Chapter one opens with the Soviet-American occupation of Korea that followed the collapse of the Japanese Empire in 1945. The section focuses on the writing and activism of the science organizations that briefly coalesced in Seoul following the end of the Asia-Pacific War. Atomic technology loomed large at this moment among Korea’s post-liberation scientific community. The topic elevated science as a decisive force and conveyed an apparent break with the past. An outcome of this understanding was the clear tone of urgency that characterized publications on science at this time. Many writers saw national liberation as a contingent outcome of imperial contestation. They turned to science as a singular mode by which to secure sovereignty and urged for a social elevation of the discipline. As the section shows, these proscriptions had their origins in the prewar iterations of the genera, rooted in a broad commitment to science as apolitical. The best illustration of this vision of science was the figure of the genius inventor. Through eurocentric histories of scientific discovery and biographies of creative intervention, the genius was posited at this time as a solitary engine of progress removed from sociopolitical context. The chapter takes up accounts of the Manhattan Project to illustrate this dynamic. By doing so, it points to out how the idea of genius allowed post-1945 writers to mitigate the political and economic realities of decolonization and Cold War division. Scientific progress and national independence, writers argued, would be achieved by the determined work of isolated and inspired intellectuals. However, in much the same way that prewar writers with similar proscriptions could not avoid the calls of Asia-Pacific wartime mobilization, postwar writers quickly became mired in the fray of division that prefaced civil war.