One of these Communists, Kim Il-sung, took over in the North in 1945.13 In the South, the occupying US forces plucked up Syngman Rhee, a Christian and anticommunist who had lived in the US for decades, and installed him as leader. His authoritarian government targeted leftists and massacred tens of thousands of people on Jeju, an island that had been controlled since the war by independent “people’s committees,” using the threat of communism as justification.
