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The Chinese Revolution brought upon by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) greatly influenced one that was soon to take place right next door, the North Korean Revolution. The events that led to both revolutions were actually very similar considering both nations populations were dominated by a peasant class. They both mainly dealt with the treatment of the peasants by the landlords of the areas and the massive population losses from what could have been the eventual annihilation of both peoples by the Japanese during WWII. When the Ching Dynasty fell, Korea, being one of the main tributary states to the old Chinese dynasties, felt the repercussions of the political and social chaos running rampage in China. But the land reforms in both nations are mainly what started the peasant uprisings which led to both communist parties to victory in their own respective areas.
The CCP managed to use the idea of land reforms to gain the support of the peasants. This idea focused mainly on using the peasants to get rid of the landlords, or the gentry class, by use of massive violence. According to the Ebrey reading on land reform, it shows the frustration and blatant hate being thrown at a landlord named Jiang. The peasants in the village obviously have a reason to hate this guy because of the taxes he imposed on them during a famine as well as storing far more grain for himself than he gave to the peasants who were paying him to live there and work on his land. What eventually ended up happening is that Jiang lived, but the peasants ransacked his home and took all his personal belongings and the deeds to his land. This was a common occurrence all throughout China in all provinces where the landlords basically took advantage of the peasants during some of the worst times imaginable. Once the peasants had taken care of the landlord, whether they killed them and all of their families or spared their life but took all the landlords had, the communist officials would redistribute the farm land and give them to the peasants. This was obviously a very hard task to do for the Chinese considering the mass size of the population of the peasants (roughly 85% of China’s population) and the very little amount of arable land located in China. The only areas that could even be farmed on for anything were located in the southern provinces and consisted of only about 10% of the entire land mass in China.
Korea’s problems with land reform, on the other hand was that they too have little arable land in the northern parts of Korea (which is where North Korea obviously ends up and why the recent famines have been so devastating) and not enough people. The Japanese managed to either assimilate Koreans into Japanese culture by forcing them to learn Japanese and follow Japanese culture or conduct mass murders of the Korean people. This left most of the northern area of Korea completely devastated by the wave of Japanese Imperialist troops moving through Korea, into Manchuria, and then ultimately into China. It wasn’t until Kim Il Sung, born in Korea but moved with his family to northeast China (Which is where he eventually came in contact with Chinese communists. According to The North Korean Revolution: 1945-1950 by Charles Armstrong, he was actually a member of both parties.), and a group of anti-Japanese guerrilla soldiers that fought the Japanese troops in Manchuria gained control of most of the northern areas of Korea that the peasants began lifting their hope with the idea that things can get better if they follow the communist ideal.
Both nations were obviously sharing some of the same hardships and mindsets like famine, high taxation, extremely poor peasants, and a deep seeded anti-Japanese attitude, but the one major difference between the CCP’s land reforms and the KCP’s land reforms is that while China used the peasants to wipe out the gentry and landlords, groups of governmental counsels in Korea called “People’s Revolutionary Governments” [“who emphasized national independence, resistance to Japan and the KMT…” (Armstrong, 34)] were trying to put forth a land reform system, but unfortunately all of these groups were eventually destroyed by the Japanese colonialists in the area. The basic idea of this system was used again after WWII had ended and the KCP didn’t use the peasants, but used the effective guerrilla tactics that they had used to fight off the Japanese in the war. They also adhered to the methods and rules of the land reform that was thought up by the People’s Revolutionary Governments, which were as follows:
1. Taking land only from the landlord class and “puppets (whether Chinese, Japanese, or Korean), keeping it out of the hands of rich and middle peasants.
2. Redistribution on the basis of “work ability” (nodongnyok), always keeping in mind the interests of the poor peasant.
3. Emphasis on distributing land to women and in “eliminating completely the vestiges of feudalism.”
4. After redistribution, any remaining land would be under the management of the “Soviet.” For the time being ordinary land could be bought and sold, but eventual “nationalization” of the remaining land would be promoted and efforts made toward reverting some of the land to collective use.
(Armstrong, 34)
This was the model that the KCP followed when Kim Il Sung ordered that the land reform of the rural areas of North Korea. It was a task that the KCP believed only armed persons could achieve, which is something that Kim Il Sung observed when the CCP had riled up the peasants to take on the gentry which inevitable led to the KMT retaliating and completely destroying small villages and inflicting mass horror on peasant families. The KCP wanted the opposite and have those that they were up against run in terror from the damage that they could do, leaving the opponent without the courage to retaliate. Of course some Korean peasants also would take part in these “exterminations” and overthrows because why not? They felt as though they should be a part of revolutionary activities, but it was completely voluntary unlike in China where the cadres actively convinced the peasants to foam at the mouth and attack with an insatiable blood lust.
To be honest, I really think that the KCP were honestly trying to keep their peasants from possibly dying from the repercussions of the actions that they would have taken like the Chinese peasants did when the KMT troops took revenge on them. The KMT wasn’t much of a problem for the Koreans, and even the Japanese and later on the Americans, who were a threat and remain a “threat” to North Korea didn’t really try to get back at the peasants for what they did to the landlords there. The KCP had the better settings, tactics, and organizations for land reforms to actually work. There was more land and less of a major population in peasants in concern with the available land to be to cut up and divvied off to different peasants and they managed to actually have the party and the government more involved, unlike China who mainly used the peasants as bricks to be thrown at the gentry.
The CCP managed to use the idea of land reforms to gain the support of the peasants. This idea focused mainly on using the peasants to get rid of the landlords, or the gentry class, by use of massive violence. According to the Ebrey reading on land reform, it shows the frustration and blatant hate being thrown at a landlord named Jiang. The peasants in the village obviously have a reason to hate this guy because of the taxes he imposed on them during a famine as well as storing far more grain for himself than he gave to the peasants who were paying him to live there and work on his land. What eventually ended up happening is that Jiang lived, but the peasants ransacked his home and took all his personal belongings and the deeds to his land. This was a common occurrence all throughout China in all provinces where the landlords basically took advantage of the peasants during some of the worst times imaginable. Once the peasants had taken care of the landlord, whether they killed them and all of their families or spared their life but took all the landlords had, the communist officials would redistribute the farm land and give them to the peasants. This was obviously a very hard task to do for the Chinese considering the mass size of the population of the peasants (roughly 85% of China’s population) and the very little amount of arable land located in China. The only areas that could even be farmed on for anything were located in the southern provinces and consisted of only about 10% of the entire land mass in China.
Korea’s problems with land reform, on the other hand was that they too have little arable land in the northern parts of Korea (which is where North Korea obviously ends up and why the recent famines have been so devastating) and not enough people. The Japanese managed to either assimilate Koreans into Japanese culture by forcing them to learn Japanese and follow Japanese culture or conduct mass murders of the Korean people. This left most of the northern area of Korea completely devastated by the wave of Japanese Imperialist troops moving through Korea, into Manchuria, and then ultimately into China. It wasn’t until Kim Il Sung, born in Korea but moved with his family to northeast China (Which is where he eventually came in contact with Chinese communists. According to The North Korean Revolution: 1945-1950 by Charles Armstrong, he was actually a member of both parties.), and a group of anti-Japanese guerrilla soldiers that fought the Japanese troops in Manchuria gained control of most of the northern areas of Korea that the peasants began lifting their hope with the idea that things can get better if they follow the communist ideal.
Both nations were obviously sharing some of the same hardships and mindsets like famine, high taxation, extremely poor peasants, and a deep seeded anti-Japanese attitude, but the one major difference between the CCP’s land reforms and the KCP’s land reforms is that while China used the peasants to wipe out the gentry and landlords, groups of governmental counsels in Korea called “People’s Revolutionary Governments” [“who emphasized national independence, resistance to Japan and the KMT…” (Armstrong, 34)] were trying to put forth a land reform system, but unfortunately all of these groups were eventually destroyed by the Japanese colonialists in the area. The basic idea of this system was used again after WWII had ended and the KCP didn’t use the peasants, but used the effective guerrilla tactics that they had used to fight off the Japanese in the war. They also adhered to the methods and rules of the land reform that was thought up by the People’s Revolutionary Governments, which were as follows:
1. Taking land only from the landlord class and “puppets (whether Chinese, Japanese, or Korean), keeping it out of the hands of rich and middle peasants.
2. Redistribution on the basis of “work ability” (nodongnyok), always keeping in mind the interests of the poor peasant.
3. Emphasis on distributing land to women and in “eliminating completely the vestiges of feudalism.”
4. After redistribution, any remaining land would be under the management of the “Soviet.” For the time being ordinary land could be bought and sold, but eventual “nationalization” of the remaining land would be promoted and efforts made toward reverting some of the land to collective use.
(Armstrong, 34)
This was the model that the KCP followed when Kim Il Sung ordered that the land reform of the rural areas of North Korea. It was a task that the KCP believed only armed persons could achieve, which is something that Kim Il Sung observed when the CCP had riled up the peasants to take on the gentry which inevitable led to the KMT retaliating and completely destroying small villages and inflicting mass horror on peasant families. The KCP wanted the opposite and have those that they were up against run in terror from the damage that they could do, leaving the opponent without the courage to retaliate. Of course some Korean peasants also would take part in these “exterminations” and overthrows because why not? They felt as though they should be a part of revolutionary activities, but it was completely voluntary unlike in China where the cadres actively convinced the peasants to foam at the mouth and attack with an insatiable blood lust.
To be honest, I really think that the KCP were honestly trying to keep their peasants from possibly dying from the repercussions of the actions that they would have taken like the Chinese peasants did when the KMT troops took revenge on them. The KMT wasn’t much of a problem for the Koreans, and even the Japanese and later on the Americans, who were a threat and remain a “threat” to North Korea didn’t really try to get back at the peasants for what they did to the landlords there. The KCP had the better settings, tactics, and organizations for land reforms to actually work. There was more land and less of a major population in peasants in concern with the available land to be to cut up and divvied off to different peasants and they managed to actually have the party and the government more involved, unlike China who mainly used the peasants as bricks to be thrown at the gentry.
