740.00119 Control (Korea)/9–347: Telegram
The Political Adviser in Korea (Jacobs) to the Secretary of State
313. Following is text of statement which General Brown read at 57th session of Joint Commission rejecting Soviet counter-proposals made at 56th session to American delegation’s proposals made at 53rd session on August 12:
“The American delegation has carefully studied the counterproposals submitted by the Soviet delegation on 26 August 1947 in reply to the American delegation proposals of 12 August 1947.
The Soviet counterproposals contain the same objectionable features which have characterized almost every proposal which the Soviet delegation has made since the Joint Commission first met on 20 March 1946 and reconvened on 21 May 1947.
The Soviet counterproposals maintain the position of ‘exclusion’ and the right to the veto power as insisted upon by them throughout the recent discussion of consultation. More specifically, they exclude from membership in the consultative body representatives of parties stated by them to be nondemocratic, representatives of all parties and organizations with membership less than 10,000, those who do not fully support the Moscow decision and those who struggle against the Joint Commission and the Allied Powers.
[Page 778]Paragraph 2 of the Soviet counterproposals visualizes the creation of a ‘provisional all Korean peoples’ assembly’, which resembles a consultative body. The creation of a consultative group on a fair and liberal basis and the methods by which it is to be established were already agreed to by the American and Soviet delegations and included in Joint Commission decision number 12. The counterproposal presently submitted by the Soviet delegation would, therefore, in fact create a consultative body of a type and in a manner different from that agreed upon by the Soviet and American delegations, as promulgated in Joint Commission decision number 12.
Acceptance of the Soviet counterproposals would create a consultative body from which would be excluded representatives of 24 major rightist groups of South Korea, with a claimed membership in excess of 15½ million. Should the American delegation be foolish enough to accept these counterproposals, it would change the normally substantial rightist-moderate majority throughout North and South Korea to an overwhelming and unrealistic leftist majority. It thus reverses the actual political situation.
The Soviet delegation offers what is ostensibly a fair proposal—‘the creation of a legislative body, elections for which should be conducted throughout all Korea on the basis of general, direct, equal suffrage, by secret ballot’. However, closer study indicates that the ‘election’ would without doubt only be conducted after the leftist dominated consultative body and the government created by it had organized and prepared Korea for the type of election recently conducted in North Korea under which 99% of the people, as the Soviets said, ‘willingly and voluntarily dropped their ballots into the white box’—an election typical of those being held in other Soviet satellite countries.
What have the Soviets to be afraid of in forming a government by free participation of all political groups? They have a deep and serious fear, otherwise they would be content to proceed to form a government which would assure to all of the political groups in Korea an equal opportunity for consultation and at the polls.
The position of the Soviet delegation has been made crystal clear, more so than ever before, by the statement in the latest Soviet proposals that ‘the number of representatives in a provisional all Korean peoples’ assembly for North and South Korea must be equal’, when as a matter of fact everyone will admit that the population of South Korea is more than double that of North Korea.
There is nothing in the Moscow agreement with respect to Korea which justifies or supports the Soviet position as indicated above. That agreement is a brief, simple document, the clear purpose of which was the setting up of an independent government for all Korea of a democratic nature through consultations with Korean democratic parties and organizations and by the rendering of such aid and assistance as might later be determined, with the participation of the Korean provisional democratic government, to develop and maintain democratic self-government in Korea.
The American delegation cannot, therefore, agree to these counterproposals presented by the Soviet delegation.”