by Norman Lowe
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Friedberg, A., A Contest for Supremacy: China, America and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia (Norton, 2011).
Garnaut, J., The Rise and Fall of the House of Bo (Penguin, 2012).
Gittings, J., The Changing Face of China (Oxford University Press, 2005).
Karl, R. E., Mao Zedong and China in the Twentieth Century (Duke University Press, 2010).
MacFarquhar, R., The Politics of China (Cambridge University Press, 2011).
Mitter, R., A Bitter Revolution: China’s Struggle with the Modern World (Oxford University Press, 2004).
Service, R. Comrades – A World History of Communism (Macmillan, 2007).
Smith, S. A., ‘China: Coming to Terms with the Past’, History Today (December 2003).
Vogel, E. F., Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (Harvard University Press, 2011).
Wang Hui, ‘The Rumour Machine: On the dismissal of Bo Xilai’, London Review of Books (10 May 2012).
QUESTIONS
‘A total and unmitigated disaster.’ How far would you agree with this comment on the policies of Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party during the period 1949–60?
‘The Cultural Revolution of 1966–9 was an attempt by Mao Zedong to protect his own power and position rather than a genuine battle of ideas.’ To what extent do you think this is a fair verdict on Mao’s Cultural Revolution?
‘Neither in his economic nor in his political outlook could Deng Xiaoping be considered to be a liberal.’ How far would you agree with this view?
Assess the reasons why the policies of Deng Xiaoping led to a period of crisis in 1987–9. How successfully did Deng deal with the crisis?
There is a document question about Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution on the website.
Chapter 21
Communism in Korea and south-east Asia
SUMMARY OF EVENTS
In Korea and some of the countries of south-east Asia, foreign occupation, among other factors, had led to the development of communist parties, which were usually in the fore-front of resistance and which played a vital role in the campaign for independence.
Korea was under Japanese rule for most of the first half of the twentieth century and regained its independence when Japan was defeated at the end of the Second World War. However, it was divided into two separate states – the North was communist, the South non-communist. After the war of 1950–3, the two states remained strictly separate; North Korea, one of the most secretive and little-known states in the world, has remained communist until the present day.
The area known as Indo-China was under French control, and consisted of three countries: Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. At the end of the Second World War, instead of gaining their independence, as they had expected in view of France’s defeat, they found that the French intended to behave as though nothing had happened and to reimpose their colonial rule. Vietnam and Laos, unlike Cambodia, were not content to sit back and wait for the French to withdraw. They fought a long campaign, in which the communist parties of both countries played a prominent part. In 1954 the French admitted defeat, and all three states became completely independent.
Tragically, this did not bring a more peaceful era.
Communist North Vietnam became involved in a long conflict with South Vietnam (1961–75), which became part of the Cold War. There was massive American involvement in support of South Vietnam. Thanks to Chinese help, North Vietnam was victorious, but both states were devastated by the war. In 1975 the two Vietnams were united under communist rule, a situation which has lasted until the present day.
Cambodia succeeded in remaining relatively peaceful until 1970, under the semi-autocratic rule of Prince Sihanouk. Eventually the country found itself dragged into the Vietnam War. It suffered five years of catastrophic heavy bombing by the USA, followed by four years of rule by the bloodthirsty communist Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge regime. By the time he was overthrown in 1979, thanks to the intervention of Vietnamese communist forces, Cambodia had probably suffered as much devastation as Vietnam. For the next ten years a more moderate communist government with Vietnamese backing ran Cambodia, after which the country returned to something like democratic rule, with Prince Sihanouk again playing a leading role.
Laos also had a turbulent history. Soon after independence, civil war broke out between right and left, until it too suffered the same fate as Cambodia – it was drawn into the Vietnam War in spite of its desire to remain neutral, and had to endure indiscriminate US bombing. At the end of 1975 the communist Pathet Lao organization took power, and is still in control of the country today.
21.1 NORTH KOREA
(a) The communist regime established
Korea had been under Japanese occupation and rule since 1905, following the Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5. There was a strong Korean nationalist movement, and at a conference held in Cairo in 1943, the USA, the UK and China promised that when the war was over, a united, independent Korea would be created. As defeat loomed for Japan early in 1945, it seemed that at last a free Korea was a distinct possibility.
Unfortunately for the Koreans, things did not work out as they had hoped: three weeks before the Japanese surrendered, the USSR declared war on Japan (8 August 1945). This brought a new element into the equation; the Russians had for many years wanted to gain influence in Korea, and their entry into the war meant that they too would have a say in Korea’s future. Russian troops in Manchuria were closest to Korea, and were able to move into the north of the country even before the Japanese officially surrendered on 2 September. Soviet forces worked closely with Korean communists and nationalists, and the Japanese occupying armies were quickly disarmed. The Korean People’s Republic was proclaimed, and the communist leader, Kim Il-sung, soon emerged as the dominant political figure. Supported by Soviet troops, Kim, who had been trained in the USSR, began to introduce his own version of Marxism–Leninism into the new state.
Meanwhile, the Americans, who were worried that the entire Korean peninsula was about to be taken over by the Russians, hastily sent troops to occupy the south. It was the Americans who proposed that the division between north and south should be along the 38th parallel. In the south, Dr Syngman Rhee emerged as the leading politician. He was strongly nationalist and anti-communist, and was determined to bring about a united Korea free of communism. In response, Stalin poured massive Russian aid into the north, transforming it into a powerful military state well able to defend itself against any attack from the south. In 1948 Stalin withdrew Soviet troops, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was proclaimed, with Kim Il-sung as premier. North Korea therefore had an independent communist government before the communist victory in China. The following year, after Mao Zedong became Chinese leader, the independent North Korea was given official diplomatic recognition by China, the USSR and the communist states of eastern Europe.
(b) One state or two?
The dominating question in the immediate post-war period was: what had become of the Allied promise of a united Korea? Ideally, the Americans wanted a united, anti-communist and pro-Western Korea, while the Russians, and after 1949 the Chinese, wanted a unified Korea which was communist. However, neither the USA nor the USSR wanted to become closely involved; given the entrenched positions of both Kim and Rhee, the dilemma seemed insoluble. It was therefore agreed that the problem be handed over to the United Nations, which undertook to organize elections for the whole country as a first step towards unifying the peninsula.
Kim refused to hold elections in North Korea, because the population of the north was much smaller than that of the south, so that the communists would be in a minority in the country as a whole. However, elections were held
in the south; the new National Assembly chose Rhee as first president of the Republic of Korea. North Korea responded by holding its own elections, which resulted in Kim’s victory. Both leaders claimed to speak for the whole country. In June 1949 the Americans thankfully withdrew their troops from South Korea, where Rhee was becoming an embarrassment because of his corrupt and authoritarian rule, which was almost as extreme as Kim’s in the north. But the withdrawal of all foreign troops left a potentially unstable and dangerous situation.
Only a year later, on 25 June 1950, after a number of border clashes, North Korean forces invaded South Korea. Rhee’s armies quickly began to fall apart, and the communists seemed poised to unite the country under their government in Pyongyang. The immediate reasons why Kim launched the attack are still a matter for debate among historians (see Section 8.1). What is certain is that by the time a peace agreement was signed in 1953, at least 4 million Koreans had lost their lives, and the peninsula was destined to remain divided for the foreseeable future into two heavily armed and mutually suspicious states.
(c) North Korea after the war
Thanks to Chinese help, Kim and his regime had survived. Once the war was over he concentrated on eliminating all remaining domestic opposition – first the non-communist groups, and then all rivals for the leadership within the Korean Communist Party. Having made himself into an absolute ruler, he remained in power, apparently unassailable, for the next 40 years, until his death in 1994. Although he was a communist, he had his own ideas about exactly what that meant, and he did not merely imitate the USSR and China.
He began a programme of industrialization, and the collectivization of agriculture, aiming for self-sufficiency in all areas of the economy, so that North Korea would not be dependent on help from either of its great communist allies. Ironically, however, he accepted considerable aid from both of them, which enabled the economy to expand rapidly during the first ten years after the war. Living standards improved and the future under Kim’s regime looked promising.
Great emphasis was placed on building up the country’s military strength after the disappointing performance in the second half of the war. The army and air force were increased in size and new military airfields were built. Kim never abandoned the dream of bringing the south under his control.
The whole of society was strictly regimented in pursuit of self-sufficiency; the state controlled everything – the economic plans, the labour force, the resources, the military and the media. Kim’s propaganda system was geared towards building up his personality cult as the great infallible leader of his people. The government’s total control of the media and communications with the outside world meant that North Korea was probably the most isolated, secretive and closed state in the world.
In the mid-1960s the principle of self-sufficiency was officially defined as consisting of four themes: ‘autonomy in ideology, independence in politics, self-sufficiency in economy, and self-reliance in defence’.
Kim continued his anti-south campaign, attempting to destabilize the government of the south in a variety of ways, the most outrageous of which was an attempt, which failed, by North Korean commandos to murder the South Korean president (1968). With the development of détente in the early 1970s, and the improving relations between East and West, the North called off its campaign and began talks with the south. In July 1972 it was announced that both sides had agreed to work peacefully for unification. However, the North’s policy was erratic: sometimes Kim suspended all discussions; in 1980 he proposed a federal state in which both North and South would have equal representation; in 1983 several leading South Koreans were killed in a bomb explosion; in 1987 a South Korean airliner was destroyed by a time bomb. Then in 1991, high-level talks were held which led to the announcement of a joint renunciation of violence and nuclear weapons. However, it seemed as though no genuine progress could be made while Kim was still in charge.
During the second half of the 1960s North Korea’s economy ran into difficulties for a number of reasons. The rift between the USSR and China, which gradually widened from 1956 onwards, placed Kim in a difficult position. Which side should he support? At first he stayed pro-Soviet, then he switched his allegiance to China, and finally tried to be independent of both. When he moved away from Moscow at the end of the 1950s the USSR sharply reduced its aid; in 1966 at the beginning of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, the Chinese cut off their aid. After that, none of Kim’s development plans reached their targets. Another serious weakness was the excessive expenditure on heavy industry and armaments. Consumer goods and luxuries were considered to be of secondary importance. There was a rapid population increase, which put a strain on agriculture and the food industries generally. Living standards fell; life for most people was hard and conditions basic. During the 1980s the economy recovered but in the early 1990s, as aid from Russia disappeared, there were more difficulties.
(d) Life under Kim Jong-il
In 1980 Kim Il-sung (‘Great Leader’) made it clear that he intended his son Kim Jong-il (soon to be known as ‘Dear Leader’), who had been acting as Party Secretary, to be his successor. The younger Kim gradually took over more of the day-to-day work of government, until his father died of a heart attack in 1994 at the age of 82. By this time North Korea was facing crisis. The economy had deteriorated further during the previous ten years, the population had increased threefold since 1954 and the country was on the verge of famine. Yet enormous amounts of cash had been spent developing nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. With the collapse of the USSR, North Korea had lost one of the few states which might be expected to show some sympathy with its plight.
Kim Jong-il, who was more open-minded and progressive than his father, was forced into drastic action. He accepted that North Korea needed to move away from its isolationism and aimed to improve relations with the south and with the USA. In 1994 he agreed to shut down North Korea’s plutonium-producing nuclear-reactor plants in return for the provision of alternative sources of energy – two light-water nuclear reactors for the generation of electricity – by an international consortium known as KEDO (Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization), involving the USA, South Korea and Japan. The Clinton administration was sympathetic, agreeing to ease US economic sanctions against North Korea; in return, Kim suspended his long-range missile tests (1999). In June 2000 President Kim Dae-jung of South Korea visited Pyongyang and soon afterwards a number of North Korean political prisoners who had been held in the south for many years were released. Even more startling, in October, American secretary of state Madeleine Albright paid a visit to Pyongyang and had positive talks with Kim. North Korea reopened diplomatic relations with Italy and Australia. In 2001 Kim, who had gained a reputation as something of a recluse, paid state visits to China and Russia, where he met President Putin, and promised that his missile testing would remain in suspension at least until 2003.
Meanwhile the situation inside North Korea continued to deteriorate. In April 2001 it was reported that following the severe winter, there were serious food shortages, with most people surviving on 200 grams of rice a day. In response, Germany immediately promised to send 30 000 tonnes of beef. In May the deputy foreign minister presented a horrifying report to a UNICEF conference about conditions in his country. Between 1993 and 2000, mortality rates for children under 5 had risen from 27 to 48 per thousand; per capita Gross National Product had fallen from $991 per year to $457; the percentage of children being vaccinated against diseases such as polio and measles fell from 90 to 50 per cent; and the percentage of the population with access to safe water fell from 86 to 53. In 2001 North Korea received almost $300 million-worth of food aid from the European Union, the USA, Japan and even from South Korea.
In July 2002 a programme of limited economic reform was introduced: the currency was devalued and food prices were allowed to rise in the hope that this would encourage an increase in agricultural production. Food rationing was to be phased out and a family-unit farming sy
stem was introduced for the first time since collectivization. At the end of 2003 reports indicated that living conditions inside North Korea were showing signs of improvement. However, by the summer of 2005 there were soldiers in the paddy fields to make sure that every grain of rice was handed over to the state procurement agency. There was even a ban on private selling of produce from kitchen gardens. At the same time there was disturbing information about the existence of large numbers of labour camps in the north of the country containing thousands of political prisoners, and where torture and execution were common – a situation reminiscent of Stalin’s gulag system in the USSR.
(e) North Korea, USA and the nuclear confrontation
On top of all the economic problems, relations with the USA took a sudden turn for the worse when George W. Bush came to power there in January 2001. The new president seemed reluctant to continue the sympathetic approach begun by the Clinton regime. After the 11 September atrocities he issued threats against what he called ‘the axis of evil’, by which he meant Iraq, Iran and North Korea. The confrontation with the USA developed over the question of whether or not North Korea possessed nuclear weapons. The Americans suspected that they did, but the North Koreans claimed that their nuclear-reactor plants were to provide electricity. The behaviour of both sides, especially North Korea, was inconsistent, and the dispute was still ongoing in 2012. The problem arose from the lack of progress with the KEDO project agreed in 1994. Work was not even started on the promised light-water reactors; the Americans accused Kim of not completing the promised shutdown of his existing nuclear plants, while the North Koreans protested that work on the new light-water reactors must start before they shut down their own reactors. In August 2002 work actually began on the first of the light-water reactors. The Americans then demanded that Korea allow inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to inspect its existing nuclear facilities, but the Koreans refused and blamed the USA for the delay in building the reactors. The Americans imposed technology sanctions on the North Koreans and accused them of supplying ballistic missile parts to Yemen.