There were plenty of US reports from the North that I read through, and information coming in from the many refugees flowing south. Things were ugly up North, and there are good reasons why refugees from the North often became the most die-hard anti-communists and most notorious and violent right-wing elements in the south. On future trips to the national archives I’ll be spending more time looking at Korean language materials captured in the North (or from Northern forces) during the Korean War. A. Lankov and C. Armstrong both have great books on early postwar North Korea. For my own part, I’ll be specifically looking at political retribution in the North against accused collaborators and may post on that here at some point in the future.

I didn’t actually post anything here about Hodge’s appraisal though as I hinted, it is possible that some of his views were incorporated into the summary of the Chang’s.

The 90% turnout is very suspicious even given the “first vote” aspect of it, given the conditions of May 1948, and I suspect police forces, right-wing “youth” groups etc. played a strong coercive role, along the lines of what Chang is suggesting, in getting people to the polls. Many contemporary sources say as much but things are so politicized it is hard to get a trustworthy overview.

In any case, I am glad that General Hodge was wrong in his appraisal of what was going to happen with the Korean election. In retrospect, we know that it is pretty common for people to turn out for there first chance to choose their government (as we have seen recently in East Timor, Afghanistan and Iraq).