Tracing the Origins of the ROK-US Alliance in North Jeolla Province, under Japan’s Occupation: Adding New Inter-Document Evidence

초록

Historians generally regard the Korea-US alliance pact as an outcome of the first Korean President Syngman Rhee’s strategic calculation. However, these conflicts with the conventional wisdom that a President alone cannot sustain such an unprecedented commitment without widespread acknowledgment and consent among the country's population. The contradiction is heightened even more when we recall the fact that Korea-America relations identity was cultivated amid the challenges mounted by increasingly popular Communist ideologies during the post-liberation era in South Korea. This paper will confront the question of whether the current existing accounts of post-liberation Korean politics have been missing a link between the sustainability of the alliance and the Korean people’s particularly positive identity with respect to America. The study intends to introduce the untold stories of a large group of Korean followers of the popular pacifism in North Jeolla Province, whose adherents reportedly maintained a pro-American identity throughout their doctrinal socialization during Japan’s occupation period.