XXXI Международный конгресс ИИСАА. 23–25 июня 2021 г. Т. 1

368 XXXI Международный Конгресс по источниковедению и историографии стран Азии и Африки СЕКЦИЯ XI • SECTION XI ИСТОЧНИКОВЕДЕНИЕ И ИСТОРИОГРАФИЯ КОРЕИ HISTORIOGRAPHY AND SOURCE STUDIES OF KOREA Caprio Mark (Rikkyo University, Kawaguchi) Historical Fact and Imaginative Conflict: U. S. and Great Britain Impressions on Soviet interests in Postwar Korea Even as the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union fought side-by- side as allies in the European theaters of the Second World War, and their leaders met at meetings that would decide the future of important areas of the postwar world, U. S. and British officials voiced concerns over whether Soviet plans for Korea would conflict with those of the United States along the Korean Peninsula, and how the United States should begin to prepare to counter those plans. One such concern in early 1945 stated that the Soviet Union was training militarily a large contingent of Soviet-based Koreans to quickly enter the peninsula once Japan had surrendered to extend communist influence. These suspicions grew after the two sides had begun their occupations in a peninsula divided at the 38 th parallel. Were the Soviets preparing a large contingent of Koreans for military purposes in the wake of a third world war? What was behind their often-heard proposals for mutual military retreatment from the peninsula? What were its long-term plans for this territory? Did it not intend to advance its influence into southern Korea once the United States military had left? The United States developed these questions, and their answers to them, in part from their impressions of Soviet actions in Poland and eastern Europe. The Korean Peninsula, which like Poland had been used by a