By August, the allies controlled only a small area in the vicinity of Pusan, in south-east Korea. The rest of the country was declared part of the North Korean ‘People’s Republic’. General MacArthur landed a large force at Incheon, on the west coast, on 15 September 1950. On 25 September, Seoul was recaptured and the North Koreans soon began to retreat northwards.
By 1 October 1950, the North Koreans had withdrawn past the 38th parallel; the UN forces followed them northwards, meeting minimal resitance, and soon the allied forces had reached the Chinese border. The Chinese decided to intervene. After secretly crossing the Yalu River on 19 October, the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army (PVA) launched their first offensive, attacking the advancing UN forces near the border. The UN forces began to retreat and were forced back below the 38th parallel border in mid December.
On New Year’s Eve of 1950, the Chinese launched a new offensive into South Korea, which overwhelmed the UN forces, allowing the PVA and KPA on 4 January 1951 to conquer Seoul for the second time. The withdrawal of the allied forces together with most of the population from Seoul is known as the ‘January Retreat’. Two months later, the PVA and the KPA were again dislodged from Seoul (14 March 1951) and by the end of May, the allies had established the so-called ‘Line Kansas’ just north of the 38th parallel. Then began a stalemate that lasted until the Armistice of 1953. The ‘Line Kansas’ (or Kansas Line) was to form the basis for the present frontier between the two Koreas.
Armistice negotiations began 10 July 1951 at Kaesong. They continued for two years, first at Kaesong, afterwards relocated at Panmunjom. The final armistice agreement was signed on 27 July 1953, by the UN Command, China and North Korea. The Republic of Korea did not sign. The two Koreas were to be separated by a demilitarised zone (DMZ). Prisoners of war not wishing to be returned to their home countries were allowed to ask to be sent to a neutral third country. After the War: The April Revolution and Park Jung-hee
Syngman Rhee remained as president at the head of an increasingly corrupt regime, desperately holding onto power by all means. Finally, the citizens began to protest, provoked by blatantly falsified election results early in 1960. On 19 April 1960 thousands of university students and high school students marched on the Blue House, the presidential mansion, demanding new elections and calling for Rhee’s resignation, their numbers growing to over 100,000. Police opened fire on the protestors, killing approximately 180 and wounding thousands. On 26 April, President Rhee stepped down from power and went into voluntary exile. This series of events is known as the ‘April Revolution’.
South Korea adopted a parliamentary system which considerably weakened the power of the president and so, while Yun Bo-seon was elected President on 13 August 1960, real power was vested in the prime minister. Following months of political instability, on 19 May 1961 Lt General Park Chung-hee launched a coup d’état overthrowing the short-lived Second Republic of South Korea and replacing it with a military junta and later the autocratic Third Republic of South Korea. Almost at once, he authorised the establishment in 1961 of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA). This was the notorious office responsible for the repression of political and social dissent throughout his time in power, and beyond. After Yun resigned in 1962, Lt General Park consolidated his power by becoming acting president. In 1963, he was elected president in his own right. In 1971, Park won another close election against his rival, Kim Dae-jung. Shortly after being sworn in, he declared a state of emergency, and in October 1972, Park dissolved the legislature and suspended the 1963 constitution. The so-called Yushin (‘revitalising’) Constitution was approved in a heavily-rigged plebiscite in November 1972.
Meanwhile, South Korea had begun the processes of industrialisation and urbanisation that were to catapult it to its current position in the world. This was done at the expense of many basic human rights, with low wages, absence of trade unions, arbitrary arrests and random killings. Finally, as more and more people were taking to the streets to demand a return to democracy and a liberalisation of society, Park seemed to be preparing a violent crackdown when he was assassinated by Kim Jae-gyu, the head of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency, on 26 October, 1979.
For a while, it seemed that the dreamed-of restoration of democracy might happen, but on 18 May 1980, General Chun Doo-hwan staged a coup while provoking an uprising in the south-western city of Gwangju which left hundreds dead. All the leading dissidents, including Ko Un, were thrown into prison and a new dictatorship began…
After continuing resistance and sacrifice on the part of many dissidents, climaxing in huge demonstrations in June 1987 which forced the dictatorial regime to accept a democratic Constitution, Korea was finally able to elect a civilian president in 1992. Since then, in spite of ongoing ideological conflicts between Left and Right, Korea has continued to develop her democratic system, while becoming one of the world’s leading economic powers.
KO UN: A SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Ko Un was born in 1933 in Gunsan, North Jeolla Province, South Korea. He made his official debut as a poet in 1958 while a Buddhist monk. For a decade he practiced Seon meditation and travelled throughout the country.
After returning to the secular world in 1962, he hurled himself into a nihilism full of desperation and alcohol, producing many striking works. He was awakened to the social reality of his country by the self-immolation of a poor labourer, Jeon Tae-il, late in 1970 and became engaged in political and social issues, opposing the military regime and joining the struggle for human rights and the labour movement.
For more than a decade, he was, many times and for long periods, persecuted by the Korean CIA, with arrests, house arrests, detentions, tortures and imprisonments. In 1980 he was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment, but thanks to international efforts he was set free with a general pardon in 1982, after serving two and a half years’ imprisonment in solitary confinement.
He married at the age of 50, and then followed a period of productivity unparalleled in the history of Korean literature — what one commentator has called an ‘explosion of poetry’. The seven-volume epic Mount Baekdu, the first volumes of Maninbo, a five-volume autobiography, and countless books of poems, essays, and novels came pouring out. ‘He writes poetry as he breathes,’ a reviewer once said. ‘Perhaps he breathes his poems before putting them to paper. I can imagine that his poems spring forth from his enchanted breath rather than from his pen.’ Korean literary critics often call him ‘the Ko Uns’ instead of Ko Un, because of his incredible activity. A true volcano of productivity, Ko Un has mastered an immense diversity of poetic forms, from epigrams to long discursive poems, epics, pastorals, and even a genre he himself invented, ‘popular-historical poetry’, of which Maninbo is the prime example.
He was invited to spend time as a visiting research scholar at the Yenching Institute of Harvard University, at UC Berkeley, and also, more recently, at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy. He is a Chair-Professor at Dankook University, Seoul. He is also currently President of the Compilation Committee of the Grand Inter-Korean Dictionary.
Ko Un has received a score of prestigious literary awards and honours at home and abroad, including the Björnson Order for Literature (Norway), the Griffin Lifetime Recognition Award (Canada), and the 2014 Golden Wreath Award of the Struga Poetry Evenings (Macedonia).