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The korean war 101: causes, course, and conclusion of the conflict.

North Korea attacked South Korea on June 25, 1950, igniting the Korean War. Cold War assumptions governed the immediate reaction of US leaders, who instantly concluded that Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin had ordered the invasion as the first step in his plan for world conquest. “Communism,” President Harry S. Truman argued later in his memoirs, “was acting in Korea just as [Adolf] Hitler, [Benito] Mussolini, and the Japanese had acted ten, fifteen, and twenty years earlier.” If North Korea’s aggression went “unchallenged, the world was certain to be plunged into another world war.” This 1930s history lesson prevented Truman from recognizing that the origins of this conflict dated to at least the start of World War II, when Korea was a colony of Japan. Liberation in August 1945 led to division and a predictable war because the US and the Soviet Union would not allow the Korean people to decide their own future.

Before 1941, the US had no vital interests in Korea and was largely indifferent to its fate.

Before 1941, the US had no vital interests in Korea and was largely in- different to its fate. But after Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his advisors acknowledged at once the importance of this strategic peninsula for peace in Asia, advocating a postwar trusteeship to achieve Korea’s independence. Late in 1943, Roosevelt joined British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek in signing the Cairo Declaration, stating that the Allies “are determined that in due course Korea shall become free and independent.” At the Yalta Conference in early 1945, Stalin endorsed a four-power trusteeship in Korea. When Harry S. Truman became president after Roosevelt’s death in April 1945, however, Soviet expansion in Eastern Europe had begun to alarm US leaders. An atomic attack on Japan, Truman thought, would preempt Soviet entry into the Pacific War and allow unilateral American occupation of Korea. His gamble failed. On August 8, Stalin declared war on Japan and sent the Red Army into Korea. Only Stalin’s acceptance of Truman’s eleventh-hour proposal to divide the peninsula into So- viet and American zones of military occupation at the thirty-eighth parallel saved Korea from unification under Communist rule.

Deterioration of Soviet-American relations in Europe meant that neither side was willing to acquiesce in any agreement in Korea that might strengthen its adversary.

US military occupation of southern Korea began on September 8, 1945. With very little preparation, Washing- ton redeployed the XXIV Corps under the command of Lieutenant General John R. Hodge from Okinawa to Korea. US occupation officials, ignorant of Korea’s history and culture, quickly had trouble maintaining order because al- most all Koreans wanted immediate in- dependence. It did not help that they followed the Japanese model in establishing an authoritarian US military government. Also, American occupation officials relied on wealthy land- lords and businessmen who could speak English for advice. Many of these citizens were former Japanese collaborators and had little interest in ordinary Koreans’ reform demands. Meanwhile, Soviet military forces in northern Korea, after initial acts of rape, looting, and petty crime, implemented policies to win popular support. Working with local people’s committees and indigenous Communists, Soviet officials enacted sweeping political, social, and economic changes. They also expropriated and punished landlords and collaborators, who fled southward and added to rising distress in the US zone. Simultaneously, the Soviets ignored US requests to coordinate occupation policies and allow free traffic across the parallel.

Deterioration of Soviet-American relations in Europe meant that neither side was willing to acquiesce in any agreement in Korea that might strengthen its adversary. This became clear when the US and the Soviet Union tried to implement a revived trusteeship plan after the Moscow Conference in December 1945. Eighteen months of intermittent bilateral negotiations in Korea failed to reach agreement on a representative group of Koreans to form a provisional government, primarily because Moscow refused to consult with anti-Communist politicians opposed to trustee- ship. Meanwhile, political instability and economic deterioration in southern Korea persisted, causing Hodge to urge withdrawal. Postwar US demobilization that brought steady reductions in defense spending fueled pressure for disengagement. In September 1947, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) added weight to the withdrawal argument when they advised that Korea held no strategic significance. With Communist power growing in China, however, the Truman administration was unwilling to abandon southern Korea precipitously, fearing domestic criticism from Republicans and damage to US credibility abroad.

Seeking an answer to its dilemma, the US referred the Korean dispute to the United Nations, which passed a resolution late in 1947 calling for internationally supervised elections for a government to rule a united Korea. Truman and his advisors knew the Soviets would refuse to cooper- ate. Discarding all hope for early reunification, US policy by then had shifted to creating a separate South Korea, able to defend itself. Bowing to US pressure, the United Nations supervised and certified as valid obviously undemocratic elections in the south alone in May 1948, which resulted in formation of the Republic of Korea (ROK) in August. The Soviet Union responded in kind, sponsoring the creation of the Democratic People’s Re- public of Korea (DPRK) in September. There now were two Koreas, with President Syngman Rhee installing a repressive, dictatorial, and anti-Communist regime in the south, while wartime guerrilla leader Kim Il Sung imposed the totalitarian Stalinist model for political, economic, and social development on the north. A UN resolution then called for Soviet-American withdrawal. In December 1948, the Soviet Union, in response to the DPRK’s request, removed its forces from North Korea.

South Korea’s new government immediately faced violent opposition, climaxing in October 1948 with the Yosu-Sunchon Rebellion. Despite plans to leave the south by the end of 1948, Truman delayed military withdrawal until June 29, 1949. By then, he had approved National Security Council (NSC) Paper 8/2, undertaking a commitment to train, equip, and supply an ROK security force capable of maintaining internal order and deterring a DPRK attack. In spring 1949, US military advisors supervised a dramatic improvement in ROK army fighting abilities. They were so successful that militant South Korean officers began to initiate assaults northward across the thirty-eighth parallel that summer. These attacks ignited major border clashes with North Korean forces. A kind of war was already underway on the peninsula when the conventional phase of Korea’s conflict began on June 25, 1950. Fears that Rhee might initiate an offensive to achieve reunification explain why the Truman administration limited ROK military capabilities, withholding tanks, heavy artillery, and warplanes.

Pursuing qualified containment in Korea, Truman asked Congress for three-year funding of economic aid to the ROK in June 1949. To build sup- port for its approval, on January 12, 1950, Secretary of State Dean G. Ache- son’s speech to the National Press Club depicted an optimistic future for South Korea. Six months later, critics charged that his exclusion of the ROK from the US “defensive perimeter” gave the Communists a “green light” to launch an invasion. However, Soviet documents have established that Acheson’s words had almost no impact on Communist invasion planning. Moreover, by June 1950, the US policy of containment in Korea through economic means appeared to be experiencing marked success. The ROK had acted vigorously to control spiraling inflation, and Rhee’s opponents won legislative control in May elections. As important, the ROK army virtually eliminated guerrilla activities, threatening internal order in South Korea, causing the Truman administration to propose a sizeable military aid increase. Now optimistic about the ROK’s prospects for survival, Washington wanted to deter a conventional attack from the north.

Stalin worried about South Korea’s threat to North Korea’s survival. Throughout 1949, he consistently refused to approve Kim Il Sung’s persistent requests to authorize an attack on the ROK. Communist victory in China in fall 1949 pressured Stalin to show his support for a similar Korean outcome. In January 1950, he and Kim discussed plans for an invasion in Moscow, but the Soviet dictator was not ready to give final consent. How- ever, he did authorize a major expansion of the DPRK’s military capabilities. At an April meeting, Kim Il Sung persuaded Stalin that a military victory would be quick and easy because of southern guerilla support and an anticipated popular uprising against Rhee’s regime. Still fearing US military intervention, Stalin informed Kim that he could invade only if Mao Zedong approved. During May, Kim Il Sung went to Beijing to gain the consent of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Significantly, Mao also voiced concern that the Americans would defend the ROK but gave his reluctant approval as well. Kim Il Sung’s patrons had joined in approving his reckless decision for war.

On the morning of June 25, 1950, the Korean People’s Army (KPA) launched its military offensive to conquer South Korea. Rather than immediately committing ground troops, Truman’s first action was to approve referral of the matter to the UN Security Council because he hoped the ROK military could defend itself with primarily indirect US assistance. The UN Security Council’s first resolution called on North Korea to accept a cease- fire and withdraw, but the KPA continued its advance. On June 27, a second resolution requested that member nations provide support for the ROK’s defense. Two days later, Truman, still optimistic that a total commitment was avoidable, agreed in a press conference with a newsman’s description of the conflict as a “police action.” His actions reflected an existing policy that sought to block Communist expansion in Asia without using US military power, thereby avoiding increases in defense spending. But early on June 30, he reluctantly sent US ground troops to Korea after General Douglas MacArthur, US Occupation commander in Japan, advised that failure to do so meant certain Communist destruction of the ROK.

Kim Il Sung’s patrons [Stalin and Mao] had joined in approving his reckless decision for war.

On July 7, 1950, the UN Security Council created the United Nations Command (UNC) and called on Truman to appoint a UNC commander. The president immediately named MacArthur, who was required to submit periodic reports to the United Nations on war developments. The ad- ministration blocked formation of a UN committee that would have direct access to the UNC commander, instead adopting a procedure whereby MacArthur received instructions from and reported to the JCS. Fifteen members joined the US in defending the ROK, but 90 percent of forces were South Korean and American with the US providing weapons, equipment, and logistical support. Despite these American commitments, UNC forces initially suffered a string of defeats. By July 20, the KPA shattered five US battalions as it advanced one hundred miles south of Seoul, the ROK capital. Soon, UNC forces finally stopped the KPA at the Pusan Perimeter, a rectangular area in the southeast corner of the peninsula.

On September 11, 1950, Truman had approved NSC-81, a plan to cross the thirty-eighth parallel and forcibly reunify Korea

Despite the UNC’s desperate situation during July, MacArthur developed plans for a counteroffensive in coordination with an amphibious landing behind enemy lines allowing him to “compose and unite” Korea. State Department officials began to lobby for forcible reunification once the UNC assumed the offensive, arguing that the US should destroy the KPA and hold free elections for a government to rule a united Korea. The JCS had grave doubts about the wisdom of landing at the port of Inchon, twenty miles west of Seoul, because of narrow access, high tides, and sea- walls, but the September 15 operation was a spectacular success. It allowed the US Eighth Army to break out of the Pusan Perimeter and advance north to unite with the X Corps, liberating Seoul two weeks later and sending the KPA scurrying back into North Korea. A month earlier, the administration had abandoned its initial war aim of merely restoring the status quo. On September 11, 1950, Truman had approved NSC-81, a plan to cross the thirty-eighth parallel and forcibly reunify Korea.

Invading the DPRK was an incredible blunder that transformed a three-month war into one lasting three years. US leaders had realized that extension of hostilities risked Soviet or Chinese entry, and therefore, NSC- 81 included the precaution that only Korean units would move into the most northern provinces. On October 2, PRC Foreign Minister Zhou Enlai warned the Indian ambassador that China would intervene in Korea if US forces crossed the parallel, but US officials thought he was bluffing. The UNC offensive began on October 7, after UN passage of a resolution authorizing MacArthur to “ensure conditions of stability throughout Korea.” At a meeting at Wake Island on October 15, MacArthur assured Truman that China would not enter the war, but Mao already had decided to intervene after concluding that Beijing could not tolerate US challenges to its regional credibility. He also wanted to repay the DPRK for sending thou- sands of soldiers to fight in the Chinese civil war. On August 5, Mao instructed his northeastern military district commander to prepare for operations in Korea in the first ten days of September. China’s dictator then muted those associates opposing intervention.

On October 19, units of the Chinese People’s Volunteers (CPV) under the command of General Peng Dehuai crossed the Yalu River. Five days later, MacArthur ordered an offensive to China’s border with US forces in the vanguard. When the JCS questioned this violation of NSC-81, MacArthur replied that he had discussed this action with Truman on Wake Island. Having been wrong in doubting Inchon, the JCS remained silent this time. Nor did MacArthur’s superiors object when he chose to retain a divided command. Even after the first clash between UNC and CPV troops on October 26, the general remained supremely confident. One week later, the Chinese sharply attacked advancing UNC and ROK forces. In response, MacArthur ordered air strikes on Yalu bridges without seeking Washing- ton’s approval. Upon learning this, the JCS prohibited the assaults, pending Truman’s approval. MacArthur then asked that US pilots receive permission for “hot pursuit” of enemy aircraft fleeing into Manchuria. He was infuriated upon learning that the British were advancing a UN proposal to halt the UNC offensive well short of the Yalu to avert war with China, viewing the measure as appeasement.

On November 24, MacArthur launched his “Home-by-Christmas Offensive.” The next day, the CPV counterattacked en masse, sending UNC forces into a chaotic retreat southward and causing the Truman administration immediately to consider pursuing a Korean cease-fire. In several public pronouncements, MacArthur blamed setbacks not on himself but on unwise command limitations. In response, Truman approved a directive to US officials that State Department approval was required for any comments about the war. Later that month, MacArthur submitted a four- step “Plan for Victory” to defeat the Communists—a naval blockade of China’s coast, authorization to bombard military installations in Manchuria, deployment of Chiang Kai-shek Nationalist forces in Korea, and launching of an attack on mainland China from Taiwan. The JCS, despite later denials, considered implementing these actions before receiving favorable battlefield reports.

Early in 1951, Lieutenant General Matthew B. Ridgway, new commander of the US Eighth Army, halted the Communist southern advance. Soon, UNC counterattacks restored battle lines north of the thirty-eighth parallel. In March, MacArthur, frustrated by Washington’s refusal to escalate the war, issued a demand for immediate surrender to the Communists that sabotaged a planned cease-fire initiative. Truman reprimanded but did not recall the general. On April 5, House Republican Minority Leader Joseph W. Martin Jr. read MacArthur’s letter in Congress, once again criticizing the administration’s efforts to limit the war. Truman later argued that this was the “last straw.” On April 11, with the unanimous support of top advisors, the president fired MacArthur, justifying his action as a defense of the constitutional principle of civilian control over the military, but another consideration may have exerted even greater influence on Truman. The JCS had been monitoring a Communist military buildup in East Asia and thought a trusted UNC commander should have standing authority to retaliate against Soviet or Chinese escalation, including the use of nuclear weapons that they had deployed to forward Pacific bases. Truman and his advisors, as well as US allies, distrusted MacArthur, fearing that he might provoke an incident to widen the war.

MacArthur’s recall ignited a firestorm of public criticism against both Truman and the war. The general returned to tickertape parades and, on April 19, 1951, he delivered a televised address before a joint session of Congress, defending his actions and making this now-famous assertion: “In war there is no substitute for victory.” During Senate joint committee hearings on his firing in May, MacArthur denied that he was guilty of in- subordination. General Omar N. Bradley, the JCS chair, made the administration’s case, arguing that enacting MacArthur’s proposals would lead to “the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy.” Meanwhile, in April, the Communists launched the first of two major offensives in a final effort to force the UNC off the peninsula. When May ended, the CPV and KPA had suffered huge losses, and a UNC counteroffensive then restored the front north of the parallel, persuading Beijing and Pyongyang, as was already the case in Washington, that pursuit of a cease-fire was necessary. The belligerents agreed to open truce negotiations on July 10 at Kaesong, a neutral site that the Communists deceitfully occupied on the eve of the first session.

North Korea and China created an acrimonious atmosphere with at- tempts at the outset to score propaganda points, but the UNC raised the first major roadblock with its proposal for a demilitarized zone extending deep into North Korea. More important, after the talks moved to Panmunjom in October, there was rapid progress in resolving almost all is- sues, including establishment of a demilitarized zone along the battle lines, truce enforcement inspection procedures, and a postwar political conference to discuss withdrawal of foreign troops and reunification. An armistice could have been concluded ten months after talks began had the negotiators not deadlocked over the disposition of prisoners of war (POWs). Rejecting the UNC proposal for non-forcible repatriation, the Communists demanded adherence to the Geneva Convention that required return of all POWs. Beijing and Pyongyang were guilty of hypocrisy regarding this matter because they were subjecting UNC prisoners to unspeakable mistreatment and indoctrination.

On April 11, with the unanimous support of top advisors, the presi- dent fired MacArthur.

Truman ordered that the UNC delegation assume an inflexible stand against returning Communist prisoners to China and North Korea against their will. “We will not buy an armistice,” he insisted, “by turning over human beings for slaughter or slavery.” Although Truman unquestionably believed in the moral rightness of his position, he was not unaware of the propaganda value derived from Communist prisoners defecting to the “free world.” His advisors, however, withheld evidence from him that contradicted this assessment. A vast majority of North Korean POWs were actually South Koreans who either joined voluntarily or were impressed into the KPA. Thousands of Chinese POWs were Nationalist soldiers trapped in China at the end of the civil war, who now had the chance to escape to Taiwan. Chinese Nationalist guards at UNC POW camps used terrorist “re-education” tactics to compel prisoners to refuse repatriation; resisters risked beatings or death, and repatriates were even tattooed with anti- Communist slogans.

In November 1952, angry Americans elected Dwight D. Eisenhower president, in large part because they expected him to end what had be- come the very unpopular “Mr. Truman’s War.” Fulfilling a campaign pledge, the former general visited Korea early in December, concluding that further ground attacks would be futile. Simultaneously, the UN General Assembly called for a neutral commission to resolve the dispute over POW repatriation. Instead of embracing the plan, Eisenhower, after taking office in January 1953, seriously considered threatening a nuclear attack on China to force a settlement. Signaling his new resolve, Eisenhower announced on February 2 that he was ordering removal of the US Seventh Fleet from the Taiwan Strait, implying endorsement for a Nationalist assault on the mainland. What influenced China more was the devastating impact of the war. By summer 1952, the PRC faced huge domestic economic problems and likely decided to make peace once Truman left office. Major food shortages and physical devastation persuaded Pyongyang to favor an armistice even earlier.

An armistice ended fighting in Korea on July 27, 1953.

Early in 1953, China and North Korea were prepared to resume the truce negotiations, but the Communists preferred that the Americans make the first move. That came on February 22 when the UNC, repeating a Red Cross proposal, suggested exchanging sick and wounded prisoners. At this key moment, Stalin died on March 5. Rather than dissuading the PRC and the DPRK as Stalin had done, his successors encouraged them to act on their desire for peace. On March 28, the Communist side accepted the UNC proposal. Two days later, Zhou Enlai publicly proposed transfer of prisoners rejecting repatriation to a neutral state. On April 20, Operation Little Switch, the exchange of sick and wounded prisoners, began, and six days later, negotiations resumed at Panmunjom. Sharp disagreement followed over the final details of the truce agreement. Eisenhower insisted later that the PRC accepted US terms after Secretary of State John Foster Dulles informed India’s prime minister in May that without progress toward a truce, the US would terminate the existing limitations on its conduct of the war. No documentary evidence has of yet surfaced to support his assertion.

Also, by early 1953, both Washington and Beijing clearly wanted an armistice, having tired of the economic burdens, military losses, political and military constraints, worries about an expanded war, and pressure from allies and the world community to end the stalemated conflict. A steady stream of wartime issues threatened to inflict irrevocable damage on US relations with its allies in Western Europe and nonaligned members of the United Nations. Indeed, in May 1953, US bombing of North Korea’s dams and irrigation system ignited an outburst of world criticism. Later that month and early in June, the CPV staged powerful attacks against ROK defensive positions. Far from being intimidated, Beijing thus displayed its continuing resolve, using military means to persuade its adversary to make concessions on the final terms. Before the belligerents could sign the agreement, Rhee tried to torpedo the impending truce when he released 27,000 North Korean POWs. Eisenhower bought Rhee’s acceptance of a cease-fire with pledges of financial aid and a mutual security pact.

An armistice ended fighting in Korea on July 27, 1953. Since then, Koreans have seen the war as the second-greatest tragedy in their recent history after Japanese colonial rule. Not only did it cause devastation and three million deaths, it also confirmed the division of a homogeneous society after thirteen centuries of unity, while permanently separating millions of families. Meanwhile, US wartime spending jump-started Japan’s economy, which led to its emergence as a global power. Koreans instead had to endure the living tragedy of yearning for reunification, as diplomatic tension and military clashes along the demilitarized zone continued into the twenty-first century.

Korea’s war also dramatically reshaped world affairs. In response, US leaders vastly increased defense spending, strengthened the North Atlantic Treaty Organization militarily, and pressed for rearming West Germany. In Asia, the conflict saved Chiang’s regime on Taiwan, while making South Korea a long-term client of the US. US relations with China were poisoned for twenty years, especially after Washington persuaded the United Nations to condemn the PRC for aggression in Korea. Ironically, the war helped Mao’s regime consolidate its control in China, while elevating its regional prestige. In response, US leaders, acting on what they saw as Korea’s primary lesson, relied on military means to meet the challenge, with disastrous results in Việt Nam.

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SUGGESTED RESOURCES

Kaufman, Burton I. The Korean Conflict . Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1999.

“Korea: Lessons of the Forgotten War.” YouTube video, 2:20, posted by KRT Productions Inc., 2000. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi31OoQfD7U.

Lee, Steven Hugh. The Korean War. New York: Longman, 2001.

Matray, James I. “Korea’s War at Sixty: A Survey of the Literature.” Cold War History 11, no. 1 (February 2011): 99–129.

US Department of Defense. Korea 1950–1953, accessed July 9, 2012, http://koreanwar.defense.gov/index.html.

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The Korean War and the Battle of Chosin Reservoir

Written by: Bill of Rights Institute

By the end of this section, you will:.

• Explain the continuities and changes in Cold War policies from 1945 to 1980

Suggested Sequencing

Use this narrative with the Truman Intervenes in Korea Decision Point, the Truman Fires General Douglas MacArthur Decision Point, and the Harry S. Truman, “Truman Doctrine” Address, March 1947 Primary Source to have students analyze the United States’ involvement in the conflict.

On June 25, 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea and rapidly swept through the nation until it controlled all but a small perimeter around Pusan at the southern tip of the Korean Peninsula. President Harry Truman was concerned about containing Soviet expansion because of the Russian explosion of an atomic bomb and the fall of China to communism the year before. He secured an authorization of force from the United Nations rather than Congress because he considered his planned intervention in South Korea to be a “police action.” General Douglas MacArthur was named supreme commander of a U.N. coalition of forces led by the United States as the nation went to war.

The U.N. armies counterattacked the North Koreans and gained back much of the territory belonging to the South. On September 15, 1950, the First Marine Division under General Oliver Prince Smith made an amphibious landing at Inchon behind enemy lines and quickly took control of Seoul, the capital of South Korea, with the X Corps of the U.S. Army. Not satisfied with regaining South Korea, General MacArthur secured support from the U.N. and the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, and permission from President Truman to send American and allied troops past the 38th parallel and into North Korea.

On October 5, Chinese Foreign Minister Chou En-lai warned that if U.N. troops crossed the 38th Parallel into North Korea, China would intervene in the war. MacArthur shrugged off the warning, and U.N. forces took the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, two weeks later. MacArthur then sent his forces farther north in several columns toward the Yalu River, on the border with China.

The map shows the northern advance of U.N. forces past the 38th Parallel toward the Chinese border.

The plan was for the First Marine Division to push its way to the objective of the Yalu along the northeastern part of the peninsula, through the forbidding Taebaek Mountains and supported by the 1st Marine Air Wing and the 11th Artillery. MacArthur described the area as a “merciless wasteland . . . locked in a silent death grip of snow and ice.”

The Marines and Army troops sailed to Wonsan in North Korea, where they disembarked 100 miles north of the 38th parallel. General Smith opposed the plan to march through the Taebaeks because of the arctic temperatures, narrow roads vulnerable to ambush, and thin supply lines likely to be cut. He was also concerned about Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and military reports of contact with the Chinese, but MacArthur was unworried and urged the Marines forward.

From October 19 to 25, approximately 300,000 battle-hardened Chinese troops who had fought in the Chinese Civil War crossed the Yalu. The Chinese Ninth Army Group, 120,000 soldiers strong, swarmed into the Taebaeks. They camouflaged their movements by traveling at night and covering themselves with white sheets in the snow. The Chinese planned to use their numbers to overwhelm the Marines, who had superior firepower.

General Song Shilun, center, was the commander of the Chinese Ninth Army Group at Chosin, Korea, in 1950.

Just before midnight on November 2, the Chinese attacked the 3,000 Marines of the 7th Regiment under Colonel Homer Litzenberg at the village of Sudong, on the road to Hagaru-ri. The Chinese forces surged in human waves that were annihilated by Marine machine guns, rifles, and mortars. The Marines killed almost 1,000 Chinese and lost only 61 of their own. The enemy disappeared after the probing attack, having gained valuable information about the Marines’ capabilities as well as about U.S. and South Korean armies elsewhere in the area.

General Smith selected Hagaru-ri village as a forward base on the southeastern tip of the Chosin Reservoir. He ordered the artillery to deploy their batteries and the engineers to build an airstrip and supply depot. Smith sent Marines to cover East Hill, the heights overlooking the village. Marine infantrymen of the 7th Regiment Easy Company marched 14 miles to the northwest, to Hill 1282, which had a commanding view of the village of Yudam-ni. Fox Company was given the critical job of occupying a hill next to Toktong Pass, the only road linking Hagaru-ri to Yudam-ni, so their fellow Marines could be supplied and would not be cut off. They arrived on November 27 and immediately started digging in, despite biting temperatures of ?25°F with strong winds.

The Fox Company Marines deployed in a horseshoe formation around the perimeter of the hill, anchored to a high embankment in the road. The front units laid out foxholes in a standard formation of two foxholes with one behind. Half the Marines went to sleep in heavy sleeping bags while the other half kept watch. They could not light fires because they had to hide their positions.

At 2:00 a.m., a large formation of Chinese in white uniforms attacked. They blew whistles and bugles and clanged cymbals, relying on sheer numbers rather than surprise. Soon, grenade explosions and machine-gun and rifle fire added to the deafening noise. There were so many Chinese that the Americans did not even aim their weapons. Within minutes, their American front-line positions were overrun and dozens were dead or wounded. Still, they fought back tenaciously.

Privates Hector Cafferata and Ken Benson were in a foxhole together when a grenade landed right on top of them. Benson grabbed it and it exploded in his face, temporarily blinding him. Cafferata fired a machine gun or rifle while Benson reloaded ammunition into empty weapons. Cafferata threw grenades as well and swung his shovel like a baseball bat to knock enemy grenades back down the hill. He was about to throw another one when it exploded in his hand and shredded his fingers. Nevertheless, he kept firing the weapons that Benson handed him. Captain William Barber rallied his troops at the top of the hill and moved among his men under fire to bolster their courage throughout the night.

The story was much the same on Hill 1282 at Yudam-ni, where Easy Company was under heavy attack all night and almost lost the hill until they counterattacked and gained a brief respite. They suffered significant casualties. East Hill on Hagaru-ri was beleaguered as well and barely held. U.S. Army units to the east of the reservoir and South Korean forces farther east were also hit hard during the first night. Chinese casualties totaled nearly 10,000 from these battles the first day.

As the sun rose over the rugged landscape, the exhausted Marines on Fox Hill counted 24 dead, 50 wounded, and three missing, cutting their effective strength by one-third. Captain Barber counted more than 450 enemy dead strewn all over the hill, with almost 100 in front of Cafferata and Benson’s foxhole. The extreme cold had clotted the bleeding from most of their wounds, but it also caused numerous cases of frostbite among the Marines. The soldiers helped the wounded and ate cold rations. Their spirits were lifted by support from airstrikes by Marine Corsairs and artillery barrages. In addition, cargo planes began dropping bundles of medical supplies, food, ammunition, radio batteries, and blankets.

The wounded from the battle at Fox Hill in Korea, 1950, were evacuated by plane to be helped elsewhere.

The Chinese, however, launched massive attacks during the next few nights. As the fighting grew desperate, dozens of wounded Marines in field hospitals gritted their teeth, grabbed a weapon, and straggled back to the fighting. One partially paralyzed man with his spine exposed from a gunshot wound tried to get up and fight but was stopped by a corpsman. Because the Marine Corps abided by the slogan, “Every Marine a rifleman,” cooks, mechanics, and drivers picked up weapons and entered the fray on the various hills.

This map shows the deployment of U.S. and Communist forces in the battle around the Chosin Reservoir in 1950. (credit: “Battle of the Changjin (Chosin) Reservoir” by Bill of Rights Institute/Flickr, CC BY 4.0)

By the morning of November 29, the Chinese had won control of East Hill and threatened Smith’s camp and airfield. As a result, Colonel Lewis “Chesty” Puller, commanding the First Regiment to the south at Koto-Ri, moved ahead toward Hagaru-ri with some British Royal Marines. The Chinese assaulted the allied relief column and knocked out vehicles on the narrow road, causing a deadly traffic jam. They killed more than 300 allies and took a few dozen survivors prisoner. The men in the rear could not get through and returned. About 400 men in the lead made it to the destination and successfully drove the Chinese from East Hill. They repulsed an attack that night and killed 1,500 Chinese soldiers. As a result of their valiant efforts, the airstrip was completed on December 1 and formed a vital link to the outside world, with cargo planes bringing in reinforcements and supplies and carrying out the wounded.

On December 3, the severely depleted companies of Marines at Yudam-ni sneaked their way back to Fox Hill led by Chinese-American Lieutenant Kurt Chew-Een Lee and helped relieve Fox Company. They subsequently became known as the “Ridgerunners.” Marine aircraft and artillery helped open the Toktong Pass as approximately 2,000 wounded Marines walked or were carried back to Hagaru-ri. As dusk settled, the bloody, ragged, unshaven, and unwashed Marines in tattered clothing marched into the base. One lieutenant colonel shouted to the men, “You people will now shape up and look sharp. We’re going in like United States Marines.” Everyone in the base stopped what they were doing and silently watched the proud men marching in perfect unison singing the Marines’ Hymn. The Army soldiers from east of the reservoir had been decimated and struggled back in smaller groups.

When asked about the retreat, General Smith retorted, “Retreat, hell! We’re just attacking in a different direction.” The entire division prepared to fight its way back to the coast, using airpower and artillery to pummel the Chinese, who had dug in around the main road and the bridge at Funchilin Pass, which they had blasted to prevent the American withdrawal. Marine engineers fixed the bridge, and the First Marine Division marched or rode back to the port of Hungnam to their transports for evacuation, especially for the wounded. Army General Ned Almond facilitated the humanitarian evacuation of 100,000 North Koreans to the south.

Pictured is a U.S. Army patrol moving from Chinhung-ni into Funchilin Pass on December 9, 1950.

The Marines suffered 750 dead and 3,000 wounded as they fought against the Chinese and caused more than 42,000 enemy casualties, costing the Chinese Ninth Army Group two divisions and effectively rendering it ineffective as a fighting force. The Chinese and North Koreans later drove the U.N. forces back down to the 38th parallel, where the war remained at a stalemate until peace was made in 1953. After World War II, some U.S. policy makers had wondered whether the Marines were necessary, but the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir changed their minds. Korea was one of the main battlegrounds of the early Cold War.

Review Questions

1. President Harry Truman was able to get approval for military action against the North Korean invasion of South Korea through the

• U.S. Senate
• U.S. Congress
• U.N. Security Council
• Southeast Asia Treaty Organization

2. The supreme commander of allied forces in South Korea was

• President Harry Truman
• General Douglas MacArthur
• General Oliver Prince Smith
• Homer Litzenberg

3. Which of the following battles has been labeled an ingenious military move by the American and allied forces that turned the tide of the Korean War?

4. Which nation issued a warning to American troops that it would expand the war if they were to cross the 38th parallel into North Korea?

• The Soviet Union
• North Korea

5. The main advantage the Chinese had over the American and British troops in the battles in northern Korea was

• superior weapons
• superior numbers
• better knowledge of the terrain
• the threat of atomic weapons

6. The result of the Korean War is best described as

• a victory for the North Koreans
• a victory for the United Nations troops
• a stalemate, because the resulting border was similar to that before the war
• worldwide compassion for the North Korean people

Free Response Questions

• Explain how the Korean War was part of the American policy of containment.
• Explain how the Chinese were able to push the United Nations troops back from the Yalu River.

AP Practice Questions

“The Security Council, Having determined that the armed attack upon the Republic of Korea by forces from North Korea constitutes a breach of peace, Having called for an immediate cessation of hostilities, Having called upon the authorities in North Korea to withdraw forthwith their armed forces to the 38th parallel, Having noted from the report of the United Nations Commission on Korea that the authorities in North Korea have neither ceased hostilities nor withdrawn their armed forces to the 38th parallel, and that urgent military measures are required to restore international peace and security, Having noted the appeal from the Republic of Korea to the United Nations for immediate and effective steps to peace and security, Recommends that the Members of the United Nations furnish such assistance to the Republic of Korea as be necessary to repel the armed attack and to restore international peace and security in the area.”

United Nations Resolution 83, June 27, 1950

1. The sentiments expressed in this excerpt reflect a continuation of the policy of

• collective security
• human rights
• containment
• massive retaliation

2. The context surrounding the events described in the resolution was the

• end of World War II
• need for military alliances
• ending of the American blockade in east Asia

3. A similar circumstance in which America prevented a takeover by a communist government was the

• American occupation of Japan
• Normandy invasion
• Liberation of Manila in 1898
• Berlin Airlift

Primary Sources

“Chosin Reservoir, Korea. November-December 1950.” http://www.chosinreservoir.com/

Suggested Resources

Brands, H. W. The General Versus the President: MacArthur and Truman at the Brink of Nuclear War. New York: Doubleday, 2016.

Cleaver, Thomas McKelvey. The Frozen Chosen: The 1st Marine Division and the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir. Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2016.

Drury, Bob, and Tom Clavin. The Last Stand of Fox Company: A True Story of U.S. Marines in Combat. New York: Atlantic, 2009.

Halberstam, David. The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War . New York: Hyperion, 2007.

Hastings, Max. The Korean War . New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987.

Russ, Martin. Breakout: The Chosin Reservoir Campaign, Korean 1950 . New York: Penguin, 1999.

Sides, Hampton. On Desperate Ground: The Marines and the Reservoir, the Korean War’s Great Battle. New York: Doubleday, 2018.

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The Korean War in History and Historiography

This article reviews the 2014 book co-edited by Donald W. Boose, Jr. and James I. Matray, The Ashgate Research Companion to the Korean War. The essay evaluates the book in relation to the historiography of the Korean conflict, outlines areas where future research needs to be carried out, reflects on methodological issues related to the field of military history, and, with reference to Michael Hunt and Steven Levine's book, Arc of Empire, discusses the Korean War as part of broader histories of empire.

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Laurent Quisefit

This article is a synthesis about Korean War, recent researches about this tremenduous conflict, and France. It was published in 2010 in Les Chemins de la Mémoire, a french government historical review dévoted to preservation of Memory. The English version is available at; http://www.cheminsdememoire.gouv.fr/en/korean-war-sixty-years-history-and-remembrance

Leighanne K Yuh

The American treatment of Korean history has undergone dramatic changes, beginning with the dispatch of Protestant missionaries in the 1870’s, through the Cold War, and up to today. Over the past 130-plus years, American historians of Korea have emphasized the complex interplay and influence of nationalism, modernization, and ideology in Korean historiography. Until very recently, histories of Korea produced in the United States sought largely to frame events on the peninsula as manifestations of larger global themes and trends. Unlike Korean historians in Korea, U.S. historians of Korea have been reluctant to frame their accounts as descriptive of a unique or extra-special narrative of Korean-ness. This is understandable; but, at the same time, it is worth considering whether U.S. historians of Korea may have something to learn from their Korean counterparts today. This paper will provide an overview of the historiography of Korea in the United States, past and present, and offer suggestions for the next era of Korean historical studies. As the intent is to provide a brief “overview,” this paper will discuss a handful of English-language histories of Korea that are well-known examples of U.S. historiography at different points in time.

Journal of Korean Studies

Hyung-Gu Lynn

Dong-Choon Kim

South Korea's past-dealing movements that I have personally involved

Priscilla Roberts

Overview of findings of recent scholarship on the Korean War, especially the new revelations from former Soviet, East European, and Chinese archives and sources.

Review of _Korea’s Grievous War_ by Su-kyoung Hwang. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.

Given the extent to which the decade figures into contemporary historical analyses as a unit of periodization, focusing on a given ten-year span hardly seems argumentative in itself. Yet, that is precisely the case with regard to the temporal framing of “Warfare and the Re-making of Korea in the 1950s,” the recent forum in a special double-issue of the Journal of American-East Asian Relations co-edited by Steven Hugh Lee and Janice C.H. Kim. In Korean War historiography, the dogged recurrence of a long-standing debate over the war’s origins has meant that interpretations of the war most often build upon an exploration of its causes and precursors in the late 1940s or earlier. For this volume to focus instead on the ‘1950s’ therefore sets aside the war-origins debate and instead brings attention to the impact of the Korean War’s period of major military hostilities (1950-1953) from a perspective that carries the analysis forward to the war’s understudied aftermath, including post-armistice reconstruction and social rehabilitation. https://issforum.org/reviews/PDF/AR855-5.pdf

theme Issue of the Journal of American East Asian Relations 2017 co-edited by Janice Kim and Steven Lee

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The Significance of the Korean War Research Paper

Introduction, events leading up to the korean war, impacts of the war.

Bibliography

One of the major results of the Second World War was the emergence of two world super powers; the United States of America and the Soviet Union. These two powers appeared to be pitted against each other from an ideological point of view resulting in high polarization. The United States favored communism while the Soviet Union was pro communism and aimed to spread this ideology to its spheres of influence.

The Soviet Union was keen on spreading communism while the United States was equally keen on advancing capitalism or at least curbing the spread of communism. One of the fronts on which this ideological war was fought was along the North and South Korea since North Korea was a communism sphere of influence while the south was a capitalism sphere.

However, this ideological war escalated into a fully fledged military operation making it the first major war after the Second World War. Historians agree that the Korean War had a strong influence on US policy and the international history. Bearing the huge significance of the Korean War, this paper shall conduct a concise yet informative research on the impacts of the Korean War on the US.

The Korean peninsula prior to the end of the Second World War was under the control of the Japanese. Following the defeat of the Japanese and the subsequent end of World War II in 1945, the Korean Peninsula had an opportunity to regain its full sovereignty. However, this was not to be the case.

Henneka documents that this “liberation” of the Korean Peninsula was started by the Soviet troops from the north which the American troops advanced from the South [1] . The two liberators, The US and the Soviets agreed to demarcate the Korean Peninsula at the thirty-eighth parallel line.

This demarcation was meant to be a temporal one but over time, the Korean Peninsula became a front for the rivalry between the two world powers with the North being a Soviet sphere of influence and the South being an American sphere of influence. The political influence of the two rivals (Soviets and the US) on the Korean society was monumental and Henneka states that “the two Koreas started their new life in dependence of their military and political protectors; the US and the Soviet Union” [2] .

The war was sparked by the North Korea who invaded the South in 1950 with the sole goal of reunifying the two Koreas by force. Following the defeat of the Japanese, the US had taken up control of the political and administrational structures of South Korea therefore assuming the role of the hated Japanese Imperialists.

The North therefore viewed the US as an imperialist taking over from Japan and the invasion was meant to liberate the South. The Korean War was devastating to both the North and the South and it is deemed to be one of the world’s most destructive wars in terms of the proportion of the population that was affected.

Hang Shin documents that the war resulted in the decline of the South Korean population by approximately 2million and the creation of over half a million refugees [3] . The War ended in a stalemate with the North being a communist state and the South being a capital state under the protection of the US. However, the war which lasted from 1950 to 1953 had huge significances to the United States.

A major impact of the war was the radical change of the United States’ perception of the communist threat. Before the war, officials in the US held mixed feelings about the Soviet Union and while some perceived them as a real danger, the Soviets were seen as weak and incapable of carrying out war.

Following the Korean War, Jervis records that the US now viewed communism as a force that was not only willing but also intent on attacking free nations so as to expand their influence [4] . The Korean War was seen as direct evidence that communism was willing to resort to armed aggression whenever it perceived that it could win the war.

The Korean War resulted in a monumental increase of the US defense budget. These increases could not have been possible without the new policies that came about as a result of the Korean conflict.

Before the Korean way, the US government faced budgetary restrictions that prevented it from enhancing its defense or even offering foreign assistance on the high levels that it wanted to. As a result of the Korean War, there was large public support for a stronger military since the communist threat was more real to the Americans and they were therefore willing to be taxed more to fund the military [5] .

Daggett when talking about the costs of the Korean War for the United States notes that the US engaged in a large buildup of forces not just for the Korean war but in readiness for deployment elsewhere in the world should the need arise [6] .

Before the Korean War, the US was involved in helping the war-torn European nations rebuild themselves through the European Recovery Program (commonly known as the Marshall plan) which began in 1948-1951. This plan which is still hailed as the most successful aid plan ever implemented by the US was mostly aimed at economic recovery of the European nations.

However, this plan also touched on security issues by establishing a military alliance in the form of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Trachtenberg notes that NATO was not militarized and it was hugely a symbol of the long-term American commitment to Europe and it aimed towards a greater degree of military integration [7] .

The Korean War resulted in the militarization of NATO since the US saw the need to have a strong conventional defense force capable of countering the communist threat in Europe. Following the Korean War, the US was also keen to develop a large NATO army whose troops would come from the US and great contributions from Britain, France and German. The rearmament of Germany (which had been disarmed following the end of the Second World War) was also precipitated by the Korean War.

Before the Korean War, there was fear that any war between the West and the Communism forces would result in a Third World War. This was a scenario that was viewed as hugely undesirable and for this reason, the US went into great troubles to ensure that diplomatic means were used to quell disputes between capitalism and communism before they erupted into full scale wars.

Prior to the Korean War, the US had held the assumption that war in any part of the world against communism would be unrestrained. The Korean War showed that it was possible to take part in limited wars where the dispute was limited to conventional forces at a particular geographical position [8] .

The Korean War proved that the idea of limited war could be realized without posing a threat to the world. The US was from then on more willing to engage in limited wars as is demonstrated from the Vietnam Wars.

The Korean War also resulted in deterioration in Chinese-American relationships. While the relationship between the US and China were bad even before the war, China’s entry into the Korean War in support of North Korea and her Russian allies reinforced the notion to the US that China was a hostile nation. Jervis notes that while China joined the war as a result of its own personal interests in protecting itself from the perceived aggression by the United Nations forces, the US saw China as acting under the instructions of the Soviet Union [9] .

The war therefore resulted in the change of China policy since now China was seen to be on the same side as the Soviet Union. The Chinese entity in the war therefore resulted in a solidification of the perception of a Sino-Soviet bloc.

The US henceforth sought to strengthen her allies in the region (South Korea and Japan) by stationing military bases in the region as well as funding military spending for the countries so as to counter the perceived threat. In addition to this, the US became visibly anti-Chinese following the Korean War since China had in the eyes of the US proven herself to be an enemy.

Another impact of the Korean War is that it resulted in the profound change of US policy by globalizing the U.S. commitment. The war led to the adoption of a belief by the US that any communist victory would greatly threaten vital American interests. The US role in Indochina where the US offered economic and military aid was as a direct result of the policy changes that resulted from the Korean War.

Jervis states that following the Korean War, the US worked under the assumption that “the whole of Southeast Asia is in danger of falling under Communist domination” [10] . While prior to the Korean War the US would have been reluctant to commit her troops and resources to reverse such a situation, the Korean War led to the preference of military intervention by the US to prevent a communist victory.

Another impact of the Korean War is that it placed North Korea as a major security risk to the Unite States. The direct attack initiated on South Korean by the North against supposed American imperialism demonstrated that North Korea was willing to undertake provocative actions against the US. This is a stance that is still held to the present day where the acquisition of nuclear warheads by the North is a major concern for the US which views Pyongyang as being willing to perpetrate acts of war from a historical view [11] .

The Korean War enhanced the commitment of the US to the containment policy. The containment policy was proposed by United States diplomat George Kennan and it was primarily a policy designed to curb Soviet expansionism that seemed eminent following the end of the Second World War [12] .

The containment policy was deemed necessary in light of the increasing influence of communism ideology in Eastern Europe and parts of Asia. In the cause of the Korean War, the US was tempted to endorse the rollback policy which would in essence have seen the destruction of North Koreas government and a take over by the US led UN forces.

The failure of this policy during the Korean War resulted in the US reverting back to the containment policy which was summed up by the Truman Doctrine in which the US pledged to “support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures” [13] .

This containment policy was hugely successful in that it kept Soviet aggression at Bay. Kang authoritatively states that the relative peace and stability on the Korean peninsula even in the face of predictions of war by many scholars has been proof that deterrence works [14] .

This paper set out to examine one of the major wars in which the US was involved in; the Korean War or 1950. The paper has proceeded to highlight the events that led to the way and gone on to examine the various impacts that the Korean War had on the United States. The consequences that the war had on US policy as well as her relationship with other countries have been articulated.

From this paper, it is clear that the Korean War had immense impacts on the United States. It is this war more than any other single factor that resulted in the significant increase in the United State’s military spending. In addition to this, the war led to the globalization of the United States commitments as it viewed any local conflict as a test of strength between itself and the Soviet Union.

Daggett, Stephen. “Costs of Major U.S. Wars”. Congressional Research Service. 2010.

Eui Hang Shin. “Effects of the Korean War on Social Structures of the Republic of Korea”. International Journal of Korean Studies, 2001.

Henneka, Andreas. “Reflections on Korean History and its Impacts on the US-North Korean Conflict”. Journal on Science and World Affairs, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2006 19-27.

Jervis, Robert. The Impact of the Korean War on the Cold War. The Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Dec., 1980), pp. 563-592

Kang, David. International Relations Theory and the Second Korean War. International Studies Quarterly (2003) 47, 301–324

• Richard Abrams, “America Transformed: Sixty Years of Revolutionary Change, 1941-2001.” (Cambridge University Press, 2006), 69.

Trachtenberg, Marc. “A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement 1945-1963”. Princeton University Press, 1999.

Watson, Cynthia. “U.S. National Security: a Reference Handbook.” ABC-CLIO, 2002.

• Andreas Henneka, “Reflections on Korean history and its impacts on the US-North Korean conflict” (Journal on Science and World Affairs, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2006), 21.
• Andreas, 22.
• Eui Hang Shin, “Effects of the Korean War on Social Structures of the Republic of Korea”, (International Journal of Korean Studies, 2001), 133.
• Robert Jervis, “The Impact of the Korean War on the Cold War” (The Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 24, No. 4 Dec., 1980), 579.
• Jervis, 580.
• Stephen Daggett, “Costs of Major U.S. Wars” (Congressional Research Service, 2010), 4.
• Marc Trachtenberg, “A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement 1945-1963” (Princeton University Press, 1999), 120.
• Jervis, 581.
• Jervis, 583.
• Jervis, 587.
• David Kang, “International Relations Theory and the Second Korean War”, (International Studies Quarterly, 2003), 302.
• Cynthia Watson, “U.S. National Security: a Reference Handbook” (ABC-CLIO, 2002), 44
• David, 302.
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2019, October 28). The Significance of the Korean War. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-significance-of-the-korean-war/

"The Significance of the Korean War." IvyPanda , 28 Oct. 2019, ivypanda.com/essays/the-significance-of-the-korean-war/.

IvyPanda . (2019) 'The Significance of the Korean War'. 28 October.

IvyPanda . 2019. "The Significance of the Korean War." October 28, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-significance-of-the-korean-war/.

1. IvyPanda . "The Significance of the Korean War." October 28, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-significance-of-the-korean-war/.

IvyPanda . "The Significance of the Korean War." October 28, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-significance-of-the-korean-war/.

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409+ documents containing “korean war” .

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Korean war korea won independence.

The Republicans rallied behind MacArthur who did not stifle his view that America should attack enemy bases in China, even at the risk of a wider war. Truman was incensed. The battle in Washington was soon drawing bigger headlines than the battle in Korea. (Ibid) Many theorists in the 1950's saw the Chinese involvement as being part of an overall communist plot to dominate the world. They saw little distinction between Chinese and Russian involvement in the Korean War but rather saw the war as a combined effort at communist dominance. In the 1950s, Western scholars, strongly influenced by the intensifying Cold War, generally viewed China's entrance into the Korean War as a reflection of a well-coordinated Communist plot of worldwide expansion, believing that the entire international Communist movement was under the control of Moscow, and that neither eijing nor Pyongyang had the freedom to make their own foreign policy decisions. The Korean….

Bibliography

The Korean War Revisited. 1998. Accessed November 20, 2004.  http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/korrev.htm 

Dongxiao Yue, Korean War FAQ. 1988. Accessed November 22, 2004.  http://www.centurychina.com/history/faq1.shtml 

Evanhoe E. Re: Korean War Causes & U.S. Involvement. The Korean War. 2001. Retrieved November 20, 2004. http://www.korean-war.com/Archives/2001/04/msg00014.html

Korean War Life as a Soldier in

Korean ar Life as a Soldier in the Korean ar Life here in Korea has been unbearable and exhausting. I enlisted prior to the outbreak of war and had been stationed in Japan on security detail. The work was easy and had not prepared me for my deployment to the front lines. As an 18-year-old private first class, I witnessed heavy fighting and the kind that seemed never to make a dent in the morale of the North Koreans. And especially with the dispatching of their Chinese allies by the thousands in the later part of this year, the task for fighting them off became and endless test of our endurance. It is also intolerably cold here in the winter. At its worst, the temperature was so cold that our guns jammed and our cannons cracked. The ground was so frozen over that we had to use grenades to make foxholes for warmth.….

Works Cited:

Baek, S. (2009). The Life During Korean War. Clark Humanities.org.

Colimore, E. (2010). Korean War Veteran From Turnersville Brings History To Life. Philadelphia Inquirer.

Ringma, B. (2011). Korean War Blog. Koreanwarmlbu.wordpress.com.

Korean War Refers to the

In order to do so, Kim built up a formidable army which was armed by the Soviets. His army was also bolstered by the arrival of veteran Korean fighters from China after the end of the Chinese civil war between the Communist and the Nationalists in which the Communists under Mao had triumphed. On the other hand, Rhee's government was relatively weak due to the communist insurgency in the south and his army had not been armed to the same level as that of North Korea by the United States. Nevertheless, Stalin did not approve of such an attack at first because he did not want a direct confrontation with the United States at that stage. After the Soviet testing of the atomic bomb in 1949, and the success of the communist revolution in China in the same year, Stalin gained more confidence. Hence, when Kim Il Sung approached him….

Works Cited

Bell, P.M.H. "The World since 1945 -- an International History" 2001. Oxford University Press Inc.: New York

Cumings, Bruce. "Korean War." Article in Encarta Encyclopedia. 2008. August 10, 2008. http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761559607/korean_war.html

Edwards, Paul M. To Acknowledge a War: The Korean War in American Memory. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000.

Kaufman, Burton I. The Korean Conflict. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1999.

Korean War After World War

The North, however, was more nationalistic in its ideas, and believed that the entire peninsula should be united based on a common language and culture. At the time, primarily because of the tremendous loss of resources from World War II, the South was unable to fight off the North completely (Stokesbury, 1990, 25-61). Based on the tense atmosphere between the United States and the Soviet Union, the Iron Curtain descending on Eastern Europe, and the Soviet push towards nuclear parity with the U.S., most of the Western governments assumed that all communistic leadership, regardless of location and nationality, were controlled either overtly or covertly by Moscow. So, when the North Korean government began its guerilla attacks against the South, the United States saw this as direct aggression from the Soviets and a desire to export communism even further. Added to this was the looming war in China, and the….

Korean War made with specific focus on what the populace went through as primarily a policy of the local alliances or the foreign influences. The paper will focus on the numerous plights of the Korean civilians including the genocides, the economic strains, the social influences and the rehabilitation concerns. The paper will also discuss the extent to which the Korean War was a Cold War or a civil war. The Korean War, which was essentially one of the many "limited wars" for forces like the United States and United Nations, ended up being a complete and destructive clash for the Koreans. What made this war particularly savage to Korean people, North and South, civilian and solder was the truth that the human and material sources of North and South Korea were utilized and exploited to the maximum. The material devastation and lack of existence in general on either side was….

Akira, K., 2010, The Unknown Korean War: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Korea and Excavation of the Remains of Mass-murdered Victims, The Asia-Pacific Journal, 18-2-10.

Armstrong, C., 2010, The Destruction and Reconstruction of North Korea, 1950-1960, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Volume 8, Issue 51 No 2.

Kwon, H., 2010, Korean War Traumas, The Asia-Pacific Journal, 38-2-10.

Lee, S., 2010, The United States, the United Nations, and the Second Occupation of Korea, 1950-1951, The Asia-Pacific Journal: Volume 8 Issue 50 No 3.

Korean War Is One of

Despite extensive assistance from the United States and the United Nations, the South Korean economy failed to rebound and it took nearly a decade before the South Korean economy began to demonstrate any significant improvement. Oddly the South Korean improvement coincided with the rise to power of Park Chung Hee (Vu). Prior to 1961, South Korea was ruled by a civilian government but a military coup occurred in 1961 which brought to power Major General Park Chung Hee. Under Park, the South Korean economy began to show improvement. Park was assassinated in 1979 and things were in turmoil in South Korea for a few short years. During such time, South Korea again attempted civilian government but it was unsuccessful. A new militarily controlled government assumed control under the leadership of General Chun Doo Hwan. The economy rebounded during Chun's tenure but he was never able to attain the popularity enjoyed….

Chang, Yunshik. "Colonization as Planned Changed: The Korean Case." Modern Asian Studies (1971): 161-186.

Cotton, James. "From Authoritarianism to Democracy in South Korea." Political Studies (1989): 244-259.

Kim, Suk Hi. "The Kaesong Inter-Korean Industrial Complex: Perspectives and Prospects." North Korean Review (2009): 81-92.

Lankov, Andrei. From Stalin to Kim II Sung: The Formation of North Korea, 1945-1960. Rutgers, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002.

What Effects Korean War Discuss Effects

Korean War Cause and Effects of the Korean War In June of 1950 armed forces of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, also known as North Korea, crossed the border and invaded the Republic of Korea, known as South Korea. This precipitated three years of war between the United States, which led the United Nation's forces supporting the South Koreans, and the North Koreans with their allies from the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union. In short it was a war between the major Communist powers and the Free World set on the Korean peninsula. Historians have debated the causes and effects of the war since it happened but almost every one can agree that the division of the Korean Peninsula after the Second World War was the first step toward war. In the wake of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the surrender of Japan left the victorious allies….

President Truman and the Korean War

Korean War is often called the quiet or forgotten war. Sandwiched in between the popular war, World War II, and an unpopular war, The Vietnam War, The Korean conflict was not the measure of hardware and military might which occurred in WWII. The Korean War was also not the political boondoggle which arose during the Vietnam era. The Korean conflict tested the wills and strategies of the world's global super powers, and how they would respond to include the newly formed United Nations in their actions. As such, the Korean Conflict tested the character of the nations involved, rather than the military might, or will to win. As such, President Truman was at the center of the crucible, and responded to the crisis with political acumen. Following the use of atomic weapons on Japan to end WWII, ussia had developed atomic weapons also. Thus as the world entered the military playground….

American Presidents: Life Portraits, CSPAN, 2004  http://www.americanpresidents.org/presidents/president.asp?PresidentNumber=32 

Berger, C. The Korea Knot: A Military-Political History Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1965

Bernstein, Barton J., Matusow, Allen J., eds., The Truman Administration: A Documentary History, Harper and Row, New York, NY, 1968

Donovan, Robert J., Nemesis: Truman and Johnson in the coils of war in Asia, St. Martin's/Marek, New York, 1984.

1950's Korean War North Korea Democratic People's

1950's Korean War, North Korea (Democratic People's epublic Korea) and South Korea (epublic Korea) Were Exploited by the Superpowers for Their Own Agendas The closing decade of the 20th century witnessed the end of the Cold War as the Soviet Union collapsed and its former Warsaw Pact allies flocked to join their former enemies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The end of the Cold War also resulted in the United States emerging as the world's only remaining superpower, but the 21st century promises to truly be the "Century of Asia" with China taking the lead. The ussian bear that played such a crucial role in the Cold War is down, but it is certainly not out and stands to play an important role as an emerging superpower in the future as well. These outcomes were the result, at least in part, of how these three countries prosecuted their respective….

Brune, Lester H. "The Korean War in World History." Korean Studies 29 (2005): 172-173.

Brune, Lester H. And Robin Higham. The Korean War: Handbook of the Literature and Research. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996.

Casey, Steven. "White House Publicity Operations during the Korean War, June 1950-June

1951." Presidential Studies Quarterly 35(4, 2005): 691-693.

Truman's Dilemma in the Korean War

President Harry S. Truman found himself entrenched in a major dilemma as the Korean ar unfolded. The consensus among most political leaders in the United States was that the Soviet Union was intending to export communism to the rest of the world. This consensus formed the basis of the American foreign policy with the goal being to contain communism at home and abroad. In Europe, this policy was characterized by the Marshall Plan but, in Asia, this policy became identified by the United States' participation in the Korean ar. Korea had been divided at the end of the Second orld ar into two halves. This division had occurred as a result of the Soviet Union having invaded Korea during the ar and the Japanese subsequently surrendering to the Soviets. The United States, fearing that the Soviet Union might try to establish a communist government on the entire peninsula moved troops into….

Griffith, Robert. "Truman and the Historians: The Reconstruction of Postwar American History." The Wisconsin Magazine of History (1975): 20-47.

Jervis, Robert. "The Impact of the Korean War on the Cold War." The Journal of Conflict Resolution (1980): 563-592.

Leffler, Melvyn P. A Preponderance of Power: National Security the Truman Administration and the Cold War. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010.

Marra, Robin F. "Foreign Policy and Presidential Popularity: Creating Windows of Opportunity in the Perpetual Election." The Journal of Conflict Resolution (1990): 588-623.

Predictions of a Second Korean War

According to international relations scholar Kang (2003) one of the greatest puzzles of the postwar world is why the conflict between communist North Korea and South Korea has not re-erupted, despite the prediction that this would occur by most scholars. The purpose of Kang’s essay is to answer how so many respected scholars were so mistaken. In one succinct and concise sentence, Kang states: “The case of North Korea provides a window with which to examine these theories of conflict initiation, and reveals how the assumptions underlying these theories can become mis-specified” (Kang, 2003, p.302). Kang argues that both the theory of how conflicts occur and the actual conditions on the ground in Korea were misunderstood. Kang also identifies novel facets of the North Korean perspective which he says have gone unnoticed by the West. “The flurry of North Korean diplomatic and economic initiatives in the past few years show that….

The Korean War and MacArthur

Psychological Traps and Intuitive Decision-Making Psychological traps can be especially dangerous when engaging in decision-making. There are a number of different psychological traps that leaders and decision makers can fall into. This paper will discuss some of these traps, explain how they affect decisions and the intuitive decision-making process, and provide two examples of how this can be seen in the “Korea 1950” case study. One type of psychological trap is the anchoring trap, which occurs when a decision maker gives disproportionate weight to the first bit of information received, allowing this tidbit of data to inform and shape his entire outlook when subsequent data would better help to explain a situation so that a more informed and rational decision could be made.[footnoteRef:2] The status-quo trap occurs when one has a bias towards maintaining a current situation even though better options exist for organizing or implementing a course of action. This trap….

Korean Conflict How Did the

On page 138 Halberstam explains that the initial American units "…thrown into battle were poorly armed, in terrible shape physically, and, more often than not, poorly led" (Halberstam, 2007, 138). The U.S. was trying to get by "…on the cheap," Halberstam explains, and it Korea "it showed immediately"; Truman wanted to keep taxes low, he wanted to try and pay off the debt from the enormous expenditures in II, and as was referenced earlier, Truman really wanted to keep military expenditures down. But what that austerity program meant was that the first troops that were being trained at Fort Lewis (prior to their orders to fight in Korea) were asked to "…use only two sheets of toilet paper each time they visited the latrine" (Halberstam, 138). Moreover, the lackluster performance by the initial troops sent into harm's way in Korea was reported back in the states and caused serious concerns.….

Halberstam, David. 2007. The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War. New York:

Kaufman, Burton I. 1983. The Korean War: Challenges in Crisis, Credibility, and Command.

Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

Korean-American Journal Entry Korean-Americans Have

My father's parents first operated a Laundromat, then a small general store. My father is now a civil engineer. School was always a priority in my household. I did not have to work in a family business like my parents, but it was always expected that I would get high marks and devote my attention to keeping at the top of my class and pursuing extracurricular activities that were valuable and enriching, including soccer and music. However, this did not mean there I had no fun as a child. I have many happy memories of my family watching my sports games and concerts and preparing traditional foods with my grandmothers. Sometimes the pressure I felt was quite intense. My parents had succeeded against all the odds and were determined that I would succeed as well. However, I felt that I needed to pursue a different path. ather than going to school….

Korean-American History. (2010). Curriculum guide: Unit 1. Retrieved August 6, 2010 at  http://apa.si.edu/Curriculum%20Guide-Final/unit1.htm 

Rusling, Matt. (2006, April 21). Comics stoke Japanese-Korean tensions. Asian Times Online.

Retrieved August 6, 2010 at http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Japan/HD21Dh01.html

Korean History The Climate and Culture of

Korean History: The Climate and Culture of Foreign Business The challenge of any cultural history undertaken to determine the foreign business fitness of a location is to make sure that there is due respect afforded the society with regard to issues that might not be seen as directly affecting the bottom line. So much of the time in the business world we are collectively focused on the ideas that surround the continued development of the global world economy, without regard for the existence of prior national issues. An easily made mistake for a researcher addressing issues of Korea from the United States would be to distill Korean history into a form that only include the interests of this country after the Korean-American ar. This account will attempt to address those issues by addressing the culture through its earliest history to its present state through modern demographics, religion, education, housing, leisure activities, climate,….

North Korean crisis starts to hurt South Korea economically." February 11, 2003. American

City Business Journals Inc. February, 11 2003 ( http://tampabay.bizjournals.com ).

South Korea gross national income soars." February 9, 2003. American City Business Journals

Inc. February 11, 2003. (

united states navy essay thesis statement: struggling to nail it. Can you offer suggestions?

Thesis Statement: The United States Navy has played a crucial role in shaping the course of history, safeguarding national interests, and upholding global security. Its contributions encompass a wide spectrum of operations, from defending territorial waters to conducting humanitarian missions, demonstrating its unwavering commitment to protecting the nation and its allies. Arguments/Points to Discuss: 1. Historical Significance: - Highlight the Navy's origins during the American Revolutionary War, emphasizing its instrumental role in securing independence. - Discuss the Navy's involvement in major conflicts, including the War of 1812, the Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, and the Korean War, showcasing its adaptability....

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Korean War is often called the quiet or forgotten war. Sandwiched in between the popular war, World War II, and an unpopular war, The Vietnam War, The Korean…

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Research paper on the korean war.

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This sample history essay explores one of Asia's most significant conflicts and describes the nature of the war between communism and democracy during the Cold War. This paper focuses on the Korean War and the subsequent split of the peninsula into ideologically opposed halves. A document like this is common to history and political science essay assignments .

The Korean War

In the new millennium, one of the flashpoints in the world that worry most people is the belligerence of North Korea. South Korea’s success, as a democratic nation and as an economic powerhouse has placed the confrontation between the two sides of a divided nation in a unique light, as pitting a rational, well-position people, the South Koreans, against a poverty-stricken , isolated and brainwashed population essentially held prisoner by the very young head of a personality cult, the new “Dear Leader”, Kim Jong-un, grandson of the founder of the North Korean regime, and son of the recently demised Kim Jong-il. Sixty years after the Korean War, two sides of a conflict could not be more different, yet so close, sharing thousands of years of the same race and culture.

Three examples of the conflict between communism and the Western world present themselves as a complete range of possibilities. Germany was separated after World War II into East and West Germany, the West becoming a thriving and democratic nation, and the East an isolated communist dictatorship within the control of the Soviet Union kept behind a wall, and from information and freedom of movement. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Germany was reunited and has become today one of the world’s most successful democratic countries and economies.

What role does Vietnam play?

Vietnam, separated into the Communist North, and the free South, was the focal point of the Vietnam War between the East and the West, and when the South fell, the whole of Vietnam was plunged into fifty years of darkness under the North Vietnamese communist system, only to be more recently opened to the world, following China’s opening, becoming increasingly less communist and more capitalist, but remaining a dictatorship bereft of most freedoms and rights enjoyed by democratic nations.

After the Korean War, what was the unified nation of Korea before the Japanese colonial period, together for 1,300 years, was separated into North and South Korea, the north a communist enclave eventually kept under the tight control of the personality cult of Kim Il Sung, the hand-picked dictator of Stalin to run what had always been known as the “Hermit Kingdom” up north, and the South, a democratic nation which today has become one of the most powerful economies in the world. The differences in the daily lives of the North and South Koreans today could not be starker.

Three countries, three possible outcomes. Reunited as democracy, reunited as a communist dictatorship, and remaining divided. To understand how Korea got here, we might have to go back and examine the period after World War II, when Korea was divided by the antagonistic super powers, and the Korean War itself, to understand how 25 million North Koreans have been held captive by a single family for over sixty years.

Korea and the aftermath of World War II

From the Seventh Century to the end of the Nineteenth Century, Korea was a unified country, albeit under repeated assault from its neighbors, China, Russia, and Japan, and the subject of adventurism from the West as well, forming alliances and making treaties to protect itself, often with both sides of a conflict. Japan occupied Korea from 1905 as colonial dictator until the end of World War II, and its heavy-handed colonization and occupation, along with Japan’s long history of aggression towards the Korean people, produced enmity by Koreans that persists even today. Although Korea was unified before the end of World War II, two distinct points of view existed, those aligned with the Soviets and communism, and those opposed to the Soviets and any foreign interference.

As World War II was in its final weeks, the Soviets began moving troops down into the north of Korea, and it was at this moment the United States realized what was afoot. According to Oberdorfer, (2001), without any plan for Korea, without any real understanding of the situation inside the country, or even the logistics or political realities inside Korea, the Americans were forced to come up with a proposal for dividing Korea, so as to prevent the Soviets from taking over the entire country. The Americans arbitrarily chose the already existing 38th parallel, the demarcation line chosen by the Japanese forty years earlier, as the dividing point, and so it came to be.

Additional Reading:  The Cold War and Containment

Arbitrary split

For this arbitrary division of a nation physically and culturally unified for 1300 years, and for the tumultuous result of the division, the Americans and Soviets must bear full responsibility. For fifty million South Koreans today, there must be some hesitant appreciation for the fact they were saved by the Americans from the same fate as their North Korean brothers who were rendered by the Soviets and the Chinese communists (Korea had always looked to China as a buffer against the hated aggressive Japanese) into a prison-like compound of a country, bereft of freedom, human rights, even dignity, and today starved and brainwashed with the full assent and protection of Beijing.

The Soviets selected Kim Il Sung as the leader of the North Koreans, and he established a northern nation, ironically called the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, though totally bereft of democracy. Kim built himself a cult, and it has persisted today in his descendants, perhaps no different than as though the Kims were emperors with absolute power, only now, with nuclear capabilities. The Americans selected Syngman Rhee, educated in the United States at Harvard and Princeton, and a committed anti-communist. But South Korea did not become a democratic nation until 1987.

The start of the Korean War

With both sides of the divided Korea rabidly committed to reunifying the other side under its own banner, and with Soviet and Chinese support, in 1950, North Korea invaded South Korea on June 25, 1950. While North Korea has persistently portrayed itself as having been the victim of invasion by the aggression of the South Koreans and Americans, documents unearthed in Soviet Union archives after the fall of the Soviet Union have now make it clear that Kim implored Stalin to support the invasion beginning in early 1949, and continuing until early 1950 when he got the green light. The invasion was undertaken at the behest of Kim, and with the full support of Stalin and Beijing.6 Oberdorfer notes that even to this day we do not know why Stalin changed his mind, and there have been several different factors suggested, including the victory of the Chinese communists in 1949, the Soviet’s development of its atomic bomb, the withdrawal of American troops from South Korea, or America’s apparent decision to exclude South Korea from its defense considerations.7

As for the precise moment the war started, there has been controversy over this since that day, a question of who fired the first shot.8,9 Nevertheless, on the same day:

“The United Nations Security Council responded to the attack by adopting (by a 9-0 vote) a resolution that condemned the invasion as a ‘breach of the peace.’” 10 (“US Enters Korean Conflict”).

Likely based on similar considerations to Stalin’s decision to give the green light to the North’s invasion, and with tremendous pressure back home from those vehemently opposed to the spread of communism, and perhaps eager to prove anti-communist credentials, the United States President turned the nation’s attention from merely worrying about the spread of communism in Europe to concern over Asia to the Korean flashpoint pitting the Soviets and Chinese communists against the U.S.11

In what appears to have been one of the first of America’s underestimations of the ability of indigenous and guerrilla forces to mount a defense in their own country (as with America's poor decisions in Iraq to some extent), a “police action” was ordered by the U.S. President, Truman, under the auspices of the United Nations, with 15 countries participating. Douglas MacArthur was appointed commander of the U.N. forces, and initially portrayed the conflict as something that could be completed in a few weeks.12

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The consequences of the Korean War

Three years later, the DMZ remained the same, both sides had experienced devastating destruction, and the casualties were enormous. By some estimates, 900,000 Chinese soldiers, 520,000 North Korean soldiers, 280,000 South Korean soldiers, 120,000 U.N. soldiers, and 36,000 American soldiers died in the conflict.13 In addition, 3 million civilians from both sides were estimated to have been killed, with some 5 million left homeless. Unification was not achieved by either side, but neither side gave up control of their respective areas. Soviet expansion was thwarted, but not defeated. The U.S. would lock horns with China in years to come, as Beijing sought to expand its influence throughout Southeast Asia.14 These stressful relations are still present, as seen with the situation with the Cold War.

Very different paths for the North and South

While some have romanticized the Korean conflict as a war by agrarianism (the North) against industrialization and commercialization (the South)15, clearly the outcome for each side speaks for itself (and other attempts to establish agrarian communist states resulted in disaster for the people too, such as in Cambodia some twenty or so years later). Deane has this to say about the North’s motives for invading the South:

"The three-month northern occupation of much of the south was strongly revolutionary and, until chaotic defeat set in, relatively tolerant and forebearing. Along with unification, Pyongyang had two priority tasks in the south – restoration of the people’s committees which the American occupation has eliminated in 1945 and a thorough land reform." 16

Deane does not discuss how fortunate the South Koreans were that the North was eventually repulsed, and forced to return to the north of the 38th parallel. Some sixty years later, the respective well-being of the peoples of the North and South speaks volumes about the North’s ill-conceived and less than altruistic plans. Since the communist threats during the Cold War , the Kim dictatorship in North Korea is viewed as among the worst and most dangerous regimes in the world.17 Human Rights Watch has this to say about North Korea:

"North Korea systematically violates the basic rights of its population. [I]t allows no organized political opposition, free media, functioning civil society, or religious freedom. Arbitrary arrest, detention, lack of due process and torture and ill-treatment of detainees remain serious and endemic problems. North Korea also practices collective punishment for various anti-state offenses, for which it enslaves hundreds of thousands of citizens in prison camps, including children." 18 (Ibid).

On the other hand, South Korea is viewed as one of the most successful democratic stories of the past 60 years.19 Freedom House has this to say about South Korea:

[After the Korean War], South Korea implemented an export-led industrialization drive that transformed the poor, agrarian country into one of the world’s leading economies.... South Korea is an electoral democracy....Political pluralism is robust, with multiple parties competing for power. Despite the overall health of the political system, bribery, influence peddling, and extortion have not been eradicated from politics, business, and everyday life....The news media are free and competitive.

Newspapers are privately owned and report fairly aggressively on government policies and alleged official and corporate wrongdoing....The government generally respects citizens’ right to privacy. South Korea respects freedom of assembly.... Human rights groups, social welfare organizations, and other NGOs are active and for the most part operate freely....South Korea’s judiciary is generally considered to be independent." 20

Most South Koreans would not wish to become part of the North under virtually any circumstances. Most North Koreans could not decide this issue because the Hermit Kingdom restricts the information that flows inside North Korea, and most of its population is ignorant of the outside world, brainwashed and starving.

Connecting the Korean War with the modern status

The Korean War resulted in the loss of a horrendous number of lives, and destruction of millions of homes, causing over five million people to become refugees. Today, these losses cannot be measured, except to concede that no war should ever be necessary. Nevertheless, people who believe in freedom and human rights, and are willing to do whatever is necessary to protect them often cannot choose the time and place when evil people with evil plans will choose to fight to impose their will on the defenseless. Tragic and pivotal events like these are one of the reasons that the study of history is so essential and why students are asked to research and write essays about them.

Bibliography

Deane, H. (1999). The Korean War 1945-1953. San Francisco: China Books.

“Historian Debunks Claim that South Started Korean War.” (2006, June 23). The Chosun Ilbo (English Edition): Daily News from Korea - Retrieved March 9, 2013, from http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_

Oberdorfer, D. (1997). The two Koreas: a contemporary history. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.

South Korea | Freedom House. (2012). Freedom House. Retrieved March 9, 2013, from http://www.freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/2012/south-korea

“US Enters the Korean Conflict.” (n.d.). National Archives and Records Administration. Retrieved March 9, 2013, from http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/korean-conflict/

World Report 2012: North Korea | Human Rights Watch. (2012). Human Rights Watch | Defending Human Rights Worldwide. Retrieved March 9, 2013, from http://www.hrw.org/world-report-2012/world-report-2012-north-korea

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The Korean War (1950-1953)

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Study Questions

Who won the Korean War?

No conclusive winner emerged. Instead, Korea returned to the "status quo ante bellum" (the way things were before the war) and North and South Korea remained divided. The US did succeed in checking Communist expansion; however, it did so at great cost in money and lives. In the larger Cold War context, the Korean War did little to improve the situation, though it also didn't lead to disintegration of relations that it could have.

Why did North Korea cross the 38th Parallel and invade South Korea?

The North Koreans were interested in attempting to reunify Korea under Communist rule, and Stalin most likely gave his approval for the invasion, perhaps as a test of how the US would react (or, as some have hypothesized, a test run for Berlin?). Regardless, the North Koreans were armed with Soviet T-34 tanks. Also, US speeches and policy at the time suggested to the North Koreans and the rest of the Communist world that Korea was not vital to American security and interests.

How did American politics effect the war?

Truman, a Democrat, was afraid of appearing "soft on Communism", lest his Republican opponents attack him. McCarthyism in particular, a rampant paranoid anti-communism sweeping the US, created a particularly hysterical anti-Communist environment. Wihtin this context, though General MacArthur (not to be confused with Senator Joseph McCarthy, who was unrelated) often acted insubordinately, Truman could not take action against him because the general was so popular with the Republicans. In fact, only the combined support of the Joint Chiefs of Staff saved Truman from impeachment after he fired MacArthur. Truman could not negotiate easily with the Communists either, for fear of Republican criticism. Only Eisenhower, a Republican President, was able to make concessions to Chinese and Panmunjom, managing to get a weak treaty signed without criticism.

Why did the US intervene in Korea when it did not intervene in China?

Having just seen China fall, US policymakers had a heightened sensitivity to Communist threats, and considered the North Korean invasion to be a possible test-run for an invasion in Eastern Europe. According to the logic of NSC- 68, a communist attack anywhere should be viewed as an attack everywhere. Under that logic, Korea became "as good a place to draw the line as anywhere."

Describe the role of the UN in the Korean War.

The UN was basically a policy instrument of the US during the Korean War. Especially with the USSR boycotting most UN proceedings, the US used its powerful influence to shape UN policy to meet its own individual needs. The UN International Peace-Keeping Force, made up mostly of American troops (and a few NATO troops), was really just a sham engineered to give the appearance that support for South Korea was more than just a unilateral American action.

Was the Korean War an international war or a Civil War?

Certainly many nations were involved in the Korean War, and in that sense it was a very international war. However, one should remember that Korea had been divided arbitrarily by the US and the USSR after World War II. The 38th Parallel was a made-up boundary with no historical precedent or resonance, and so, in a sense, the North Korean attack might be considered part of an internal, civil war to unify a single country that shared the same culture and language and had historically been unified. It was because of this somewhat ambiguous nature of the Korean War that the UN classified the attack by North Korea as a "breach of peace" rather than a far worse act of "aggression".

Why did the negotiations to end the Korean War go on for so long.

The negotiations at Kaesong and then Panmunjom dragged on for so long (about 2 years) primarily because neither side was willing to make concessions for fear of appearing weak. Specific issues included the fate of Formosa (Taiwan), the dividing line between North and South Korea, and the question of what to do with POWs (Prisoners of War).

Why did the PRC (People's Republic of China) cross the Yalu and start a counteroffensive against the US/UN/ROK forces?

As MacArthur's forces pressed North across the 38th Parallel, the Chinese Communists feared an invasion of Manchuria. Furthermore, MacArthur's meeting with Truman at Wake Island suggested to PRC leaders that a major US offensive was in the works, perhaps a plot to restart the Chinese civil war.

What was the result of Truman's firing MacArthur.

General Ridgway replaced MacArthur as Commander of the Far East. Ridgway held a more conservative stance, followed orders from Washington readily, and did not seek to expand the war as haphazardly as MacArthur did. However, Truman's dismissal of MacArthur upset many MacArthur-loving Republicans in Congress, who threatened to impeach Truman. Fortunately for him, Truman had the unanimous opinion of the JCS behind him, so he wasn't impeached. In the long run, Truman's reliance on the Joint Chiefs of Staff increased the group's power in military decisions over the future Presidents.

Was strategic bombing effective during the Korean War?

For the most part it was not. North Korea was simply not industrialized enough for strategic bombing to have a devastating impact. The infrastructure (especially bridges and roads) that strategic bombing did manage to destroy were usually quickly rebuilt by North Korean laborers. In negotiations as well, strategic bombing, even that aimed against dams and power plants in northernmost Korea, failed to win concessions, and may actually have hardened the resolve of the Communists.

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The Local and Global Effects of The Korean War

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Bibliography

• Editors, History.com. “Korean War.” History.com. Last modified November 9, 2009. https://www.history.com/topics/korea/korean-war.
• “The Korean War.” Khan Academy. https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/postwarera/1950s-america/a/the-korean-war.

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Korean War: 4 SEQ Samples

The topic of the Korean War revolves around the reasons why it happened and whether it was a proxy war or just a civil war. These are just samples for students to refer to so that they have a model to use when answering a similar question.

For ease of download, I have included the pdf download in the box below.

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1. Explain how post-war developments in Asia and Europe impacted Korea.

( P ) Post-WWII development in Asia impacted Korea as it led to the necessity to contain the spread of communism in the Asia-Pacific.

( E ) In October 1949, China turned communist, and China signed the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance in February 1950 with the Soviet Union. The communists viewed Korea as a potential platform to expand their global influence into the Asia-Pacific. Hence, Mao, the leader of communist China, focused his attention on the assistance of North Korea, which served as a counter-balance to the American influence in Japan.  As a result, the National Security Council prepared a top-secret report called the NSC-68, stressing the importance of the Americans to contain the spread of communism on a global basis.

( E ) Thus, the communist take-over in China meant that Korea had become an essential platform over which both ideologies wanted to gain control to prevent the spread of communism.

( L ) Thus, post-war development made Korea a battleground in the Cold War.

( P ) Post-war development in Europe also significantly impacted Korea as the Soviets had gained greater leverage against Western powers.

( E ) In August 1949, the Soviet Union had successfully exploded its first atomic bomb.  This event created atomic parity with the USA, meaning that the USA could not use atomic diplomacy as an effective threat against the Soviet Union.

( E ) Therefore, by early 1950, the Soviet Union was more inclined to support a possible North Korean invasion of the South.  Kim Il-Sung approached Stalin for help in April 1950. Kim persuaded Stalin that he could easily and swiftly conquer the South.  Stalin was concerned about the alliance of America and Japan and saw this as an opportunity to counter American influence in the region.

( L ) Thus, encouraged by their attainment of atomic parity, Stalin granted Kim permission to attack the South.

2. “The Americans were responsible for the escalation of the Korean War.” How far do you agree with this statement? Explain your answer.

( P ) The escalation of the Korean War was a result of American involvement.

( E ) The American intervention triggered China’s entry into the Korean War. By Oct 1950, UN troops had captured Pyongyang, occupied two-thirds of North Korea and reached the Yalu River. The presence of the UN troops was alarming to the Chinese, who felt threatened. Hence, when they ignored the repeated Chinese warnings, China joined the North Korean troops fighting the war.

( E ) Instead of being a civil war between North and South Koreas, it escalated into a more significant regional conflict – involving the USA and its allies on one side and North Korea and China and the USSR. 

( L ) Therefore, US involvement had worsened the conflict.

( P ) However, the Americans were not to be blamed for the escalation of the Korean War.

( E ) This escalation was caused by both the Soviet Union and China. The Soviet Union and China supported Kim Il Sung’s government in North Korea. They sought to extend the communist sphere of influence. The Soviet Union also supplied the North with the weaponry that would help it to invade the South. Even though Stalin did not actively encourage Kim to invade the South, he eventually approved and asked China to help Kim. Kim Il Sung also did not take any direct action against South Korea until he had attained Stalin’s approval and support.

( E ) Therefore, the indirect involvement of the Soviet Union gave Kim the confidence to carry out the invasion, which led to the Korean War and escalated into a proxy war that saw Chinese troops and Soviet-trained troops in the war.

( L ) Thus, the Soviet Union and China were responsible for the Korean War.

( J ) In conclusion, the USA had its motivations for becoming involved in Korea as part of the Cold War against the Soviet Union. Hence, the USA is responsible for escalating the Korean War. The USA saw the North Korean invasion of South Korea as part of a Soviet plan to gain hegemony in Asia and eventually control the world. As a result, they led to a significant force to counter the North Korean advance, which also led to the involvement of Chinese troops and thus escalating the Korean War.

3. “South Korea was to be blamed for the Korean War.” How far do you agree with this statement? Explain your answer.

( P ) I agree that South Korea was to be blamed for the Korean War.

( E ) Border clashes between North Korea and South Korea were standard in 1949 and 1950. South Korea started these clashes to try to capture territory in North Korea. However, Syngman Rhee’s aggressive actions in planning border clashes backfired as they failed to achieve their goals. These failed invasions set the stage for North Korea’s invasion of the South in June 1950, which started the Korean War as they convinced North Korea of the ineffectiveness of the South Korean forces.

( E ) For example, South Korean warships on North Korean military installations provoked the North Korean army and resulted in fierce fighting by both sides. It also affected the USA’s goodwill towards South Korea and made the USA even more reluctant to send heavy weapons to South Korea. As a result, these border clashes revealed the weaknesses of the South Korean forces and their inability to launch successful offensive attacks. Desertions by South Korean soldiers were common and showed the unpopularity of Rhee’s regime.

( L ) Hence, South Korea was to be blamed for the Korean War.

( P ) However, I’m afraid I disagree with the statement because the Soviet Union was also blamed for the Korean War.

( E ) The Soviet Union supported North Korea’s invasion of South Korea. In early 1950, Stalin changed his mind and became more willing to help Kim’s invasion after developments like the communist victory in China, the Soviet explosion of the atomic bomb and the US Defensive Perimeter. Hence, the Soviet Union trained the North Korean army and provided military equipment such as tanks, guns and fighter planes. As a result, Soviet support for Kim’s invasion of South Korea led to the outbreak of the Korean War.

( E ) It helped make the North Korean army strong and gave them the military capability to launch an offensive attack on South Korea. It also gave Kim the confidence to invade South Korea because he could count on Stalin and Mao to help him should the invasion go wrong. Indeed, the North Korean forces launched a surprise attack on South Korea on 25 June 1950 and started the Korean War.

( L ) Hence, USSR was to be blamed for the Korean War.

( J ) In conclusion, I partly disagree that South Korea was responsible for the Korean War. South Korea incited frequent border clashes, which increased tensions between the two sides and made the conflict inevitable. Within this setting of increasing provocation by the South, the Soviet Union could offer its support to North Korea to mount the offensive and invade South Korea, which then triggered the outbreak of the Korean War.

At the same time, Soviet Union’s financial, military, technical and logistical support for North Korea did help to make the North Korean army strong. It gave them the military capability and the confidence to launch a successful offensive attack and invasion of South Korea. Hence, both sides are responsible for the Korean War

4. “The Korean War was mainly about the reunification of the two Koreas.” How far do you agree with this statement? Explain your answer.

( P ) The Korean War was mainly because of the desire by both sides for unification. 

( E ) The Korean peninsula was halved at the 38th parallel after Japan had surrendered and Japanese soldiers left Korea. The USSR occupied the northern part temporarily and the USA the southern region. The United Nations called for an election in 1947 to establish a single government to reunite Korea, but the USSR refused to hold it. As a result, Korea splintered into two halves in 1949. Both Syngman Rhee (President of South Korea) and Kim Il Sung (President of North Korea) claimed the right to rule over Korea. As a result, there were border raids and conflicts between small groups of soldiers from the North and South.

( E ) Syngman kept provoking the North Koreans by launching raids into North Kore but failed. On the other hand, Kim was also determined to unite the Korean peninsula under communism. With the blessings of the USSR, the North Korean army invaded South Korea.

( L ) Thus, a civil war broke out with Koreans fighting against each other because both sides desired unification.

( P ) However, the Korean War was primarily due to interference by external powers.

( E ) The USSR was to be blamed for the Korean War. From the start, Stalin had backed Kim Il-Sung to run a communist government in Korea due to Stalin’s attempt to keep North Korea communist and spread communism across Asia. The USSR supplied North Korea with military equipment and training. As the leader of the communist bloc, it also encouraged China to back North Korea directly, which led to Kim daring to invade South Korea in 1950.

( E ) The USSR was thus to blame because it used Korea as the ground for a proxy war to demonstrate its superiority over its superpower rival – the United States.

( L ) Thus, the Korean War was because of external powers.

( P ) The US was also responsible for the outbreak of the Korean War.

( E ) During the Cold War, the US was determined not to let Korea fall into the hands of communism. When World War II ended, the US set up a democratic government in Korea. They even supported Syngman Rhee – a leader who abused his authority in South Korea.

( E ) As a result, when North Korean soldiers invaded South Korea, the US was determined to protect South Korea, activated a UN coalition force under its leadership, and intervened in the conflict, turning a civil war into an international problem.

( L ) Thus, the Korean War was a result of American intervention.

( J ) In conclusion, the Korean war was fundamentally a conflict between the two Koreas, as armed contact between the two Koreas had already occurred before the intervention of the US and the Soviet Union. The presence of the support of the superpowers merely sought to escalate the conflict to a new level given the increase in terms of military aid, resulting in North Korea’s crossing of the 38th Parallel in June 1950.

This is part of the History Structured Essay Question series. For more information on the Korean War, you can click here . For more information about the O level History Syllabus, you can click here . You can download the pdf version below.

Other chapters are found here:

• Treaty of Versailles
• League of Nations
• Rise of Stalin
• Stalin’s Rule
• Rise of Hitler
• Hitler’s Rule
• Reasons for World War II in Europe
• Reasons for the Defeat of Germany
• Reasons for World War II in Asia-Pacific
• Reasons for the Defeat of Japan
• Reasons for the Cold War
• Cuban Missile Crisis
• Reasons for the End of the Cold War

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Korean War Essay

Counting the years, it is possible to mention that it passed more than sixty years since the beginning of the war on the Korean peninsula. But to this day in the West and in Japan there is a myth that North Korean troops attacked first. This “thesis” was also heard recently on some Russian TV channels. However, even a small excursion into the postwar 1945 shows that originally, the U.S. authorities and a group of Korean collaborators were very interested in the escalation of the conflict in the region. On the one hand, it can be explained by the fact that being located on the Korean peninsula, the U.S. government could control the entire Southeast Asia, including the eastern part of the Soviet Union and China, which were the main geopolitical rivals to Washington. But on the other hand, there is another point of view on the war, and Sandler stated that “it would seem that there could be little dispute of the basic fact that the Korean People’s Army of the Democratic Republic of Korea invaded the Republic of Korea. But as early as 1952 the “independent” journalist, I.F. Stone, claimed that the accepted version was really all wrong, that South Korea had actually invaded the North, or at the least, that the North Korean invasion was an exasperated response to southern provocation and cross-border attacks”. [1] Of course, there are as many opinions as there are many commentators on the events of the past. By the way, many historians often refer to the Korean War as something forgotten, even naming it “the forgotten war,” but none war should be forgotten because every war takes many people lives, influencing the course of the history and changing destinies; so, we are going to explore the Korean war with all the necessary details in the body of this assignment. The thesis statement is the next: the Korean War occupies its significant place between the World War II and the Vietnam War, and every country that was involved in the war has the own attitude to the events and protects the own version of the history; so, the war happened and the conflict existed, while the roots of its beginning and its consequences are interpreted in different ways.

In the historical books the Korean War lies between the great drama of the World War II and the Vietnam War. Shortly describing the Korean War for the purpose to give the war a first description, we may say that it was the first armed confrontation of the Cold War, which lasted just over the three years (from June 25, 1950 to July 27, 1953). And the conflict erupted between the North Korea and the South Korea; however, it is quite often seen as a war between the U.S. and its allies against the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union. To acknowledge this statement, we can use Brune’s and Higham’s words, who said that “finally, the Korean War brought direct conflict between U.S. and communist forces, a situation avoided in Europe throughout the cold war”. [2]

The above made description can be explained by the fact that the Korean War was by its essence an armed conflict between the Korean Democratic People’s Republic (North Korea) and China (supported by the Soviet Union), on the one hand, and the Republic of Korea (South Korea) and a coalition of several UN countries led by the U.S., on the other hand. So, it can be mentioned that not only Korea was involved in the own war because many other countries had their political and economic interests there. Moreover, the Korean War was a bloody three-year civil slaughterhouse between North Korea and South Korea – in fact, a single country that was divided between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, while the country was also used as a testing ground for reconnaissance. As a result of the war, neither side achieved what it wanted, and the state border stayed on the 38th parallel. Informally, the war lasts even to this day, in the same form as the Cold War was hold.

Observing the beginning of the war, it becomes obvious that small and modest Korea rarely could solve anything by itself in a world where it was everywhere surrounded by too smart neighbors. So, for the purpose to put a dominance over the country Americans had developed a secret plan for the outbreak of the war on the peninsula, which would also allow to discredit not only North Korea but also the ideas of socialism and communism in general, labeling them as aggressive. It was made by the reason that the United States was imperative to establish itself as the main fighter in the world “for the ideals of freedom and democracy,” which, naturally, facilitated their way into new markets in Africa, Asia and Latin America. There was an increase in sympathy for the Soviet Union: the rapid pace of reconstruction without any outside help testified about the benefits of a planned economy on the free market.

In addition, to complete the work of NATO, established in April 1949, there was needed a precedent that would demonstrate the effectiveness of the new alliance. After that, the U.S. would be able to successfully manipulate the countries of the Western Europe by drawing them into long-term “strategy of containment.” Moreover, the U.S. has created a secret group on national security, which was led by a former banker from the Wall Street, and this group has been working on creating substantiation of future military aggression and determined the states that were appropriate for this aim. So, everything is not as simple with the Korean War as it very often presented in media and popular books on history because the United States being governed by very talented leaders was trying to provide the own dominance all over the world in all possible ways, including the use of special secret technologies and creating secret groups of the best professionals for these purposes. And finally, the result of successful advocacy campaign of the United States can be seen in the fact that even today many people believe to the official reason for the war, which to this day hold in many countries: North Korea started the war.

In addition, there is no necessity to blame the United States in all evils, including the beginning of the Korean War because every country protects its interests, and the United States is not an exception. It should be noted that North Korea with the Soviet Union’s support conducted reorganization of the army and also prepared for the conflict. Initially, both the Soviet Union and North Korea assumed that separation of the 38th parallel was temporary, and the two Koreas would be able to unite their territories and forces at the end. However, in 1948, South Korea proclaimed its independence. Those days leader really feared the growth of patriotic and anti-American sentiments, so he tried to usurp the executive power in the country. The United States went to meet these new steps because they believed such a policy to be productive to achieve their goals. In response, North Korea also had to declare its sovereignty.

Incidentally, the theme of the Korean War is still an important fact of the history because this conflict can be considered practically the beginning of the Cold War (the famous Fulton speech of Winston Churchill sounded back in 1946). And as it was described above, in this war, the United States followed a policy of double standards which was characterized by a big portion of cynicism. The U.S. created a special force to conduct psychological operations especially for the Korean War.

Thinking about the significance of the Korean War and its consequences in the broader context of history, we may say that firstly, the Korean War was really significant in the context of the Cold War. To explain, the war on the Korean Peninsula was the first “hot war” during the Cold War. Secondly, one of its main outcomes was that the Americans decided not to use nuclear weapons during the confrontation. When the Chinese entered the war, U.S. General Douglas MacArthur demanded a nuclear strike on China. But then the U.S. President Harry Truman did not accept the proposal, believing that it would be an unnecessary war at the wrong time against the wrong enemy. Then the only enemy against whom Washington considered possible to use nuclear weapons was the Soviet Union. Simultaneously, the U.S. wanted at all costs to hold back the spread of Soviet influence on Third World countries. As a result, from 1945 to 1991 there was unleashed about 150 local wars between two rival blocs across the planet. [3]

Moreover, it can be also added that the Korean War played its own role in strengthening the relations and union between North Korea and China. When the leader of North Korea asked Stalin to support a unifying war on the Korean peninsula, the Soviet Union’s leaders said “yes”, but he also made it clear that in a case when the North Korean troops need help, they will have to apply for it in China. So, the Korean leader traveled to China and asked for a help there, and that help was needed as early as in October 1950, when the South Korean army and UN troops approached the shore of the river on the border with China. Moreover, the so-called Chinese people’s volunteers, despite their huge losses, helped the North Koreans regain their territory and push the front line below the 38th parallel. Disposing near the border, opposing sides ended hostilities after awhile.

To continue, if not the Chinese intervention, the war would have ended in November 1950, and the regime of Kim Ir-Sen would not exist at all. Of course, the Soviet Union also helped Pyongyang, but the help was not so big, such as air support by fighters flown by Soviet pilots. But the decisive factor was the will to fight, despite the losses. By the way, the UN forces lost about 37,000 soldiers, the Chinese – a few hundred thousand, and the North Koreans – millions.

And finally, even today the Korean War left a trace in hearts of millions of Korean people, but the attitude to it has different manifestations in North and South Korea. For instance, even now in South Korea, the war is not a thing of the past. Everything that happens in the country has a direct attitude to the Korean War or is its consequence. If we go down to the border with North Korea, it is easy to find that South Korea is in a constant state of operational readiness, South Korea is always ready to defend its borders and citizens. Yes, today the debate died down a bit, but the conflict remains in everyone’s subconscious.

In a case of North Korea, the Korean War is one of the myths that hold the state itself. According to this myth, the South Koreans, instigated by the Americans attacked the only legitimate regime in Korea and destroyed the country. That war is used to justify any military and political actions of the North Korean leadership, including nuclear-missile tests, as Pyongyang considers that it is constantly threatened from outside. Ordinary citizens have to believe what they are told by the state media. And according to official version, in 1950, People’s Republic of China was attacked by the enemies, while the North Koreans were forced to protect themselves, and they won the war through military achievements of their leadership and allies.

In conclusion, we have researched a lot of facts about the Korean War, beginning with the roots of the conflict, mentioning the interests of different countries in deadlock correction, and ending with the consequences of the war to both Koreas, and their allies. We have also proved that the war took away millions of lives, and it was a kind of “hot war” in the frames of the Cold War. So, we can not ignore the Korean War, naming it “the forgotten war” because the Korean War was the first local armed conflict between western and socialist blocks in the nuclear age, in which participation of superpowers was limited by the reason that it was extended to a limited area and not accompanied by the use of weapons of mass destruction.

[1] Stanley Sandler, The Korean War: No Victors, No Vanquished (London: UCL Press, 1999), p. 47.

[2] Lester H. Brune and Robin Higham, The Korean War: Handbook of the Literature and Research (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1996), p. 35.

[3] Brune and Higham, 136.

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The Korean War took place between 1950 and 1953. After World War II the country was divided between the USA and the Soviet Union into a communistic North Korea and a capitalistic South Korea on the line of the 38th parallel. It was a war between the Republic of Korea, supported by the United Nations, and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, supported by China and the Soviet Union. Many scientists call the Korean War as "The Forgotten War," because it has been overshadowed by bloodier and vaster conflicts like the War of Vietnam, Desert Storm and the anniversary of World War II. The Korean War was not a success for the West like the WW II. But it was not a defeat like the war in Vietnam. From the part of the America President Truman has never called it as a war. It was called just a conflict in the region. There were no celebrations and a huge publicity of the case. White House always kept silence (Cumings, 229). In majority people in USA didn't care about the war, they didn't think about it (Tomedi, 154).

It was a first conflict in the period of the Cold War between USA and the Communist USSR.

The USA went to war in Korea for three reasons. I think that the most important reason for America’s involvement in the war was Truman’s belief that the Communism would be spreading between countries of the region like a line of dominoes. He was worried that the next communist country would be Japan, which was very important for American trade. The second reason was in belief of Truman that capitalism, freedom and the American way of life were in danger because of the force of Communism. This led Truman to drive communism out of North Korea. Finally, Truman realized that the main rival of the USA for world domination was the USSR. By supporting South Korea, America was able to fight Communism without direct conflict with the Soviet Union. The USSR also kept the line of the rough foreign policy and that was later called as the Cold War. On 24 June 1950 President Truman was informed that the North Koreans had invaded South Korea. Truman decided that the United States was obligated to act. On 27 June there was the first significant battle for the America in the Korean War. It was two days after the invasion of the North Korea and three months before China entered the war. That day the arms of the North Korea broke through the border with the South Korea on the Han River. Truman decided to begin active phase of the conflict in the North Korea and the British government and the arms of the Commonwealth countries supported American President in his decision. (Snow, 54). The war on its first year was a dashing affair. It was a war of movement, of tanks, of planes up and down the peninsula. There was much fervor and martial oratoryBy November 1951 there was no more oratory (Brady, 2). The war involved troops from other nations of the region and the force of almost all Commonwealth countries. We don't know how many people died exactly in the Korean War. It was first a civil war then kept by huge countries with different ideologies. When the war ended, the countries that took part in it didn't resolve the case like other military conflicts. Korea is still divided in two different countries. The war actually didn't come to the end. The Korean War had long-lasting consequences for the entire region. It froze the relations between the United States and the Soviet Union. This war didn't resolve nothing. In 1953 there was signed the agreement that till today maintain peace in the region. There was created a demilitarized zone, that is actually strongly militarized by North and South Korean soldiers and by a number of American soldiers. There are only a few observers from the neutral countries. The Korean War was the first open conflict between the USA and USSR in the Cold War. It was a great but frustrating experience for America that was used to the victories in the military conflicts. The public didn't understand that war and didn't support it. Over 60 years have passed and the South Korea has become a country with huge economic force. The North Korea is a poor communistic country with a military regime. Both North and South Korea are raising their nuclear powers. They conduct trainings near the borders of each other but i think that people in this countries are still wondering to unite and live in peace. Many families were divided during the war. They continue to live in different ideologies without the possibility to reunite their families. They are divided by the demilitarized zone with a huge number of troops that are keeping eye on everybody who is trying to cross the border.

Cited Works

Brady, James. The Coldest War: A Memoir of Korea. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2000. Print. Cumings, Bruce. The Korean War: A History. New York: Modern Library, 2010. Print. Snow, Donald M, and Dennis M. Drew. From Lexington to Desert Storm and Beyond: War and Politics in the American Experience. Armonk, N.Y: M.E. Sharpe, 2000. Internet resource. Tomedi, Rudy. No Bugles, No Drums: An Oral History of the KoreanWar. New York: John Wiley & Sons. 1994. Print.

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In 1871, American land and naval forces came to the nation of Korea, in order, to create political and trade relationships with the country. Also the Americans wanted to know what happened to the merchant ship General Sherman, which in 1866 was looking for trade relationships, but the Koreans destroyed the crew and the ship. So when the American naval came to Korea, the Koreans attacked them, and later, the Americans attacked back. This conflict was later called the United States Expedition to Korea, or simply the Korean Expedition. Although the Koreans attacked General Sherman and the American naval ships, Merlin of the book The Once and Future King would find that America was the aggressor in the conflict, since Merlin would see that…

The Korean War By Dr. Frank H. Schwable

During the Korean War, an officer of the United States Marine Corps, Colonel Frank H. Schwable, was taken prisoner by the Chinese Communists. After months of intense psychological pressure and physical degradation, he signed a well documented "confession" that the United States was carrying on bacteriological warfare against the enemy. The confession named names, cited missions, described meetings and strategy conferences. This was a tremendously valuable propaganda tool for the totalitarians. They cabled the news all over the world: "The United States of America is fighting the peace loving people of China by dropping bombs loaded with disease spreading bacteria, in violation of international law."…

The Korean War: The Forgotten War

The Korean War also referred to as the “Forgotten War,” set an unforeseen reconstruction into the Air Defense Artillery branch of the modern Army. This bloody war was an important event in the world or the Air Defense Artillery branch. The contingency missions of today’s Army were solidified during the Korean War and it helped cement the Air Defense Artillery motto of “First to Fire.” There were many important events that occurred for ADA during this war. From the first air defense unit arriving to the key battles that took place, this conflict provided significant advancements for air defense in the U.S. military. The Korean War commonly referred to by many as “The Forgotten War,” should never be forgotten by Air Defense Artillery, as…

Space Race Essay

The Korean War was one of the biggest conflicts that was attributed to the Cold War. It was caused by North Korea invading South Korea. The U.N. and USA went in to assist South Korea while China and the Soviet Union went in to assist North Korea. In 1950, combat erupted as the North Korean army, the Russian army and Chinese army entered South Korea. Later, the U.N. tried to stop hostilities by calling a ceasefire, but it was denied and the U.S.A and U.N. had to go into South Korea to fight the North Koreans and their allies. Eventually, in 1953 both sides signed a peace treaty and the Korean War ended.…

Essay On The Causes Of The Korean War

War can often occur with diminutive warning and result in vast destruction and excessive mortality. There are a variety causes for wars such as greed, power, and to improve the standard of living. Another cause of war is to protect the boundary of the country. In some countries such as Korea and Vietnam these boundaries define the different political views of the territories. Korea and Vietnam were divided between the Communist North and the Democratic South. This division of the countries led to disputes and then war. The causes of the Korean War were very similar to the Vietnam War with their roots in the Truman Doctrine and the Domino Theory, and events led to the War on Terrorism, however they did have differences and varying perspectives…

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The Evening

Justices seemed split on emergency abortion access.

Also, U.S. weapons are headed to Ukraine. Here’s the latest at the end of Wednesday.

By Matthew Cullen

Supreme Court justices appeared sharply divided today over whether federal law should allow doctors to perform emergency abortions in states that have adopted near-total bans on the procedure.

At issue in the case is Idaho’s ban, which allows abortion to save the life of a pregnant woman but not to prevent her health from deteriorating. The federal government argued that the Idaho measure violates a federal law requiring hospitals to stabilize or transfer patients with urgent medical issues.

The challenge applies to only a tiny fraction of the nation’s abortions, my colleague Pam Belluck, who covers reproductive care, told me. “But the implications of whatever the Supreme Court decides in this case could be very broad,” she added.

A broad decision could especially affect abortion access in the 14 states that have enacted near-total bans. “It could telegraph to states that what Idaho is doing either is or is not OK, and that could change those states’ abortion bans one way or another,” Pam said. “If the justices side with Idaho, it could also say to states that ‘abortion isn’t the only thing you can restrict.’”

Today’s arguments were lively, and at times they suggested that there was a possible divide along gender lines. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative, appeared skeptical that Idaho’s law superseded the federal law. “I don’t think it’s a slam dunk either way,” Pam said.

Pam also noted that today’s hearing suggested that some of the court’s conservatives, particularly Justice Samuel Alito, may be prepared to embrace the language of fetal personhood , which is the notion that fetuses have rights that require protection.

In related news, Arizona lawmakers advanced a bill to scrap an abortion ban , based on an 1864 law, that could go into effect as soon as June 8 if not repealed.

U.S. weapons are headed to Ukraine

President Biden today signed into law a foreign aid package that includes more than $60 billion in assistance for Ukraine. It is the largest single commitment the U.S. has made to Ukraine since Russia began its full-scale invasion in 2022.

Soon after the legislation was enacted, the Pentagon announced that it would rush the first $1 billion in aid, including a range of missiles, cluster munitions and battlefield vehicles. The shipment also contains longer-range versions of weapons known as Army Tactical Missile Systems, or ATACMS — weapons that the U.S. secretly shipped to Ukraine last week .

My colleague Lara Jakes explained what’s headed Ukraine’s way, and why it might help the country’s war effort.

Israel appears poised to invade Rafah

Israel’s military this week sketched out rough plans to relocate civilians in the southern Gaza city of Rafah to a safe zone in the event of an Israeli ground invasion. Many analysts and residents saw the announcement as a hint that an assault of the city was all but inevitable .

Israeli officials have long insisted that a push into Rafah is necessary for securing the release of the remaining hostages and eliminating Hamas militants sheltering in tunnels beneath the city. But many of Israel’s Western allies, including the U.S., have discouraged it from invading the city, where more than one million Gazans are now sheltering.

In other news from the war, Hamas released a video apparently showing Hersh Goldberg-Polin , an Israeli American hostage.

Johnson said Biden should act to end campus protests

Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, visited Columbia University today and condemned the pro-Palestinian protests there. He said he intends to call President Biden and demand action, including possibly the sending in of the National Guard to quell the demonstrations, which Johnson called antisemitic.

Similar protests have been reported at more than 20 college campuses .

More top news

Labor: A day after the Federal Trade Commission announced a ban on noncompete clauses, business groups sued over the rule .

Health: The Food and Drug Administration approved an antibiotic for increasingly hard-to-treat urinary tract infections .

Business: Boeing lost $355 million in the first quarter of this year. Meta’s profits more than doubled .

Myanmar: The junta recaptured Myawaddy, a trading hub on the border with Thailand, reversing a key victory for resistance soldiers .

Crypto: Prosecutors argued that the founder of Binance should go to prison for three years .

Voting: A bill would bar homeless voters in Georgia from receiving mail-in ballots and election information at temporary addresses.

Media: Listeners are tuning out. Sponsorship revenue has dipped. A diversity push has generated turmoil. Can NPR turn things around?

Aviation: The U.S. announced new air-travel rules on refunds and surprise fees. Here’s what to expect .

Britain: Several army horses escaped and galloped through London , injuring pedestrians.

Sports: Fourteen years after Reggie Bush forfeited his Heisman Trophy, he had the award, college football’s most prestigious individual honor, reinstated .

TIME TO UNWIND

A long-lost klimt painting sold for $37 million.

Much about a recently resurfaced Gustav Klimt painting, “Portrait of Fräulein Lieser,” was shrouded in mystery when it was put up for sale . The portrait’s subject was debated, its seller was unknown and its provenance was officially uncertain, though the auction house conceded that it was likely acquired illegally during the Nazi annexation of Austria.

Perhaps the only thing that was clear was that it would fetch a lofty price tag. Today it did: An Asian client bought it at auction for $37 million .

New York City’s everlasting scaffolding

Anyone who lives in or has been to New York City will probably recognize the photo above, because sidewalk sheds seem to blanket the city and never get taken down . Out of roughly 8,500 currently standing, nearly 1,000 have been in place for more than three years; two date back to 2011.

If you’re confused as to why the scaffolding is up despite a lack of apparent construction, you’re not alone. The main reason is that they are required for periodic inspections, and some property owners found that keeping them in place was less expensive than fixing their facades.

Dinner table topics

“Rebel Girl”: The punk artist Kathleen Hanna realized that she had more to say than could fit in her book — about violent men, inspiring women and the boy who made her a mother .

A toy, for now: Meta’s artificial intelligence assistant is fun to use, but it can’t be trusted .

Filmmakers discuss: Nicole Kidman has for years been an in-demand actress across nearly every genre. We talked to directors about what makes her special .

A reader wrote in: Can I ask my mother-in-law who my wife’s biological father is ?

WHAT TO DO TONIGHT

Cook: This miso-roasted salmon is simple yet memorable. It even makes for a good breakfast .

Watch: “The Bricklayer” is one of the best action movies to stream right now .

Read: If you read just one romance book this spring, our columnist recommends this one .

Listen: Check out some of the best songs from members of this year’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame class .

Consider: Some experts say calorie restriction can increase longevity. Here’s what to know .

Clean: This budget robot vacuum works just as well as a $1,200 alternative .

Play: Here are today’s Spelling Bee , Wordle and Mini Crossword . Find all of our games here .

ONE LAST THING

Get ready for a trillion very noisy bugs.

After spending more than a decade underground, roughly a trillion noisy, red-eyed cicadas are beginning to emerge from the earth . This year, the Great Southern Brood, which comes out every 13 years and has already been spotted in Georgia, is expected to converge in the Midwest with the Northern Illinois Brood, which emerges every 17 years.

No one can explain for sure how the cicadas know when to come out en masse, or why they do. But when the two broods arrive in full force this spring, it will be the first time that they have shown up together since Thomas Jefferson was president.

Have a vibrant evening.

Thanks for reading. I’ll be back tomorrow. — Matthew

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