Abstract

America’s occupation and liberation of southern Korea from Japanese rule has usually been examined as an example of Cold War diplomacy in which civilian and military officials working for the US government facilitated the rise to power of Korea’s anticommunist far right as they confronted the Soviet occupation of northern Korea. Historians treat this history as a case study of US-Korea bilateral relations and rarely study its broader contexts. By contrast, this article explores the history of America’s occupation of southern Korea in the context of comparative and connected histories, examining in particular the linked themes of liberation and decolonization. The narrative interrogates how Korea’s independence from Japan in 1945 was similar to, or different from, big power diplomacy in the Philippines, Indonesia, and Vietnam, and how the United States and other big powers’ responses to World War II in Asia impacted the subsequent history of empire and decolonization. It outlines the ways in which events in Korea were connected to the wider history of the American empire in Asia, and explores American military operations in World War II in colonial Southeast Asia as foreshadowing US occupation policy in Korea. This methodology helps us to rethink existing chronologies and to connect the world before and after 1945, while also better contextualizing Korean history, at perilous crossroads in 1945.