_The Partition of Korea_ The importance of Korea in the Soviet scheme of things was indicated by the haste with which Russian troops crossed the frontier on 12 August 1945, three days after the declaration of war. They were the vanguard of an army numbering a quarter of a million men led by General Ivan Chistyakov, a hero of the battle of Stalingrad. The surrender terms called for a joint American and Soviet occupation, with the 38th parallel serving as a temporary line of demarcation. Not until 8 September, however, did Lieutenant General John R. Hodge reach southern Korea with the first American troops. By that time the Russians had gone through their usual routine, and the machinery taken from northern Korea was estimated at 30 to 40 percent of the industrial potential. Looting by Soviet troops went unpunished, and regular supplies of food for the huge army were demanded from an impoverished people just freed of the Japanese yoke.[8] [8] _Ibid._, 285. The Russians had a tremendous advantage over United States occupation forces. Since World War I more than a million Koreans had found a refuge from Japanese bondage on Russian or Chinese soil. Thousands of men had been indoctrinated with Communist principles and given military training to aid the Chinese Reds fighting the Japanese invaders of China. Thus in 1945 the Russians could count on the efforts of Korean revolutionists to establish Communist rule in their homeland behind a façade of democracy. [Illustration: KOREA] The United States forces, on the contrary, did not even have enough interpreters. They impressed the Koreans at first as being alien occupation troops setting up a military government. Meanwhile, the Russians had installed an interim civil government at Pyongyang. Korean Reds filled the key positions, and Stalin’s portraits and the hammer and sickle emblem were seen at political rallies. Koreans of all persuasions opposed the division of their country into two zones on either side of the 38th parallel. The Reds at Pyongyang contrived to lay the blame on the Americans. They made a further appeal to Koreans on both sides of the boundary by announcing a land reform in the northern zone. Ever since 1905 a Japanese landlord had been the hated symbol of oppression. Pyongyang won a great propaganda victory, therefore, by announcing the confiscation of all large estates, Korean as well as Japanese, and the division of the land among the peasantry.