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ISBN: 9781771861359-05

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The Patriot State

From: Patriots, Traitors and Empires

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Chapter five, The Patriot State focuses on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) which formed under the Soviet influenced northern half the the peninsula. While the United States hadn’t spilled a single drop of blood in the liberation of Korea, it had marched onto the peninsula, declared a military dictatorship, and rejected Korea’s four decades- long struggle for independence. What’s more, Washington had intervened on behalf of the most reviled groups in the country and brought the Japanese and their Korean collaborators back into administrative positions, reversing efforts Korean patriots had made to purge them. On the other hand, Koreans looked to the Soviet Union as a model because they believed that communists genuinely supported national liberation, were against the landlords, and promoted women’s rights. Koreans in the US zone were also looking to the USSR because it was clear that in the Soviet zone, Koreans were allowed to build an independent Korea, emancipated from the exploitation of the indigenous landlord class, and liberated from the treachery of pro- Japanese collaborators. The autonomous development of the provisional government from the spontaneously developed people’s committees arose from Korean ambitions to overcome four decades of hardship and humiliation under Japanese rule, while Kim Il-sung’s ability to command the popular support of Koreans in the Soviet zone was attributable to his personal qualities, his undeniable patriotic credentials, and his outstanding commitment to the historical aspirations of Koreans.

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Stephen Gowans

Stephen Gowans is an independent political analyst whose principal interest is in who influences formulation of foreign policy in the United States. His writings, which appear on his What’s Left blog, have been reproduced widely in online and print media in many languages and have been cited in academic journals and other scholarly works.