Dividing Korea: Dr. Kornel Chang

Kornel Chang on U.S. Power, Korean Resistance, and the Birth of Division

What if Korea's true revolution was never allowed to happen? In this episode, I talk with historian Kornel Chang, author of A Fractured Liberation, to explore a moment in Korean history that most people never learn about. A moment when ordinary Koreans believed they were on the brink of something new. In 1945 Japanese colonial rule had ended and, across the peninsula, people were filled with hope. Workers seized factories, farmers reclaimed land, and women demanded rights. It was Korea's "Asian Spring"...an explosion of grassroots energy and possibility. But it didn't last.

Instead of freedom, Koreans faced a new occupying force: the U.S. military government in the South. Kornel walks us through how the American-led administration, fearful of leftist movements and obsessed with anti-communism, sidelined local efforts toward democracy, reinstalled collaborators from the colonial regime, and helped lay the groundwork for division, war, and decades of authoritarian rule. This is a story about who gets to decide the future when the dust of war settles. And it's more important than ever.

Buy A Fractured Liberation: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674258433

Kornel Chang is the author of Pacific Connections: The Making of the U.S.-Canadian Borderlands, winner of the Association for Asian American Studies Book Prize in History. He is Associate Professor of History and American Studies and Chair of the History Department at Rutgers University–Newark.

About David A. Tizzard

David A. Tizzard has a PhD in Korean Studies and lectures at Seoul Women's University and Hanyang University. He writes a weekly column in the Korea Times, is a social-cultural commentator, and a musician who has lived in Korea for nearly two decades. He can be reached at datizzard@swu.ac.kr.

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Discussion Outline

0:00 From Pyongyang to New York

9:49 The Paths Not Taken

27:48 Why Was Korea Divided?

41:36 Who Could Lead Korea?

52:42 Collaboration with the Japanese

1:04:35 The Lived Experiences of 1945-1948

1:17:14 Using Literature to Centre Ordinary Koreans

1:26:23 On Korean Studies and its Factions

1:37:00 Recommendations

Music by Jocelyn Clark

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