This image comes from a USIS publcity shot taken at Masan in the mid- 1950’s, detailing the work of electrical restoration undertaken prior to, during, and in the aftermath of the Korean War. A couple of quick observations:
(1) The man responsible for putting together a pre-war group (with ECA funding) looking into the problem, Walker L. Cisler, had also helped restore the electrical grids of various European nations in conjunction with the Marshall Plan. With his connections to Eisenhower, Cisler would pop up again in the mid-1950’s (Summer 1956), this time trying to market the Fermi breeder reactor to South Korea.
(2) The electrical capacity of the South after the “cut-off” of May 1948 by the North was extremely low, as the mid-1950’s restoration work undertaken by Pacific Bechtel allegedly doubled the ROK’s capacity.
(3) The persistence of older models would continue in state planning well into the late 1950’s, with both hydroelectric (along the Han) and tidal plants investigated as possible options, before settling on primarily thermal plants in the mid and late 1950’s.
All of this goes towards a simple point, that the disentanglement of infrastructure between North and South, a complicated issue in the 1945-1948 period, would continue into the post-war era. The South would not resolve its electricity shortages until the 1970’s with the availability of commerical electricity from the first nuclear plant.
I would love to know more about the South in terms of the necessary engineering expertise to run this kind of plant (above), and as for the northern case, Aaron S. Moore (ASU) is currently working on Japanese engineers in Manchuria and the North, looking at how they re-invent themselves as development specialists after 1945.
I recongize that none of this pertains directly to the previous two posts, but I think the passing of Kim DaeJung and the North’s presence at his funeral fits with this brief look at the electrical issue, thereby anticipating the nuclear issue.
