Foreign Friends

Few decisions shaped the twentieth century more than the choice to split Korea in August 1945, yet historians have given surprisingly little attention to why it happened. David P. Fields contends that the division was not a hasty call by American military officers at the close of World War II. Instead, he traces it to a campaign of persuasion that Korean nationalist Syngman Rhee carried on for roughly four decades.

Rhee, who attended an American missionary school in Seoul, grasped how deeply Americans believed in their nation's special calling. He argued that Washington had betrayed a people among the fastest-growing Christian communities in the world when it accepted Japan's takeover of Korea in 1905. Working with a network of American allies, he pressed officials to correct that injustice by backing Korean independence. After Pearl Harbor, Rhee and his supporters maintained that America's earlier abandonment had opened the door for Japanese expansion in Asia and damaged Washington's standing with millions of Asians. Rhee cast Korea as a cautionary example of American failure in the region, making it a proving ground for the country's exceptional role after the war. Rhee never wanted a divided nation, but his advocacy helped push events toward that outcome.

Drawing on the personal papers and diary of Syngman Rhee, the book examines the religious, intellectual, and diplomatic currents behind this campaign. Fields offers a fresh reading of the relationship between the United States and Korea, aimed at readers interested in Cold War origins, American foreign policy, and the influence of missionary and religious thought on diplomacy.