Peaceful Archipelago and Violent Peninsula: A Tale of Two Occupations

Planners of United States postwar occupations in Japan and Korea anticipated the possibility of violence from overzealous Japanese who might refuse to accept their country’s defeat and revenge-seeking Koreans who might retaliate for colonial-era oppression. Though violence was evident in both Japan and Korea, it was far more intense on the peninsula than the archipelago. This paper examines this danger as one important dreg of Japanese colonial rule that divided the Korean people and disrupted their immediate post-liberation history. Its primary focus is on ramifications that these divisions and disruptions had on Korean politics and society in the period leading up to the Korean War.