How 2 Colonels and a National Geographic Map Divided Korea

By Sebastien Roblin,The National Interest

On the evening of August 10, 1945 two colonels convened in an office in the Pentagon to consider an extraordinary assignment. Imperial Japan was then only days away from surrender, and the fate of its subjugated Korean colony was in question. If the State Department did not clarify who would administrate which parts of Korea, then the entire peninsula would fall under the control of advancing Soviet troops.

But where should the dividing line be drawn?

Chris “Tick” Bonesteel and Dean Rusk were not lightweights by any means. Both were Rhodes Scholars, and Rusk would later serve as Secretary of State under presidents Kennedy and Johnson. But neither knew much about Korea.

In his biography As I Saw It [3], Rusk recalled:

“Bonesteel and I retired to an adjacent room late at night and studied intently a map of the Korean peninsula. Working in haste and under great pressure, we had a formidable task: to pick a zone for the American occupation. Neither Tic nor I was a Korea expert, but it seemed to us that Seoul, the capital, should be in the American sector.”

Using a National Geographic map of “Asia and Adjacent Areas” that lacked provincial borders, the two mid-ranking officers struggled to find a “convenient” boundary—so they settled upon a line at the thirty-eighth parallel north latitude. Rusk conceded that it “made no sense economically or geographically,” but the line fell thirty miles north of the Korean capital of Seoul. Though some officers argued that they should move the line further north to the thirty-ninth parallel, the two officers thought they’d be lucky if the Soviets agreed to the thirty-eighth.

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