ABSTRACT
China, the Dutch in the East Indies-were clinging on to their possessions opposed by insistent nationalist sentiment. A shattered Japan had been flung out of its pivotal position between the homeland and a wide arc to the south and west. Evident everywhere was the military power of the US, which had won the war in the Pacific. Then there was the immensity of China’s 500 million people split between a Communist movement growing inexorably and a corrupt, elitist, Nationalist regime. The Land of Morning Calm has never seemed an appropriate name for Korea. Historically loyal to the Manchu dynasty of China, Korea was forced to cede ports and trading rights to Japan after 1875. Commercial competition between Russia and Japan led to annexation by Japan in 1910. Peace in 1945 removed Japanese colonization but made peace hostage to the brooding presence of Communist China, backed by the USSR, and to US military power directed from a capitalist Washington and tactically operated from occupied Tokyo.
