Korean War

Korean War (1950–1953).This conflict grew out of the August 1945 division of Korea into U.S. and Soviet occupation zones. During World War II, U.S. leaders believed that the Korean peninsula should eventually receive independence from Japan but that it would need a period of tutelage before enjoying full self‐government. The United States made only vague agreements on Korea's future at wartime conferences with Soviet, Chinese, and British allies.

Background of the Conflict.

As the Pacific war moved toward conclusion, American officials worried that the impending entry of the Soviet Union into the fight against Japan would result in Soviet occupation and domination of the entire peninsula. Some Soviet troops entered Korea after the Soviet Union declared war on Japan on 8 August 1945, but they did not advance rapidly. A week later, Washington proposed that the Soviets occupy the country as far south as the thirty‐eighth parallel and that the United States occupy the rest. Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin agreed.

Stalin wanted the peninsula unified under a friendly regime. The Americans primarily wanted to contain Soviet influence. Despite a qualified agreement in December 1945 for a provisional national government and a multipower trusteeship, subsequent negotiations failed to produce either. In November 1947, beset by unrest within its zone and burgeoning commitments elsewhere, the United States pushed through the General Assembly of the United Nations a resolution calling for elections throughout Korea aimed at creating an independent government. When the Soviets refused to permit a UN commission into its zone, the United States, with UN approval, went ahead on 10 May 1948 with elections in the south. In August, the Republic of Korea (ROK) was inaugurated at Seoul with the conservative Syngman Rhee as its president. In December, the UN General Assembly recognized the ROK as Korea's only legitimate government, with authority below the thirty‐eighth parallel. In the north, meanwhile, the Soviets had set up the leftist Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) under Premier Kim Il Sung.

Soviet troops withdrew from the north at the end of 1948; American troops left the south the following June. Yet worries continued about armed clashes along the thirty‐eighth parallel between units of the ROK and DPRK armies and ongoing guerrilla activities. In the fall of 1949, guerrillas launched an offensive against the ROK army and police that lasted for several months.

Meanwhile, Kim Il Sung pressed Stalin to support a full‐scale North Korean military offensive to overthrow the ROK. Stalin hesitated, fearing the U.S. response. At the end of January 1950, perhaps encouraged by U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson's omission of South Korea from a speech describing the American defense perimeter in the Pacific, Stalin agreed to plans for such a venture. In April, he began funneling heavy weapons to the DPRK army. In May, Kim received the go‐ahead from Mao Tsetung (Mao Zedong), the leader of the People's Republic of China. Already the Chinese had returned to the north tens of thousands of Koreans who had fought on the communist side in the Chinese civil war and would now comprise the lead units of the DPRK army.

The Fighting Begins.

The DPRK surprise attack began on 25 June 1950. The North Koreans advanced rapidly, but the United States responded vigorously, fearing a loss of international credibility if its client fell. Washington took the issue to the UN Security Council, which the Soviet Union was boycotting, and secured resolutions, calling for a cease‐fire and the withdrawal of North Korean forces behind the thirty‐eighth parallel and urging members to provide assistance to help the ROK repulse the attack. U.S. President Harry S. Truman approved the use of American air forces from Japan in support of ROK resistance. On 30 June, with the North Koreans still advancing, he committed U.S. ground forces to Korea with the objective of restoring the thirty‐eighth parallel. On 7 July, after passage of a Security Council resolution calling on the United States to designate a commander of UN forces in Korea, Truman appointed General Douglas MacArthur. Rhee immediately placed ROK forces under him.

Retreating U.S. troops and remnants of the ROK army fought desperately just to maintain a foothold around the southeastern port of Pusan. Then, on 15 September, the U.N. command launched a counteroffensive at Inch’ŏn on the west coast, sending the North Koreans into a headlong retreat. By the end of the month, U.N. units approached the thirty‐eighth parallel. Only some 25,000 DPRK troops managed to escape across that line, and on the thirtieth ROK units crossed in pursuit. Three days earlier, Washington had authorized MacArthur to move his ground forces into North Korea to destroy enemy forces. On 7 October, a UN General Assembly resolution called for action “to ensure conditions of stability in Korea” and to establish “a unified, independent and democratic government” there. Non‐Korean units in the UN command crossed the thirty‐eighth parallel the next day.

The Chinese Intervene.

The Chinese communists already had warned the United States that they would enter the fray if non‐Korean forces moved into North Korea. Irate over a U.S. decision of 27 June 1950 to protect the Nationalist Chinese on Taiwan, suspecting Washington of aggressive designs on the mainland, and anxious to reestablish China to its historic place in East Asia, the government of China began considering intervention in Korea in July. Still, concerned about American firepower, including nuclear weapons, uncertain of Soviet air support, and anxious to concentrate on domestic reconstruction, Mao did not decide conclusively to intervene until 13 October. The “Chinese People's Volunteers” (CPV) entered Korea six days later, concentrating their first offensive on ROK units.

Although the Chinese intervention caused an urgent reevaluation of policy in Washington, MacArthur pleaded successfully that his instructions not be altered. On 24 November, he launched what he hoped would be an “end‐the‐war offensive.” The CPV countered with their own offensive, however, producing what MacArthur conceded was “an entirely new war.”

The Chinese offensive of late November, combined with another early in 1951, sent UN ground forces reeling southward for nearly two months. During that time, U.S. allies, especially Great Britain, and Cold War neutrals, led by India, worked in the UN to contain the war. They delayed the imposition of sanctions against China until May 1951 and limited them to relatively mild economic and political measures.

Two facts eased their task: First, top officials in Washington, adhering to a Europe‐first strategy, preferred to limit the war in Korea; second, by late January, UN forces had ended their retreat below Seoul and were again moving northward. MacArthur pressed for authority to extend his operations into China with the objective of clearing the peninsula of enemy forces and persisted in making public his disagreements with official policy. On 11 April 1951, Truman relieved him of all commands. Clearly Washington was willing to settle for its initial objective of restoring the status quo prior to the beginning of the war. With the failure of Chinese spring offensives and the establishment of a relatively stable battle line mostly north of the thirty‐eighth parallel, that objective appeared within reach.

Armistice.

Truce talks commenced on 10 July 1951. On 27 November, after long debate, the communist side accepted the UN command's position that the armistice line be the battle line rather than the indefensible thirty‐eighth parallel. The issue of the fate of prisoners of war remained unresolved, however. The Americans insisted on the principle of no forced repatriation, whereas the communists clung to the more conventional position of automatic repatriation.

While UN ground forces had advanced slightly northward during the fall of 1951, by the spring of 1952 the communists were well dug in, and UN operations thereafter were mostly limited to air strikes on North Korea. Kim appears from the spring of 1952 to have desired an end to the fighting. Mao and Stalin resisted a concession on Chinese prisoners, however, and not until 4 June 1953, with a new Republican administration headed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in power in Washington, did the communists concede the point. Stalin's death on 5 March 1953, coupled with the U.S. bombing of dikes in North Korea in May and the threat of a termination of armistice talks and of further military escalation, paved the way for key concessions on the communist side. After delays resulting from Rhee's attempt to sabotage any settlement that did not achieve Korea's unification, the armistice was signed by the UN command, the North Koreans, and the Chinese on 27 July.

Aftereffects.

The war left Korea divided, but the destruction caused by the conflict discouraged a repeat performance. Koreans suffered at least 2 million civilian and probably more than 1 million combat casualties. Chinese casualties were anywhere from 382,000 (Chinese estimate) to 1 to 1.5 million (U.S. estimate). American forces endured more than 33,000 deaths as a result of battlefield injuries, over 20,000 more from other causes, and a total of more than 142,000 casualties. The United States and the ROK provided over 90 percent of the manpower to the UN command, but the fifteen other contributor‐countries suffered more than 17,000 casualties.

To discourage a disappointed Syngman Rhee from resuming hostilities, the United States made clear that it would not support such a move and attempted to mollify Rhee with a defensive military alliance and large‐scale economic aid. To deter the other side, the United States and other contributors to the UN cause declared that any renewed hostilities would in all likelihood not be confined to Korea. The war already had sparked massive rearmament programs in the United States and western Europe, which narrowed the Soviet bloc's advantage in conventional forces and widened the U.S. superiority in nuclear weapons.

In the United States, the war imposed limited sacrifices; indeed, it helped to produce an economic boom. Yet it also added fuel to a domestic Red Scare; in 1952, widespread frustration with the continuing stalemate helped propel the Republicans to victory over the incumbent Democrats in both the presidential and congressional elections. On the eve of the 1952 election, Eisenhower dramatically pledged to go to Korea in his quest to end the unpopular war. Finally, the war provoked a high state of military readiness that would last for the remainder of the Cold War.
See also Anticommunism; Fifties, The; Foreign Relations: U.S. Relations with Asia; McCarthy, Joseph; National Security Council Document #68; Nuclear Strategy.

Bibliography

Bruce Cumings , The Origins of the Korean War, 2 vols., 1981–1990.
James I. Matray, ed., Historical Dictionary of the Korean War, 1991.
Cold War International History Project, Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars, Bulletin nos. 3, 6–7 (Fall 1993 and Winter 1995–1996). Sergei Goncharvo,, John W. Lewis,, and and Xue Litai , Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War, 1993.
Jian Chen , China's Road to the Korean War, 1994.
William Stueck , The Korean War, 1995.
Shu Guang Zhang , Mao's Military Romanticism, 1995.
Burton Kaufman , The Korean War, 2d ed., 1997.
Stanley Sandler , The Korean War: No Victors, No Vanquished, 1999.

William Stueck