(Korean War History)Post #56. The Division of Korea, 1945-1948.

Prof. Kathryn Weathersby

Given the importance of the Korean issue to the Soviet Union, the Soviet leadership closely monitored the actions taken toward holding elections in the South. On April 24 the Politburo, the highest decision-making body, sent instructions to General Shtykov in Pyongyang regarding the response the authorities in the North should make if separate elections are held in the South. In such case, Kim Il Sung should convene a special session of the People’s Assembly of North Korea to adopt two decisions worked out by the Politburo. 

First, Pyongyang had to counter the claims that a government in Seoul would have legal jurisdiction over the North. Therefore, the Assembly must declare that until Korea is unified, the draft constitution for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea that the People’s Assembly had adopted that month should be considered the legal authority on the territory of North Korea. 

Second, the North must create a Korea-wide government to rival that created in Seoul. To claim legitimacy, this government would be created through elections held in both halves of the peninsula. Therefore, “two-stage illegal elections” would be held in the South. Each region would elect seven or eight representatives to meet in Haeju. They would then elect 360 deputies to the Supreme People’s Assembly from the southern provinces. According to Russian reports, around 1,100 South Korean representatives met in Haeju from August 21 to 26 and duly elected the 360 deputies. At the same time, elections were held in the North on August 25. 

    Just over two weeks after the establishment of the Republic of Korea, the Supreme People’s Assembly convened in Pyongyang with 572 deputies. On September 8 the Assembly approved the new Constitution and the following day the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was established. General N. G. Lebedev recalled in an interview with historian Andrei Lankov that it was he who suggested the name for the new state, after rejecting the name “Korean People’s Republic” that had been proposed by the North Koreans. Kim Il Sung became head of the Cabinet of Ministers while Kim Tu-bong remained chairman of the Supreme People’s Assembly.

Since the Republic of Korea claimed legitimacy because of recognition by the United Nations, the DPRK based its legitimacy on an assertion that it was the only government created independently by Koreans. Ignoring the central role played by the Soviet Union, this new narrative located the origin of the state in the North-South Conference that had been held in Pyongyang in April 1948, just before the UN Temporary Commission on Korea carried out its plan to conduct elections.

Kim Ku and Kim Kyu-sik had attended the week-long North-South Conference and had returned with a promise from Kim Il Sung that he would accept free elections in the north and would refrain from cutting off the supply of electricity to the South. Both promises were soon broken, but, believing them to be true, Kim Kyu-sik had boycotted the UN sponsored elections. The newly created DPRK therefore asserted that it had been established through the North-South Conference by anti-Japanese fighters led by Kim Il Sung, while the ROK was an American creation led by Japanese collaborators.

In the next post, we will examine the approaches the ROK and DPRK initially took toward the tragic division of Korea into two competing states.  

[Sources: This post relies on Andrei Lankov, From Stalin to Kim Il Sung: The Formation of North Korea, 1945-1960 (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002).]

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