Two leaders of North Korea, Kim and Park, had different opinions from each other with regard to Seoul Liberation. Kim Il-Sung made it clear that Seoul was the capital of United Korea, which was rather a mere declaration. Park Hun Young, however, thought that the outcome of the war was virtually decided by Seoul Liberation, because he regarded the war as a continuation of the campaign carried out in South Korea by the Korean Communist Party (South Korean Labor Party) since 1945 Liberation.
The priority in the liberated Seoul was to restore people's power and to establish wartime mobilization system, which were the responsibilities of people's committees including the Provisional Peoples Committee of Seoul. Consequently, all of the people's committees were restored until early August of 1950. Most of the committee members were from the South Korean Workers' Party Group.
By enforcing registration of political parties, social organizations, factories, cultural authorities, and weapons, the committees controlled people's daily lives. Or, in a way, they restored daily lives; they filled the administrative void resulted from the war Land reform and the implementation of labor laws were fundamental measures to make possible the United Front tactics in liberated areas.
However, in Seoul, farmers received not land ownership but just the right of cultivation without rent, under the construction project of unified capital. It ruined the plan to induce the farmers' voluntary participation in the war through the land reform. The situation was similar in terms of the implementation of labor laws. While the introduction of socialist labor laws was epoch-making, it could hardly achieve substantial effects when most companies shut down during the war.
It was essential to instigate and brainwash citizens through the media in order to end the war sooner. For this purpose, as many as 12 newspapers were used as bulletins of the Cabinet, the Party, and the People's Committee in Seoul alone. The effect of broadcasting was more remarkable. Addresses on the air by prominent figures who remained in Seoul and were put into the studios by the occupying authorities' so-called "invitation maneuvering" agitated the citizens. Among the addressers were key figures of the Shanghai Provisional Government such as An Jae Hong, Cho So Ang, and Kim Kyu Sik, and the middle-of-the-road nationalist leaders.
Mobilization for the recruitment of volunteer army became routine; streets of Seoul thereby had been filled with a number of demonstrators since the occupation of June 28, 1950. A large scale of wartime mobilization through propaganda maneuvers naturally accompanied the political purge of reactionists as well as the strengthening of the united front.
However, without a concrete standard to judge who should be regarded as a 'traitor', and without measures and procedures of 'exclusion (elimination)' being prepared, a lot of people were killed on the basis of arbitrary decisions during the war. Although the people's courts were established to prevent the arbitrary punishments, they also were not free from recurring insane revenges themselves.
In fact, political purges that started in the late period of Korean War might be a boomerang of arbitrary retaliations and eliminations that happened in Seoul and other liberated areas during the war.