The Soviet Union and Korea: Perceptions, scholarship, propaganda

Abstract

Of the four countries divided after World War II (three since 1975), only Germany and Korea became divided as a result of military occupation by the Red Army, with the occupied part eventually being saddled with a Leninist regime and a centrally planned economy. But while East Germany is still forced to tolerate a sizable Soviet military presence, North Korea has been free of Soviet troops for almost 40 years (and free of Chinese troops, which entered the Korean conflict in late 1950 to save the North Korean regime, for almost 30 years). This fact goes a long way toward explaining the difference between East Germany and North Korea in terms of the degree of their dependence on the Soviet Union and hence the degree of their independence in the international arena. There is one other important difference: the presence of Communist China on the North Korean border, creating problems as well as opportunities for North Korea that are absent in the East German case. There are also important asymmetries in the cases of noncommunist South Korea and West Germany. To be sure, both countries are important U.S. allies that permit sizable contingents of American troops armed with nuclear weapons on their territory and that have generally anticommunist populations. In West Germany, the legal Communist party is irrelevant to the political process; and in South Korea, where communist activity is illegal, the memories of the war of 1950-53 have inoculated the populace against the attractions of communist ideology. But the similarities end here. West Germany is one of the world's most important middle powers and one of the most influential members of the European Communi ty one whose economic, industrial, technological, financial, and potential military power is truly first class. South Korea, by comparison, was for the first 30 years after liberation from Japanese colonial control a very minor