our people of the South. That will also step up normally when the rice crop comes in even without any political activity, with Koreans raiding back and forth across the boundaries there to steal rice from South Korea. Koreans are naturally turbulent and quarrelsome even among themselves. They have always been. In the old days they used to have rock and club fights between villages. Two or three hundred would attack a village half a mile away, just in good, clean fun, but it takes on a new aspect now with the political phases and influences, particularly up along the boundary, with soldiers on both sides of the boundary. DRAPER: It becomes a good place for some fun. HODGE: Yes, it becomes a good place to start something. DRAPER: You spoke of a possible withdrawal. That would leave your main supply bases soon behind you, wouldn't it? HODGE: Yes, sir, we would have to do what we could to destroy these supplies. We have some sub-depots down at Pusan. We have supplies scattered pretty well throughout the area. We always have the possibility of flood in the summer, and we have a minimum maintenance level that we keep within the unit where they can get at it under any condition. This is the thirty days' rations and other supplies in proportion. WARD: We have about thirty or forty days' rations. SECRET 62 DECLASSIFIED Authority [illegible] HODGE: Thirty days, of all types, a certain amount of ammunition, about fifteen days of POL, which we maintain in these areas for our own protection. We had a pretty bad flood here last summer (1946), and had to supply some people by air. DRAPER: Are your supply levels adequate, General? HODGE: Generally, yes. We have licked most of our supply problems by main strength and awkwardness and a lot of help from Japan. DRAPER: And your flow of supply into the area is steady and adequate? HODGE: It is coming along very well. At times we have had POL shortages, but simply because it didn't get into the area. That is on a higher level than ours, and we have always been able to borrow back and forth and struggle through. We have at times had to make a material cut in our motor vehicle operations. DRAPER: I understand you are having a direct supply line starting the first of January! HODGE: Yes, sir. DRAPER: Will that be helpful or otherwise? HODGE: We think that if it is set up gradually enough - that is, not too sudden, and the adjustments made, it will be OK. We already have liaison officers at the port, and making our own requisitions through 8th Army for test and training. On the first of January requisitions go direct to the port. In May is when the first stuff will come in on our own direct requisition. The 8th Army will still follow-up on all requisitions that go through them. I think with that gradual turn-over, it will work out. There may be some disadvantage in it, but we think that it will be advantageous, generally speaking. You see, there has been some difficulty with the 8th Army. Our requisitions go there, and there they go into consolidated requisitions, and although they say, "Ship this to Korea", frequently it is difficult to trace down what is due in. If it doesn't come, what happened to it? If we send in a requisition direct, we can find out what happens to it, and we believe that we can keep our due-in in a better and more accurate status. Of course, we had some troubles reestablishing supply systems after the big disintegration of the supply set-up 6SECRET DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 826374 after the war ended. The Navy was tied in with it, the Army was tied in. That whole thing was tied together, and it had to be completely taken apart and rebuilt. In the meantime our key personnel, the people that ran the thing disappeared. I don't know how many times we have had where the important guy that ran the job disappeared and nobody knew where he went. It has caused a lot of trouble, and we are just in the last few months beginning to get a real inventory and to know what is what, how much we have, and where it is. DRAPER: They told me in Hawaii they are shipping about fifty thousand tons of surplus property. HODGE: Yes, some of it is FLC, and use for our own use here, which can later be declared surplus for FLC if we wish. DRAPER: Will that give you some needed equipment? HODGE: It will. There is a lot of equipment in there that we can use. DRAPER: And is there additional need for a lot more than you anticipate getting, or will that supply you up - HODGE: It will supply some shortages of things that we need for our supply level, our level of critical stuff. There are a lot of things there that we need that are not combat equipment, or standard organizational equipment, with all the various jobs that we have to do and while we are building up posts, camps, and stations. For example, Camp Seoul here in town, and Camp Sabingo in the 7th Division area where we are trying to furnish the same equipment and service that they furnish in the post of say, Camp Forrest. You can see that with the utilities and all that we are building it takes tremendous additional equipment and supplies. DRAPER: What I meant is that this surplus property is gradually disappearing and becoming a thing of the past, and I wondered whether this was going to give you all you need. HODGE: We have screened this property carefully in an attempt to get everything there that we need. We are also bringing some stuff to be declared surplus here. The Korean economy here can use almost anything, and FLC has indicated they will give us additional money as we need it. I think we'll have enough money to pay for the surplus when we get shaken out and see 6 SECRET DECLASSIFIED Authority [illegible] 826574P what we get from these other places. As to this FLC thing: In the Philippines, for example, we made a dicker to take certain stuff out when we screened it. We found it in such rotten condition that we turned it down. I couldn't afford to lay junk on the shore of this place. In other places where we have picked up FLC we have done better, but we don't know exactly what our FLC balance is at present. DRAPER: How did you get that money for that purpose? HODGE: FLC? We signed a contract with FLC for $35,000,000 to be negotiated with the future Korean government. DRAPER: Now this 35 thousand tons will just about balance off? HODGE: Part of that is definitely stuff we need to fill our shortages. We know what that is. There is other stuff that's coming in as excess in that we can't justify requisitions for all of it right now, but we know we are going to need it. DRAPER: Do you need this 25 million ceiling lifted or not? HODGE: FLC indicated that we can get that lifted any time we want to. DRAPER: I was talking to General Connolly about some of the problems in the European Theater, and I think they are disposed to be liberal. HODGE: Yes, they have told us that they will lift it any time we want it. We've got a political problem here on FLC. That thing has risen up and slapped us in the face with the accusation that we are indebting the future Korean Government without their knowledge and without their acquiescence. Koreans are willing to take the stuff; to take anything you can give them, but when we commit them to pay, they scream to the high skys, although they are getting a dollar for every 25 cents spent. DRAPER: Is there anything you want me to talk with General Connolly about? HODGE: How about that, Helmick? GENERAL HELMICK: The level raised? I don't think we'll need it right now, but if we found any equipment which we can use here to advantage, we'll ask for a lifting on the ceiling. DRAPER: You don't have what many other theaters have, a lot of surplus property - I mean you don't have that here in Korea? DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 826524 65 SECRET HODGE: No, sir. All we have is what we have brought in here ourselves. DRAPER: Therefore, before this is all dissipated, if there is advantage to be taken for you on some part of these surplus properties, as is being taken in various territories because it's there, and a lot of it's just going to be left there, I'm sure, or taken over, now is the time to make that effort, if it's - I think, within reason, it can be done. HODGE: We have had our scavengers all over the Pacific area for well over a year. If they have missing anything, I don't know what it is. The stuff out through the combat zone is terribly beaten up, and mostly just junk, but the Hawaiian stuff is in fair condition. DRAPER: That's right. And they have boxes that they don't even know what's in them. But they are withdrawing, apparently, part of this 55 thousand tons from ... HODGE: We...that's not from FLC, but from this other liquidation under the Department of the Interior. DRAPER: Yes, but if you want to get anymore withdrawn, or there is any need for your troops or for the Korean economy of that stuff that you would like to have, you are going to lose the opportunity before very long of making any more speeches. I don't know what you need, or if you need anymore. I'm not trying to ... HODGE: We need many things, but the things we need are not available in the surplus equipment. DRAPER: Even in Hawaii? HODGE: There may have been some additional equipment in Hawaii that will be reported. DRAPER: I may be going back through Hawaii, and will be very glad to talk to General Hull, if there's any reason. HODGE: Our boys; a bunch of our beggars went in there and have looked into everything we could think of we might need. We have many more needs, and we have to spend money for this stuff. DRAPER: Not for that - SECRET 66 DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 826518 HODGE: No, but for transportation. That goes into many dollars and we have to balance between stuff we actually need against stuff we may need but could do without. We could use a lot of motor transportation here but when we get a lot of motor transportation, we run into impossible POL problems and maintenance to keeping it running. DRAPER: The answer is, generally speaking, there is not anymore when this is gone. HODGE: We think we have it pretty well in hand. DRAPER: Don't hesitate to let me know. GENERAL TRUBEAU: Haven't inventories in the Philippines been thoroughly made? HODGE: Most of that Philippine stuff went to China. TRUDEAU: One other question: Have you ever made representations to GHQ regarding direct personnel supply line to the States? HODGE: I don't think we have. We are under them for military command and that is a command function. They are very touchy about any by-passes. I'm very hesitant to make any recommendations that indicate we are trying to get out from under them on anything. DRAPER: I have no other questions. Colonel Munson, do you? MU[illegible]SON: No. (The conference then adjourned at 1215 hours, 23 Sep 1947) SECRET 67 DECLASSIFIED Authority NND 826518