Phantom Bureaucracy: American Censorship in Occupied Korea, 1945-1948

Censorship is a universal feature of military occupations – but censorship regimes are not universally the same and may even change over time. The extant literature provides few answers that might explain divergences within and across cases. While historians have refrained from deriving more general insights, instead focusing on narrative accounts of single-case studies, recent efforts by political scientists have centered on evaluating the determinants of occupation failure and success. However, reaching a fuller understanding of "the occupation" demands a more thorough investigation of when military occupiers impose – and rescind – mechanisms of control on an occupied population. Drawing on extensive, unused archival materials, I examine the American censorship regime in southern Korea (1945-1948) to trace how occupation leaders tried to impose censorship controls and how they changed course in response to local resistance. I argue that military occupiers face a censor's dilemma that enables them to increase the scope and intensity of censorship in times of stability and forces them to retreat in times of instability. The tension between coercion and conciliation means occupiers must delicately balance the need to intervene in society to fulfill their mission and appease public opinion to maintain their legitimacy and security.