A/HRC/25/CRP.1 preference for the establishment of gradual independence processes. In 1943, in anticipation of Japan’s defeat, the Allied Powers at the Cairo Conference set out an agreement for the independence of Korea “in due course”. In 1945, the United States decided on the 38th parallel to divide the Korean peninsula into two zones of control, one under an American sphere of influence and the other under a Soviet one. The United States sent 25,000 troops to South Korea in fulfilment of these arrangements. They were often met with resentment and resistance. In August 1945, the Soviet Union sent its 25th Army to North Korea where it set up the Soviet Civil Administration. 96. The Japanese departure from the Korean peninsula was abrupt. Self-governance groups, or people’s committees, appeared throughout the peninsula to fill the vacuum. The United States actively suppressed these groups while the Soviet Union developed them into core institutions of governance. When the Soviets arrived in Pyongyang, the leader of the Korean nationalists, Cho Man-sik, the most popular politician in North Korea, had established the South Pyongan Committee for the Preparation for Independence. Among the Soviet troops who were dispatched to North Korea were “Soviet Koreans”, ethnic Koreans who had been either been part of the substantial Korean minority population following immigration into the Russian Far East in the late 1860s or those more recent arrivals who had fled from Manchuria under intensified Japanese pressure against guerrilla fighters there. These Soviet Koreans included the 33 year-old Korean guerrilla hero Kim Ilsung who was a military officer with the rank of captain in the Soviet Army. 97. When the Soviet Union decided against retaining Cho Man-sik as the local leader, Kim Il-sung was selected as an alternate candidate. On 14 October 1945, Kim Il-sung spoke publicly for the first time to a mass rally in honour of the Soviet Army. He was introduced by Soviet General Lebedev as a “national hero” and an “outstanding guerrilla leader”. Nevertheless, Kim Il-sung was only one of three North Koreans who spoke at the event. He was not the most senior of them as Cho Man-sik remained the head of the Administrative Committee of the Five Provinces, the first proto-government established by the Soviets. In December 1945, however, the foreign ministers of the Soviet Union, the United States and United Kingdom met in Moscow where they agreed to a joint trusteeship of Korea for five years. Nationalists in Seoul staged rallies against the decision. Cho Man-sik, likewise, refused to sign the declaration of support of trusteeship in January 1946. He was subsequently imprisoned and died in October 1950. 98. By 1946, the Soviet Civil Administration devolved authority to the local administration. Kim Il-sung was made head of the Provisional People’s Committee of North Korea. There was less resistance to the Soviet Union’s influence in the North than there was to the United States in the South. In March 1946, the Provisional People’s Committee issued a Land Reform Law which was signed by Kim Il-sung. Land belonging to Japanese entities and individuals as well as large landowners was confiscated and redistributed to former peasant tenants.25 The land reform in the North was generally successful and helped to strengthen the position of the new regime. In August 1946, the Provisional People’s Committee nationalized industry. Technically, only Japanese owners and Korean collaborators were subject to confiscation, but this effectively included all large and most medium sized industries. Efforts to promote national culture and education were also popular with the people. In 1947, the DPRK launched its first economic plan. 25 22 The DPRK’s official biography of Kim Il-sung notes that, “Through the agrarian reform, a total of 1,000,325 hectares of land that had belonged to Japanese imperialists, pro-Japanese elements, traitors to the nation and landlords were confiscated and distributed to 724,522 peasant households which had had little or no land.” Kim Il Sung: Condensed Biography (Pyongyang, Foreign Languages Publishing House, 2001), p. 131.