Korean War

The Korean War (1950-53) was a major Cold War military clash fought up and down the peninsula of Korea, finally leading to a stalemate in 1950 that restored the boundaries to nearly what they were at the start, along the 38th parallel. The Communist states of North Korea, China and the Soviet Union were arrayed against South Korea, supported by the United States and a multinational United Nations force. The war began with an invasion by North Korea in June 1950, followed by unexpected American and UN entry. North Korean forces had pushed the South Koreans and Americans back into a small perimeter when, in September 1950, an amphibious landing at Inchon turned the tide. The North Korean army disintegrated as the allies moved north, with UN approval, to unify the country. Unexpectedly the Chinese then sent in large numbers of infantry, and in the bitter cold of November-January 1950-51 pushed the UN forces out of the north. Communist supply lines were fragile, especially in the face of heavy American bombing, so the lines stabilized close to the 38th parallel in 1951. Two more years of static warfare followed, with the issue of returning reluctant Communist prisoners of war held by the UN the major sticking point. Finally an armistice was reached in summer 1953' the prisoners were exchanged and fighting ended in an uneasy truce that continues into 2008.

The war was limited in size and scope but casualties were heavy on both sides. In the U.S. political reverberations helped cause the fall of the Truman administration and his Democratic party in the landslide election of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Republican candidate who promised to end the war. For Americans it is a “forgotten war”, neglected on the timeline between the twin cataclysms of World War II and Vietnam.

Background

Historically an independent nation, Korea had been seized by Japan in 1910 and cruelly treated as a colony. The Koreans came to hate the Japanese violently, and were overjoyed at their liberation by Soviet and American soldiers in September, 1945. The division of Korea was set at the Yalta Conference in February 1945, when the Societs and Americans agreed to divide the Japanese-controlled Korean peninsula at the 38th parallel. The Korean people wanted to throw off the Japanese and become united, but the second goal was only vaguely promised at Yalta. The two superpowers sponsored rival government, Communist in the North and anti-communist in the South. Given the fierce determination of Koreans to unite their homeland, a civil war was inevitable. In the North, Kim Il Sung, leader of the Korean Communist party, came to power in 1945. His ruthless totalitarian regime crushed all opposition and promoted guerrilla warfare in the south.

Ruling the south was a right-wing government headed by Syngman Rhee, who had been converted to Christianity during his exile, and then earned a PhD in theology from Princeton. Although Rhee's authoritarian regime crushed pro-Communist uprisings, he did allow the emergence of a civil society in the south. That is, there were multiple independent sources of thought and power, like corporations, local businesses, universities and churches, in contrast to the north where the Communist party controlled all activity whatever, down to the neighborhood level.

Kim sought support from his two northern neighbors, Mao's China and Stalin's Soviet Union. At the time Washington considered both Mao and Kim to be Stalin's puppets; historians now see them as largely independent actors.

However, all were committed to their own versions of aggressive, anti- western Marxist-Leninism. Both Mao and Stalin were committed to revolution in Asia, and both concluded after America's failure to send troops into the Chinese Civil War that Washington would ignore an invasion of South Korea. Mao advised North Korean leaders that "solely military means are required to unify Korea. As regards the Americans, there is no need to be afraid of them. The Americans will not enter a third world war for such a small country.".  

Early Movements

General Douglas MacArthur, Commander of American Forces in the Far East, and seventy years old at the time, was ordered to sort out the problem. MacArthur, headquartered in Toyko, flew to South Korea on June 27. The Eighth U.S. Army in Japan was on the way by June 30. The Americans would help defend South Korea from the Communist invaders. President Truman deemed America’s effort a “police action”. It would be the first time in the post-World War II environment that America would fight communism directly, on the field.

In Washington, D.C. on July 19, President Truman asked Congress to approve an emergency defence appropriation of $11 billion. Truman, like Roosevelt before him in 1940, wanted 50,000 war planes built a year. Congress appropriated $8 billion for aircraft production for 1951.

On September 15, 1950, General MacArthur led a victorious assault on the port of Inchon on the west coast of South Korea, just west of the capital city. This victory finally broke the momentum of the North, which had maintained the upper hand in combat during July and August. The Americans routed the enemy then marched east into Seoul, subduing the invaders by September 27. The Americans had the North Koreans on the run. The war looked set to come to a quick end as the Communists were retreating back above the 38th parallel. But President Truman made a fateful decision which led to the war dragging on for two more years. He gave MacArthur orders to give chase. Chairman Mao of Communist China had warned the U.S. not to travel north of the 38th parallel, yet the American forces invaded North Korea anyway on October 7. Subsequently Chairman Mao sent Chinese troops into North Korea to help defend its Communist ally against the invading Westerners. By the end of November 300,000 Chinese troops were in combat. The Americans, in tandem with UN Forces, saw heavy fighting over the next few months. Back in America, more than a few government officials as well as journalists wondered if this was the beginning of World War III. On December 16, 1950, President Truman declared a National Emergency, warning the American people, “The increasing menace of the forces of communist aggression requires that the national defense of the United States be strengthened as quickly as possible.”

The Korean War wasn’t to be the onset of Armageddon, but it was a grim and dirty war, a prototype of the Vietnam War experience in its years of “stalemate” fighting in a rugged landscape strange to Americans.

Stalemate

The Korean War dragged on. General MacArthur was recalled back to Washington, D.C. on April 11, 1951. General Matthew B. Ridgway assumed command of the UN forces in the Far East and General James A. Van Fleet of the Eighth Army in Korea. America was destined for two more years of scattershot combat and futile negotiations. U.S. defense budget for 1951 was $48.3 billion; for 1952, $62.2 billion; for 1953, $53.2 billion. Before the war came to a close President Truman would reach the end of his first elected term as President and chose not to run again. During his farewell radio address to the American people on January 15, 1953, Truman said this:

"In Korea our men are fighting as valiantly as Americans have ever fought—because they know they are fighting in the same cause of freedom in which Americans have stood ever since the beginning of the Republic. . . . Now, once in a while I get a letter from some impatient person asking, Why don’t we get it over with? Why don’t we issue an ultimatum—make all-out war, drop the atomic bomb? For most Americans, the answer is quite simple: we are not made that way. We are a moral people. Peace is our goal, with justice and freedom."

The Korean War dragged on until an armistice was signed between North Korea, the United States, and China on July 27, 1953. According to the official count, 33,629 American soldiers were killed in action on the battlefield in the Korean War, mostly by Chinese—not North Korean—divisions. 110,000 Americans were wounded or missing-in-action. The UN forces lost 60,371. The U.S. Army estimate of enemy killed exceeded one million, the majority Chinese troops. The war-torn landscape of the Korean peninsula, after three years of ground fighting and saturation bombardment by American air power, was in ruins.

Postscript

Following the ending of the Korean War the Cold War remained at an intense boil. Joseph Stalin had died on March 5, 1953 but the Soviet Union, now under the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev, remained just as fearsome to the American people.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican, formerly Allied Commander in Chief in Europe during World War II; and his vice president, Richard Nixon, both distrusted the Communists as much as President Ronald Reagan would in the 1980s, and the Cold War haunted the world political scene of the 1950s. One crisis after another threatened world stability: Chinese Communist aggression in the Formosa Straits in 1954 and 1958, Egypt’s seizure of the Suez Canal in 1956, unrest in Jordan and Syria in 1957, the Soviet Union shooting America’s U-2 spy plane out of its airspace in 1960. The two nuclear powers lived in constant fear and dread of one another and competed in a dangerous arms race to maintain a global balance of power. That their arsenals contained enough firepower to turn the surface of the earth into a sterile moonscape led the two superpowers by mutual fear to maintain an inhibition against the deployment of atomic bombs. The militaries of both countries were still being fortified by men and matériel for ground-based operations. The American government spent more than $50 billion in 1953 to build up its military services. The Department of the Air Force received $15 billion of that sum that year. The defense industry was making a killing in order to preserve the peace.

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