NAWSA SUBJECT FILE Strong, ANNA Louise amerasia EDITORIAL BOARD A REVIEW OF AMERICA FREDERICK V. FIELD AND THE FAR EAST chairman 125 EAST 52nd ST. NEW YORK PHILIP J. JAFFE TELEPHONE: PLAZA 3-4700 managing editor T.A. BISSON KENNETH W. COLEGROVE OWEN LATTIMORE WILLIAM W. LOCKWOOD KATE MITCHELL DAVID H. POPPER WILLIAM T. STONE March22, 1941. Dear Friend: Anna Louise Strong has given to readers of Amerasia the only complete story of one of the most critical periods in Far Eastern history. She has furthermore provided them with an invaluable guide by which to interpret current news reports from China. Amerasia is proud to publish this enlightening and authoritative account of the political crisis through which China is now passing, at a time when most news concerning it is censored, garbled or intentionally deceptive. We are sending you a reprint of her article. Please read it. It is well worth your time. And besides its intrinsic value, we offer it as typical of the material which Amerasia publishes. For what Miss Strong has done with regard to the civil war crisis in China, dozens of other noted Amerasia contributors are doing with respect to the myriad of complex problems which makeup the current Far Eastern scene. We feel very strongly that you ought to become one of Amerasia's steady readers. We are therefore enclosing for your convenience a subscription form and a reply envelope. Use them now—and begin to receive every month forty-eight pages of expert comment on Far Eastern developments and their significance for the United States. Very sincerely, AMERASIA. The Kuomintang-Communist Crisis in China A First-hand Account of One of the Most Critical Periods in Far Eastern History By Ana Louise Strong Reprinted from "Amerasia", March 1941 THIS article is a sample of the authoritative and enlightening material which Amerasia brings to its readers. SUBSCRIBE now and receive every month forty-eight pages of expert comment on Far Eastern developments by noted authorities. AMERASIA 125 East 52nd Street, New York City Please enter my subscription to Amerasia for 12 months beginning with the issue for the month of............ __Bill me for $2.50 __I enclose $2.50 Single copies of Amerasia are 25 cents and yearly subscriptions are $2.50 in U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Add 50 cents for all other countries. Name Address The Kuomintang-Communist Crisis in China By Anna Louise Strong IT is no service to China either to minimize or exaggerate the present tension between the Communist Party and the Kuomintang. The threat of widespread civil war is serious but the situation is not yet fatal. It has reached the stage in which the actions of "friendly nations" may either ruin or save the situation--in which, for example, the actions of those in charge of American foreign loans may prove decisive. But they must first know--what Chungking censorship conceals--that there is a situation to be saved. The January armed clash in South Anhwei in which some 2,000 of the Communist-led New Fourth Army were killed and between 3,000 and 4,000 wounded, after which the army itself was officially disbanded and its general, Yeh Ting, held for court-martial, was only the latest of many armed clashes between Communist and Kuomintang troops which have gone on for more than a year. Nor is even this particular incident settled, as Chungking officially claimed. On the contrary, it has led to far more threatening developments. The Communists have not accepted the disbanding of the New Fourth, but have organized their own "Revolutionary Military Committee" which appointed new commanders for the 90,000 men which still function under the name of the New Fourth north of the Yangtze. An official "spokesman" for this committee immediately issued an interview in response to the January 17th announcement of the Chungking Military Council disbanding the New Fourth. He charged that the attack on the New Fourth was only one step in the plot of the "pro-Japanese elements who occupy high positions in the government and the Kuomintang" to bring about a peace pact with Japan and to have China join the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo Axis. Nowhere in his statement does the spokesman denounce Chiang Kai-shek himself. He attacks by name Ho Ying-chin, Chungking's Minister of War, who has been for some time charged with being the present center of the pro-Japanese forces which formerly grouped around the now puppet-ruler of Nanking, Wang Ching-wei. On the basis of these extremely serious charges, the Communist Military Committee issued what practically amounts to an ultimatum in twelve points. The demands are of such a drastic nature that they must be considered as an attempt to break through to the Generalissimo's attention by dynamite. They include the "cessation of attacks on Communist armies," the revoking of the order disbanding the New Fourth, the freeing of its general, Yeh Ting, an open apology by the government for the "South Anhwei outrage" and compensation paid to its vic- 3 CRISIS IN CHINA tims, the abolition of a blockade line now maintained in the northwest against the Yenan district, the "punishment" of Ho Ying-chin and several subordinates, and the arrest and court-martial of the "pro-Japanese elements" in Chungking. Both the charges and demands were made immediately following Chungking's January 17th pronouncement, but the news of them was suppressed by Chungking's censorship, and reached America a month late. International Setting The present situation must be seen against the background of Japanese plus German intrigue working upon all the backward and reactionary elements in China, and exploiting the never completely settled cleavage of the earlier civil war. The international setting of the present period begins with the Tripartite Pact between Germany, Italy and Japan, and with the arrival of many new German advisers in Tokyo. These events served to stimulate Japan's desire to settle the "China incident" as rapidly as possible in order to move south against the French, British and Dutch possessions, which she is powerless to do with a united and hostile China in her rear. Early last autumn, Japan began to spread peace rumors in China. More or less definite peace proposals reached Chungking through Chinese bankers in Hongkong and even through semi-official spokesmen over the Tokyo radio. It was intimated that China need only: (1) recognize Manchoukuo, (2) recognize Japan's special interests in North China, (3) leave China's ports in Japanese hands, and (4) cooperate with the "New Order in East Asia," which meant almost anything up to a complete economic, political and military alliance with Japan. In return for this, Japan would withdraw her troops from Central and South China --- which Japan most devoutly longs to do. Chiang Kai-shek, however, strengthened by the British and American loans, refused to talk peace. It was then that Japan finally, and without much enthusiasm, recognized the Nanking regime of Wang Ching-wei. No pro-Japanese or pro-peace groups would dare express themselves openly in Chungking. Behind the scenes, however, there are capitulators who express themselves either by defeatism or by stirring up internal friction, or by actual plotting with the enemy. As a high Chungking official, who was not a Communist, said to me: "Wang Ching-wei is gone but his secret supporters remain and are at the root of the trouble." The power of these capitulators would be greatly increased if any of the following developments occurred: (1) if Japan made a big concession, such as withdrawal from the Yangtze valley; (2) if Britain and America ceased to support China's struggle for freedom and democratic progress; (3) if hoarding, speculation and profiteering continue to demoralize internal economic conditions in Free China; or (4) if there were an increase in civil strife. In a military sense, the Sino-Japanese war has been for some time at the stage of stalemate, in which Japan's chief weapons have become economic pressure and political intrigue. In using political intrigue Japan merely continues to wield a weapon which she used successfully in China for the entire generation preceding the present war. Cooperation with Japan only recently seemed to northern provincial governors and even to many Nanking politicians a respectable path to riches and power. The first serious check to Japan's policy of "divide and conquer" came when the ten years of civil strife between Chiang Kai-shek and the Communists was called off in favor of resistance against the common national foe. This was a program around which all China rallied; even backward, provincial warlords were compelled to submit to the Chinese people's will for unity against Japan. General Han Fu-chu, Governor of Shantung, was executed for the kind of dealing with the enemy which was political wisdom a year 4 CRISIS IN CHINA earlier. But it would be utopian to assume that all the former traffickers with Japan were at once converted. There is still a strong tendency among China's reactionary militarists to regard Japan as the natural military organizer of East Asia. Moreover, Japan's fifth column work has been greatly strengthened by her pact with Germany, for Germany, having given considerable help to the Chungking government in the early stages of the war, still has many friends in high places in China. The Hankow Period The high point of Chinese national unity was reached during the "Hankow period," from the fall of Nanking in 1937 to the fall of Hankow in late 1938. Nanking's fall had broken the exclusive hold of the Shanghai capitalists over the government. Chiang Kai-shek had announced that was the vast peasant populations of the interior were China's new base. Hankow was an ideal capital, more easily accessible to all parts of the interior than either Peiping, Nanking or Chungking. Hankow had peasant revolutionary traditions of nearly a century, dating back to the days of the Taipings. It had a larger industrial working class than any Chinese city except Shanghai. From the military standpoint, the heroic but bloody defense of Shanghai had shown China's weakness in traditional methods of war, but the sudden emergence of the Communist-led guerrillas in North China was giving new hope to the nation. All of these factors helped to create a new sense of national unity around Hankow as a center, a unity in which the Communists played an important part. The unity attained in the Hankow period, however, was never reduced to organized form. Despite much talk of democracy and much energetic popular initiative, the Kuomintang Party never recognized as legal any popular organizations except those which they themselves initiated and controlled. The Communist Border District with its capital at Yenan was never legally recognized. It was never clearly determined whether the Communist Party was legal or illegal. It depended on the will of the local generals, most of whom suppressed Communists. The supposed amnesty of 1937 was only partly carried out; two Americans traveling in 1940 in South Kiangsi found 60 forgotten Communist prisoners in a single prison, held since 1934. (They are still there.) In Hankow itself there were assassinations of Communists and raids on their newspaper by gangsters alleged to have ties with the secret police of the Kuomintang. When these matters reached the attention of the Generalissimo, however, he usually demanded that the aggressors live up to the new unity that had been proclaimed. No governmental machinery had been established through which unity might be expressed and questions settled. The "National Congress" consisted of Kuomintang members elected four years previously during the period of civil war; and some of its members were and still are in Japanese puppet governments. A constitution making the Kuomintang the only legal party had been drawn up, but due to the Japanese invasion the Congress had not met to adopt it. Beginning in Hankow, the democratic forces demanded a new National Congress based on popular elections, but the government ministers who had been appointed by the previous Congress and who would be inevitably unseated by any new Congress, claimed that elections could not be held during the war. The deadlock in which the old Congress could not be summoned and a new one could not be elected was partly broken by a new body, "The People's Political Council," formed during the Hankow period in response to popular demand. It was 220 members representing practically all the different political groups in China, but its powers are advisory only and its membership is handpicked by the Kuomintang which decides even who shall represent the Com- 5 CRISIS IN CHINA munist Party. The members of the People's Political Council whom I met in Chungking seemed to be able and devoted intellectuals greatly disturbed by the growing disunity in China, but powerless to prevent it. They complained that they had formed a committee almost a year ago to investigate the Kuomintang-Communist friction but the Chungking government paid no attention to their report. Chiang Kai-Shek's power obviously does not rest upon such ineffective forms of government. It rests upon his armies and his moral prestige as the symbol of China's unity. He has no constitutional power to reorganize the government. He is neither the president of a democracy nor a fascist dictator; his status is more like that of the early kings who emerged from feudalism through the allegiance of many rival lords. If he greatly desired, he might get rid of any individual minister in the government or any individual general in the army, but only by political combinations and pressures which might sap his power in another direction. He has no conception of what is meant by "rule of the people"; he once said, "If the people rule, then how can I rule?" Moreover, to make changes in a democratic direction became harder rather than easier with the lapse of time. For by the time the government moved to Chungking, it was so widely accepted as the "Central Government of China" in a sense which no government had ever been before, that even those bankers of the coast who were ready to make terms with Japan felt the authority of Chungking and returned to it. They resumed their wonted sway which the fall of Nanking had temporarily broken. Even the talk of democracy, which had been so vivid during the days in Hankow, died. When I visited Chungking in December, 1940, no public meetings were allowed without a representative of the police, empowered to interrupt the speech at any moment. General Ho Ying-chin Ministers who had seemed slated for immediate dismissal during the Hankow period not only remained but increased their power. The most notorious case was that of General Ho Ying-Chin, Minister of War, by whom all commands to the armies are issued. For the past decade he has been famous for two things: his wars with the Communists and his agreements with Japan. The 1935 Ho-Umetsu agreement, for instance, gave Japan such dominance of North China that it became the cause of student demonstrations against "Japan and Ho Ying-chin." Its terms could never be published in China proper lest they cause the fall of the Nanking government. General Ho was known to be opposed to the present war with Japan. Today he signs all the orders that carry it on. All orders to Communist armies and all complaints from Communist armies to the Generalissimo pass through his hands. When I expressed in Chungking my amazement that a man with this past should be kept by the Generalissimo in such an important post, I was told: "Oh, but the Generalissimo could hardly do without him and it is not even certain that he could depose him. General Ho has much closer relations with all the lower generals than has the Generalissimo himself." One need not elaborate on the chances of intrigue which this creates. Ho Ying-chin has used the new Chinese unity, which he did his best to prevent, as the slogan under which he transferred troops and officers, breaking all rivals and building his own military machine. He has thus placed himself in a position to be Japan's most valuable ally in the military domination of East Asia. New Fourth and Eighth Route Armies Far away from Chungking in the north and east of China, separated from "Free China" by Japanese concentrations and Chinese armed forces alike, the Communist-led 6 CRISIS IN CHINA armies rapidly increased. They were assigned only territory which the Japanese had already conquered, the Eighth Route in North China and the New Fourth on the Lower Yangtze. They were allotted pay for 45,000 soldiers in the Eighth Route and a much smaller number in the New Fourth. They were, however, allowed to organize peasant guerrillas and on this basis they grew rapidly, until by the end of 1940 they claimed from 500,000 to 600,000 armed but unpaid men. They campaigned all over Japanese-occupied China, from Manchuria to the Yangtze, from the Mongolian deserts to the sea. They penetrated Manchuria to within a hundred miles of Mukden, and established contact with 100,000 poorly organized Manchurian Volunteers. They reached the Shantung coast and held the port of Chefoo long enough to collect customs revenue and run in several shiploads of war supplies from Shanghai and Tientsin. They disrupted Japanese rail communications on all sides of Peiping and put up proclamations inside the city walls. Extending southward the Eighth Route eventually made contact with the New Fourth Army, which in its turn was expanding along the entire Yangtze Valley from the area north of Shanghai to districts almost as far inland as Hankow. This "unruly expansion" was the chief thing held against the Communist armies by Chungking officials with whom I talked in December 1940. Both Sun Fo and Pai Chung-hsi told me that if the Communists would remain in the areas assigned them, organize only the authorized number of troops and obey the local magistrates appointed by Chungking, there would be no trouble. But the Communists were faced with ever-increasing bands of hungry, armed peasants who demanded to be taken into their armies, and who otherwise would degenerate into local bandits or Japanese puppet troops. Their attempts to give these peasants leadership and organization against Japan were handicapped by lack of funds and food. Since Chungking refused support for such numbers, they tried to form local governments whose taxing-power could regularize the food levies on the countryside. In this they were opposed by local magistrates appointed by distant Chungking, who had no interest in giving them food. "When we got customs revenue from Chefoo," said a young woman with the Eighth Route Army, "the Shantung governor expected us to give it to him. He lost Chefoo to the Japanese and we got it; we needed the food for ourselves." This was the origin of one local clash. . . . All such clashes took place far behind Japanese lines, and news of them reached Chungking through channels provided by Ho Ying-chin. Under such conditions local clashes grew more frequent and widespread, with increasing participation by the authorities in Chungking. The first serious armed clash occurred late in 1939 in North Shensi. The Special Border District, with its capital at Yenan, had declared allegiance to the Chungking Government, but the Central Government had given no legal status nor fixed boundaries to the district. General Hu Tsung-nan, Governor of Shensi, decided that the district was his and sent armies to occupy it; generals in Kansu collaborated. After Yenan had lost four of the twenty-three hsien which it claimed, part of Ho Lung's men—Eighth Route forces operating just across the Yellow River—came back to Yenan as home defense. Yenan lost no more hsien but three concentric lines of block-houses began to be built in narrowing circles against the Border District—the tactics which squeezed the Communists out of South China in the earlier civil war. By the end of 1940 two thousand such block houses had been built. The next important clash occurred in the adjacent province of Shansi between the Old and New Armies of Yen Hsi-shan. Yen's original army broke very badly in 1937 under the first Japanese onslaught which they had never been equipped to withstand. Yen re- 7 CRISIS IN CHINA organized them, adding local peasant boys. Much of this enrollment was taking place during my visit to Shansi in 1938. Thousands of Shansi boys were applying to join the Eighth Route because of its superior prestige, but they were being told: "We have no money for soldiers; join Yen Hsishan." Yen's new army was therefore strongly pro-Eighth Route and followed its tactics in organizing the local peasants. Conflicting accounts exist of the clash that finally developed between the two different armies of General Yen. Chungking claims that it was inspired by the Eighth Route; Communists state that, on the contrary, it broke out in spite of them, and that, after it occurred, they "mediated" and induced the New Army to withdraw to Northwest Shansi. In any event, the New Army now operates in close conjunction with the Eighth Route in that territory, where to some extent it replaces the forces that returned to Yenan. Throughout 1940 an armed blockade separated all Eighth Route and New Fourth territory from "Free China." An estimated one-fifth of Chungking's total forces were diverted to "watching" the Communists. Students trying to go to Yenan for education were detained in Sian; if they persisted in their dangerous desire they were thrown into concentration camps. For fourteen months the Eighth Route claimed to have received no munitions or medical supplies from the Central Government; if any were sent, they failed to get through. Truckloads of medical supplies sent by Madame Sun Yat-sen's organization, the China Defense League, were indefinitely detained. Even a foreign doctor who tried to reach Wutaishan to replace Dr. Norman Bethune was unable to pass and finally accepted medical service among Central Government troops. One occasion at least is recorded when armed men taking the payroll for the New Fourth Army were seized by other Chinese troops of the Central Government; neither the payroll nor the soldiers were ever released. Only occasionally could this unofficial blockade be penetrated by men with high prestige. Clashes between Communist-led armies and other Central Government forces became epidemic in the summer of 1940. They took place in Hopei, Shantung, North Kiangsu, East Anhwei, South Anhwei and at the northern edge of Chekiang. Details are impossible to verify, since each side charges the other with attacking, and though the Communists asked for an investigation commission, none was sent. Meanwhile the high staffs in the Kuomintang-led armies made speeches to their subordinates urging that they must be prepared to fight the Communists. Pamphlets were published denouncing the Communists as the most dangerous element in the nation; in Hongkong I was told that 200,000 such pamphlets had been sent out to Overseas Chinese. Deadly phrases were whispered; "Japanese are only lice on the body of China but Communism is a disease of the heart." The repression spread beyond the Communists to all united front organizations; the famous "Life" bookshops of the National Salvation Movement were closed in ten cities. Many organizers of the Industrial Cooperatives were arrested, kidnapped and even assassinated as "Reds," a term which might merely cover the jealousy of a local official who failed to get his squeeze from the cooperatives. Ho Ying-chin Cooperates with the Japanese There seems reason to think, in at least three cases, that local generals, acting under Ho Ying-chin's orders to check the Communists, were simultaneously cooperating with the Japanese. General Shih Yu-shan, who clashed with the Eighth Route in South Hopei, was a man of picturesquely adventurous past. He began his career as a commander under Marshal Feng Yu-hsiang and was left at loose ends when Feng was defeated by Chiang Kai-shek. When the present war with Japan began, Shih despaired of getting funds from Chiang Kai-shek 8 CRISIS IN CHINA so he went over openly to Japan. After receiving money and munitions for his needy troops, he declared loyalty to Chungking and gained much face for thus outwitting the Japanese. He expected to be made Governor of Hopei and was disgruntled when denied the post. He was, however, assigned the territory of South Hopei and is alleged to have had orders from Ho Ying-chin to check the Eighth Route's expansion by cutting the connections between their Shansi and Central Hopei forces. Charges that General Shih was conspiring with the Japanese were sent to Chiang Kai-shek on July 2 in an official telegram by Chu Teh, commander-in-chief of the Eighth Route. He stated that on June 22, General Shih sent instructions to all his subordinates giving a code of signals, consisting of white sheets placed on the ground, by which Japanese planes could distinguish his troops from those of the Eighth Route. This information, plus other details of Shih's collaboration with the Japanese, had been given to Chu Teh by Shih's subordinates who did not wish to side with Japan. No answer was received from Chungking to this accusation, but later in July Shih's forces, in coordination with Japanese puppet troops and with the aid of Japanese planes, attacked the Eighth Route near Puyang and Poshan. Shih was shot by one of his own brigade commanders and most of his troops came over to the Eighth Route. For several months no details of this conflict reached Chungking, and details are still conflicting. But by the end of November it became known that General Shih was dead. Then General Wei Li-huang, commander of the war zone in which the incident occurred, announced that he had executed Shih for treason,--thus removing the onus of mutiny from his subordinates. The Central News Agency in Chungking, however, announced that Shih had been executed "for expanding his territory in defiance of orders." Similar charges of treason were made against General Miao Chen-liu, commander of the 57th Army in South Shantung. Chu Teh sent a telegram to the Generalissimo in July, giving an exhaustive list of Miao's alleged dealing with the Japanese, as revealed to Chu Teh by Miao's subordinates. These included the exchange of signals, exchange of emissaries, joint banquets--in fact, a fully worked out system of combined attack against the Eighth Route. No answer came from Chiang Kai-shek but Ho Ying-chin telegraphed back: "Don't slander your fellow-generals." Telegrams from division commanders under General Miao next went to Chungking revealing more conferences with the Japanese and appealing over the head of their commander to the Generalissimo. ON October 9th, the entire staff of the 57th Army signed a joint telegram to Chiang Kai-shek declaring their general a traitor and demanding his execution. None of these telegrams was answered, but word was spread in Chungking that "the Eighth Route is stirring up trouble in other Chinese armies." Finally Miao's staff arrested him and sent him under guard to the commander-in-chief of the war zone who forwarded him to Chungking, where he is now busily circulating his version of the affair. Meanwhile his troops, like those of General Shih's have augmented the forces of the Eighth Route-- an indication of what may happen if civil war begins. Then there was the case of Admiral Shen Hung-lich, Governor of Shantung. On August 5 Chu Teh wired the Generalissimo the details of how Shen's troops in coordination with the Japanese had attacked the 115th Division of Lin Piao. On September 14 Chu Teh again wired the Generalissimo other details. On September 24 the Kuomintang Provincial Committee of Shantung wired the Kuomintang Executive in Chungking reporting Shen's liaison with the Japanese. All these accusations and protests were disregarded. "We interpret these incidents," said a representative of the Eighth Route to me, "as 9 CRISIS IN CHINA meaning that General Ho Ying-chin is ready to cooperate even with Japanese against the Communists." To my query whether Chiang Kai-shek had the same attitude as Ho Ying-chin, he replied: "We do not even know whether the Generalissimo gets all of our telegrams. We believe that Chiang does not at present want to make an agreement with Japan. He wishes to suppress the Communists more and more but not quite to the point of interfering with the war against Japan. It is a very narrow road. Until now he has been able to take it. But he cannot take it long." Military History of the New Fourth Army The Generalissimo, however, has chosen to have a show-down and as a first step accepted personal responsibility for disbanding the New Fourth Army in the Yangtze Valley. This army consisted officially of four "units," functioning as independent groups in different areas on both sides of the Lower Yangtze, assigned to them originally by Chiang Kai-shek. After the fall of Hankow the New Fourth was augmented by 20,000 dispersed soldiers from Central Honan who formed a fifth unit, and by large numbers of peasants on the borders of Hupeh, Honan and Anhwei who formed a sixth detachment. Later a battalion known as the Shangnan Volunteers, organized south of the Yangtze, grew so large that the commander of the war zone objected to it, and it crossed the Yangtze to avoid trouble and took its station north of Shanghai and north of the river. Thus the New Fourth operated on both sides of the Yangtze almost from Shanghai to Hankow, in small detachments separated by some of the heaviest Japanese concentrations in China. For three years its units were in constant contact with the Japanese, attacking the Nanking-Shanghai railway, the Wuhu-Nanking railway, and the highways between Nanking and Hangchow. They wrecked trains, waylaid Japanese army trucks, stopped trade with the Japanese-held cities. In the autumn of 1938 they raided the Japanese-occupied airdrome within sight of Shanghai and hoisted the Chinese flag above its buildings. In the first year, the detachments south of the river fought more than 600 engagements, most of them small affairs but all of them wearing down the Japanese. "We have been able to detain 50,000 Japanese in this area," claimed General Yeh Ting. "No matter how often they change their troops, they never dare lessen the number which they maintain here." The people in Chekiang called the army "the soldiers of God" and "world army No. 1." They had a saying, "as in lettuce you eat the heart, so if you join the army join the Fourth." Other Central Government armies held positions flanking this territory, but only the New Fourth operated all around and in between the enemy-held towns. With the general worsening of relations between Communist and Kuominatang forces, a whole series of armed clashes took place between the New Fourth and surrounding Chinese armies, beginning in February 1940. Endless details of these clashes are available, but in the absence of checking, nobody knows how accurate the details are. It seems at least clear that the New Fourth payroll was seized on one occasion, and its normal river-crossing, by which communication with Chungking and with troops on both banks was maintained, was permanently blocked. The New Fourth claims to have intercepted secret instructions from Chungking to local commanders to suppress all New Fourth forces by the end of the year. On the other hand, the New Fourth was plainly increasing its influence in the nearby armies, many of whose troops came over to its ranks during the armed clashes. Despite these frictions between Chinese forces, the New Fourth continued to fight the Japanese. Major Evans F. Carlson, who visited the area occupied by the New 10 CRISIS IN CHINA Fourth in Southern Anhwei last October, reports in the China Defense League news letter one of their victories near Kianghsien. "I arrived in this area," he said, "shortly after a particularly aggressive Japanese drive had been turned back by the New Fourth Army. The Japanese came in two columns, one from near Wuhu. . . . They were allowed to make a deep penetration and then the mobile units of the New Fourth fell upon their flanks and rear, forcing them to withdraw with a loss which was estimated, both by the New Fourth and Central Government officials, at an aggregate of 7,000 casualties." Major Carlson was also struck by the emphasis on the "united front"; even the small children talked to him earnestly about the "need for all people to work together for National Salvation." He adds, "There were many signs of the close cooperation between the army and the people." Relations between the New Fourth and the commander of the War Zone, General Ku Chu-tung, were not so excellent. He maintained a blockade against the New Fourth which it was perilous to try to pass. A brilliant young intellectual, Wu Ta-kwan, took a party of Chinese journalists to the New Fourth region. General Ku asked them not to visit the New Fourth but they replied that since they were "comforting" all the armies in this region, they would comfort the New Fourth too. On their return they were summoned before General Ku, and their young leader went alone. He was never seen afterwards. Telegrams sent by Mme. Sun Yat-sen to ascertain his fate were met by General Ku's bland statement that "he had never heard of the man." The Order to Move and Disband The New Fourth was ordered to leave the Yangtze Valley and move north of the Yellow River to be amalgamated with the Eighth Route. This was given as a "proposal" in July and as an "order" on October 19. The Generalissimo himself did not sign the order till December 10, and there is excellent reason for believing that it was originally issued by Ho Ying-chin without Chiang's knowledge, and later confirmed in the interests of army discipline. The New Fourth regarded the order almost as an instruction to commit suicide. They pointed out that only one-tenth of their army was on government pay-roll, and the rest consisted of local peasants who could not easily leave their homes. No winter uniforms had been furnished, no supplies for the long journey, and no munitions had been received for eight months. Yet they were required to cross several heavy Japanese concentration and pass by many of the Central Government armies which were already clashing with them in armed battle and which gave no pledge of permitting them to pass. They were promised munitions and pay after they should reach the Yellow River but they had fairly good reason for assuming that they had fairly good reason for assuming that they were not expected to arrive. The Communists' most serious objection to the order, however, was that they considered it not a routine military command but a political and military splitting of China into two parts, in preparation for peace with Japan in Central and South China. None of those with whom I talked claimed that this was the Generalissimo's intention. Chiang Kai-shek himself in an interview with me indignantly denied any intention of making peace with Japan or of leaving any part of China outside his rule. But it was clear that the concentration of all the Communists in North China--which had never been under allegiance to Chiang anyway--would give Japan a heaven-sent excuse for concentrating her attacks in that region. If she should then choose to make a demonstrative withdrawal from the Yangtze Valley, the peace tendencies in Chungking would be immeasurably strengthened. "We do not refuse to obey the military order," said the Communists, "but we want it made part of a wider political settlement which will allow democratic safeguards in 11 CRISIS IN CHINA all of Free China. We can trust the Chinese people to preserve their unity against Japan. But if all Communists are put in North China and prohibited elsewhere, and no people's movements are allowed, we cannot trust the Chungking bureaucrats. The result will be either civil war or the splitting of China into two parts, with neither of which alternatives can we agree." Throughout December, during my visit in Chungking, the capital was buzzing with the "threat of civil strife." Scores of Chinese leaders were urging "patience" and "unity." Reactionaries were gloating: "We have them surrounded and can crush them." Meanwhile some twenty-seven divisions of Central Government troops, uncontaminated by previous contact with the "Reds" were moving eastward to surround the New Fourth Army with the obvious intent of forcing it out of the Yangtze Valley or eliminating it from the scene. Minor clashes with local forces continued through most of December. The Ambushing of New Fourth Troops First news of the final clash was announced from Chungking on January 17 by the Military Council which stated that Yeh Ting had been imprisoned and was awaiting court-martial, following suppression of a "revolt" by his troops. Yeh Ting was accused of having plotted to control the China coast from Chekiang and Kiangsu in the south to Shantung in the north"--all regions, incidentally, held by Japan. General Ku Chu-tung, commander of the 3rd War Area, was credited with having "successfully suppressed the rebels." A few days later, Edgar Snow reported from Hongkong that it had been the New Fourth Army's rear-guard of some 10,000 men with had been surrounded, and that they had fought for eight days, losing 4,000 casualties before they were suppressed. Only a month later did full uncensored details arrive from China, signed by Chinese of standing who had steadily supported the united front. It seems that Commander Yeh Ting finally received in late December part of the money needed for moving his army north as ordered. Taking this as evidence of good faith, he sent his forces over the river, the last to leave being a rear-guard of 4,000 armed men protecting some 6,000 unarmed persons, consisting of families of officers, political workers, and the hospital with nurses, doctors and wounded. This force of 10,000 more than half unarmed, was surrounded by 80,000 Chungking troops in a narrow mountain pass near Maolin, and were attacked by troops under General Shankuan Yun-hsian on January 6th. They ran out of food on the fourth day, and fought without eating until their ammunition gave out on the eighth day. They telegraphed to Chungking begging that the attack on them be stopped, and were told that General Ku Chu-tung, the war zone commander, had already been told to stop it. During the sixth day of their fighting, questions were raised in the National Military Commission in Chungking, to which Ho Ying-chin replied that "everything is proceeding satisfactorily," that the New Fourth is obediently moving northward, and that a "slight difficulty" had arisen which he had directed General Ku to solve. On the seventh day of the fighting, Mme. Sun Yat-sen and others telegraphed an appeal from Hongkong. The fighting ended on the eighth day when munitions gave out. Of the 10,000 people, more than 2,000 were killed and 4,000 wounded or captured; the dead included numerous political workers, technicians, nurses and children. The remnants of the New Fourth were arrested, and their general, Yeh Ting, held for court-martial. The second in command, Hsiang Ying, was wounded and subsequently killed. (General Yeh Ting was then taken to the headquarters of General Ku Chu-tung in Shangyao, Kiangsi Province, which is noted as the location of Ku's torture chamber where many patriotic youths have met their death. Since 12 CRISIS IN CHINA there are no foreign correspondence in Shangyao, General Yeh's transfer there suggests that his fate is to be settled without risk of unfavorable publicity.) On January 17, four days after the conclusion of this battle, the Chungking Military Council--it is not known whether the Generalissimo was included--issued the order disbanding the New Fourth. Ten days after this, on January 27, the Generalissimo himself assumed responsibility for the official disbanding but stated that it would not affect other Chinese troops, i.e. the Eighth Route. Thereafter, Chungking censorship shut down and Chinese representatives in this country spread the word that the Communists had accepted the disbanding and there would be no more trouble. Communist Revolutionary Military Committee Issues Official Order Belated material from China, however, makes plain the tremendous tensions of the past month. On January 20, three days after the official order of January 17, the "Revolutionary Military Committee" of the Chinese Communist Party--which has not been heard of since the earlier civil war-- issued an "Official Order" reorganizing the New Fourth under the command of Chen-Yi, formerly the commander of the New Fourth's First Unit. A few days later--in any event before January 26, the date on which my information was mailed from China--the "spokesman of the Revolutionary Military Committee" issued his detailed charges, outlining the fifteen steps of the alleged plot by "pro-Japanese elements" in Chungking to take China into the Axis. Such accusations have been made for the past year, but never in so definite a form. Especially interesting is the fact that some of the steps in the alleged plot took place while the letter containing the charges was on the ocean. The first step was the barrage of propaganda against the Communist armies, which was going on during my December visit in Chungking. The next steps were the destruction of the New Fourth forces south of the Yangtze and the official disbanding of the entire New Fourth Army. These steps were taken in January. According to the Communist spokesman, the future development of this plot will involve the following: actions by large Chungking armies "tightly cooperating with the Japanese armies" in the regions between the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers to separate the New Fourth from the Eighth Route in order to liquidate them separately. Following this, pretexts would be sought for the official disbanding of the Eighth Route Army and the arrest of its commander, Chu Teh. Next would come arrests of Communists, all over China, including Chou En-lai, official representative of the Eighth Route Army in Chungking, who is already under surveillance. The Communists daily newspaper would be closed and large-scale war would be launched to seize Yenan. Japan, it is alleged, would next withdraw her troops from the Yangtze Valley, and throw them into a ruthless war against the New Fourth and Eighth Route Armies in North China. Fifth column elements in Chungking would then celebrate the recovery of the lost territories as due to the valor of Chungking troops, and would demand a "glorious, victorious peace." It it proved impossible to call off the war officially, because of the Chinese people's objections to the Japanese terms, an undeclared truce would reign in all parts of China except the North where the plotters would obstruct the Communist armies by means ranging from blockade to armed attack. All anti-Japanese elements would, of course, be persecuted as alleged Communists--a tactic familiar from the days when the government was at Nanking. Thus Chinese public opinion would be taught to believe that victory had been won everywhere except in those northern regions where "the Communists either cannot or will not drive out Japan." This would make possible the signing of 13 CRISIS IN CHINA the actual peace pact which would leave Japan or Japanese puppets in control of North China--insofar as they could clear out the Communists--and of China's ports. China would then join the Axis. (If this transition seems a bit abrupt to American readers, it must be remembered that the German have always been popular in China, since they lost their rights of extra-territoriality, and that Germany gave significant help to the Chinese in the early stages of this war. Granted the illusion of a "glorious peace of victory," it might not be impossible to direct considerable nationalist feeling into the channel of "clearing the rest of the imperialists out of East Asia and the South Seas.") Regardless of whether these charges will prove correct in every detail, large-scale civil war looms behind the fact that they were made. Some 800,000 Chungking troops, one-half the government forces, are now in positions for attacking the Communists. About 80,000 are said to have been engaged in the disarming of the New Fourth rear-guard south of the Yangtze in the battle which raged January 6th to 13th. Another 200,000 to 300,000 have moved into North Anhwei and Kiangsu where they separate the Eighth Route from the New Fourth; and are already reported to be engaged in attempts to defeat them. In the northwestern provinces, an estimated half million encircle the Yenan district and blockade the Eighth Route Army in Shansi. The Future of the New Fourth Army Meanwhile, the reorganized New Fourth Army, with 90,000 men north of the Yangtze under its new acting commander, Chen Yi, is still the pivot on which the future turns. It has been ordered by the Communists' Military Committee to continue the fight against Japan in the name of Chinese nationalism on the basis of Sun Yat-sen's Three People's Principles "while always guarding against the sudden attack of the pro-Japanese elements," i.e. attacks which may be launched by Ho Ying-chin. If attempts are made to disband these New Fourth forces, the Communists' Military Committee officially states that the Eighth Route will come to its assistance. This will give the Communists an estimated 500,000 to 600,000 seasoned fighters, a much smaller and worse-armed force than Chungking possesses. But Chungking contains elements that will not hold together in a war against the Communists, especially if the Communists can convince the local population and soldiers that they are being wantonly attacked. If this struggle really begins, it will not be the mere disarming of a few Communists. It may well change the map of China and East Asia, and the balance of the present world war. Chungking exists today as the Central Government of China only because it is the symbol of unity toward which nine-tenths of the Chinese people passionately aspire. This gives it the prestige which controls recalcitrant provincial warlords who might otherwise carve restless kingdoms of their own or bargain profitably with Japan. Governors of at least two of the sea coast provinces are reputed to favor Wang Chingwei, but are held to Chungking by the pressure of the Chinese people. Yunnan in the far South shows repeated tendencies to go off on its own. If Chungking ceases to be the symbol of Chinese unity, warlords all over the country will pull loose. One pattern which might easily emerge would be the old split of China into "Three Kingdoms" which has occurred more than once before. There would be Nanking, already recognized by Japan and from which Germany and Italy would no longer have a reason for refusing recognition; Chungking, a mountain republic approached through the back door of Burma, and recognized by America and Britain unless Ho Ying-chin combined it with Nanking; and a north or northwest republic, either "united front" or 14 CRISIS IN CHINA Communist, which would ask for and perhaps eventually secure recognition from the U.S.S.R. It seems likely, however, both from the Communist representatives' statements to me last December and from the details of such events as now get past the Chungking censorship, that the Communists will for the present try to avoid this three-cornered geographical split and will rather seek to arouse popular movements and pressures throughout China in order to effect a new governmental grouping in Chungking. Important political figures have already separated themselves from the actions of Chungking. Mme. Sun Yat-sen led a group of Kuomintang members in a joint message on Jan. 12th to the Generalissimo and the Central Committee of the Kuomintang, appealing for the resumption of the national united front. On the same day, Marshal Feng Yu-hsiang, addressing a committee of the National Military Commission in Chungking, cited Poland and France as glaring examples of nations destroyed by internal dissension, and made a plea for national solidarity. The aged General Yen Hsi-shan spoke even more strongly in an interview telegraphed Jan. 11th to Hongkong: "There are undesirable elements in the Kuomintang who directly threaten our war of resistance and indirectly give the Japanese assistance. Not only am I dissatisfied with them, but the entire nation dislikes them. . . . They arouse the progressive elements to disobedience to the Central Government." On about January 18, General Sheng Shih-tsai, Governor of Sinkiang Province, sent a telegram to Chungking in which he stated that after the military record of the Eighth Route and New Fourth armies against Japan, there is no ground or excuse for any "punitive campaign" against these armies. He declared that if civil war develops in China now, this can only help the Japanese invaders in their plan of conquering China; and that the people and armies of Sinkiang stand solidly behind a policy of unity, resistance, and struggle against all those preparing to sell out to Japan under the cover of a so-called "punitive campaign." These significant and powerful political figures have been ruthlessly side-tracked by Chungking reactionaries throughout this present war. Their appeal--and also the appeal from many other sections of China--indicates the widespread ferment going on in all provinces of China behind the censorship veil. Armed clashes, reported but as yet unverified, in four northern provinces, indicate that the military suppressions predicted by the Communists' Military Committee are still going on. In reading news one should look for indications whether the Communist forces seem to be withdrawing to form a new northern area, or whether the agitation still goes on across all of China, looking towards a new and more democratic central government. If large scale civil war is launched against Yenan, we may look to see Communist forces break through the cordon of government troops which have continually blockaded them from any contact with the U.S.S.R., and which--barring the excuse of civil war--they would not dare try to force. Then they might really secure the arms which, during the whole war thus far, they have been denied. It will never be too late to save China. She will survive. Her people will organize under some banner to cast forth Japan, even though it may not be under Chungking. But it may soon be too late to prevent a powerful Japanese attack on the Southeast Asian front, which would inevitably involve yet another area in the Second World War. Only swift action to preserve Chungking as the center of Chinese unity can do that. The quickest way to cut the Gordian knot might be an immediate conference among the American, British and Soviet Embassies in Chungking, a pooling of information and charges from both sides of the strife, and joint pressure to stop a Chinese civil war. Acting together, these three countries might prevent a temporary crisis from becoming a national and international disaster. 15 Contributors EVANS FORDYCE CARLSON, a former Major in the U. S. Marine Corps stationed in China for several years, has recently returned by Clipper from Chungking, after covering 4000 miles in southern and western China. His two latest books are "Twin Stars over China" and "The Chinese Army." ANNA LOUISE STRONG, author, journalist and lecturer, has traveled widely in America, Europe, the U.S.S.R., and the Far East, and has written extensively about the most important historical events of our times. Returning to this country from a recent trip to the Soviet Union, she traveled by way of China, where she arrived just as news of internal political crisis there was reaching the outer world. The article in this issue is written from first-hand information and impressions. The most recent of Miss Strong's numerous books is "My Native Land." "ASIATICUS" is the pen-name of a well-known writer living in China. He is the author of "The Fascist Axis vs. the United Front in China," which appeared in the February issue of Amerasia. WILLIAM C. JOHNSTONE is Professor of Political Science and Dean at the George Washington University, Washington, D. C., and author of "The United States and Japan's New Order," 1941. ANDREW J. STEIGER is a journalist who worked in the Soviet Union for a number of years and whose travels included trips to the Soviet Arctic and the Soviet Far East. His articles have appeared in various magazines, including Asia. CAPITAL NOTES: K. M. (Kate Mitchell). amerasia A REVIEW OF AMERICAN AND THE FAR EAST March, 1941 VOL. V, NO. 1. Capital Notes 2 K. M. Economic Democracy in China 5 Evans Fordyce Carlson The Kuomintang-Communist Crisis in China 11 Anna Louise Strong Autobiography of General Yeh Ting 24 "Asiaticus" Export Controls and Far Eastern Policy 30 William C. Johnstone How Strong Is Soviet Siberia? 36 Andrew J. Steiger News of the Month 43 Index and Review of Vol. IV Section II EDITORIAL BOARD Frederick V. Field, Chairman Philip J. Jaffe, Managing Editor T. A. Bisson Kenneth W. Colegrove Owen Lattimore William W. Lockwood Kate Mitchell David H. Popper William T. Stone Amerasia, Published Monthly by Amerasia, Inc. at 125 East 52nd Street, New York, N. Y. Price 25 cents a copy. By subscription: in the United States, Canada, and Mexico $2.50 yearly. Foreign add 50 cents for postage. Entered as second-class matter March 24, 1937, at the Post Office at New York, N. Y., under the Act of March 3, 1879. 4 West 31st Street, New York City. The following are extracts from a personal letter from my daughter, Anna Louise, which some of her friends will be interested to read. SYDNEY STRONG. Moscow, February, 16, 1930. Every time I turn around now, I get another job. Every time I ask some friend's advice as to how to organize my work, and which jobs are better emphasized and which dropped, he thinks a day, and then merely gives me a new one. Today I went, at a friend's suggestion, to Gosisdat, Textbook section, and proposed a reading-book for English classes made up of selections from my books on Russia and China. Take the first chapter of First Time in History, several chapters of Children of Revolution, some from China's Millions, some new articles etc... The answer came: "We are very glad to meet you. No, we don't want a reading book of collected articles. But here's something we wish you would do. The party directive is now that workers shall learn foreign language rather widely, and read about foreign conditions. By autumn the English classes among workers will be very wide-spread, needing tens of thousands of books. We get out small booklets, for supplementary reading matter, heavy paper covers, about 10,000 words, plus a glossary in the back. We don't want stuff on Russia in these books; we get that more up to date in our papers. But we'll sign a contract this minute for a booklet on the Ford Plant, showing both the tremendous rationalization, the material benefits to workers, and the terrific drive and strain and carelessness of workers' welfare under capitalism. Can you give us such a booklet"? Knowing that I already had the material written up somewhere, I signed the contract. I went yesterday evening to a Comradely Court, about which I shall write more at length in an article. Neighbors Court, would perhaps be our word for it. A new idea, which is hoped eventually to supersede all other courts. It is an informal neighborhood assembly, confined either by factory, or by housing cooperative, which hears all private complaints, petty thefts, slanders, personal abuse, wife-beating, neglect to children, etc. All work is voluntary; the judge, secretary and two assistant judges may not be persons who have any legal knowledge or any connection with the courts as judge, prosecutor, or investigators. Idea is to get as far as possible.. from the mentality of courts, and deal only with facts, with a view to rehabilitation and reestablishment of neighborly relations...It has legal right to put fines up to ten roubles, or to punish by - 1) oral censure accompanied by acknowledgement of wrong; 2) censure printed in the wall newspaper; 3) censure printed in a central city newspaper...Great idea, though I admit I didn't think one case was settled properly. But the Neighbors' Court is the place to go to learn about Moscow housing troubles. Most of the cases start with that. Oh, I forgot to tell you of a letter received from the Tomak University, foreign language courses, about Children of Revolution. Some years ago it reached them, in a package of books from America. "The topic of the book being familiar and its fine style most intelligible to each of my pupils, it had soon conquered all hearts and become the favorite reading with them.... "Unfortunately we have but one specimen here which cannot by any means satisfy the needs of more than 150 students. I was trying to write you for some more of these books, but in vain, for I did not know your abode. "Now that you are amid us, here in U.S.S.R. though far from Siberia, we--my girls and boys and I,--welcome you, dear, dearest friend and avail ourselves of the good chance of thanking you for the pleasure your lovely book has procured to us. "Allow us to enter your name into the list of friends of the English Division of our Department. He our Chief! "Please write us as soon as possible..Are you willing to send us your photograph. We are anxious to see what the authoress of our favorite book it." "With friendly shake-hands, ---A.M. Sheremetevski, English section, etc. Now I really must stop. [*[?]*] [*[?]may be [?]*] 4 West 31st Street, New York City. The following is a copy of a letter written by my daughter Anna Louise Strong to Miss Smith, Executive Secretary, Open Forum Speakers Bureau. Boston. I am sending it to a few of daughter's friends. SYDNEY STRONG. C O P Y Moscow, Russia February 15, 1930 Dear Miss Smith: Many thanks for your kind inquires. I shall not return to America this spring. I want to stay and see the biggest revolution yet to take place,-- the rural revolution. I used the word "revolution" not as aa metaphor, but as a reality; it has all a revolution's brutality, hopes, and uncertainties. And it is much bigger than 1917, which was only the preliminary tremor. Incidentally, a booklet written by me on "The Tractor Station,--highest technique of collectivization", and badly translated into a style by no means gripping, has been grabbed for issue in a first edition of 300,000! A special man was sent with the manuscript to Leningrad, since all the linotypes of Moscow are overloaded, and it was desired to rush the book through in ten days. for the spring sowing campaign. No proof reading even is allowed me I only trust the editors have found the same faults that I have . . . This gives a little idea of the forces at work on even the fringe of the struggle. And who would sacrifice an audience of 300,000 peasant households, (which means much over a million readers,) in the midst of a desperate struggle over the complete remaking of farming,-- for the sake of influencing mildly an audience of liberal Americans ! I am having a great time. The only thing that may induce me to come back to America even next year is father's presence and his constant gently reminders of my many friends who wish to hear me. Otherwise, it is so much more exciting living here; when I see Louis Fisher come back after six months abroad, and watch the poor fellow trying to find out what has happened to change the face of the land,-- I don't want to lose touch. Of course he's an able person, and will catch up quickly. But I resent even the month I shall probably spend in Geneva, getting my passport renewed and seeing my relatives in June. If for two days one doesn't read the papers, one is already a back number. There is of course much cruelty, and terrible injustices,-- what can you expect when the execution of drastic policies must be put through by twenty- year old half-instructed Young Communists who are anxious to make a record for loyalty, and who are far more extreme than intended. One could sum up the injustices in even one township and have enough for kind pacifist souls to damn Russia forever. But on the other hand,-- a hundred million people are being shaken, willy-nilly, through three centuries in a decade; and the crisis is especially this spring. (signed) Anne L. Strong. Anne Louise Story INSIDE NORTH KOREA AN EYE-WITNESS REPORT ANNA LOUISE STRONG 25¢ INSIDE NORTH KOREA AN EYE-WITNESS REPORT [image] ANNA LOUISE STRONG Dr. Strong interviews President Kim II Sung Typographic design by Pauline G Schindler Published by Anna Louise Strong at Montrose, California. [photo of man and woman] With Minister of Labor at a Social Insurance health resort The Author Anna Louise Strong is known as a reporter of revolution. She is the only American who toured North Korea since its liberation from Japan, talking with people in all walks of life. Born in Nebraska, educated in Oberlin, Bryn Mawr and Chicago University (degree Ph.D.) she went to Russia in 1921 with the American Friends' Sercice. This began thirty years as wrold reporter specializing in social changes. No reporter has scored more exclusive beats and journalistic "firsts." Took the first foreign relief to the Volga famine (1921). Toured tens of thousands of miles to Russian farms and factories. Camped with Kirghiz tribes on the "Roof of the World" to study Soviet policy with nomads. Organized "Moscow Daily News," English paper in Moscow (1930). Ran blockade into war-torn Canton(1925), into "Red Hankow (1927), only reporter who saw the "People's Power" in Hunan, that peasant revolt that bore the seeds of Today's China. Crossed Gobi Desert with Borodin's famous trek to Moscow (1927). Dodged bullets in Madrid trenches (1936-37). Only reporter who saw the Baltic States vote themselves Soviet. First American to fly the Moscow-Chungking route (1940). Only correspondent to fly Fairbanks-Moscow Arctic Route (1944). Only foreign writer in trenches on Polish Eastern Front (1945). Travelled nine Communist provinces in China (1946-47) and lived six months in a cave in Yenan among the people who now rule in Peking. Only American writer to visit post-war Dairen, Port Arthur, North Korea (1947). Author of more than fifteen books, ("I Change Worlds", "Wild River", etc.) and of thousands of articles published in more than forty countries. Latest book, "The Chinese Conquer China", published by Doubleday. This booklet covers her visit to North Korea in 1947 ; it was printed in small edition in 1949 and is now brought to date in the framework of today. Rural memorial to home boys and Russians who died together against the Japanese [photo of memorial with pedestrians and an automobile] BACKGROUND In days to come Korea will continue to supply headlines. Yet there is little public knowledge about the country. Headlines, without background, can only distort and not reveal facts. First background fact is this : Korea is a peninsula jutting out from China towards Japan. It has 85,000 square miles and some 30,000,000 people. They are mostly peasants. Some large industries, mines, powerplants were developed by Japan in recent decades when she ruled Korea ; these are mainly in the hilly North. Rice-fields, form which Japan took most of the crop, are mainly in the South. Second chief fact is this : Korea is a unity. Koreans were welded into a nation by thousands of years of history. They have been at times conquered and suppressed but never divided. Until the Americans and Russians invented "The Parallel." This divided Korea into military zones for purposes of fighting Japan. It was never meant to divide the Korean nation. No Korean recognized the Parallel as a proper division. It cut across a national life whose food was in the South and whose industries were in the North. The great Northern powerplant gave power to all Korea; streams flowed from Northern hills to irrigate Southern fields, whose rice in part returned to feed the North. Koreans felt themselves a single nation. All organizations that sprang up after the liberation from Japan - trade unions, peasant unions, political parties, even the first "National Congress" - were at first nationwide. But the cold war between America and Russia hardened the Parallel into a boundary. An American-protected government grew in the South and a Russian-protected one in the North, each claiming the right to speak for the nation. Russia's Army withdrew in December, 1948, and the American Army in subsequent months, but the division remained. The claims of the Southern government are known to Americans. Syngman Rhee, an eighty-year-old reactionary, had not been in Korea for forty years when the Americans flew him in and made him president. Later he was elected in what we called the "United-Nations-sponsored" election of 1948; this is his legal claim to power. It was done through the "Little Assembly" a body whose legality Russia always protested, since it was created to by-pass the Security Council. Russia also claimed that the holding of elections was not within the U.N.'s competence, but should be done by Koreans, and all foreign troops should first withdraw. Therefore the Northern Zone boycotted the "U.N. election"; so did all anti- Rhee parties in the South. Rhee was elected in the midst of police terrorism, political murders and violent uprisings. More recently, on May 30, 1950, Rhee's slate was repudiated in the elections for the National Assembly; the N. Y. Times reported that only 48 of the 210 seats, less than a fourth, were won by Rhee's slate. (What happened to this National Assembly? Nobody knows as I write. It is known that Rhee arrested some of them; that he executed "more than 100 pro-Communist politicians" before fleeing from Seoul. The North claims Southern Assemblymen have in large part joined them. The American Army was invited to intervene by Rhee and not by the Southern Parliament). The claims of the Northern government were never presented in America. Nor were they ever heard by the United Nations; the Americans prevented that. In 1947 and 1948 the North Koreans sent to plead their case with the U.N.; 4 each time, under American influence, the U.N. refused to hear. Their claims are based on a 1948 election which they claim to have held all over Korea, openly in the North and illegally in the South. Of this extraordinary claim I shall have more to say. In any case, since August, 1948, the "Supreme People's Assembly of the Korean People's Democratic Republic," as the Northern government is named, consists of 572 deputies, of whom 360 come from the South and 212 from the North, in proportion to population. This is the government against whose armies America is fighting. President Truman says it is a "police action" since the North Koreans "committed aggression" by invading the South. The North Koreans claim that Syngman Rhee's forces have invaded them hundreds of times and even started this particular conflict and that Southern Assemblymen invited them South. I have not checked their claims; I have no facilities. But some day the United Nations must check them if that body is to continue to exist. IMAGE: At Pyongyang Airport INTO NORTH KOREA All of Korea has been "iron-curtained" country since World War II. To visit the South you needed permit from General MacArthur; to visit the North, a permit from the 5 Russians. The few correspondents who got into the South glimpsed great strikes and peasant uprisings. No correspondent, except for my visit, has toured the Northern Zone at all. This isolation was not the wish of Koreans. I shall not forget how fifteen reporters and news photographers met my train at Wonsan, because rumor ran "the Americans are coming," and they all hoped some American delegation would remove the artificial Parallel. When they found only one very unofficial American reporter, they politely hid their disappointment and told me to write about them for America. "Only tell the truth about how hard we try to build." I had no heart to say that I had already approached American new's agencies and been told flatly that no story from North Korea was wanted, that they got their stories from refugees who ran away to the South. . . It was that hospitable city of Wonsan, which longed so for friendly contact with Americans, that was "plastered by some 50 Superforts" in the second week of the present "police action." The agencies refusing my story said I could get no real facts since Russians would handicap every move. So I must state how I got my facts. I was met at the Pyengyang airport by the mayor, the woman chief of information, and the chairman of the writers' union, a famous novelist - all Koreans. It was 1947 and the Russians were then in occupation; a Russian major of the Army's press department got me a "western style" hotel room and made some routine contacts. Then I told him I wished to go alone among Koreans, as too much guidance would invalidate my conclusions. Thereafter I made my own plans. I travelled from coast to coast across country, visiting vil- 6 lages, industrial plants, rest homes of the social insurance system. I picked up interpreters where I found them; some had learned English in American missionary schools. I talked freely to farmers, workers, factory managers, women, writers, officials. I got my facts entirely from Koreans, all of whom seemed glad to talk and unconstrained. If and when I met Russians they usually declined to comment on Korean affairs, saying: "It is the Koreans' country; ask them." I had freer and closer contact with Korean people in the Russian zone than any correspondent has reported from the American zone. My strongest impression was that the Koreans seemed to think that they were running things. They were even naive about it. Again and again I was told that the "democratic government," the universal suffrage, the land reform, the expanding agriculture, industry and education was the work, as one former put it, "of our own hands." The Russians, they insisted, were just there because of a treaty with the Americans, and only to give advice. "The Russians liberated us from the Japanese," said one, "but we Koreans did all the rest." If I remarked that the Russians still handled their foreign contacts and supplied their defense - for North Korea had, in autumn of 1947, no army of its own* - they would brush this aside as if foreign relations and army didn't matter. "In all the running of the country," they would say, "in elections, in police, in courts, in acts of government, we Koreans are the boss." The only concentration of Russians was in the capital, Pyongyang, and they were not very conspicuous even there. The only time I saw Russians much in evidence was at the anniversary celebration of the date of liberation, August 15, 1947. Russian generals stood beside the President Kim Il Sung in the tribune in Pyongyang to review the floats of factories and organizations and receive the plaudits of the marching crowd. In the banquet that followed, Russians and Koreans mingled on equal terms, drank alternate toasts, sang in turn the folk songs of their people - I was struck by the fact that the Russians responded with old Ukrainian love songs rather than with Bolshevik propaganda - and *Since my visit the North Korean organized their own army, stating that this was necessary because of the large force of "right reactionary terrorists," armed by Americans in South Korea. The Americans were justifying their action by claiming that the North Koreans had an army of 250,000, but there was no army at all in the north at the time - late 1947. 7 danced with each other's womanfolk. It was a natural, joyous celebration of a joint victory. But it was hard for me to imagine an American occupying army mingling in such easy equality with an Asiatic race. That is one of Russia's strong points in Asia. RUSSIANS AND KOREANS As far as I could see, the Russians were popular. What was more important, their popularity had grown. There had been some complaint against them at first, in 1945, for the first troops that came in fighting were tough babies from the German front; liberating armies, even when they are of one's own people are not easy for a civilian population to take. But these shock troops were quickly replaced by small numbers of selected experts in farming, industry, engineering and government, who were dotted around the country, and whose functions were quite clearly circumscribed. A Korean farm inspector on the east coast told me that there were only ten or twelve Russians in his provincial capital and three or four in his county seat, and that their job was "just to give advice." "For instance I got the job of farm inspector because I know farming. But I don't know inspecting for no Korean had such jobs before. So I go and ask one of the Russians how to make out reports for the government. They have specialists in all lines. They are good-hearted, simple people who have more experience of government than we." This almost amusingly naive attitude towards the Russian occupation is partly the brag of a newly liberated people but it must also be credited to the shrewd technique of the Russians. Unlike the Americans in the south, who were always discussing which candidate to support and who, as their own chosen chairman of the Legislature, Kimm Kiu-sek, himself stated, "were always interfering in every little thing," the Russians never appointed or even discussed a single governing official in North Korea nor they have ever discussed the merits of any proposed Korean laws. They took very firmly the position that these things were the Koreans' own affair. The Russians have their own technique of influence - we shall see as we proceed further - but it is always in terms of influence, not of domination. I could not find 8 a Korean who felt that the Russians were "over him" in any sense at all. I found in fact an almost mystical belief in the "power of the Korean people." One farmer actually told me that the landlords submitted without resistance to the confiscation of their lands, not because of the Red Army but because "it was a just law and the will of the Korean people." A factory worker told me that the "pro-Japanese traitors ran away to the south," not because of the Russians but because "they feared the wrath of the people." The North Koreans seem hopeful adolescents in politics who still have to learn some international facts of life. But their attitude showed an awakened sense of their own political power. This North Korean atmosphere is not due to Russian control of the news reaching the Koreans. Every village has plenty of radios that can listen to American army broadcasts from Tokyo. They are ex-Japanese radios especially geared to Tokyo propaganda; they can't get Moscow programs at all. There are also twenty-four newspapers of three political parties, including one privately owned paper run merely for profit. There is - if one can believe the unanimous assurance given me by reporters, writers and editors at a banquet they threw in my honor - no censorship in North Korea at all! "It is not needed in the north, for everyone here is progressive and patriotic," was the incredible claim they made! The idyllic, and rather unrealistic self-assurance that one finds among the North Koreans is due, in my judgment, to the ease with which farmers got land and workers got jobs and the people got the Japanese industries, houses and summer villas without any class struggles. And this in turn is due to the events of the last month of the war. When the Red Army entered Korea in early August, 1945, heavy battles took place in the north, but the Japanese rule remained tranquil in the south, for the Russians stopped by the Yalta agreement at the 38th parallel, while the Americans came several weeks after the surrender of Japan, and ruled at first through the Japanese and then through the Japanese-appointed Korean officials and police. So naturally all of the pro-Japanese Koreans - former police and officials, landlords and stockholders in Japanese companies - fled south to the American zone. 9 The flight of all these right-wing elements amazingly simplified North Korean politics. The Russians did not have to set up any left-wing government, assuming that they wanted one. They merely set free some ten thousand political prisoners and said, by implication: "Go home, boys, you're free to organize." Under Japanese rule all natural political leaders either served Japan or went to jail. With the pro-Japanese gone, the ex-jailbirds became the vindicated heroes of their home towns. They were all radicals of sorts, including many Communists. Anyone who knows what a tremendous reception was given to Tom Mooney when he was released to come home to the workers of San Francisco, may imagine the effect on the small towns and villages when ten thousand of these political martyrs came home. North Korea just naturally took a great swing leftwards, and the Russians had only to recognize "the choice of the Korean people." People's Committees sprang up in villages, counties, and provinces and coalesced into a provisional government under the almost legendary guerrilla leader Kim Il Sung. Farmers organized, demanded the land from the landlords and got it in twenty- one days by a government decree. (Compared to the land reforms of other countries, this sounds like a tale of Aladdin's lamp!) Ninety per cent of all big industry - it had belonged to Japanese concerns - was handed over by the Russians "to the Korean people" and nationalized by one more decree. Trade unions organized, demanded a modern labor code, and got it without any trouble from their new government, with the eight-hour day, abolition of child labor, and social insurance all complete. Another decree made women equal with men in all spheres of activity and another expanded schools. Then general elections were held and a "democratic front" of three parties swept unopposed to power. The natural opposition had all gone south, to be sheltered - and put in power - by the Americans. This is the reason, I think, for the almost exaggerated sense of "people's power" that the North Koreans express. Their real class struggle is coming; it hasn't fully hit them yet. The reactionaries all fled south, where they are bloodily suppressing strikes. In North Korea the farmers are building new houses and buying radios because they no longer pay land rent, while the workers are taking vacations in former Japanese villas. 10 The North Koreans assume that this is just what naturally happens when once you are a "liberated land." "They aren't yet liberated down south," they told me. "The Americans let those pro- Japanese traitors stay in power." (This was said in 1947. In January 1950 Walter Sullivan of the N. Y. Times still reported: "The South Korean regime leans heavily on the leadership, in army and police, of those who held positions of rank under Japan." In late July 1950 when American troops were fighting, a Washington-Tokyo radio hook-up revealed that the "remnants" of the South Korean Army which still fought with us against the North were men who had served in the army of Japan.) a IMAGE: KIM IL SUNG, President of North Korea Government and elections BELIEVE IT OR NOT, there is no Communist Party in North Korea! It was rather a shock to me to discover this, for the American press cannot refer to this area without labeling it all as "Communist." That press is strictly out of date. In 1945 there was a Communist Party, a thriving one. It combined with the equally thriving "Farmers' Party" (People's Party) into the "North Korean Labor Party," which, as far as I could judge, seems more like America's last century "Populists" than like today's Russian Communists. North Korea has had a vivid political history since the Japanese war. While the American press ignorantly dismissed it all as "totalitarian," or "Russian puppet," the Koreans have been energetically forming and reforming political parties, civic organizations, and holding elections of various kinds. The clearest account of what occurred was given me by Lee Kang Kuk, head of foreign affairs. I checked it from other 11 sources, but Lee put it most succinctly. He has a trained legal mind. He was born in Seoul in the Korean royal family, of that Lee dynasty that Japan overthrew in 1910. ("Some spell it 'Lee,' some 'Yee,' some 'Rhee,' " he told me, "for the Korean letter resembles all of these.") He graduated at Seoul University in 1930, studied law in Europe, came home to practice and was jailed by the Japanese. After the surrender of Japan, Lee lived for a year in the American zone of South Korea, which had always been his home. Then he fled north because the Americans were going to jail him again. Lee is thus a European-trained lawyer, familiar with the politics of both zones and able to explain them in terms of the Western world. He himself belonged to the "Farmers' Party," or "People's Party," under leadership of the veteran patriot Lyuh Woon Heung. "After the surrender of Japan," Lee stated, "we organized People's Committees and set up local provisional governments all over Korea. We made no division between north and south for the Americans had not yet come and we did not know that they would suppress us. On September 6, 1945, three weeks after the surrender of Japan, we held our first congress in Seoul, of about one thousand representatives from all parts of the country. They had been chosen quickly and without full formality, but they were a fair representation of all the political tendencies in Korea, except the pro-Japanese. We took the name 'Korean People's Republic' and set up a 'People's Committee' of seventy- five members to hold provisional power and prepare for general elections. We even chose the very reactionary Syngman Rhee as chairman, because we knew that he would be the American candidate and we wanted unity with all our allies. Rhee came to Korea then in an American plane, waited around to see what the Americans wanted and then decided to repudiate our 'People's Committee' and rule as dictator with American aid. Since then, of course, we have no use for him. "The American armed forces landed two days after we had declared our 'Korean People's Republic.' We sent delegations to greet them. They refused to deal with us, choosing rather to recognize the Japanese rule. The Americans disregarded and finally suppressed our People's Committees all over their zone. 12 The Russians recognized these committees as our local provisional governments. Thus began the great split between north and south. "The split was not immediate. Not only the first provisional government but the first political parties and civic organizations - trade unions, the Farmer's Union, the Union of Youth, the Women's Union - formed first on a nationwide base. These organizations became in the north the centers of political life and the base of government; in the south they were attacked by right-wing terrorists, assisted by the Japanese-appointed (and now American-recognized) police. "Thus all of these organizations and political parties were finally forced to divide into northern and southern organizations," Lee concluded, "since they are suppressed in the south while in the north they flourish as centers of political life. "Today there are some 20,000 political prisoners in the American zone," Lee added, "twice as many as under Japan. I myself had to flee north to escape. It is well that I did, for our beloved leader Lyuh, head of the Farmers' Party, who remained in the south and cooperated with the American-installed government, was assassinated by right-wing terrorists a month ago" (in June, 1947). THE POLITICAL PARTIES There were no organized political parties of any kind when those first "People's Committees" were formed. There were men of many political views, but all political organization had been suppressed under the Japanese, so political parties had still to take organized legal form. These parties also began on a nationwide base. The "Democratic Party," small in number but containing many prominent intellectuals and businessmen, was quickly formed. It was followed at once by the Communists. For a time the largest party was the Farmers' Party (People's Party) but its organization was neither disciplined nor clearly defined. Finally in North Korea it merged with the Communists to form the North Korean Labor Party, which is by far the largest party now. The second largest party, the Chendoguo, is based on a religious sect peculiar to Korea. It is a humanist religion, that de- 13 veloped in Korea before its subjugation by Japan, and continued under Japanese persecution. It has a wide following among farmers. It proclaims that I am God and you are God, and we should behave as such. The Chendoguo is a democratic religion, since Koreans are as much God as Japanese are. It was the Chendoguo that led the famous and naive pacifist revolt in 1919 when hundreds of thousands of Koreans rushed through the streets in white robes, proclaiming Korean independence and telephoning to the Japanese police that Korea was independent now. They were shot down by guns. The Chendoguo has thus its heroic tradition of martyrs; most of the political prisoners under Japan were either Chendoguo or Communist. The Democratic Party of North Korea is small in size but influential, composed largely of business and professional men. The chief of the health department and the vice-president whom I interviewed were of this party. The first acting government in North Korea as a whole was known as the "Provisional People's Committee of North Korea." It was formed by delegates from the six northern provinces to handle their joint problems, on February 8, 1946, when it had become clear that a government for all Korea was impossible at the time. It was composed of leading citizens of many political views but was non-partisan in nature, since the political parties were not yet fully organized. This government faced many bitter problems. The problem of food! North Korea was a land of mines and heavy industry, that had not fed itself for decades. It was deprived of food by its separation from South Korea. The problem of industry! All Korean industry had been tied to the Japanese war industry, and had also been thoroughly wrecked by the Japanese before their surrender. The problem of education! There must be schools in the Korean language, which had been discouraged under the Japanese. Under the dynamic leadership of Kim Il Sung, who had fought the Japanese for fourteen years in the mountain north of Korea, the People's Committee accomplished a whirlwind program in a year. The land reform in March, 1946, transferred more than half of the lands of North Korea to new ownership 14 The big industries were received from the Russians and nationalized "for the Korean people." A modern labor law was adopted; women's equality was proclaimed and schools were promoted. A furiously active political life went on. THE FIRST GENERAL ELECTIONS In November, 1946, North Korea held its first general elections, to approve or disapprove of what the provisional government had done. By this time there were three political parties: the North Korean Labor Party, which was by far the largest; the Chendoguo and the Democrats. These parties formed a "democratic front" and put up a joint ticket, the "single-slate ticket" so criticized in the west. I argued with the Koreans about it but they seemed to like their system. Ninety-nine per cent of them came out to vote, and everyone with whom I talked declared that there was no compulsion but they came because they wanted to. I discussed the question with a woman miner. "Did you vote in the general elections?" I asked. "Of course," she said. "The candidate was from our mine and a very good worker. Our mine put him up as candidate." I explained the Western form of elections. What was the use of voting, I argued, if there was only one candidate. Her vote could change nothing. It would be a great shame for the candidate, she replied, if the people did not turn out in large numbers to vote for him. He would even fail of election unless at least half of the people turned out. "Of course I knew that our candidate would be elected without me," she added with a self-deprecating smile, "for he is very popular and has plenty of votes without mine. But I wanted him to have more votes and to know that everybody is for him, for he is a very good worker from our mine. Besides, it was our first election, and nobody would stay away! "We all knew the candidate. We all like him, we all discussed him," she concluded. "The political parties held meetings in our mines and factories and found the people's choices. Then they got together and combined on the best one, and the people went out and chose him. I don't see what's wrong with this or why the Americans don't like it." She paused and then added, 15 with a touch of defiance. "I don't see what the Americans have to say about it, anyway!" Voting technique was simple. There was a black box for "no" and a white box for "yes." The voter was given a card, stamped with the electoral district; he went behind a screen and threw it into whichever box he chose. The cards were alike; nobody knew how he voted. Were any candidates black-balled? I learned that there were thirteen cases in the township elections in which candidates were turned down by being thrown into the black box. This fact, which westerners may approve as showing "freedom of voting," was regarded with shame by the Koreans since it meant that "the local parties had poorly judged the people's choice." In one case a candidate was elected but received eight hundred adverse votes, organized by a political opponent. He at once offered to resign, as he had "failed to receive the full confidence of the voters"; the three political parties all jointly urged him to accept the post. The Koreans are familiar with the competitive form of voting also. This was used in village elections and in many of the township elections in March, 1947. These elections were largely non- partisan, nominations being made not by parties but in village meetings. Secret voting followed, choosing the village government from competing candidates. VOTING IN THE VILLAGE The black and white boxes were also used in the village competitive elections, in a highly interesting manner. In one village there were twelve candidates, of whom five were to be chosen for the Village Committee. Each voter was given twelve cards, bearing the names of the candidates. He then cast his chosen ones into the white box and the rejected ones into the black. "What prevents him from casting them all into the white box?" I asked. "Nothing at all, but in that case he is voting against himself, for his votes do not advance any candidate beyond the others. He can do exactly as he likes. He can put as many as he likes in the white box, as many as he rejects in the black box, and if he wants to, he can take some of the cards home with him, 16 without either voting for them or against. If he has a single very strong choice, he will vote for one and against eleven; this strengthens his single vote, by giving black to all the rest. He can vote for three or four or six or seven, instead of five. The laws of mathematics insure that he weakens the strength of each vote if he votes for more than five. When all the ballots are counted, and the white checked against the black, we get the exact preference of the villagers." Men who could not read and write also voted by this system. A man who could read would take all twelve cards at once. But if a voter felt that twelve cards would confuse him, he could take them once or more at a time, go to the boxes and cast them and come back for the rest. I was intrigued by these village elections, which seemed to me exact and subtle in expressing the voters' choice. The Koreans with whom I talked, however, considered them rather primitive. To them the single slate, put up by agreement between the parties, and then ratified or rejected by the people, was a "more developed form." They argued that it was more likely to secure the best representatives in government, since the candidates were firstly widely discussed in public meetings and then examined by the leaders of all the parties before being finally proposed. The election day became a tremendous festival. Priests held religious services and led congregations to vote. Farmers washed their hands ceremoniously and put on clean linen "to make government with clean hands." People who were sick in bed had the boxes taken to them, and their attendants were instructed to "turn their backs while the citizen voted." One case of a dying man was recorded who refused to die till he could get his vote cast! They brought him the boxes; he used his last energy to cast his ballot, then fell back and succumbed. PRESIDENT KIM IL SUNG The devotion and zeal shown by the North Koreans in their first election went far beyond that known in older democratic lands. No North Korean with whom I talked doubted that he was living in a liberated country that was ruled by the "people's power." Kim Il Sung, president of North Korea, is thirty-six years old, 17 less than half the age of Syngman Rhee, who holds power in the south. He is likely to outlast all the southern contenders for power, being not only much younger but much more of a fighter than they. Kim spent all his adult years from the age of nineteen fighting the Japanese. He built a guerrilla army of 10,000 men, which defended a hill government of more than 300,000 Koreans, holding the Japanese at bay for years. I talked to President Kim in his bright spacious office in Pyongyang. He has a quick flashing smile under a mop of bushy, black hair. He wore the thin white coat that is the usual Korean summer garment. For more than an hour he told the story of his life. President Kim came from a patriotic revolutionary family. His father was jailed in the uprising of 1919, when young Kim was seven years old. After the father's release the family moved to Manchuria, as many Korean patriots did, to escape Japan's control. Young Kim went to school in Manchuria, and got into trouble for organizing Korean students against the increasing power of Japan. When Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931, Kim's father was dead and the lad was nineteen years old. His mother buckled on him the two pistols of his father, and young Kim went to the hills to organize a "Korean Patriots' Band." He began with eighty men, but he captured Japanese arms and increased hsi followers until he had ten thousand. He made contact with the Chinese "Manchurian Volunteers" in their war against Japan, and he organized an "autonomous Korean government" of five counties in the Manchurian hills on the Korean border. He raided across the border into Korea, destroying Japanese garrisons. Then he sent agitators into Korean cities and organized the "Union for Liberation of the Motherland." They had a ten- point program, including national independence, political democracy, land reform and the eight-hour day. At the age of twenty-three, young Kim was president of this "Union" and commander of its armed forces, based on the northern hills. All of this was ten to fifteen years ago, when America and Chiang Kai-shek still recognized Japan as the lawful overlord in Manchukuo. The Japanese wrote in their press of "that anti-emperor bandit 18 Kim Il Sung." They spread legends about him: that he could fly, that he could contract the earth and step from one place to a distant one. They put a price of 200,000 Yen on his head; it was $100,000 in those days. An assassin killed a Korean and turned in a head, claiming that it was the head of Kim Il Sung. The Japanese press announced him dead. A year later they admitted that he was still very much alive. Kim did not appear publicly in Korea in the first weeks after Japan's surrender. Many of his band returned, and the people were asking: "Where is he?" It was then discovered that Kim had been travelling about under an assumed name, taking part in the organization of local governments, in order to get acquainted with his native land, from which he had been an enforced exile so many years. A tremendous ovation greeted his first public appearance in Pyongyang and he was unanimously chosen first provisional president at the first assembly of delegates from the northern provinces. He was a member of the Communist Party and is now a member of its successor, the North Korean Labor Party, which is the largest party in North Korea. "The government of North Korea is ready to take part in setting up a joint democratic government for a united Korea," Kim Il Sung told me. "The people of South Korea also desire this, but a wave of terrorism, arrests and murders in the south prevents the expression of the people's will." He cited the assassination of the aged leader of the Farmers' Party, Lyuh Woon Heung, who had been one of the creators of that early short-lived "Korean People's Republic," whom the Americans had then installed as a left-wing balance in their right- wing government, and who had been killed by terrorists just two months earlier than this interview. Kim claimed that, in July, 1947, six weeks before our talk, when the Joint Commission of Americans and Russians was met in Seoul by a great popular demonstration, the police dispersed the crowd and made arrests in the meeting. Later, in August, reporters of left-wing papers were arrested as they left a press conference with the Soviet delegate to the Joint Conference in Seoul. "Despite these difficulties created by the reactionary and pro- Japanese terrorists," said President Kim, "the Korean people 19 will eventually attain a united, democratic government. For this is the Korean people's will." CHURCHMEN LEADING FIGURES It will startle my readers to know that the next two highest figures in the North Korean government - after the Communist Kim Il Sung - are two Protestant preachers, both the product of American missionary schools! Vice-president Heong Ki Doo is a Methodist minister, while the Secretary of the Committee, Kang Lang Ook, is a Presbyterian minister. Both of them still preach on Sundays to large congregations, and attend to their government business during the week. Secretary Kang remembers a little English from the days when he studied it twenty-three years ago under an American missionary named Moffett. It was hard at first to learn what denomination he belonged to, for he did not know the word "Presbyterian" in English, while the Korean name is not the same. Finally he said: "Calvin, Calvin," and the picture was clear. Kang taught for many years in a mission school and then completed the theological course, becoming a fully ordained pastor in 1940. He then experienced first hand the Japanese suppression of American missions, which grew as the war developed. Today Pastor Kang preaches to a large Pyongyang church. He belongs to the Democratic Party. He is better known, however, as one of the creators of the "Union of Protestant Faith," organized to take part in "progressive politics." He believes that churches should take part in promoting democracy and progressive laws. He wanted to know whether "preachers do this in America," and was much pleased when I replied: "Some of them do." "Under the Japanese," said Kang, "religion and politics had to be very separate. Some people think they should be separate still. But I think that all citizens and organizations in a democratic state should take part in promoting good laws." Kang's "Union of Protestant Faith" had enrolled about one- third of all Protestants in North Korea at the time of my visit. It included a large proportion of the pastors. "Many of them take a leading role in local governments, being elected to the People's Committees," he said. Kang regretted, however, that 20 the Protestants on the whole are "more reactionary than the average run of the population." This, he thought, was because they are more wealthy than the average Korean. There were many Protestant landlords, Kang told me. He was indignant at the way they "ran away to the south and told lies about religious persecution in the Soviet zone." "It wasn't religion but land that worried them," he said. "Actually, religion is now free for the first time in forty years. The Japanese took our churches for offices and warehouses, but the Red Army gave them back in August, 1945. Now the churches belong to the believers whose number is growing." If any dispute arose over church property, Kang told me, the Red Army helped the believers. During the elections, for instance, when enthusiastic citizens were posting pictures of candidates, some people in Kandon County wanted to put these on a church, which was the best placed building there. The believers objected to this, and the non-believers called them "undemocratic," unwilling to take part in the elections of their country. Both sides at last sought the advice of the local Red Army commandant. The latter supported the church members, stating that they alone could decide whether the placing of election banners "insulted their religion," and that if it did, no outsiders had the right to put anything on their church. Kang smiled when I asked what position the Protestant clergy had taken towards the land reform. "Some of them spoke privately against it, because they had landlords in their congregation, but none of them dared oppose it very openly." "Were they afraid of the government?" I asked. Kang was shocked. "Oh, no, they were afraid of what the farmers in their congregations would say. The farmers would say that they went against religion. Does not the Bible tell us: 'Give to the poor' and 'He who does not work, shall not eat'? How then could a pastor openly oppose the land reform? He would be going against the Bible!" Kang had suffered martyrdom for his convictions. A year ago a terrorist gang from South Korea threw a bomb into his home, killing his son and daughter and wounding both Kang and his wife. His face grew grim as he told me about this. He has kept right on fighting for "religion and progressive politics." 21 Land for the farmers North Korea is mountainous country where the Japanese developed mines, water-power and war industries, feeding them from the farm areas of South Korea and Manchuria. But Manchuria is today cut off by the Chinese civil war - while the Americans refuse rice from South Korea. So North Korea has to feed itself. And does! It was not easy the first year. The harvest of 1946 was a poor one, so North Korea tried to get food from South Korea in payment for half a billion kilowatt hours of electric power they had supplied by that time from their great power plant on the Yalu River. (It has grown to more than a billion kilowatt hours now in 1948.) They also tried to get rice in payment for irrigation water which the north sent into the south to water some 60,000 acres. In both of these efforts they failed. So the North Koreans ate scantily on about one pound of grain per person per day, and many people - chiefly city folk without land who couldn't get on the ration list - went south in search of cheaper food. By summer of 1947, the time of my visit, the land reform was well established, the cultivated had been increased some 17.5 per cent over that of 1945 and the fields were better fertilized and better worked. So the big news in autumn of 1947 was that North Korea could feed itself properly on a harvest of two million metric tons, which was about a pound and a quarter of grain per person per day. The farmers incidentally had profited handsomely from the land reform and the high food prices. And hundreds of thousands of people were moving from South Korea into the north. It began with the land reform. This threw the landlords out in twenty-three days and relieved three-fourths of the North 22 Korean farmers from a crushing burden of rent. This was followed by the "production drive," with a Farmers' Bank making cheap loans for seed and fertilizer. These two factors, together with the incentive of a pretty good price for food in the open market, stimulated the expansion of the farms. The cultivated area in the three northernmost provinces (whose boundaries have not changed and whose figures are therefore comparable with those of Japanese days) show an increase in the cultivated area from 3,015,500 acres in 1945 to 3,549,250 acres in 1947, a growth of 17.5 per cent in two years, which would be remarkable in any land. Even more striking was the increase in the farmers' standard of living, now that they no longer pay rent. In the days of Japan's rule, by official figures of 1943, there were some three and a half million farming families in all Korea, owning some 8,750,000 acres of cultivated land. That's less than three acres per family. But they didn't have it equally. Some 62 per cent of the land was in the hands of landlords. Most of the soil tillers were share-croppers, and their rent was from 50 to 80 per cent of their crop. To be precise, of all those three and a half million farming families, some 17.3 per cent owned all the land that they tilled. Some 52 per cent were fully sharecroppers, 21 per cent owned small bits of land but share-cropped additional land to keep going, while 4 per cent were farmhands. Landlordism grew worse in the decades of Japanese rule. The Japanese took for themselves the land of Korean feudal lords; they put in irrigation systems and charged the farmers more than they could pay; then the Japanese-owned banks took over the lands on mortgages. Japan used Korea as her granary. Of a total rice harvest of 18 million "koku" in 1938, 11 million, or 60 per cent, went to Japan. The Japanese ate seven times as much rice per capita as the Koreans, condemning the latter to eat rice huskings and cheaper grains such as kaoliang. Under the Japanese rule there were many farmers' uprisings. According to Japanese sources, 15,000 insurgents were killed and 10,000 jailed in uprisings between 1905 and 1907. Several hundred thousand Koreans took part in the Great Uprising on March 1, 1919, led by the religious pacifist sect, the Chendoguo. Of these 300,000 were arrested, beaten up or killed by the Japa- 23 nese police. Yet farmers' uprisings again took place in 1930 and 1933, and were again suppressed. The Japanese overlords knew that they were sitting on a volcano in the Korean rural areas. So they quickly and ruthlessly jailed anyone who spoke a word of discontent or freedom. Almost everyone of influence in North Korea today has thus a prison past. Lee Shun Kin, present minister of agriculture, came from a prosperous farming family which was able to give him an education in Tokyo University. Nevertheless he landed in jail twice, a total of seven years. His record is just an average one among Korean patriots. PRESIDENT OF THE FARMERS' UNION The real jail-bird hero of Korea's farmers is Kang Chin-kuan. He is president today of the Farmers' Union of North Korea, elected in tribune to his heroic past. From Kang's story one gains a picture of the Korean farmers' struggle through the years. Kang and Minister Lee came to see me, to tell me the tale of Korea's farmers. The two men were an interesting contrast. Minister Lee had the quick brain of the educated man, the graduate in political economy, the statistician. Sixty-two year old Kang said little; he listened, considered and nodded. He has had little chance for education. But he knows and voices the needs and hopes of the farmers. His dark oval face expressed not only his own unusual endurance, but the suffering tenacity of generations of Korean share-croppers. Old Kang was born in 1885 in a share-cropper family. He was a share-cropper all his life. He never went to school. At the age of fifteen he married. "My grandfather wanted to see my bride before he died, so they got me a wife," he said. "There was no ceremony. They just got her for nothing from a family that couldn't feed her." The short and bitter bridal of the poor! Kang took part in the great 1919 uprising. When the uprising was crushed, he fled to Manchuria and continued to organize farmers. The soldiers of the warlord Chang Tso-lin caught him and gave him to the Japanese in 1921. He was in jail till 1940. "In a tiny cell," he said, "with a high-up grated window." Sometimes they took him under a guard to work. 24 "Could you ever talk to anyone? "Of course not," Kang laughed. In 1940 they let him out as a man who was broken, no longer a danger to Japan. For Kang's limbs had grown atrophied in jail, and he could no longer walk nor even stand but only crawl. He was carried to his village home and dumped there. After a year he was walking a little. But even before he could walk he was doing illegal propaganda among the share-croppers again. THE LAND REFORM One of the first acts of the newly formed provisional government was the Land Reform Law. The rapid organization of "People's Committees," described in the previous section, went hand in hand with the organization of Farmers' Unions. Farmers formed some 60 per cent of the citizenry in North Korea, and they were also 60 per cent of the membership of the governing "People's Committees." The Provisional People's Committee for North Korea, under Kim Il Sung as president, took power on February 8, 1946, stating that its chief task was "to fulfill the farmers' demands." At once the Farmers' Union of North Korea, which had grown by that time to 1,500,000 members, held a congress at Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, and demanded land reform on the basis of "land to the tiller." Two days later, on March 5, in the midst of a storm of letters and resolutions from farmers, the provisional government passed the Land Reform Law. It was announced on March 7 over the radio. Some 197,000 organizers were sent at once to the rural districts, where some 11,500 local committees were elected by landless farmers to apportion the newly acquired lands. The distribution was completed in twenty- three days, by April 1, 1946. The farmers, who demanded land in the first week in March, began their spring plowing in April on their newly acquired lands. Probably no land reform in all history has been accomplished so swiftly and with so little turmoil. The Land Reform Law was sweeping. It confiscated all Japanese lands, whether public or private, all landlords' lands, if the landlord owned more than twelve acres, or if, owning less, he systematically rented the land and did not work it himself, 25 all lands of churches and monasteries that exceeded twelve acres. The lands were given to village committees to distribute on the basis of the number of people in each farm family, and also with reference to the number of adult workers. Landlords also might get land to till but not more than twelve acres, and this must be in another county where they would have no traditional influence. Of the 70,000 landlords in North Korea, 3,500 took advantage of this permission. Some 724,522 farming families got land, 72 per cent of all the farmers of North Korea. Of these 442,975, or more than half, had been landless share-croppers or farmhands, while the rest had possessed small bits of land supplemented by share-cropping. Of the 4,950,000 arable acres in North Korea, some 2,625,000- more than half-was thus distributed. Before the land reform the average holding of poor farmers was half an acre; after the reform it was five acres. Before the land reform over half a million farming families could not feed themselves till the next harvest, but were forced to borrow food at usurious rates. After the reform, every farming family could feed itself. Even though 1946 was a bad crop year because of excessive rains, the farmers had much more food than formerly. They now gave 25 per cent of their crop to the government in tax, instead of the former 50 to 80 per cent to the landlords in rent. UNREST IN THE SOUTH Nothing could keep the news of this land reform from seeping into the rural areas of South Korea, where, under the American occupation, the landlords still held the lands. This was why the general strike in South Korea in autumn of 1946, which began with the city workers, spread swiftly into the rural areas, until there were farmers and workers demonstrations and uprisings in eighty centers, put down bloodily by the South Korean police, with the help of the American military. An air of success spread over North Korea in autumn of 1947. It was especially noticeable on the farms. Almost every village had extended its sown area and had worked its fields better--with the government loans for seed and fertilizer. The weather had been favorable and there was a good crop. 26 My trip from coast to coast across the peninsula showed every inch of arable land well sown. Fields came so close to the railroad that a casual glance through the window gave the illusion that we were riding over the crops. Rice fields were thick with sharp blades of that dark blue-green color that shows well-fertilized soil. One heard that the fields in South Korea had gone yellow for want of the fertilizer, which comes from a chemical works in North Korea. This fertilizer plant once supplied South Korea and sent fertilizer to Manchuria and Japan as well. At any time in the past two years North Korea would gladly have exchanged fertilizer with the South for food. Something always got in the way. Perhaps the Americans needed the surplus South Korean rice for Japan, or perhaps there wasn't any surplus. North Koreans wouldn't know. Anyway, unable to trade it to the South, they put all the fertilizer on their own fields, with good result. A VILLAGE IN THE EAST Let us take two sample villages that I visited, one near the east coast and one near the west coast, not far from Pyongyang. Driving out from Wonsen on the east coast, with a Korean farm inspector, I came to the village Shinchunghi, a cluster of thatched-room clay houses buried under green vegetation. We took off our shoes to enter the village committee-room, for the floor was of soft mats. We talked here with Pak I Ho, village chairman, a man in his early thirties who was "head of a family of twelve." These were not all his own children, but included his parents, brothers and brother's wives, as Oriental families do. This village, said Pak, had 150 households, with 278 acres of "wet field" suitable for rice and 310 acres of "dry field" suitable for wheat. It thus averaged about four acres per family. Before the land reform, only twelve families could live from their own land. Fifteen were part-tenants, owning in all fifty acres, but renting more. Thirteen were landless laborers. One hundred and ten families were share-croppers. All of the landlords lived outside the village, some in the county town, some in the provincial capital. "There had been many small revolts by tenants against landlords," said Pak. "Usually these took the form of a demand by the 27 tenants of a given landlord for easier terms of rent. No real improvement occurred until after the liberation. Then the real 'Farmers' Unions' began. "We saw what was happening in the county so we organized here too. Nobody really opposed the organization, but the young folks were more energetic in it than the old. We sent letters to Kim Il Sung and asked for the land. There was no resistance of landlords here. Some of them were small landlords who said: 'I am ready to give up my land, if only Korea can thus be strong, independent and free.' Such landlords still live in the next townshop where they have orchards and grow fruit. Big landlords ran away to the south but our village had none of these. "When the government gave the law, we called a Farmers' Meeting and had the law explained. Then we elected a Committee of Seven from experienced farmers and from all political parties, to divide the lands. The Farmers' Meeting itself fixed the method of division. We had a system of points: one point for every able-bodied worker in the family and fractions of a point for younger or older members of the family who could not do so much work. The land went according to the number of points in the family. "Some farmers have less land to work than formerly. There was no quarrel about this, for they formerly had to pay high rent for this land but now all the land that they work is theirs. Some farmers living in other villages had land in this village and we traded with them, so that each man may work nearer home. By all of these means our farm-work became better, and we have been able to add fifty acres of cultivated land that were formerly unworked, while we have changed twenty acres of 'dry field' to irrigated 'wet field' so that we get more rice." Eight of the thirteen former farmhands had been able to marry, since they now have land of their own. Fifteen new houses had been built, while eight other families had bought material for houses, and would build them as soon as the harvest work was done. "There is also electricity in all houses now," said Chairman Pak, "while formerly it was only in the homes of the rich." 28 A VILLAGE IN THE WEST An even more striking success story was told me in Kwangyi village, on the west coast near Pyongyang. Kwangyi village is a cluster of ninety-seven families buried in green gardens, crops and trees. They possess in all some 343 acres - not quite four per family - of which most is sown in millet, corn and kaoliang, with twenty-one irrigated acres in rice. The village chairman, a lean, sinewy man in his forties, squatted on a mat in the high summer pavilion he had built above the roof-tops, and told his tale. Only five of the ninety-seven families, he told me, had owned any land before the land reform. These five had owned fifty acres, an average of ten acres per family, and this land was still theirs. All the rest of the villagers had formerly rented the land that they tilled. Five landlords had lived in the village and one of them had been the "gugen" or village chief, appointed from above. Part of the land had been own in small pieces by people who lived in the town. "Before freedom came there was hate against the landlords," said the chairman, "but nobody dared speak out, not even when they took 70 and 80 per cent of the crop. After the freeing of our country, we began to demand the land. The government listened to us and the government gave us the land. That was the biggest happiness I ever knew. They just went away and we don't want to remember them any more." Prosperity had come to Kwangyi village with its new land ownership and with the high prices the farmers got for their crops. Ten families had built new houses in the past two years, six had replaced straw roofs with slate, six more had built those pleasant summer pavilions, high platforms with a roof but open on all sides, raised above the foliage to catch the breeze on summer nights and give the luxury of good sleep. There were twenty new radios and forty sewing-machines in the village. Electricity, paid for by the villagers, was now in every home. Many, many new things had come since the liberation, the chairman assured me, while a group of villagers, gathering 29 around, nodded as he mentioned each of the new things in turn. There was the land reform, and the teaching of children and illiterates - "Formerly only the rich studied but now we have forty children and sixty grown-ups going to school." There was the electricity and the radios. And taxes were of many kinds formerly but now are only three: for the government, for the province and for the school. Then there are the secret elections and the right of everyone to be elected. "We have a People's Committee of five elected by the villagers, instead of the former 'gugen' appointed from the country. Then there is the Women's Union that is getting equality." "Of all these new things which is the most important?" I asked, while a dozen villagers clustered close to hear. The chairman considered for a moment and then answered with decision: "The land reform - and the free speech." Such are the changes in land ownership and in daily living that have made the farmers of North Korea a solid bulwark of the new regime. With the factory workers Steel works manager and shop committee chairman All the industrial workers I met in North Korea like to brag that they were the first workers in the Far East to enjoy a "fully modern labor law, with the eight-hour day, collective bargaining and social insurance." Their claim is not strictly correct for the Liberated Areas of China and Manchuria just over their border have an equally good labor code. Nonetheless the North 30 Koreans have the right to feel proud of their achievements. In one respect they can claim to surpass their Chinese brothers - their well-equipped social insurance. The Japanese had more health resorts and summer villas in Korea than in China and the present Department of Labor has taken them over. The North Koreans have also a larger amount of publicly owned industry than the nearby Chinese, for Korea was highly industrialized by the Japanese. Minister of Labor Oh Ki-sup, with whom I went on a four-day trip to health resorts, is one of those typical patriots who spent the greater part of his adult life in Japanese jails. At the age of sixteen he joined the underground movement for Korean independence. He has spent thirteen years and eight months in jail. In telling about his imprisonment he mentioned casually what seemed to me its most amazing feature. He had organized four revolutionary study circles inside four different jails and one outside at a time when he was in "solitary" confinement! Minister Oh's account of how he did it throws sharp light on the inner weakness of imperialism. The facade of Japanese control seemed imposing and strong, but there were weak places in it ready to crack. The night watchmen and night warders in the jails were Koreans, because the Japanese conquerors disdained these least desirable jobs. Prisoner Oh played upon the patriotism and also upon the cupidity of these jailers. He would find some watchman who would take messages to his friends outside, either through anti-Japanese patriotism or for the money the outside friends would give. On this slender basis Oh built his study groups, one in each of the jails to which he was transferred. In all of this time Prisoner Oh was never permitted legally to have a pencil or a scrap of paper. He saved bits of toilet paper - of which he was allowed to pieces a day - and he had a tiny sliver of hidden lead that served as a pencil. Through such difficulties the revolutionary movement of the Korean patriots grew. Prisoner Oh managed to organize illegally right up to the day of national liberation. As soon as the Red Army arrived and liberated Oh and the other political prisoners, the liberated men hastened to the factories and workshops where they were known - others of course were hurrying to the farms - and called workers' meetings. These 31 workers' meetings at once took part in setting up city and provincial government; they also organized trade unions, first by factories, then by cities, counties and provinces. There was a fury of organization throughout Korea in those first months of Japan's defeat. By November, 1945, the All- Korean Federation of Trade Unions was organized, covering both north and south. Four months later the Korean trade unions reluctantly divided themselves into a North Korean Labor Federation and a South Korean Labor Federation. "It was the American policy in South Korea that compelled this division," said Minister Oh. "In the first months after Japan's defeat all Korea felt united," he continued. "The 38th parallel did not seem to be a barrier to the Koreans but only a temporary convenience of the occupying powers, until they should impose their peace terms on Japan. We Koreans organized our trade unions, farmers' unions, local governments on an all-Korean basis. The first headquarters of the All-Korean Federation of Trade Unions was at Seoul, in South Korean, while North Korea had only a branch office. Then the American Army began to suppress trade unions in the south. The chairman of the All-Korean Federation was imprisoned in Seoul. Meanwhile in the north the trade unions grew rapidly, operated openly, had collective agreements with all factories, took part in the production plans for industry and put up labor candidates for government. In the south they had to work on a semi- legal or a completely underground basis. These different conditions forced a separation of the trade unions into northern and southern federations." There were some 430,000 workers in North Korea, of whom 380,000 were members of trade unions, according to Minister Oh. This number does not include seasonal workers such as fishermen, lumbermen and building workers who farm in summer and take odd jobs in winter. Nor does it include farm laborers, because the land reform turned these into farmers owning their own land. The largest trade union is that of miners with 52,000 members, then transport workers and chemical workers with some 45,000 each. About one hundred thousand belong to unions of white collars including office workers, teachers, sanitary workers and so on. "What do you do about unemployment?" I asked the minister. "There isn't any," he replied. "There is, on the contrary, a great shortage of workers because we have so much reconstruction to do and we are expanding our industry. We need thirteen million more work-days than we can count on for just the reconstruction of roads and bridges. This means that in this reconstruction alone we could absorb 45,000 more workers." Many workers, said Minister Oh, were migrating from the American zone of South Korea into North Korea because of the unemployment in the South and the better chance of jobs in the North. NATIONALIZATION OF INDUSTRY The labor conditions of North Korea are built on publicly owned industries. The nationalization of industry was a relatively simple problem for 90 per cent of all big industry belonged to Japanese concerns. The Japanese made of Korea a military base against China and the USSR. They constructed strategic railways and highways, a powerful war industry and big power plants that supplied not only Korea but part of Manchuria with electric power. All of this Japanese-owned industry was seized by the Russian victors and then turned over to the Koreans. By a decree passed August 10, 1946, by the North Korean provisional government, all industry "belonging to Japanese and traitors" was nationalized. There was nobody to oppose this decree for the Japanese and their supporters had either gone back to Japan or fled south to the American zone. The Korean people of the north thus came into possession of the banks, railways, communications and 90 per cent of all big industry more simply and with much less turmoil than usually attends such nationalization. Two serious problems at once confronted the industries. First, all industry had been hitched to Japan. All Korean plants produced parts and semi-finished products that were sent to Japan for completion. There was not a single finished product in all Korean industry. Now that Korea had become independent, her industry must be remodelled and reconverted from a war industry serving Japan to a peace-time industry serving the needs of the Koreans. 33 The second problem was posed by the fact that the Japanese destroyed everything they could before they surrendered. The Korean workers' underground does not seem to have been strong enough to prevent this. The Japanese wrecked 80 per cent of all locomotives on the railways, and damaged the rolling stock, repair shops and even the right of way. Some 64 mines were flooded and 178 were otherwise made unusable. All blast furnaces and coke batteries and most of the open-hearth furnaces in the country's iron and steel works were destroyed by the simple process of letting them cook with the charge inside. I visited, for instance, the largest iron and steel works in the country, the Kensiko Steel Works, located a short distance north of Pyongyang. Under the Japanese it had three big blast furnaces, three open-hearth furnaces and employed seven or eight thousand workers making pig iron, steel, sheet steel, rolled steel and coke for the Mitsubishi concern of Japan. At the time of my visit there were some 6,800 workers but most of these were still engaged in rebuilding the works. All the three blast furnaces and the three open-hearth furnaces, they told me, had been spoiled by allowing the molten metal in them to cool and harden. When I asked why the Korean workers had not prevented this, they replied that the Koreans had held unskilled jobs and had not been in charge of the technical processes. HUGE CHEMICAL PLANT SAVED The big chemical works in Jeungnam was, by contrast, saved by its workers. This plant was the largest industrial enterprise in Korea, employing 20,000 workers. Among other things, they made one of the constituent elements of the atom-bomb on which the Japanese were experimenting. When the Japanese surrendered, they planned to blow this factory up with its own explosives. There was, however, an alert underground Korean trade union in the chemical works. The workers discovered the plot, and expelled the Japanese from the works in an armed struggle lasting four hours. They then located the explosives, which had been set with time fuses, and threw them into the sea. "If those had gone off, they would have wiped out not only the entire works, but a city of 150,000 people," I was told by a group of those chemical workers whom I met in a seaside health resort. 34 They added that, as soon as the Japanese were expelled, the trade union came out into the open, set up guards over the factory and took an active part in electing the local government. The new labor code was passed June 24, 1946, some six weeks before the industries were nationalized. It provided the eight- hour-day - seven in hazardous work - and two weeks vacation with pay for ordinary workers, but one month vacation for youths and those in hazardous trades. (Under the Japanese the work day sometimes ran to fifteen or sixteen hours and there were no paid vacations.) The new law forbade child labor, gave women equal pay for equal work and introduced a safety code. One of the most appreciated innovations was the Social Insurance. It began to function in January of 1947. Nearly 200,000 workers were given free medical treatment in the first six months of the year. Many houses and summer villas formerly owned by the Japanese were turned over to the Ministry of Labor and made available to the Korean workers through the Social Insurance. By summer of 1947, the time of my visit, the Social Insurance possessed 85 summer villas with 1,400 beds, and expected to give free vacations to 25,000 workers during the season. Many workers' families also received new houses through the trade unions, for the homes of the former Japanese owners, managers, and technical staff were turned over to the workers and distributed through the unions to those who made special records or had special needs. AT A HEALTH RESORT I spent four days in a health resort of the Social Insurance. I went swimming three times in one day on one of the finest beaches in the world. It was on the east coast and the water was warm with gently sloping sands and the charm of a tropical beach without the dangerous sea animals and plants of the tropics. Two years earlier this beach with its villas belonged to the ruling Japanese; Koreans were not permitted to use it. Today the villas belong to the Ministry of Labor and are used through the Social Insurance for the vacations of industrial workers. Five shy but self-possessed women came to my room when I asked for an interview with some women workers. There were 35 two weavers from the Hamheung Textile Mills, a young spinner from the silk filature mill of Pyongyang, and a fifteen-year-old orphan - she looked barely twelve - who lived in a factory dormitory, worked six hours daily in the factory and went for two hours to the factory school. One woman of thirty-six sat demurely looking at the ocean in a figured white silk gown. I postponed interviewing her, for she looked such a typical housewife that I thought her the wife of some official or engineer. When I asked her what she did, I got a shock. "I am a gold miner," she said, "working three hundred feet underground. I am a skilled worker; I operate a drill." "Isn't that heavy work?" I asked. She smiled a bit apologetically and replied that it was. "But not as heavy as the work I used to do. Under the Japanese I loaded ore and pushed the cars, working thirteen hours or more a day. Now, as pneumatic drill operator, I work only seven hours and get very good pay." Lee Mai Hwa was her name. She had worked many years in the mines. But she had only been a driller for one year; under the Japanese rule women were not allowed to learn the higher skills. She was proud of her job. "How did you get this work?" I asked. "Did you replace a man?" "I got my job because we are expanding production and because I studied the work. Under the Japanese we had only 1,000 workers in our mine, but now we have 2,500." Among the 2,500 workers, Lee said, there were 206 women but only two of these were drillers. Lee Mai Hwa was the first. Lee was proud of her wages. They are twice what her husband gets. He works for the same mine but on the surface. He sharpens drills. He makes at most 2,000 yen a month. "But I made 4,000 last month," bragged Lee. "For women now get equal pay for equal work and my work is very skilled. . . I also set many records. Formerly a driller drilled one car of ore a day, but once, for a record, I drilled twenty cars in one day! It takes four and even six loaders to load all the ore I drill." "You must be the head of your family," I commented. "That's what my husband says," replied the complacent Lee. 36 "Is he jealous?" "No, he's proud," she assured me. I inquired into her standard of living. Just what can she buy with the 6,000 yen that she and her husband make? Under the Japanese, said Lee, the food was very bad. "Now I get rationed food, 750 grams of rice a day for my ration and the same amount for my husband. We are both first category workers." This rationed rice costs only five yen a kilo. So the basic rice food costs only 230 yen a month from the family wage of 6,000 yen. "We have a good house now," Lee added. "It formerly belonged to a Japanese official. It has a warmed floor." (This is the Korean way of heating good houses.) "We have two big rooms and four closet-rooms and a little hall." "Did you ever have a nice silk dress like that under the Japanese?" I asked. "Oh, never," smiled Lee with a touch of amusement, stroking her white, silk gown. Lee also told me that the general elections held in her town where the candidate was "a worker from our mine." But this I have given in the chapter on government and elections. LABOR HEROES The modern labor law and the nationalization of industry aroused loyalty and energetic devotion among North Korea's workers. When they understood that the industries were now the property of the Korean people, they began to work like mad to repair them. At the Seisein Spinning Mills the workers contributed nearly 9,000 hours of voluntary labor to repair the mill. The Tonchen wharves were rebuilt nearly 200 days before the date called for in the plan. At the Kensiko Steel Works they introduced to me proudly two "labor heroes," Chi Sam Zon and Lee Sam Zon, who had remained in the shop for thirteen days so that the rolling mill would not stop. "We Koreans have very few technicians or skilled workers," they explained, "so we had to stay on the job until we could train in substitutes." 37 "What is the biggest change in your lives made by the liberation?" I asked a group of workers in the Kensiko Works. They discussed it among themselves and combined on these three answers. "First: Formerly we worked thirteen hours a day and had not time to think; now we work eight hours and we know all kinds of things about the world. "Second: Formerly we ate no rice but only husks of soya beans; now we have a good rice ration of a pound and a half daily and we live in better houses too. "Third: Formerly we had no voice in anything; now we have a voice in management through our trade union and a voice in government through our votes." These are the changes that have made the industrial workers of North Korea a solid bulwark of the new regime. And now? In the years after my return to America I saw from afar how the Parallel hardened as Koreans, all wishing unity, were split by the American-Russian cold war. The power plant was a typical case. Korea made headlines in May 1948 because the North shut off the electric power from the South. General Hodge, commander of the American armed forces in Korea, demanded that "Moscow" turn it on. But the Russians had given the power-plant "to the Korean people" two years earlier and the North had been supplying the South for two years and asking for pay. There were two reasons why they didn't get paid: a technical one and a top-flight political one. The technical one was that the North demanded pay in electrical equipment to expand the plant and not in nylon stockings and Hollywood movies; but America was not selling equipment to Soviet zones. The top- flight political reason was that General Hodge insisted on 38 dealing with the Russians and not with the North Koreans, who owned the plant. So when the Pyongyang radio finally announced repeatedly: "Send someone to negotiate payment or we'll shut the power off," General Hodge told correspondents: "It's an unrecognized radio; we cannot pay attention." Thus the power was shut. The same thing happened to some irrigation water, which the North wanted paid for in rice. It was finally turned off too. A major split came with the 1948 elections. When, under American pressure, the U. N. formed the "Little Assembly" and ordered a supervised election in Korea, the North replied with an "All-Korean election" of its own. It was held in the North as a great festival; thousands of people waited in line from midnight till dawn "to be first to vote in Korea's new day." In the South it was held by illegal house to house canvass; the North claims that under such conditions they signed up 77.5 percent of the Southern vote! This seems fantastic - an illegal election polling a three- fourths majority - so I watched for a year for details. All I could find in the American press were small items about arrests in connection with "socalled elections." Then in 1949 I met Korean women in Budapest and got their story. Each voter, they said, recorded his name and thumb-print in token of his vote. The woman who gave most detail was a grandmotherly soul in a gorgeous gray satin national costume, the chairman of the Korean Women's Democratic Federation - called Communist, of course, by Rhee. She trilled a few words of English learned in some American mission school. "Please" and "Thank you very much," she said, smiling. She told an amazing tale. "I was an election worker. I went from house to house disguised as a peddler of cloth. I went at dusk or at dawn, to find people at home and to avoid the police. When I was inside the house I asked: "Are you for our candidate who goes to Pyengyang to make a united government?" If they 39 were afraid or said "No," I did not list them, but if they said 'Yes,' I said: 'Then give your name and thumb-print.' I collected names and thumb-prints on long papers, and smuggled them over the Parallel at night, disguised as a peasant woman." She looked complacent and grandmotherly but I pried: "Weren't people afraid to vote?" "Not very. The police could not jail so many millions. They arrested or shot election workers and candidates; some were killed trying to cross the Parallel to the Assembly sessions." By methods like this, the North claims to have collected the votes of 77.5 per cent of the South. They claim to have the names and thumbprints in their archives on file for Korean history. I cannot check this claim but one would think the United Nations might have done so. It is know at least that the government whose armies marched South on June 25, 1950, was composed of 572 deputies, of whom 360 came from the South and claim election by Southern constituencies. * * * * TRAVELLING HEALTH TEAM INNOCULATES VILLAGERS 40 At 3 o'clock Sunday morning, June 25, 1950, the U. N. Secretary Trygvie Lie, resting from his world pilgrimage but hoping that his peace mission had succeeded, was awakened by phone call from Ernest Gross, U. S. delegate to the United Nations. Gross said fighting had started in Korea and the United States considered North Korea the agressor and called for immediate session of the Security Council. With a speed never shown over threats to peace in Israel, Pakistan or Indonesia, the U. N. called for a "Cease Fire," ordering the Northerners to go back where they came from. By Monday American bombers roared over Korea dropping the death that finds civilians and soldiers alike. By Tuesday this was authorized by the U. N. Security Council, in the absence of the only two nations - the USSR and the actual government of China - whose borders march with Korea and who have the most immediate interest in Korean peace. It was observed by all that the the South Koreans were at best "apathetic"; while in some cases they hung out banners to welcome the Northern troops. When the North got around to answering the charge that they were aggressors, they said: that Syngman Rhee's forces had invaded the North 432 times between January and September, 1949, raiding 71 times by air and bombarding 43 times from the sea; that Rhee's forces made 25 attacks over the Parallel between June 3--6, 1950; that Rhee arrested the official emissaries sent by the North to propose a united election for all Korea; that Rhee began the present conflict on June 23--24 by bombarding villages North of the Parallel, killing and wounding peasants and policemen and followed it up at dawn of the 25th with a full-scale offensive which took the town of Haeju, five miles north of the border; that the Northern radio warned they would launch a counter- offensive unless the Southern army withdraw; that the Northern "counter-attack" began at 3 P.M. that day. 41 These claims were unregarded, barely heard. For by this time American troops were fighting Koreans by land, by sea and especially by air. It became harder and harder to tell which Koreans they were fighting, for the Southerners seemed getting into the war, not as allies but as targets. Civilians were cleared from war-zones; any peasant who sneaked back to get in crops might be shot as guerrilla, and might actually be one. Bombing started on Seoul's predominantly Southern population half a dozen times a day. It seemed that, whatever motives took America into the fighting, the Russians had succeeded in staying out, and America might find herself fighting the entire Korean people, and possibly 450,000,000 Chinese as well. So it was lucky for everyone, for mankind's survival, and even for America, that leaders in some of the nations thought about peace. The most important proposal thus far was made by Nehru. He said the real government of China - the one in Peking - should be quickly brought into the Security Council, and the Council should then act on Korea. Stalin agreed at once, suggesting that the Council should then hear the Korean people. It would seem to have been about time. Washington 42 said "No" to Nehru and again to the Russian representative Malik when he repeated the proposal to bring the new China into the Security Council to take up the question of Korea. Washington said China and Korea are separate questions and mustn't be mixed. Are China and Korea separate questions? Nehru knows - if Truman doesn't - that the United Nations cannot speak with valid voice in East Asia if the voice of 450,000,000 Chinese is shut out. Korea belonged to China for centuries; she guards the sea approach to Peking and all North China. China has agreed to accept a friendly Korea as an equal, independent nation, but China could no more tolerate a hostile Korea than New York could a hostile Long Island. Either in peace or in war China will speak on the Korean question, and her voice will be the most important voice of any outside power. Nehru wants her to speak in peace through the Security Council lest she be forced to speak in war . . . Nehru's proposal is for the time rejected but similar proposals will be made again. Many nations are thinking of ways to clear a path to peace. Shall we Americans think only of better ways to make war? Love Humanity KOREA U.S.S.R. SEA OF JAPAN CHOSEN (KOREA) JAPAN LIBERATION DAY AT PYONGYANG Opera House built in two months for Libe- ration Anniversary Village celebration after tax delivery. "All debts paid, and everything else ours." Anna Louise Strong ARRIVES DIRECT FROM CHINA and will speak on "FORGING A UNITED CHINA" at the Senator Auditorium SEVENTH AND UNION Sunday February 27th At 3 P.M. BROADCAST OVER KEEN (1370 K.E.) Admission 35c Auspices China Aid Council THE SOVIETS in a WARRING WORLD Russia Fights for Peace World Shaking Events Whose Echo Reverberates In Every Country. Described by Amer- ica's Leading Authority On the Soviet Union — Anna Louise — STRONG JOHN D. BARRY, Chairman WED, MARCH 2 8:15 P.M. DREAMLAND Post at STEINER Presented by AMERICA RUSSIAN INSTITUTE Tickets at { American Russian Institute :: SUtter 4298 Sherman-Clay and Co. :: SUtter 1331 25c 40c BALCONY MAIN FLOOR SUNDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 22 "My Twelve Years in the Soviet Union" DR. ANNA LOUISE STRONG has become known to tens of thousands of her hearers as the "oldest (her own adjective) American resident" in the new Moscow of the Soviets. As author, correspondent and traveler, she has spent the past twelve years in that country which presents today the world's greatest question mark. She has traveled many tens of thousands of miles into all regions; the far north beyond the Arctic Circle, the hot wastes of Turkestan, the high "roof of the world" in the Pamir. One entire year was spent visiting collective farms in the first year of their introduction. Two additional trips made to China gave her insight into the problems of the Soviets in the Far East. It is now three years since Dr. Strong has been in America. During this time she has been busy organizing the American newspaper in Moscow, known as the "Moscow Daily News"; condition as one of the leading English-language dailies outside the English-speaking lands. FORD HALL FORUM Founded February 23, 1908 Incorporated October 1, 1928 GEORGE W. COLEMAN DAVID K. NILES Chairman Director RUSSELL COOK, Director of Music LOUIS P. SMITH, Director of Workers CLARA BELLE COOK, Accompanist EDNAH BLANCHARD, Sec'y, Ford Hall Folks SEASON 1933-1934 OPENING MEETING SUNDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 8 "Whither is the World Moving?" RT. HON. SIR HERBERT SAMUEL, P.C., G.C.B., G.B.E, P.M., is the Leader of the Liberal Par- Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.