Доклады Международного конгресса ИИСАА. Т. 1

330 Proceedings of the International Congress on Historiography and Source Studies of Asia and Africa.Vol. I. 2020 III. FAR EAST, SOUTH AND SOUTH-EAST ASIA ДАЛЬНИЙ ВОСТОК, ЮЖНАЯ И ЮГО-ВОСТОЧНАЯ АЗИЯ Mark E. Caprio (Rikkyou University, Tokyo, Japan) The Contradictory Achievement of the 1946–1947 US-USSR Joint Commission: Strengthening North-South Korean Divisions Summary: From March 1946 delegations from the United States and Soviet Union began a series of Joint Commission meetings to work toward realizing the task established by the Moscow Decision the previous December: to oversee a process to create a unified Korean government. This plan directed the Commission to form a provisional government that would be placed under a four-state trusteeship plan as a prerequisite toward the establishment of a sovereign united Korean government. Even before the first meeting the two delegations began bickering over which Korean political and social organizations to include in this process. The Soviet Del- egation demanded that those groups that opposed trusteeship, and by extension the Moscow Decision and Joint Commission, be prohibited from participating in this process. The American Delegation, realizing that eliminating these groups would severely weaken Korea’s conservative bloc, argued the Korean right to free speech. That is, their opposition to trusteeship should not purge them from the process. Though the delegations met off and on for two years, and though they realized progress toward the goal, this difference eventually aborted the Joint Commission process. Much English-language research has to date attributed this failure to the Soviet Union’s stubborn lack of flexibility, an attitude that reflected the state’s long-term strategy to extend its influence over the entire peninsula. This paper does not directly challenge this assumption but considers also the United States’ responsibility in the Commission’s ultimate failure. It also sees the aggressive actions of conservative Koreans that extended beyond mere verbal objections of the process, and the hostile