Article on History of Korean War
WORLD HISTORY : KOREAN WAR
On June 25, 1950, the Korean War began with the invasion of the Republic of South Korea by communist North Korea. Almost immediately, the world responded to this first great threat of the Cold War, with the United Nations sending troops–primarily Americans–to push North Korea back across the 38th parallel. The war would quickly turn into a stalemate, resulting in an armistice agreement in 1953. Little ground was gained, and the end of the war saw the establishment of a demilitarized zone, or DMZ, that held the status quo at the 38th parallel. It continues to serve as a fragile buffer zone between the two countries to this day.
Among the wars of the United States the Korean conflict was the last to utilize conventional strategies, tactics, and weapons. Simultaneously it was the first limited, inconclusive conflict to mix the antagonists of the cold war in the cauldron of a civil
war.
war.
Until the mid-1960s, most American interpretations of the United States' entry into the war supported the Truman administration's position that the United States had become involved because its honor and credibility were at stake, it felt compelled to contain the Moscow-directed global expansion of communism, and it saw tolerance of North Korean aggression as Munich-like appeasement. But the Vietnam War brought challenges to established views on American foreign and defense affairs, including the Korean War. Most revisionists blamed America and South Korea for precipitating hostilities, argued that the conflict was basically a civil war, and charged that ethnocentrism and economic imperialism had influenced American policymakers on Asia.
War erupted in Korea on June 25, 1950, along the thirty-eighth parallel that separated North and South Korea. As North Korean units pushed deep into South Korea, the U.N. Security Council, at the instigation of the United States, condemned the North Korean invasion and later called on members to assist South Korea. That first week, President Harry S. Truman, without seeking congressional approval, committed American forces to the conflict. On July 7, the U.N. Command was established, with General of the Army Douglas MacArthur appointed as its head. The nearest U.S. forces were already under his Far East Command, including in Japan alone four army divisions, the Fifth Air Force, and units of the Seventh Fleet. Eventually nearly 1.8 million Americans would serve in Korea, of whom 54,200 were killed, 103,300 wounded, and 8,200 missing in action. Besides the preponderant American and South Korean forces, military units from fifteen other members of the United Nations fought in the conflict.
Military operations evolved in four phases during the initial, or MacArthur, period. First, the North Korean offensive of June to September 1950 drove from the thirty-eighth parallel to the Naktong River. MacArthur's forces succeeded in holding the southeast center of the Korean peninsula because of the rapid reinforcement of his command and the crippling interdiction of the North Korean supply lines by American air power. In the second phase, the United Nations-South Korean offensive of September to November 1950 began with a brilliant amphibious assault at Inchon and advanced north toward the Yalu River border. Next, Communist China intervened, launching an offensive (November 1950 to January 1951) that thwarted the United Nations' attempt to “liberate” North Korea and pushed MacArthur's forces below the thirty-eighth parallel. From January to April 1951, the Chinese were hurled back above the parallel in a counteroffensive by the rejuvenated U.S. Eighth Army of Gen. Matthew Ridgway.
Meanwhile MacArthur became increasingly vociferous and allegedly insubordinate in demanding a blockade of the Chinese coast, naval and air bombardments of Chinese industrial centers, and employment of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's Taiwan troops in Korean operations and against the Chinese mainland. President Truman and the Joint Chiefs of Staff disagreed, however, and in April 1951 Truman named Ridgway to replace MacArthur as head of the U.N. Command, the U.S. Far East Command, U.S. Army Forces in the Far East, and the Allied occupation in Japan.
The next period of the war, April 1951-July 1953, fell into two major phases: operations and negotiations. The front lines became virtually stalemated, but hard fighting continued, primarily in the Iron Triangle and Punch Bowl regions just north of the thirty-eighth parallel. The two most savage battles of the period, both communist defeats, were Heartbreak Ridge in September-October 1951 and Pork Chop Hill in April 1953. The U.N. naval and air forces maintained firm control of the seas and skies of the combat zone, with the American strategic bombing campaign reaching a zenith in mid-1952. The U.N. Command was led by Ridgway until May 1952 and thereafter by Gen. Mark Clark. The U.S. Eighth Army, which was the principal ground force of the U.N. Command, was headed by Gen. James Van Fleet and then by Gen. Maxwell Taylor.
In the acrimonious truce negotiations, which began in July 1951, the U.N. delegation was led by Adm. Turner Joy and later by Gen. William Harrison, both Americans. The armistice, signed on July 27, 1953, resulted in a cessation of hostilities and a prisoner exchange, but it left the peninsula divided close to the thirty-eighth parallel and actually satisfied none of the belligerents.
Because of their appalling human and property losses in the war, both Koreas underwent slow rehabilitation. North Korea remained a staunchly communist state, though more closely aligned after 1953 to Peking than to Moscow. South Korea developed into a prosperous, if politically divided, country with strong economic and security links to the United States.
The consequences of the war for the United States were manifold. Desegregation of the Eighth Army during the Korean operations was a milestone for blacks in the American military establishment. McCarthyism fed on public discontent with the conduct of the war. Dissent grew as the war became protracted and indecisive, contributing to the 1952 presidential triumph of General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower, the first Republican in the White House in two decades. The Korean hostilities prompted the United States to strengthen its military commitment to nato. The war also hastened the signing of the Japanese peace treaty, the formation of seato, and the creation of American security pacts with Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines.
From the start of the Korean fighting, the Truman administration escalated military assistance to the French in the Vietnam War and then sent aid and advisers to the fledgling Republic of South Vietnam. Washington assumed that global communism was monolithic and that Moscow was dictating the aggression both in Korea and in Vietnam. In the later American involvement in Vietnam, as in Korea, the U.S. government was never able to delineate clearly the currents of nationalism, communism, and imperialism that seemed to flow into one another.
Clay Blair, The Forgotten War: America in Korea, 1950-1953 (1987); Burton I. Kaufman, The Korean War: Challenges in Crisis, Credibility, and Command (1986).
D. Clayton James
The Reader's Companion to American History. Eric Foner and John A. Garraty, Editors. Copyright © 1991 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
Posts
Post a Comment