THE HOPE OF ASIA

...The reactionary administration of Syngman Rhee, which our Army occupation supported and brought into power, refused to finish the land reform the Americans started...

...Mitchell has served as auditor and business accountant, agricultural economist with the Farm Security Administration, and was with the War Food Administration and the Combined Food Board during the war...

...Unless human well-being continues to be the major goal of the citizens of the world, the struggle between the U.S...

...In the fifties, Americans are being induced to think that the world's ills are all caused by Communism and that Communism must therefore be crushed...

...They became in that moment our allies in the struggle against slavery...

...Three-fourths of the tenanted land had been owned by rich Korean landlords, and the American Army felt that it did not have the power to expropriate private lands...

...After five years of international operations in various countries, either as occupying power or ECA cooperator, we have a good fund of information from which working instructions can be formulated...

...It was not a bit afraid of the American Occupation Army...

...My organization sold the land to the tenants, for a reasonable price and easy terms, and gave the legal title to the land...

...It represented little countries with chips on their shoulders...

...More important is the economic and political stability of the world and its people...

...The money and know-how of the U.S...

...Furthermore, it is not consistent with American ideals to help such governments strengthen their police states...

...The destruction of little Korea (and it will be virtually destroyed in this war) served as a timely warning for the United States, shocking her into complete mobilization for World War III...

...But their program was a fake...

...threatens to degenerate into the age-old game of world power politics, in which ideals are forgotten...

...There must be a tremendous educational effort aimed at farmers, landlords, and public officials...

...In the long run of history, winning the cold war against Communism is not the entire goal of mankind, nor even a great part of it...

...While the UN performs the police function of maintaining order, we must turn to the compelling assignment of putting most of our resources into the battle against Communism where they belong—in the realm of human reform and social progress...

...Having run a land-disposal scheme myself, I know what a tremendous job it is...

...It is in this spirit that I draw on my own experiences there to examine American successes and failures in Korea during 1945-1950...

...An investigation system must be set up to prevent the Korean employes all up and down the line from using the land sale as a vehicle of graft and patronage...

...If the Soviet bloc decides once more to throw military power into the Cold War, the UN once more will move to crush it...

...and the moral strength of the UN will be the inducements...

...Although America's productive C CLYDE MITCHELL, chairman of the department of agricultural economics at the University of Nebraska, was president of the New Korea Company and later administrator of the National Land Administration in the U. S. Army Military Government in Korea, during 1946, 1947, and 1948...

...Arming the corrupt and reactionary governments of every one of the backward nations of the world to the extent that would enable them to resist the full force of Communist aggression would certainly lead to bankruptcy...

...In 1946 and 1947 more than two million refugees poured down out of the Soviet Zone into the greater freedom of our zone, and the story they told was one of torture, confiscation, and oppression...

...We were able to put over a program which sold this land to the long-oppressed farm tenants at reasonable prices...

...To win, the free world must outperform Communism's promises...

...We gave the land to the tenants," they said...

...Diplomatic personnel and machinery need a thorough overhauling...

...no deed of title was worth a copper sen...

...In the short time the UN Temporary Commission was in Korea in 1948, I saw an amazing thing happen...

...The Hope of Asia By C. CLYDE MITCHELL THE United States is conducting foreign affairs in this explosive era in history without regard for one of the decisive facts of our time—the revolution in Asia, a revolution in which a 17th Century culture is hauling itself into the 20th Century...

...The Assembly passed a land-reform bill early in 1949, patterned after the one the Americans had used the year before, but Syngman Rhee's bureaucracy, from national down to local levels, was highly responsive to sabotage by the land-owning gentry, and never made the slightest move to implement the law...

...the great issue of world politics is simply this: under whose leadership will the revolution be conducted...

...it can scarcely be done through the extremely conservative Department of State or the ECA...

...Genuine ownership did not exist...

...Prof...

...IV This philosophy of placing human welfare first as a weapon against Communism has been criticized...

...power, her skilled technicians, her educators, and her money are all needed in the development of Asia, the mere pouring of billions of Marshall Plan dollars into these countries is no guarantee of success...

...In the '40s, it was Fascism...

...As an administrator, I found out why Americans always prefer to deal that way...

...Korea is an excellent case study of the problems that the non-Soviet world must meet...

...The Soviet Union has opportunistically seized the initiative for the moment...

...Here indeed is another strong reason to fight for the establishment of action agencies within the UN to administer worldwide problems of human welfare...

...The evidence comes from the North Koreans themselves...

...And the taxes and so-called "patriotic" rice contributions usually exceeded the rents the tenants had formerly paid their pre-war landlords...

...II I was head of the National Land Administration in 1946-1948...

...They were proud...

...and the U.S.S.R...

...Such a course can only dissipate our money, misdirect our effort, and make ourselves look to the teeming billions of Asia exactly like the image of us the Communist propaganda presents—"exploiters of human misery...

...Up to now the non-Communist world has been falling into the Soviet sphere country by country...

...My criticism of the American State Department is that it has been too conservative, not that it is too liberal...

...But Communism is not so crafty and so strong that it can go on defeating us—if we provide hope, a helping hand, and democratic direction to the revolutionary stirrings of the millions of Asia who hunger for a better life...

...What will it be in the '60s and the '70s...

...We won a cold war battle from the Russians in South Korea with that land sale...

...And then we must devise some method of making this liberalism effective...

...Harry Truman's immediate and angry response to this challenge to the integrity of the United States and the union of free nations may prove to be the most beautifully timed, most historically accurate piece of pure intuition the world has lately seen...

...Can't we see that both the Communist and Fascist attempts at world conquest were and are feeding on some deep-rooted human needs, and that the destruction of the one or the other of the major world powers will not solve the problems which created them...

...A native of Tennessee, he was educated at the University of Texas and Harvard...

...Her ruthlessness and frankly imperialistic methods have frightened the world—but in an even more sinister way they have induced too many of us to lose sight of long-run objectives in the immediate frenzy to stop Russia...

...After the tenants were "given" the land in North Korea more than a million were later moved off, to make way for individuals who were more acceptable to the local Communist Peoples' Committees...

...Too late the farmers of North Korea found, to their sorrow, that they had merely exchanged one oppressive landlord for another...

...I shall never forget the happy expression on the faces of those farm tenants, as they lined up for blocks to sign their mortgage and get their deed...

...Let us not forget the things that invite Communism into the rest of the world— human misery, oppression, slavery...

...It is the fearful difficulty of communication—the impatience of Americans—which leads them to use short-cuts, to see only through the eyes of carefully-planted interpreters, to speak only through the voice of the status quo...

...The Communists in North Korea had, two years earlier, with much fanfare, put over their brand of land reform...

...But let us not forget what comes afterward, in Korea...

...The downtrodden people of the world are sure of it when we take as our allies cruel and ruthless dictators...

...We must reassess our liberalism to see if it is adequate to deal with problems of human welfare abroad...

...I know for a fact that Syngman Rhee's bureaucracy was many years away from an honest land reform in South Korea...

...It will not be easy, but it can be done —and it must be done...

...Unfortunately, we Americans did not have much Korean land to sell —only that taken from Japanese landlords under international rules of warfare...

...We need now a set of working instructions for a redirected international policy...

...By wrong people I mean political elements so ultra-conservative that they persist in suppressing legitimate demands for economic and social reform...

...We need to re-assess our "liberalism...

...My observations in Asia convince me that we have the ability to stop Russia and win the long-run battle at the same time if we face up to the nature of the struggle in the world and act accordingly...

...Can't we get at the bottom of our troubles...

...Composed of representatives of small as well as large countries, the Commission snooped around in all sorts of dark corners and uncovered corruption and intimidation...

...Governments, to qualify for any aid in the future, must agree to begin work on these reform measures immediately, and UN missions should make continuous on-the-spot progress reports...

...III There is great doubt that it can be done by any one nation because of the danger of imperialism and the fear of one-power rule by the people of the world...

...There must be a complete "revolution" in office procedure in little county land offices...

...It was particularly good in ferreting out instances where civil liberties were being violated under the guise of "maintaining domestic peace and order...

...How can we coerce such reactionary governments to reform themselves when the reforms will often mean a decline in the influence and importance of the land-owning aristocracy making up the governments...

...The critics say we should provide military strength to these governments so that they can resist Communism...

...The new Korean legislature, incidentally, proved to be more liberal than did the administrative branch of Rhee's regime...

...It cannot be done through military governments...

...My answer to this is that it is unrealistic, short-sighted, and a policy of bankruptcy...

...We have not only often failed to do this, but actually, as many thoughtful citizens of the Western world have begun to suspect, we have been helping Communism along through our support of the wrong people in those countries...

...Rhee claims that the law was to have been implemented on July 1, 1950, but I have my doubts...

...for example, whereas during past centuries one or two sales had been entered per day, in 1948 we required 1,000 sales to be entered daily...

...The attitude of the Western world, most particularly of the citizens of this country, toward social reform and human welfare needs revision...

...Korea has given the world the precedent it needs in resisting aggression...

...It is vital for us to remember that we defeat our own purpose if, when we do all this, we also support and maintain in power a reactionary, property-owning class of feudal aristocracy, as we did in China and in South Korea...

...managing 600,000 acres of Korea's best farm lands...

...To recognize the world situation in such terms, however, is not in itself enough...

...They conclude then that we are exchanging our ideals for air bases...

...I blame the State Department, in its cultured, striped-pants politeness, for dealing mainly with the wealthy, the educated, the English-speaking aristocracy in these countries...

...Many millions of land sale forms and records must be printed, and then filled in by hand...

...A tremendous task of mental reorientation lies ahead of us...

...The program was a success, and went a long way toward striking at the human misery and dissatisfaction on which Communism breeds...

...They pasted the deed on their mud walls with rice paste...

...There is no disputing the fact that millions of underprivileged human beings are striking out for a better life for themselves and their children...

...No, the Russian land reform, which is advertised so highly, turned out, as it always does after it is too late, to be mockery...

...It is under UN auspices that the governments of the backward nations of the world, which are on the Communist timetable, must be induced to institute immediately the social reforms (land, taxes, judiciary, educational reform) which alone can save them...

...Too many of us are waiting, with folded hands, for World War III to resolve the issue, when in fact there are momentous decisions to be made in the vast areas of the world which have not fallen to the Communists...