| After the collapse of their empire, the Japanese reluctantly departed from their former colony but left legacies that penetrated deeply into the lives of the people of Korea. By examining the activities of a few individual Japanese leaders who were in the Korean peninsula, especially the American zone, in the last months of 1945, this study takes a small step toward answering these intriguing questions: What did the Japanese in Korea do to influence the situation in their favor? Why did they succeed in their endeavors? How did their actions impact the post-war fate of Korea?; This work demonstrates the power of psychological manipulation, individual-level diplomacy, and perceptions rather than facts in retrospect. Japan's influence on post-war development in Korea would have been minimal if the Americans had not been conscious of the threat, perceived or real, of Soviet Communist expansionism. In order to bring a Japanese perspective to the study of this subject, I attempt to reconstruct the situation in Korea surrounding Japan's surrender as it was perceived by Japanese witnesses and further attempt to analyze their mindset during that chaotic time, primarily utilizing reports and memoirs of colonial authorities in the peninsula at the war's end.; These primary documents, mostly new to Western scholarship, reveal that the Japanese officials of the former colonial government not only remained in the southern peninsula but, as friends of the new masters, the Americans, still flexed their muscle for a few more months after their country was defeated. Their short-term objective was to protect the lives and property of the Japanese in Korea until their safe repatriation. In the long-run, however, their efforts also contributed to setting the course of a right-wing capitalist South Korea that remained primarily under the control of former collaborationist, anti-communist Koreans who, in turn, steered the south to the Right, in stark contrast to the north, which steered to the Left.; Those Japanese in Korea at Japan's defeat were small in number but their impact was by no means insignificant. Consequently, any history of the post-1945 Korea must also consider their influence, along with that of the more obvious American, Soviet, and Korean protagonists, whose roles in this tragic drama have been much more extensively studied. |
