Kim Dong-choon a professor of sociology at Sung Kong Hoe University who was once the head of the Korean Truth & Reconciliation is someone I have consistently debunked here on the ROK Drop and he now has an interview posted over at the History News Network where he continues to push his revisionist history.  Here is a sample:

During the Korean War, I found more than half of those who had fought for independence before 1945 were killed, mainly by those who had collaborated with the Japanese and then assumed positions of authority under the Americans after 1945. The U.S. occupation of Korea in 1945, and the Korean War, can be viewed as an extension of colonialism in the sense that the U.S created and supported the Rhee Syngman government. Like its predecessor under Japanese rule, Rhee’s was a regime maintained by foreign troops. The mass killings among Koreans can be understood as a postscript to colonialism. In this case, precisely identifying the perpetrators would not be very meaningful. In any event, the magnitude of the perpetrators’ crimes and the passage of time make it almost impossible to punish the perpetrators, nearly all of whom are, in any event, long dead. What can be done is restore the reputation and dignity of families that had long suffered injustice.  [History News Network]

Normally I say read the rest at the link, but don’t bother this time because it is a waste of time.  Fortunately Lewis Bernstein left a comment over at HNN that saves me from typing up a long essay that would once again debunk Kim’s claims:

A collection of very interesting statements. As I recall the Rhee government was put in power in an election sanctioned and supervised by the UN. Rhee won much to his own surprise. US troops were withdrawn in June 1949 in accord with an agreement made with that government. BTW neither the State Department nor the US military advisors thought Rhee worthy of support because he was a vindictive and dictatorial leader and verged on incompetent. The Rhee government broke the back of the anti-government rebellions by itself. As a matter the material available at the Cold War History Project gives one additional insight into this period. Anyone disagreeing with Rhee was defined as a “communist.” Rhee, whose model was a strong traditional Korean ruler (he was born in 1875) persecuted all those who opposed him. As far as can be determined there was no armed anti-Japanese resistance movement in the South; the feeble one in the North had the USSR as its patron. Korean exile groups were supported by the Nationalist Chinese or the Soviets. The Korean War, I would point out, was a civil war as well as a war sanctioned by the Soviet Union.

The real problem is that Koreans, like Sociology Professor Kim, don’t like to deal with the last 150 years of Korea’s history as it is a uniform tale of impotence and factionalism. I would also point out that a large portion of the Korean intelligentsia willingly collaborated with the Japanese because they represented order and progress as well as an end to anarchy. This, too, is unpleasant for Koreans to consider – it is much better to consider oneself as a helpless victim.

Just to add to Bernstein’s comment is that the US military occupation of Korea that Kim claims backed Rhee after he was elected President after the UN sponsored election in 1948 consisted of 472 KMAG advisers, hardly an occupation.

I recommend everyone read my prior posting on Syngman Rhee here.

Rhee taking the oath of office in 1948.

The fact of the matter is that the US cared very little about South Korea prior to the Korean War.  If people read David Halberstam’s excellent history of the Korean War, The Coldest Winter he documents in great detail how little attention General Douglas MacArthur gave to events in South Korea before the war:

It became clear that MacArthur wanted no part of Korea in the period from 1945-1950. There were countless cables coming across his desk from Hodge, pleading for his help or his advice: “I urgently request your active participation in my difficult position …” Faubion Bowers, who was a principal MacArthur aide in those days because of his ability to speak Japanese, remembered Hodge deciding on his own to come to see MacArthur, and being kept waiting for hours, hoping to see the general, only to be told that he was to take care of Korea himself. “I wouldn’t put my foot in Korea. It belongs to the State Department,” MacArthur told Bowers later as he was driven home. “They wanted it and got it. They have jurisdiction. I don’t. I wouldn’t touch it with a ten-foot barge pole. The damn diplomats make the wars and we win them. Why should I save their skin? I won’t help Hodge. Let them help themselves.” [The Coldest Winter - Page 61]

General John Hodge was the military commander in charge of US forces in Korea and he repeatedly try to get MacArthur to take an active interest in Korea because General Hodge could not stand South Korean President Syngman Rhee:

Those most comfortable with Rhee did not, however, include the Americans in Korea who actually had to deal with him on a daily basis, many of whom came to loathe him. General John Hodge, the unusually rough and undiplomatic commander of American troops in South Korea, despised Rhee. He considered him, as Clay Blair, the military historian, wrote, “devious, emotionally unstable, brutal, corrupt, and wildly unpredictable.” [The Coldest Winter - Page 69]

Could it be General Hodge hated Rhee because of things such as his KMAG advisers reporting back to him with pictures of mass executions? This shows how little control the KMAG advisers had of ROK troops in Korea that Kim Dong-choon wants everyone to believe they had some kind of command authority to override Korean sovereignty in regards to how they handled their prisoners. This is obviously not true.

In fact Hodge quarreled so much with Rhee that Rhee was able to prevent Hodge from becoming the 8th Army commander in Japan and that is how General Walton Walker received the posting. ROK Drop readers should remember that General Walker would go on to play a critical role in saving South Korea from the communist attack and has since been rewarded with multiple Korean cities refusing to allow the construction of a statue in his honor.

I have been highly critical of the Korean Truth & Reconciliation Commission for sometime, but I am actually not opposed to the idea of a Truth Commission if it was truly dedicated to researching an accurate history of the Korean War.   However, as I have shown is that they do incredibly sloppy work.  This sloppy work is because this commission is stacked with leftist ideologues like Kim Dong-choon who are using the commission to achieve political goals.  The issue of civilians killed during the Korean War is a very real one that unfortunately people with biases are using to advance their own agendas that are aided by sensational media reports. I continue to believe that since the Korean War was a UN action maybe a joint UN research team from countries heavily involved in the Korean War could investigate the claims?   This idea is definitely better then having people like Kim Dong-choon re-write the history of the Korean War.