Korea: Records of the U.S. Department of State, 1930-1963
This archive documents Korea under Japanese occupation through the postwar period. Japan annexed Korea in 1910, and in the period 1931 to 1945 it ruled Korea by a strict military regime with complete cultural assimilation the order of the day The euphoria following Japan's defeat, and Korea's liberation, in 1945 was short lived as Soviet and American policy makers divided Korea under a joint protectorship. The Korean War, which broke out in 1950, resulted in a strategic stalemate, and the unwillingness of the United Nations to risk a larger conflict with China and perhaps the Soviet Union, ultimately resulted in a 1953 armistice, with Korea divided along roughly prewar lines. Documents from the U.S. Department of State, Division of Far Eastern Affairs, and the U.S. Department of Commerce include: "Annual Report of the Administration of Chosen, 1927-1928: Control of Opium"; "Morphine Addicts in Chosen"; laws and regulations on narcotics; an agricultural report focusing on rice production (1939); issues of repatriation of American citizens from "the Japanese Empire and from Japanese-controlled areas of the Far East" (June 1943); a report from U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk on a visit of a Japanese delegation, in April 1962, to South Korea and to North Korea outlining "… the Department's continuing need for intelligence on North Korea."