The Living Reed

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KOREA IS A GEM of a country inhabited by a noble people. Yet she is the Asian country least known to the western peoples, although to the three nations surrounding her, China, Russia and Japan, she has been well known for centuries and highly valued, and recent history has been only a continuation of that profound interest. When Stalin insisted that Russia have a share in the Pacific area of the second world war, he was fulfilling an age-old ambition of his land-locked people to secure not only the natural treasures of Korea but her matchless seacoast with harbors facing three sides of the compass. Had the Americans been sufficiently informed through history, we would have relentlessly opposed Stalin’s demands. Instead we yielded, even to the extent of dividing Korea at the 38th parallel, a line of division which, ominously enough, Russia and Japan had once agreed upon in secret in the years when they were rivals for the possession of Korea. They were prevented from making the division only by certain western powers, who had hopes of their own regarding Korea.

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