The Interrogation Rooms of the Korean War by Monica Kim

Author:Monica Kim
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2018-11-30T16:00:00+00:00

Youth, Race, and the Pedagogy of Violence

Just as the NWYMA became critical to the operations of the CIC during the occupation, the Anti-Communist Youth League came to play a similar role with regard to the US military during the Korean War. The Civilian Information and Education (CIE) division of the US military was a program operated by the Psychological Warfare section of the US military. The CIE, as part of its attempt to infiltrate everyday Korean social spaces within the POW camps, encouraged the formation of different types of youth groups, such as the “Students National Defense League” or the “Korean Youth Association.” These groups, according to an internal military publication, were “to provide the framework whereby security might be maintained so that the common POW had nothing to worry about.’ ”74 These youth groups later were subsumed into the overall organization of the ACYL, the formation of which had been encouraged by the Republic of Korea Army. In other words, the ACYL functioned as a proxy in many ways for the anti-Communist Korean state via ROKA and the US military organizations such as the CIE.

In an interview with the Psychological Warfare Section, a prisoner of war at Koje-do, who appeared in the report only by the name of “Lee,” recounted his experiences negotiating and navigating the political landscape of the anti-Communist youth groups before his internment in the POW camp. He was born and raised in North Korea, but soon after liberation, he took up residence in Seoul to attend university. Recalling May 10, 1948, the day of the “first big election in South Korea,” Lee stated, “The government mobilized youth groups at election places. If men refused to vote for the right people, they were beaten up…. I saw goon squads all around with sticks at election time…. [There] was an atmosphere of terror all around there. Most of the youth of South Korea belonged to Rhee’s party. All parties used youth organizations. They were organized in schools.”75

As a student, he recalled how the “Rhee government put terrorists in the schools, not to study, but to keep surveillance on all other students…. Anyone talking about politics would be sure to be regarded as a communist.” Characterizing the young men in these groups as “ignorant, strong-arm boys,” Lee noted that they had beaten him up for refusing to sign a statement attesting to the innocence of students who had been arrested for the murder of a professor.

Considering himself as someone who was “yearning for national unity and constructive action,” Lee then joined “gladly” the North Korean army in 1950. And then as a South Korean civilian internee in both Pusan and on Koje-do, Lee again experienced “anti-Communist terror.” Soon, he joined the Communist group within his POW compound.76

The seeming omnipresence of the anti-Communist youth groups in the prewar period as described by Lee was the manifestation of a national project supported by the US military and consolidated by Rhee. By the end of 1947, one of the major Korean

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