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 1952 election of General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Republican candidate who promised to end the war. For Americans and Chinese it is a "forgotten war", neglected on the timeline between the twin cataclysms of World War II and Vietnam. For the Koreans it is the central event of their modern history, and efforts to reunify the land continue.

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 Joseph Stalin for the Sovet Union and Franklin D. Roosevelt for the U.S. 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 assumption was that postwar amity between the USSR and US would lead to a reasonable solution at some indefinite future time. As the Cold War started, 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.".

Military strengths

Most of the 20 million Koreans in the South, and the 10 million in the North, were subsistence farmers living in the western half of the peninsula. Travel was a chore in the west (except on the good railroad system), and quite difficult in the mountainous east. The industrial level was low and the people were extremely poor. Nevertheless Kim built a powerful military machine in the North.

The US Army considered the peninsula indefensible and, in line with severe budget restraints, removed its soldiers in 1949. It left small arms and ammunition behind for ROK, the new South Korean army, but no tanks, no warplanes and no medium or heavy artillery. The North Koreans were much better armed, having leftover Japanese weapons, and second-hand equipment sold them by Moscow. Frustrated that internal subversion had not toppled the anticommunist government in Seoul, Kim ordered his NKPA (North Korean People's Army) to invade on June 25, 1950. Spearheading 9 divisions with 80,000 men were elite units with 100-150 excellent Soviet T-34 battle tanks, backed up by 100 aircraft. The South Koreans had only 100,000 soldiers (65,000 in combat roles) and little equipment. Moscow's military experts figured that the North had a 2:1 advantage over the South in troops, 2:1 in artillery; 7:1 in machine guns; 6.5:1 in tanks; and 6:1 in aircraft--ratios quite adequate for a successful conquest if South Korea received no American help.

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. In 1952 Truman, after losing the New Hampshire primary, ended his reelection campaign. General Dwight D. Eisnhower defeated the anti-war isolationist Robert A. Taft for the Republican nomination, and electrigfied the country by promising, "I shall go to Korea," -- that is he would end the war. In his farewell address on January 15, 1953, Truman said:

"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."

Eisenhower, however, threatened to use nuclear weapons unless the Chinese came to terms, which they did. An armistice was signed by North Korea, the United States, and China on July 27, 1953.

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.

Bibliography

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Overview and reference

• Halliday, Jon and Bruce Cumings. Korea: The Unknown War (1988); hostile to US & ROK; well illustrated
• Heller, Francis H. ed. The Korean War (1977)
• Kaufman, Burton I. The Korean War (1986)
• Malkasian, Carter. The Korean War (Essential Histories) (2001), brief summary excerpt and text search
• Matray, James I. Historical Dictionary of the Korean War (1991), good reference
• Millett, Allan R. The War for Korea, 1945-1950: A House Burning (2005), major history by leading scholar excerpt and text search
• Summers, Harry G. Korean War Almanac (1990), not fully reliable
• Tucker, Spencer C. et al. Encyclopedia of the Korean War: A Political, Social, and Military History (2002) the best reference source
• Varhola, Michael J. Fire and Ice: The Korean War, 1950-1953, (2000) excerpt and text search

Korea

• Cumings, Bruce. The Origins of the Korean War (2 vol 1981, 1990), sympathetic to North Korea; stresses civil war aspects
• Lankov, Andrei, and A. N. Lankov, From Stalin to Kim Il Sung: The Formation of North Korea 1945-1960 (2002) excerpt and text search</ref>

Diplomacy and national policy

• Dingman, Roger. "Atomic Diplomacy During the Korean War." International Security 13 (1988-89)
• Foot, Rosemary. The Wrong War: American Policy and the Dimensions of the Korean Conflict, 1950-1953 (1985)
• Goncharov, Sergei, John Lewis, and Litai Xue. Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War (1993)
• Jian, Chen. China's Road to the Korean War (1995) excerpt and text search
• Kaufman, Burton I. The Korean War: Challenges In Crisis, Credibility And Command (1996)
• Stairs, Denis. The Diplomacy of Constraint: Canada, the Korean War, and the United States (1974), esp ch 4 on containing America's militarism
• Stueck, William. Rethinking the Korean War: A New Diplomatic and Strategic History (2004) excerpt and text search
• Stueck, William. The Korean War (1997) excerpt and text search
• Stueck, William, ed. The Korean War in World History (2004) excerpt and text search
• Whiting, Allen. China Crosses the Yalu (1960), out of date

Domestic politics

• Casey, Steven. Selling the Korean War: Propaganda, Politics, and Public Opinion in the United States, 1950-1953 (2008)

Biographies and memoirs

• Domes, Juergen, Peng Teh-huai (1985), Chinese commander
• James, D. Clayton. Years of MacArthur vol 3, 1945-64 (1985), the major scholarly biography
• Ridgway, Matthew B. The Korean War (1986) memoir by US ground commander excerpt and text search

Ground operations

• Appleman, Roy E. South to the Naktong, North to the Yalu (GPO, 1961); official history of fighting in 1950; Appleman has published four more highly detailed, non-analytical combat narratives.
• Blair, Clay. The Forgotten War (1988), elaborate detail
• Flint, Roy K. "Task Force Smith and the 24th Division." in Charles E. Heller and William A. Stofft eds. America's First Battles: 1776-1965 (1986), 266-99. A wide-ranging look at the Army and its weak fighting ability in 1950.
• Halberstam, David. The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War, (2007), oral histories excerpt and text search
• Hastings, Max. The Korean War (1987), 416pp; British perspective excerpt and text search
• Knox, Donald. The Korean War, An Oral History (1985)
• Korea Institute of Military History. The Korean War (3 vol 2000); highly detailed narrative; official South Korean history excerpt and text search
• Marshall, S.L.A. The River and the Gauntlet (1953) based on after-action intervierws
• Mossman, Billy C. Ebb and Flow: November 1950 - July 1951 (GPO, 1990), good official history
• Schnabel, James W. U.S. Army in the Korean War: Policy and Directions: The First Year (GPO, 1972), official history
• Toland, John. In Mortal Combat: Korea, 1950-1953 (1991)

Air and sea operations; logistics

• Futrell, Robert Frank et al. The United States Air Force in Korea, 1950-1953 (GPO, 1961), the best military analysis
• Hallion, Richard. The Naval Air War in Korea (1986)
• Huston, James A. Guns and Butter, Powder and Rice: U.S. Army Logistics in the Korean War (1989)

Soldiers, prisoners, medical

• Bardbury, William C. et al. Mass Behavior in Battle and Captivity: The Communist Soldier in the Korean War (1968)
• Biderman, Albert D. March to Calumny (1963), best on US POWs; rebuts charges (made by Eugene Kinkead) that 1/3 collaborated
• Cowdrey, Albert E. The Medics' War (GPO, 1987)
• Wubben, H. H. "American Prisoners of War in Korea." American Quarterly 22 (1970)

Historiography

• Millett, Allan R. "A reader's guide to the Korean War," The Journal of Military History Jul 1997 Vol. 61 No. 3; pp. 583+, summarizes the main books and arguments

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