How Anti-Communism Disrupted Decolonization: South Korea’s State-Building Under US Patronage

Abstract

Korea had been a Japanese colony from 1910 to 1945. Instead of becoming independent and unified, it was divided in the aftermath of World War II. The chapter describes how the American Cold War strategy of anti-communism penetrated the internal politics of South Korea, and distorted, or even prevented, like in other countries the process of decolonization, keeping the colonial apparatus in place. The historical task of reshaping the post-colonial order in East Asia was overshadowed for the US by requirements of its new hegemony and the need to rebuild the region’s capitalist economies. The systematic elimination of former independence activists, including right-wing nationalists in South Korea, by extreme anti-communists who had worked for the Japanese foretold the dominance of anti-communism in politics. The ideology of anti-communism brought South Koreans permanent surveillance, political terror, and mass killing like during colonial subjugation.

Cold War Undercurrents: The Extreme-Right Variants in East Asia

“…The onset of the Cold War deprived Asia of an opportunity for decolonialization and postcolonial justice and prolonged the political dominance of the conservative establishment. 107 As the United States' interests in the region were to build a strong ideological buffer and a capitalist showcase against the expansion of communism, it allowed the comeback of war criminals or colonial collaborators to political and economic power and emboldened their institutional longevity. The persistence of Far Right conservatives, anticommunism, and colonial racism, which are the central features of the Cold War political and ideological regime, has rarely been interrupted or corrected until recently.…”