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Security over Democracy 1 The South Korean state would never have come into existence in 1948 without American intervention. Nor would it have survived the hardships brought on by national division and the horrific war that followed without vast U.S. military and economic assistance. For the United States, building and stabilizing South Korea came at an enormous cost in terms of both material resources and human lives. But the state that Americans made such great sacrifices to support was a highly autocratic one that frustrated their ambitions to spread democracy. Washington was only willing to make massive investments to sustain a highly questionable regime because it believed that the security of the United States and of its Asian allies would be jeopardized if southern Korea did not become a bulwark against the expansion of Communism. For U.S. officials, the preservation of democracy at home often meant support for anti-Communist autocrats abroad even if the costs were exorbitant. State building in South Korea proved to be particularly expensive. The problems usually faced by new states, such as eliminating domestic rivals and establishing territorial integrity, were more difficult in the Republic of Korea (rok) because of how the country was created. The inability of the United States and the Soviet Union, which occupied the southern and northern halves of the Korean peninsula respectively, to agree on a framework for national elections led to the formation of mutually antagonistic nations. Efforts to destroy the rok from both within and without would soon follow. National division left the southern economy, which had been tightly integrated with that of the industrial North, in shambles. The dire economic situation that prevailed in South Korea remained a source of potential instability for a decade after the Korean War ended. Only U.S. assistance enabled the rok to weather the storms of social division, insurgency , military invasion, and economic turmoil. American largesse fostered a process of state building in South Korea that was very different from the one that had occurred in Europe. The chief beneficiary of U.S. assistance was the fiercely anti-Communist nationalist Syngman Rhee, who Washington reluctantly backed because it doubted that more moderate leaders would combat leftist influence with sufficient intensity. Unlike most European heads of state, who had to bargain and [14] Security over Democracy compromise with the citizenry to acquire the necessary resources for bureaucratic , disciplinary, and military institutions, Rhee wheedled funding for institution building from the United States. In Europe, according to sociologist Charles Tilly, bargaining between the government and the governed helped create and confirm individual rights vis-à-vis the state; when authorities ‘‘sought to draw resources and acquiescence’’ from different groups, these groups could demand new privileges or force the state to limit its own power.∞ With the United States covering the costs of war and economic reconstruction in South Korea, such negotiation was unnecessary. The Rhee regime could afford to ignore the will of the governed and to be indifferent to national development. While U.S. assistance enabled the rok to survive, before 1960 Syngman Rhee’s heavy-handed methods of state building ensured that it would not thrive. Creating a Government The most basic component of state building is establishing and consolidating governing institutions. When American forces occupied the southern half of the Korean peninsula in 1945, two distinct possibilities for creating such institutions existed. One possibility was aligning with the Korean left, which had formed a provisional government with strong popular support in the brief interim after Japan surrendered to the Allies at the end of World War II and relinquished its empire. The provisional government established local branches, or ‘‘People’s Committees,’’ that helped maintain order and assumed local administrative functions in provinces throughout Korea. Originally called the Committee for the Preparation of Korean Independence, the interim government’s leaders met in Seoul on 6 September 1945 and rechristened it the Korean People’s Republic (kpr). The kpr committed itself to destroying the vestiges of Japanese imperialism through land reforms and other social changes.≤ The second possibility was to reconstitute the vast centralized bureaucratic structure that the Japanese had used to govern Korea—one that had organized, mobilized, and exploited the Korean population to serve Japan’s interests.≥ The American military, which occupied the southern half of Korea on the basis of an agreement reached with the Soviet Union in August 1945, was in a position to determine which of these two political...

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