This is a [incomplete] 1946 article that lays out the conundrum that the Korean people were faced with following the defeat and withdrawal of Imperial Japan:
“Koreans didn’t want to be a country cut in two. It had been an economic cultural, and political unit under the Japs. The North mined coal the South needed. The South grew food the North needed. Was the chief effect on Korea of the war for liberation to be loss of unity? Were Yank and Russian liberators to be worse than Japanese oppressors?”
“Korean complaints that liberation was meaningless without unity and independence won General MacArthur’s sympathy. Yet he couldn’t conscientiously order his Yanks out of southern Korea as long as the Russians held the North. Pulling out the Yanks would just be an invitation to the Reds to communize Korea.”
