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UID:pretalx-wha-annual-meeting-korea-2026-PL7C3N@pretalx.com
DTSTART;TZID=KST:20260626T152000
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DESCRIPTION:How was the United States—conventionally not a major power in
  East Asia—able to consolidate new regional hegemony after 1945 rapidly 
 and smoothly? How did Korean and Japanese people come to accept U.S. Occup
 ation as legitimate\, even though it effectively negated Korea’s indepen
 dence and\, in Japan\, imposed rule by a former archenemy? This paper addr
 esses these questions through a political-economic lens\, focusing on trad
 e disruption\, food crisis\, and U.S. aid. In postwar East Asia\, dissolut
 ion of the Japanese Empire also meant breakdown of long-standing trade net
 works. In 1936\, Korea exported half of its rice production to Japan\, and
  Japan relied on its colonies for one-fourth of total grain consumption. T
 his highly interdependent economic bloc collapsed in 1945\, as the United 
 States forbade Japan’s import of food from former colonies in order to b
 uild independent national economies. Predictably\, this policy generated f
 ood crisis and economic chaos\; paradoxically\, the United States also bec
 ame the main solver. U.S. military governments and U.S.-led international 
 food institutions compensated for disrupted trade in Korea and Japan by pr
 oviding massive aid of flour and fertilizers produced at home. In 1949\, f
 or instance\, Japan imported 1.45 million tons of flour—enough to feed 2
 0 million people for a year—solely from the United States\, for which Ja
 panese statesmen frequently expressed gratitude in the National Diet. In K
 orea\, where people had suffered population pressure throughout the coloni
 al period\, postwar U.S. aid was described as “incomprehensibly generous
 \,” and U.S. efforts to sever Korea’s rice exports to Japan were also 
 broadly appreciated. In this way\, the Japanese Empire was recast as an Am
 erican empire in postwar East Asia\, through U.S. agricultural production 
 that refilled East Asia’s empty granaries with flour from American Great
  Plains.
DTSTAMP:20260412T140126Z
LOCATION:Room 201 (Seats 42)
SUMMARY:Recasting Empire: Trade Disruption\, Food Aid\, and the Legitimatio
 n of U.S. Occupation in Postwar Korea and Japan\, 1945-1950 - Wonkyoo Lee
URL:https://pretalx.com/wha-annual-meeting-korea-2026/talk/PL7C3N/
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