These men were part of an anti-Russian demonstration near Seoul, Korea, in 1946. They were protesting the Russian occupation of North Korea.

At the Potsdam Conference in January 1945, the United States and the Soviet Union, its wartime ally, agreed that Korea, which had endured four decades of brutal Japanese occupation, would eventually gain its independence. At war's end, however, the deal went awry.

The U.S. Army occupied Korea south of the 38th parallel, and the Soviet army controlled the northern half. The Soviets quickly sealed off a border between the two zones and organized a communist regime in Pyongyang.

In September 1948, the north was proclaimed the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. The new premier was Kim Il Sung, 36, the offspring of a Korean family that had emigrated to Manchuria, where Kim had dropped out of high school to join a communist militia fighting the Japanese. When the Soviet occupation forces withdrew two months later, they left behind the Soviet-trained and equipped Korean People's Army to keep the regime in power.