By Here is a first in a series of postings on a long documentary about the Korean War from a British perspective. Hat tip to Tom Coyner for pointing this out to me.
Episode 1 – Prelude to War:
An explanation of the first year(s) of the Occupation of Korea (1945-1949), and some of the key Koreans (Syngman Rhee, Kim Il-sung, Cho Man-sik, Yu Un-heong, An Ho-sang) and Foreign authorities (John Hodge, Nikolai Lebedev, etc) involved.
An interesting moment in this film is when Gregory Henderson, a former US Embassy official, admits that the reason why the USA did not conduct a joint occupation of Korea (because Korea was not an antagonist in the Pacific War, and as such an action might have kept Korea from becoming divided) was because US authorities were afraid that the Russians would have political advantages with the Koreans that the USA did not have.
Another key moment is when Dean Rusk (later the Secretary of State under Kennedy/Johnson) says that the reason he and Charles Bonesteel (both Colonels at the Pentagon in 1945) decided to separate the US and Russian occupation zones at the 38th Parallel was because it would place the country’s capital, Seoul, in the US zone of occupation.
65 years later, Korea is still dealing with these decisions.
The interviews in this episode with US, Korean, & Russian officials like Dean Rusk are quite interesting and definitely worth checking out.
7:11 pm on July 13th, 2009 1
Damn Americans!
If they hadn't of divided Korea after they freed Korea from the Japanese, South Korea could have been a 3rd world country just like North Korea is today. But noooo…
Damn Americans!
8:22 pm on July 13th, 2009 2
It's Bush's fault.
9:31 pm on July 13th, 2009 3
I thought the section on the air war on outube was a little simplistic.
3:56 pm on July 14th, 2009 4
I remember comments about the beginning of the Vietnam war was because the British on behalf of the french (After WWII) talked Roosevelt into dividing areas of influence below the 16th(?) parallel to become British concerns and areas above American. While Roosevelt was much for the independence of indochina, the Brits and France had other ideas, and convinced Roosevelt that they would move toward an independant indochina(Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia). The French reneged. And tried to reestablish colonial control. Hence the Vietnam wars.