The Korean
War
Introduction
Written by Robert Flynn
The Korean War, which began with the North Korean
invasion of South Korea in June of 1950 and ended with an
armistice agreement in July 1953, has remained one of the
most overlooked events of the twentieth century. In America,
in particular, the bloody, stalemated conflict for control of the
Korean peninsula rapidly faded from the popular memory—a
victim, in the words of historian Roger Dingman, of its
chronological place between the ‘good war’ of the 1940s and
the ‘bad war’ of the 1960s (qtd. in Foot, ‘Making Known’
411). Despite such American myopia, the conflict proved
critical for both the Korean people and for geopolitical
developments in East Asia (Stueck, Korean War 360-61). More
important, however, was the war's effect on the emerging
Cold War. Indeed, by helping to militarise, globalise and
harden the conflict between the USSR and the United States,
the Korean War proved to be the defining event of the Cold
War.
Ironically, given its importance to the Cold War, the Korean
conflict had its roots as much in an indigenous civil war as in
the global contest between the superpowers. At the
conclusion of the Second World War, the United States and
the Soviet Union divided Korea at the thirty-eighth parallel so
as to arrange for the surrender of the Japanese troops that
occupied Tokyo's former Korean colony. With the
deterioration of superpower relations, however, the thirty-
eighth parallel soon became a permanent political border. In
the north, the Soviet Union installed a young Communist
named Kim Il Sung as head of a Communist government; in
the south, the American Military Government headed by
General John Hodge helped reactionary Koreans found the
Republic of Korea (ROK) under the conservative nationalist
Syngman Rhee. From 1948 to 1950, North Korean infiltrators
and indigenous leftists in South Korea waged an extensive,
but unsuccessful, guerrilla campaign against ROK forces
aimed at discrediting and toppling Syngman Rhee's
unpopular government (Kaufman, Korean War 4-16). The
failure of that effort led Kim to change his strategy. After
securing additional military equipment from the Soviet
Union including T-34 tanks and heavy artillery, Kim won
grudging permission from Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong to
launch a conventional invasion across the thirty-eighth
parallel in June 1950 (Goncharov et al. 130-67).
Kim's highly successful invasion internationalised the
Korean Civil War and turned it into the central episode of
the early Cold War. Seeking to uphold American credibility
and believing that the communist world was monolithic,
President Harry Truman and his advisors opted to intervene
militarily under the auspices of the United Nations (UN) to
prevent Kim Il Sung from unifying Korea under Communism
(Foot, Wrong War 74-75). Initially, American troops proved
no more effective than ROK forces at halting the North
Korean armoured spearheads. General Douglas MacArthur's
stunning amphibious invasion at Inchon in September 1950
turned the tables in the war, however and compelled Kim to
withdraw his forces from the south. Flushed with victory,
the Truman administration then made the fateful decision to
cross the thirty-eighth parallel so as to militarily reunify the
peninsula under a non-Communist government. That action
had enormous consequences. Fearing the dangers inherent
in an American army on its borders and intent upon
maintaining its own credibility, the People's Republic of
China (PRC) decided to intervene on a massive scale in
Korea in October 1950. The ensuing Chinese offensive
caught UN forces off guard and compelled them to retreat
three hundred miles down the peninsula (Stueck, Korean
War 97-106, 127-30).
The nature of the conflict changed dramatically in the
months following the Chinese intervention. Believing
that the USSR was the real enemy in the Cold War and
intent on focusing on the defence of the far more
valuable region of Western Europe, the Truman
administration opted to scale back its objectives in
Korea. After UN troops stabilised the front lines just
north of the thirty-eighth parallel, the United States
consequently abandoned its earlier effort to reunify
Korea and instead shifted to a limited war strategy
coupled with simultaneous negotiations. As a
consequence, the conflict evolved into a static war of
positions that more closely resembled World War I than
World War II or the Chinese Civil War. Public frustration
boiled over in the spring of 1951 when President
Truman sacked MacArthur in response to the general's
public criticism of the limited war policy and call for a
commitment to total victory (McCullough 835-56). As
negotiations dragged on into 1952 and 1953, moreover,
the American people grew increasingly angry about
waging a limited conflict in which Americans continued
to die even as their nation refused to seek a decisive
victory over the enemy. Eventually, the cost and
frustration inherent in the long, drawn-out conflict led
both sides to make concessions in the peace
negotiations. The Korean War finally drew to a
conclusion on July 27, 1953, leaving the peninsula
devastated and still divided.
The Korean conflict turned out to be the defining
episode of the emerging Cold War, in large part because
of the lessons the two sides learned from the conflict.
Failing to grasp the civil origins of the conflict,
Washington concluded that Moscow had ordered the
attack on South Korea. The war thus powerfully
strengthened the American conviction that the
communist world was a monolith controlled by the
Kremlin. The conflict also reinforced the World War II–
inspired belief that appeasement was doomed to failure
and that only the credible threat of an American military
response would prevent the Communist bloc from
waging expansionist wars; the war thus justified a sharp
increase in defence spending and a massive expansion
of America's supply of nuclear weapons. Finally, the
difficult and drawn-out peace talks led Washington to
conclude that negotiations with Communist states were
fruitless unless conducted from a position of
overwhelming strength.
Ironically, the Communist powers drew similar lessons.
Believing that its nuclear arsenal had prevented the
United States from seeking victory, the USSR reckoned
that it could prevent American aggression only by
maintaining a credible—and thus ever-larger—stockpile
of atomic weapons. Likewise, Mao Zedong concluded
from the conflict that Washington was implacably
hostile to the PRC and that China could check American
hostility only by maintaining its military credibility.
Thus, while the growth in the U.S. and Soviet nuclear
zone—the authoritarian anti-Communist Syngman Rhee credibility, drawn from the Korean War experience,
arsenals prevented Washington and Moscow from
in the south and the even-more authoritarian Communist eventually led the United States into the quagmire of
engaging in hostilities with each other, the concurrent
Kim Il Sung in the north—the smouldering civil war Vietnam.
emphasis on credibility ensured the perpetuation of the
increasingly took on the character of a Cold War proxy The conflict had equally significant consequences for
Cold War and the consequent involvement of the
struggle. The North Korean army's Soviet-equipped the Communist states. China's ability to stand up to the
superpowers in regional conflicts in places such as
invasion of South Korea in June 1950 capped this United States greatly enhanced its international stature,
Vietnam and Afghanistan. The ‘lessons’ of the Korean
process by completing the transformation of the while Moscow's failure to support Beijing in the conflict
War would thus shape and institutionalise the fabric of
indigenous civil struggle for control of Korea into the sowed the seeds of the subsequent Sino-Soviet split.
the Cold War from 1950 until its conclusion in 1991.
defining event of the early Cold War. As the historian More importantly, the conflict in Korea helped militarise
Burton Kaufman writes, in short, ‘The Korean conflict of and globalise a Cold War that had formerly been a
Causes
1950-1953 involved a great power struggle between the principally diplomatic and economic struggle confined
The roots of the Korean War are complex and stretch United States and the Soviet Union superimposed on a to Europe and the Middle East. Specifically, the Korean
through Seoul, Pyongyang, Washington, Moscow and civil war between North and South Korea’. conflict led both superpowers to expand exponentially
Beijing. Initially, the conflict originated in the the size of their nuclear arsenals even as they
postcolonial struggle for control of Korea. The savage concluded that the potential for massive retaliation
civil war that broke out following World War II pitted Effects undercut the usefulness of such weapons. Finally, the
conservative landlords, businessmen and bankers Korean War resulted in the deaths of over two million
Some of the consequences of the Korean War were due
against left-wing peasants and workers, and resulted in Korean civilians and profoundly affected life on the
to the scale and duration of the conflict. In America, the
the deaths of over one hundred thousand people by Korean peninsula. To the consternation of nearly all
North Korean invasion pushed the political centre to the
early 1950. The civil conflict for control of Korea Koreans, their land remains divided into implacably
right by undercutting domestic reform efforts and by
quickly became enmeshed in the Cold War, however, hostile regimes. Thus, the fundamental, causal conflict
lending credibility to McCarthyite allegations that a
because of the post-war occupation of the peninsula by of the Korean War remains unresolved to this day.
Communist conspiracy sought to rot the nation from
the United States and the USSR. With each superpower
within. At the same time, the emphasis that successive
installing an ideologically acceptable government in its
American administrations placed on maintaining
Key People/Places
Dean Acheson (1893-1971): American secretary of state from 1949
to 1953. Acheson's omission of South Korea from his January 1950
‘defence perimeter’ speech probably led Kim Il Sung and Joseph
Stalin to conclude that the United States would not respond to an
attempt to reunify Korea by force.
Clement Attlee (1883-1967): British prime minister from 1945 to
1951, during the outbreak of the Korean War. Attlee supported
intervention in Korea by the United Nations, but balked at
President Truman's statement in December 1950 that the United
States was contemplating the use of atomic weapons in the war.
Omar Bradley (1893-1981): Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Bradley's testimony during Senate hearings on Truman's decision
to fire General MacArthur persuasively countered arguments for an
expanded war.
Cheju Island: An island off southwest Korea. Cheju was the scene
of bitter fighting between leftist guerrillas and government security
forces in late 1948 and early 1949 and remained a hotbed of
insurgent activity throughout the war.
Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975): Leader of the Nationalist Chinese
government on Taiwan. Chiang hoped that direct conflict between
the People's Republic of China and the United States would compel
Washington to restore him to power on the mainland.
Mark Clark(1896-1984): Commander of UN forces in Korea from
May 1952 until the end of the conflict.
Demilitarised Zone (DMZ): A 140-mile-long, 2.5-mile-deep zone
that has divided South Korea from North Korea since the end of the
Korean War in July 1953. The world's most fortified border, the
DMZ has, ironically, become a thriving wildlife refuge.
Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969): Former commander of
American forces in Europe during World War II, head of NATO,
and president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. Eisenhower
claimed to have ended the Korean War through the threat of
nuclear escalation.
John Hodge (1893-1963): Commander of the XXIV Corps in the
United States army and head of the American Military Government
(AMG) in Korea following WWII. Hodge angered Koreans by
continuing to govern through the colonial Japanese administration
and by refusing to recognise or work with the popular People's
Republic government.
Inchon: A port city west of Seoul. MacArthur's dramatic
amphibious invasion at Inchon in September 1950 ended the North
Korean invasion and led to the UN's failed effort to militarily
reunify Korea.
Iron Triangle: A heavily fortified area bound by the towns of
Pyonggang (not to be confused with the North Korean capital of
Pyongyang), Chorwon and Kumwha. The Iron Triangle controlled
key lines of communication in central Korea, and was the scene of
heavy fighting from 1951 to 1953.
C. Turner Joy (1895-1956): Commander of naval forces in the
Far East during the Korea War and head of the UN delegation at
the peace negotiations until June 1952.
Kim Il Sung (1912-94): Young Communist political and military
leader who took control of North Korea following World War II.
He waged civil war with Syngman Rhee, and ordered the June
1950 attack on South Korea that began the Korean War.
Alan Kirk (1888-1963): American ambassador to the Soviet
Union. Kirk urged the Truman administration to respond
forcefully and quickly to the June 1950 North Korean attack.
Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964): Legendary American general,
post-war proconsul of Japan and commander of UN forces in
Korea until April 1951. MacArthur's insistence that the United
States make Korea the central battleground in the Cold War and
his insubordinate letter to Representative Joseph Martin in March
1951 led President Truman to fire him.
Mao Zedong (1893-1976): Leader of the People's Republic of
China from 1949 until his death in 1976. Mao wished to focus on
shoring up Communist control of mainland China and on taking
Taiwan from the Nationalists in 1950, but he reluctantly
intervened against UN forces in Korea because he feared the
presence of an American army on China's borders.
George Marshall (1880-1959): Secretary of Defence from 1950 to
1951. His Senate testimony on the recall of General MacArthur
helped discredit both MacArthur and the notion that the United
States should expand the Korean War by attacking China.
Joseph McCarthy (1908-57): Former Marine and judge, the
Republican junior senator from Wisconsin (1947-57) briefly
dominated national politics and gave the McCarthy Era its name.
Taking advantage of the crisis atmosphere created by the Korean
conflict, McCarthy exploited the Communists-in-government
issue more effectively than any other figure. Forgotten and
forlorn, he died of alcohol-induced cirrhosis of the liver in 1957.
Panmunjon: The site of peace negotiations from October 1951
until the conclusion of the conflict in 1953.
The Pusan Perimeter: The defensive position held by UN forces
in the late summer of 1950.
Matthew Ridgway (1895-1993): Eighth Army commander from
December 1950 to April 1951, and commander of UN forces in
Korea from April 1951 to May 1952. As Eighth Army
commander, Ridgway rallied his defeated and dispirited troops
and eventually stabilised the UN position just above the thirty-
eighth parallel.
Dean Rusk (1909-94): War Department colonel and later
secretary of state under John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. In
August 1945, Assistant Secretary of War John McCloy tasked Rusk with
arranging for a division of Korea into American and Soviet zones of
occupation that would permit the United States to control the capital of
Seoul. Rusk opted for the thirty-eighth parallel largely because it existed
on most maps of the peninsula.
Taiwan: Island bastion of Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist government
following the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War. Kim Il
Sung's invasion of South Korea and Truman's subsequent decision to
neutralise the Taiwan Strait with the Seventh Fleet forestalled Mao
Zedong's plans to effect the final reunification of China.
The Thirty-Eighth Parallel: The line by which the United States and
the USSR agreed to divide Korea into zones of occupation at the
conclusion of World War II. The thirty-eighth parallel quickly hardened
into an international border after the two superpowers helped establish
rival regimes in their respective zones.
Joseph Stalin (1879-1953): Secretary General of the Communist Party's
Central Committee from 1922 to 1953. He adopted the title ‘Soviet
Premier’ from 1941 to 1953, and functioned as dictator of the USSR
from 1924 until his death in 1953. Stalin reluctantly approved Kim Il
Sung's planned invasion—and provided the military equipment to effect
it—after Kim promised that the attack would succeed quickly and
completely. Stalin's failure to provide air support to Chinese forces after
they intervened in Korea helped foster the enmity between the two
Communist states that led to the subsequent Sino-Soviet split.
Syngman Rhee (1875-1965): An American-educated anti-Communist
who took control of South Korea after World War II. The proud and
unyielding Rhee ruled South Korea autocratically and nearly disrupted
the armistice proceedings when he unilaterally freed twenty-five
thousand North Korean prisoners of war (POWs). Opposition to his
authoritarian rule resulted in his overthrow in 1960.
Robert Taft (1889-1953): A conservative, isolationist Republican
senator from Ohio whom Eisenhower narrowly defeated for the GOP
presidential nomination in 1952. After the Korean conflict became a
stalemate, Taft criticised Truman for deploying American troops to
Korea without first consulting Congress and attacked the
administration for pursuing a limited war strategy.
Harry Truman (1884-1972): President of the United States from 1945
to 1953. Truman won broad approval in the United States for his
decision to deploy troops to Korea to prevent Kim Il Sung's conquest of
the south. Truman has earned praise for upholding civilian control of
the military during the contretemps with MacArthur, but his decision to
wage a limited war after the Chinese intervention greatly eroded his
public support.
Walton Walker (1889-1950): Commander of the U.S. Eighth Army
from the outbreak of the Korean War until his accidental death in
December 1950. Walker organised the successful defence of the Pusan
Perimeter in the summer of 1950.
Yalu River: The river that divides North Korea from China.
 in support of Syngman Rhee's government.
Since the 1960s, a new school of thought has arisen to
challenge this view. Influenced by the Vietnam War and by a
new focus on Korean documents, revisionist scholars such as
Bruce Cumings and Gabriel Kolko argue that the war's origins
were rooted not in the Cold War but in the brutal civil war
between progressive and reactionary Koreans that had broken
out after World War II. Such historians assert not only that
Moscow had virtually no involvement in the planning of the
June 1950 invasion of South Korea, but also that the assault
was in fact a counterattack inspired by persistent South
Korean provocations. Scholars such as Cumings also take
issue with the view that the United States intervened in Korea
merely to counter aggression. Instead, they conclude that
Washington was acting to sustain the system of global
capitalism it had established after World War II. Cumings and
others thus take odds not only with the notion that ‘Koreans
invade[d] Korea’ in June 1950, but also with the earlier view
that the United States had acted in Korea principally to blunt
aggression (Cumings, Roaring of the Cataract, 769).
Cumings's interpretation of the origins of the Korean War
remains highly influential, but it has come under increasing
attack in recent years from scholars who emphasise the
international basis of the conflict. Taking advantage of
Origins of the Korean War recently declassified Soviet and Chinese archives, historians
such as Sergei Goncharov and Xue Litai assert that ‘the facts
Though the Korean War began over fifty years ago and has
now available do clearly call into question the arguments that
been the subject of innumerable scholarly works, it remains
s Macarthur Kim was driven to war by the South's recurring provocations
one of the most hotly contested events of the post-World War
glas MacArthur roaring orders fr. the bridge of the flagship U.S.S. Mount McKinley, watching his X
or that the decision was taken solely on his own initiative’
II era. making
t Marine Division Historians studying
assault thethe
landing on conflict
Inchoncontinue to debate the
beachheads.
(Goncharov et al. 213). Indeed, these historians argue that the
extent
l Mydans./Time of Pictures/Getty
& Life the war's impact
Images on McCarthyism, to ponder the
Korean War emerged both from events related to the Korean
50 rationale behind the Soviet Union's failure to attend the UN
Security Council during the pivotal early days of the conflict, Civil War and from complex negotiations between Moscow,
and to argue over which side bore responsibility for the
om: www.life.com/image/50777975 Beijing and Pyongyang in the spring of 1950 that were based
deadlocked
ee Your World peace
LLC. All Rights talks in 1951 and 1952. No aspect of the
Reserved
more on cold calculations of national interest than on shared
Korean War has engendered more persistent or intense adherence to the ideology of communism. Eager to increase
debate, however, than the series of questions related to the
the Soviet Union's security buffer in Northeast Asia and
conflict's origins. What were the roots of the Korean War?
hoping to forestall a possible reconciliation between Beijing
Were its origins in the Cold War or in the ongoing Korean
and Washington, Stalin agreed to Kim's request to reunify
Civil War? Most importantly, who was responsible for the
outbreak of the conflict? Korea through force, and provided additional offensive
military supplies and tactical advice toward that end. Unable
‘to deny his Korean comrades the very opportunity for
Early scholarly interpretations of the origins of the Korean War
e/50777975/print/1
unifying theirPage 1 of 1
country that the Chinese had demanded for
tended to buttress the official American view that the Soviet
Union bore primary responsibility for the Korean conflict. themselves’ and dependent on the Soviet Union for the
Wagering that the United States would not respond to an equipment necessary for the planned invasion of Taiwan, Mao
attack in Korea, Joseph Stalin ordered his local subordinate, had little choice but to accede to Kim's plan (Goncharov et al.
Kim Il Sung, to launch a lightning invasion of South Korea. If 214). Such recent interpretations have thus helped produce a
successful, the Soviet leader believed, the assault would win
new synthesis regarding the origins of the Korean War. As
new territory for international communism, threaten Japan's
John Merrill summarises, these new works suggest that the war
long-term security and undermine America's East Asian
‘cannot be isolated either from its local context or from the
defence perimeter. Orthodox scholars such as David Rees
thus discounted completely the local Korean situation, cast complex resonance between events on the peninsula and the
international environment’ (189).
the conflict in strict Cold War terms and wholeheartedly
supported the Truman administration's decision to intervene
McCarthyism instance, recklessly alleged that ‘Truman is the President in
name only . . . the real President who discharged MacArthur
Named for its chief proponent, the movement to uncover
is a rather sinister monster conceived in the Kremlin and [ . .
Communist subversives in the federal government and other
.] nurtured into Frankenstein proportions by the Hiss crowd,
key public institutions dominated American politics from the
who still run the State Department’ (qtd. in Whalen 304).
late 1940s to the mid 1950s. Rooted in the notion that
communism was a monolithic force and in the belief that the
At the same time, frustration over the limited nature of the
international Communist conspiracy sought to weaken the
Korean War—and anger that elites in the Truman
United States from within, McCarthyism gained momentum in
administration seemed uninterested in a clear-cut victory—
pace with the emerging Cold War because the conflict with
helped strengthen and perpetuate McCarthyism. As the
the USSR appeared to confirm the movement's fundamental
historian James T. Patterson argues, ‘[t]he war [. . .] lifted the
assumptions. Not surprisingly, the Korean conflict proved
Red Scare to high tide’ (236). Buffeted by the McCarthyites'
especially pivotal in nurturing the Red Scare. International
charges, the Truman administration shifted the standard for
communism's apparently co-ordinated effort in Korea and the
the dismissal of federal employment from reasonable grounds
Truman administration's failure to prevent the North Korean
to reasonable doubt. A growing number of states required
attack appeared to validate the basic logic of McCarthyism. At
teachers to take loyalty oaths or made invoking the Fifth
the same time, the administration's limited war strategy and
Amendment grounds for dismissal from government
the resultant military deadlock perpetuated and intensified the
employment. Not surprisingly, congressional red-baiters took
poisoned political environment in which movements such as
advantage of the war-inspired crisis atmosphere to broaden
McCarthyism thrive (Halberstam, Fifties 68-70, 112-16).
their efforts to punish their liberal political enemies through
congressionally sanctioned witch-hunts. McCarthyites in
At first, the public and members of both major political parties
Congress used the war to justify no fewer than thirty-four
strongly backed the administration's handling of the Korean
separate investigations of domestic communism in 1951-52.
conflict. However, the subsequent failure to reunify Korea
The frustration and anger that accompanied the Korean War
under a non-Communist regime, the seeming evidence of
thus played a key part in perpetuating the Red Scare. In fact,
close co-ordination among the Communist powers, and the
only after the bitter, frustrating conflict had ended in 1953
stunning American defeat at the hands of the Chinese in late
would McCarthyism begin slowly to fade away (Patterson
1950 fuelled the red-baiters' claim that traitors in the Truman
236-37).
administration were responsible for America's apparent failure
in the Cold War. Much of their attention focused on Secretary
of State Dean Acheson's
Press Club speech in
January 1950, in which he
failed to name South
Korea as a nation the
United States would
automatically defend in
the event of a Communist
attack. As Senator Kenneth
Wherry viciously asserted,
Acheson's hands were
‘stained with the blood of
our boys in Korea’ (qtd. in
Griffith 115). Truman's
decision in April 1951 to
dismiss General Douglas
MacArthur for
insubordination resulted in
a hail of new allegations
that the executive branch
was honeycombed with
traitors. Senator Joseph
McCarthy (R-WI), for
The Cold War
The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet
Union was both pivotal in producing the Korean War
and was, in turn, powerfully shaped and altered by that
conflict. The Cold War—the economic, political,
diplomatic, military and cultural struggle between the
United States and the USSR—began in earnest not long
after World War II. Initially, the contest between
America and the Soviet Union was principally a
diplomatic and economic struggle that centred on
preventing the USSR from expanding its influence into
Western Europe and the Middle East. Joseph Stalin's
belligerent and ideologically charged ‘Election Speech’,
the installation of puppet regimes in Eastern Europe and
Moscow's continued occupation of northern Iran in
1946 and its persistent efforts to hinder economic
recovery in Germany had rekindled pre-war fears that
the Kremlin sought to expand its control over Europe
and the Near East. Inspired by George Kennan's call for
the United States to contain Soviet expansion through
economic and diplomatic means, Washington issued the
Truman Doctrine and established the Marshall Plan in
1947. The hardening American attitude manifested in
these actions did not go unanswered. Intent on shoring
up his position in Eastern Europe, Stalin countered by
ordering a Communist coup in Czechoslovakia and by
initiating the Berlin Blockade in 1948. By the end of that
year, the Cold War was in full swing (Leffler 3-23).
Despite its division and occupation by the United States
and Soviet Union following World War II, Korea was not
initially a flashpoint in the Cold War. Both superpowers
at first hoped to see Korea unified and neutralised under
a trustee arrangement. However, the strategic
importance of the peninsula to the security of both the
Soviet Far East and Japan, and the growing rivalry in
Europe led both superpowers in 1946 to view Korea
through the lens of the Cold War. Indeed, the
superpowers' actions on the peninsula during the late
1940s would mirror the growing Cold War in Europe.
Fearing that the USSR intended to undermine stability in
the south, the head of the American Military
Government (AMG), General John Hodge, followed the
pattern established in Europe when he suppressed the
nascent, left-leaning Korean People's Republic (KPR)
government and instead threw his support behind
Syngman Rhee's conservative Korean Democratic Party
(KDP). In keeping with its earlier actions in Eastern
Europe, meanwhile, the USSR re-appraised its policy of
permitting North Koreans to elect friendly-but-
independent representatives to local people's
committees and moved to install a more tractable client
government headed by the strongly pro-Soviet
Communist Kim Il Sung (Stueck, Korean War 19-27). As
a consequence, Korea soon became, in the words of
historian James Matray, ‘a divided nation that was not
independent but a captive of the Cold War’ (Reluctant
Crusade 51).
As the Cold War worsened in the wake of the USSR's
detonation of an atomic bomb and the Communists'
victory in the Chinese Civil War, it increasingly
coloured perceptions of Korean events. In particular,
the contest between the superpowers ensured that the
Truman administration would view the North Korean
invasion of South Korea not as an intensification of the
ongoing civil war, but as an extension and escalation
of the larger Cold War. Believing that the North
Korean offensive was merely a new front in the Soviet
Union's program of global conquest, Truman and his
advisers felt that they had no choice but to commit
troops to South Korea's defence. Likewise, the
administration's decision to pursue a limited war
strategy and a negotiated settlement after China's
intervention stemmed from the belief that Korea was
merely a Cold War feint and that the real Soviet
objective remained Western Europe. In General Omar
Bradley's famous words, continuing to pursue victory
in Korea in the face of the larger threat to Western
Europe meant engaging the United States ‘in the
wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time and
with the wrong enemy’ (qtd. in Kaufman, Korean War
107).
The Cold War thus shaped American perceptions of
the Korean Civil War and helped transform that struggle
into an international conflict. At the same time, the Korean
War dramatically transformed and broadened the Cold
War from a formerly economic and diplomatic contest for
the control of Western Europe into a militarised contest for
global dominance. Concluding that the North Korean
invasion was but one prong in a larger, Soviet-directed
campaign to win control of the Far East, President Truman
dramatically stepped up American military aid to friendly
governments in East and Southeast Asia in the weeks
following Kim's attack. At the same time, the
administration demanded and received a substantially
increased military budget based on the recommendations
embodied in the National Security Council's top-secret
report, NSC-68 (Stueck, Korean War 349). The shock of the
conflict and the threat of direct invasion that it seemed to
portend likewise helped the United States transform NATO
from a paper commitment to a powerful defensive alliance.
For its part, Moscow reacted to the Korean War and to the
subsequent American military rearmament program by
undertaking its own arms buildup centred on the
development of the hydrogen bomb. Thus, the Korean War
was both a consequence of the superpowers' mounting
post-war rivalry and the pivotal event in institutionalising,
globalising and militarising the Cold War (MacDonald
261).
Credibility
The overriding importance of maintaining credibility—a
nation's reputation for reliability and resolve in the face
of aggression—proved central to the origins and course
of the Korean War. Credibility loomed large in the
strategic thinking of American policy makers because of
their understanding of the perceived lessons of the
1930s. Policy makers in the U.S. government believed
as an article of faith that France and Britain's misguided
effort to avoid war by appeasing Adolf Hitler at the
Munich Conference in 1938 had led directly to the
outbreak of World War II. To officials in Washington,
the appeasement policy proved counterproductive in
two ways. First, it rewarded Hitler's aggressive
behaviour and made clear that the Allies would not
stand up to him, and it thereby emboldened the Nazi
dictator to pursue further aggression. Equally important
were the actions of the British and French at Munich
(and their earlier failure to stop Italian aggression in
Ethiopia and Japanese expansion in Manchuria), which
demoralised friendly nations such as Czechoslovakia by
demonstrating to them that they could not count on
allied assistance were they to resist a German invasion
(Leffler 21).
Memories of Munich dominated the American
understanding of the North Korean invasion in June
1950. Few American officials saw South Korea as
strategically important in its own right. Believing that
Moscow had ordered and directed the assault, however,
policy makers in the Truman administration viewed the
attack as a crucial test of America's Cold War
credibility. ‘“Communism was acting in Korea just as
Hitler, Mussolini and the Japanese had acted ten, fifteen
and twenty years earlier,” President Truman later
recounted. “If the Communists were permitted to force
their way into the Republic of Korea without opposition
from the free world, no small nation would have the
courage to resist threats and aggression”’ (Whalen 116).
Intent on making the communist world think twice
before initiating any further aggression and equally keen
on demonstrating to its friends—particularly its
European allies—that they could rely on the United
States, the Truman administration moved to stop the
North Korean assault. ‘The decision to intervene’, the
historian Robert McMahon concludes, ‘was [thus] the
product not of a reassessment of the Korean peninsula's
intrinsic importance to the United States but of its
symbolic relevance [. . .] to what U.S. diplomats
reflexively interpreted as a test of American resolve’
(‘Credibility and World Power’ 459).
The American obsession with credibility also influenced
the administration's conduct in the conflict. The
decision to cross the thirty-eighth parallel and advance
to the Yalu River stemmed in part from the belief that
global perceptions of American resolve would be
enhanced if the United States were to reunify Korea
under a non-Communist government. American officials
felt that they had to press forward, moreover, to avoid
appearing to yield to China's threat to intervene if UN
forces moved into North Korea. Stopping at the thirty-
eighth parallel, the Truman administration concluded,
‘would have constituted an apparent loss of nerve in the
face of Communist pressure tactics’ and would have
emboldened the Communists to make further threats
(Stueck, Korean War 98). The American fixation with
credibility also shaped Washington's negotiating
strategy. Specifically, American officials refused to grant
concessions that they believed would reward
aggression. Thus, the Truman administration rejected a
British proposal in late 1950 that called for the United
States to grant official recognition to the People's
Republic of China in exchange for a ceasefire in Korea
on the grounds that doing so would merely encourage
the Communist states to conclude that they could win
further concessions through other acts of aggression
(Kaufman, Korean War 65-71).
The United States was not, however, the only nation
intent on maintaining its credibility during the Korean
War. Indeed, recently declassified Soviet and Chinese
documents indicate that the Communist powers were
nearly as obsessed with upholding their reputations as
was Washington. In early 1950, for example, a reluctant
Joseph Stalin approved Kim Il Sung's invasion plan in
part because he believed he needed to buttress Soviet
credibility within the communist world. Stalin's
obsession with maintaining the Soviet Union's
reputation for resolve and reliability likewise spurred
him to urge Beijing to intervene in Korea because he
believed, in William Stueck's words, ‘that Communist
passivity would make the United States more rather than
less aggressive’ (Korean War 105). Mao Zedong agreed.
‘If we don't send troops to Korea’, Mao argued during a
key Politburo meeting in October 1950, ‘the reactionary
forces in the world will become bolder and that will be
disadvantageous to all sides’ (Stueck, Korean War 101).
Ironically, therefore, China moved to intervene in the
Korean War in part to achieve the same intangible
goal—upholding credibility—that had motivated the
United States to intercede four months earlier.
Monolithic Communism
Washington's understanding of the Korean War and
America's consequent approach to that conflict were
shaped fundamentally by a particular understanding of
communism that was then emerging as the dominant
perceptual framework of the Cold War. Increasingly,
both foreign policy decision makers and the public at
large were coming to conclude that communism was
an integrated, monolithic force and that the parties,
states and individuals it ‘controlled’ acted not to
advance their own or their nations' interests but to
achieve the goals of the international communist
movement. The Korean War proved to be the central
event in the emergence of this understanding of
communism. The Korean War, in fact, would be
shaped by the understanding that communism was
monolithic in nature and would also in turn constitute
the pivotal episode in institutionalising that perspective.
During the early Cold War, the American perception of
the menace posed by communism remained unformed
and shifting. Foreign policy decision makers vacillated
between the belief that communism was a powerful
ideological tool that the USSR used to win adherents
among those suffering psychological dislocation and
material deprivation, and a contrasting conviction that it
was a near-religious force that dictated the foreign
policies of the nations it controlled—including the
USSR—and that used those states as instruments in its
effort to expand its sway across the globe (Isaacson and
Thomas 25-33, 352-56). Tugged between these
competing views, American foreign policy in the late
1940s was confused and contradictory. On the one
hand, the United States declared publicly that it would
assist free people everywhere who confronted
communist aggression. On the other, Washington began
to provide military and economic aid to Josip Broz Tito's
Communist regime in Yugoslavia, and waged a subtle
diplomatic campaign to separate the People's Republic
of China from the USSR, capped by Secretary of State
Dean Acheson's intentional omission of Taiwan from
the American defence perimeter during his January 1950
Press Club speech (MacDonald 22).
Even as it pursued the Yugoslav and Chinese initiatives,
though, Washington began slowly to alter its perception
of communism. That re-appraisal partly stemmed, in
fact, from the failure to alienate China from the USSR.
Ignoring the Truman administration's conciliatory policy
regarding Taiwan, Mao ordered the seizure of American
diplomatic property just hours after Acheson's Press
Club speech. Worse, the Chinese leader signed a long- campaign to expand Communist control in East Asia,
term treaty of alliance with Moscow in February 1950 Truman administration officials concluded that they had
that compromised Chinese sovereignty. Mao's rebuff of no choice but to intervene to stop the advance of
America and willingness to enter into an unequal treaty communism in Korea. At the same time, the growing
with the USSR suggested strongly to administration conviction that communism was a monolithic force led
officials that Communists—with the exception of the Truman to step up American aid to threatened areas
aberrant Tito—were more committed to ideology than to throughout the region. He consequently ordered the
nationalist sentiments (Goncharov et. al. 102). Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan Strait to prevent a
Communist invasion of Taiwan and announced a sharp
This understanding of the Communist menace shaped increase in military assistance to French forces fighting
America's decision to intervene in Korea. Noting that Communist guerrillas in Indochina (McCullough 779-
the North Korean attack came close on the heels of both 80).
the Communist victory in the Chinese Civil War and the
signing of the Sino-Soviet Treaty and blind to the While the American approach to Korea was shaped by
complex relationship among Beijing, Moscow and the monolithic conception of communism, that
Pyongyang, administration officials concluded that the perspective was in turn reified and institutionalised by
invasion was the product of international communism's the conflict. No longer—in the wake of the apparently
unified drive for global dominance and that Joseph co-ordinated North Korean offensive and, especially, in
Stalin had undoubtedly ordered the attack (one State the aftermath of Communist China's intervention—did
Department official publicly ‘likened the relationship American officials view communism merely as a tool of
between the Soviet Union and North Korea to that the USSR. After Korea, they saw it as an
between Walt Disney and Donald Duck’ [Whalen 115]). uncompromising faith that dictated the actions of
Perceiving the invasion as part of a larger co-ordinated Communist states. No longer did they draw a distinction

between Communist governments put in place by the
USSR's Red Army and those that gained power
independently. All Communist states, they came to
believe in the days following Kim's offensive, operated
to advance the aims of international communism rather
than to promote national interests. No longer, finally,
did they think that Communist leaders put nationalism
above belief. Loyalty to ideology, they concluded,
proved far stronger than allegiance to country. In short,
no longer did they debate whether communism or
nationalism motivated Communist-controlled states.
Communism was an integrated, monolithic force,
American officials concluded, that completely
controlled its adherents and impelled them to take
actions aimed at expanding international communism's
global sway.
Limited War
The limited war strategy pursued by the Truman
administration in Korea following the Chinese
intervention remains one of the most controversial
aspects of the Korean War. During the early stages of the
conflict, few Americans disagreed with the
administration's war strategy. Seeking at first merely to
prevent South Korea from falling to the North Korean
invasion, Washington instructed its theatre commander,
Douglas MacArthur, to use all military means short of
nuclear weapons to repel the attack. Even after the
Inchon invasion and the consequent shift in war aims
from preserving South Korea to reunifying the peninsula
under a non-Communist government, the administration
continued to give the general free rein to use his forces
as he saw fit. Accustomed as they were to winning wars
decisively and viewing World War II as the model of the
ideal conflict, most Americans approved the Truman
administration's goals and its military strategy during the
early part of the conflict.
Both the American objective and war strategy would
change, however, in the wake of the Chinese
intervention. Believing that communism was a
monolithic force (and that Korea was thus a distraction
designed to draw resources away from Europe) and
dubious that they could achieve a meaningful victory
against a nation that appeared able to draw upon
limitless manpower, Truman and his advisers decided to
abandon the earlier goal of reunifying Korea.
Henceforth, as historian Richard Whalen asserts, ‘The
United States/UN would fight with limited forces and
limited strategy for a limited purpose, while continuing
to advocate the unification of Korea by political means’
(265). President Truman consequently ordered General
MacArthur to prevent the Communists from driving
American forces off the peninsula, but refused to accede
either to MacArthur's request to widen the war by
bombing China or to isolate the battlefield ‘by laying a
field of radioactive wastes [. . .] across all major lines of
enemy supply’ in North Korea (Whalen 292).
The Truman administration's decision to pursue a limited
war strategy and concomitant refusal to approve
MacArthur's calls for escalation rankled the proud
general. Intent on rebuilding his reputation and
genuinely believing that the greater threat was in Asia
rather than Europe, MacArthur moved in early 1951 to
compel the president to widen the war in Korea. In
March, he disrupted a planned White House peace
proposal by preemptively issuing an inflammatory public
statement; worse, he then wrote a letter—subsequently
made public by House Minority Leader Joseph Martin (R-
MA)—in which he condemned the administration's
limited war strategy by declaring that there was ‘no
substitute for victory’ (Halberstam, Fifties 113-14).
MacArthur's nakedly insubordinate actions challenged
the principle of civilian control of the military. In April,
President Truman consequently recalled the general
from his command and replaced him with General
Matthew Ridgway. The administration's clumsy
handling of MacArthur's firing—he first learned of his
dismissal while listening to the radio—and the public's
broad approval of his seductively simple call for a
decisive victory in Korea resulted in a national
outpouring of support for the general. MacArthur thus
returned home to a hero's welcome highlighted by a
ticker-tape parade in New York City attended by 7.5
million people and by the general's address to
Congress. Vilified by a nation seeking easy answers, in
contrast, President Truman saw his remaining public
approval melt away and confronted mounting calls for
his impeachment (Halberstam, Fifties 113-14).
Support for MacArthur soon proved to be as shallow as
it was extensive. Nonetheless, most Americans
remained frustrated and dissatisfied with the
administration's limited war strategy. They grumbled
about the ongoing costs of the war in terms of blood
and money, and deplored the recall of World War II
veterans for duty in Korea. More broadly, Americans
continued to measure conflicts according to the
yardstick of the good war—World War II—and to
believe that wars should be fought to win or not fought
at all. They thus found ‘too cerebral’ the
administration's claim that the United States was
conducting a limited conflict in Korea so as to achieve
victory in the larger Cold War, and made clear to poll-
takers that they favoured expanding the war to include
attacks against China in hopes of achieving a decisive
victory (Whalen 303).
The confusion and anger most Americans felt over the
limited nature of the Korean War thus simmered just
below the surface during the last two and a half years of
the conflict. Dissatisfaction with the war would prove,
in the long run, to be a cautionary tale for future
political leaders. Accustomed as they were to the
nation's tradition of winning wars decisively, the
American people were simply ill-suited to conducting
lengthy, limited conflicts such as the Korean War. As
the historian James T. Patterson argues, the public
frustration with the Truman administration's handling of
the conflict in Korea ‘suggested that democracy and
prolonged military stalemate do not easily mix’ (232).
American political leaders would eventually learn that
difficult lesson, but not before leading the nation into
an even more frustrating limited conflict in the jungles
and rice paddies of Indochina.
Timeline
1904-05
Japan emerges victorious in the Russo-Japanese War.
1910
Japan formally annexes Korea.
1919
Demonstrations against continued Japanese rule break
out in Korea.
1943
At the Cairo Conference, Winston Churchill, Franklin
Roosevelt and Chiang Kai-shek declare that Korea would
become an independent nation after a period of multi-
power trusteeship.
1945
Japan surrenders in August. The United States and Soviet
Union subsequently agree to divide Korea temporarily at
the thirty-eighth parallel for occupation purposes; the
first American occupation forces arrive in September. A
wide range of Korean groups form the government of the
Korean People's Republic in August and September, but
the governor of the American Military Government,
General John Hodge, refuses to grant it official
recognition. In October, Syngman Rhee returns to South
Korea from exile in the United States and assumes
control of the conservative Korean Democratic Party. At
the Foreign Ministers' Conference in Moscow in
December, the United States and the USSR agree to
form a Joint Commission to prepare Korea for the
election of a unified government.
1946
During 1946, relations between the United States and
the USSR worsen as the wartime alliance begins to give
way to the post-war Cold War. In keeping with the
growing tension of the Cold War, the Joint Commission
disbands in May 1946 after the two superpowers prove
unable to resolve key differences regarding Korea.
Throughout the year, the United States steps up its
support for Syngman Rhee and the Korean Democratic
Party in the south while the USSR increasingly backs
Kim Il Sung in the north.
1947
The Cold War begins in earnest. Seeking to contain
possible Soviet expansion in Europe, President Harry
Truman announces the Truman Doctrine in March and
later approves the Marshall Plan. Intent on forestalling
Communist domination of Korea, meanwhile, the
United States presents a resolution at the United Nations
calling for separate elections in the American and Soviet
zones.
1948
Cold War tensions intensify after a Soviet-engineered
coup in Czechoslovakia in February and the initiation of
the Berlin Blockade in June. In Korea, the occupation
zones become formal states. In August, Syngman Rhee
establishes the Republic of Korea in the south; the
following month, Kim Il Sung founds the Democratic
People's Republic in the north. In the fall, a leftist revolt
breaks out in South Korea on Cheju Island and in nearby
mainland cities including Taegu. Rhee responds by
committing security forces to the insurrectionary areas.
1949
In January, South Korean security forces complete their
suppression of leftist guerrillas on the island of Cheju.
The fighting results in over thirty thousand deaths.
Though Stalin ends the Berlin Blockade, Cold War
tensions increase after the Soviet Union detonates its
first atomic bomb in September and after Mao Zedong
declares the establishment of the People's Republic of
China in October. By the end of the year, both
superpowers withdraw their occupation troops from
Korea.
1950
In January, Secretary of State Dean Acheson leaves
South Korea off the list of places that the United States
would automatically defend in East Asia. In April, Kim Il
Sung visits Moscow and wins Stalin's tentative approval
for his plan to reunify Korea through invasion. The
following month, he goes to Beijing and secures Mao's
endorsement. On June 25, the North Korean army
crosses the thirty-eighth parallel into South Korea.
President Truman responds by ordering American
military units to defend South Korea and by instructing
the navy to secure the Chinese Nationalist bastion on
Taiwan. With the Soviet Union absent from the United
Nations, the United States wins international approval
for military action in defence of South Korea. In
September, U.S. troops under General Douglas
MacArthur turn the tables against the North Korean
army with the amphibious landing at Inchon. Following
MacArthur's dramatic manoeuvre, the Truman
administration approves the movement of forces across
the thirty-eighth parallel in order to reunify Korea under
a non-Communist government. In November, after
Washington had ignored its repeated warnings,
Communist China intervenes forcefully in Korea. The
resulting Chinese offensive lasts until January 1951 and
pushes U.S. and UN forces south of the thirty-eighth
parallel. General Matthew Ridgway takes command of
the American Eighth Army in Korea in December after
General Walton Walker dies in an automobile accident.
1951
Under Ridgway's able leadership, UN troops stop the
Chinese offensive south of Seoul in January. During
Operation Thunderbolt in February, Ridgway's soldiers Convention. Frustrated by the failure of the talks, the
retake the South Korean capital and push Communist United States initiates air attacks on North Korean
forces back above the thirty-eighth parallel. In March, hydroelectric facilities on the Yalu River in June. In
Douglas MacArthur sets off one of the most spectacular October, Dwight Eisenhower solidifies his lead in the
episodes of the Korean War when he criticises the presidential race by promising that, if elected, he would
president's handling of the conflict in a letter to go to Korea to find a resolution to the conflict.
Representative Joseph Martin. Martin's decision to make
public MacArthur's letter the following month results in 1953
Truman's dismissal of the general on April 11. The death of Joseph Stalin in March 1953 paves the way
MacArthur subsequently returns to a hero's welcome in for a conclusion to the conflict. In April and May, the
the United States that includes a televised address before United Nations and the Communists exchange sick and
both houses of Congress. Popular support for MacArthur wounded POWs through Operation Little Switch. In
falters, however, after the Joint Chiefs of Staff make clear June, the two sides sign an armistice that ends the
their opposition to his call for total war during fighting and permit the repatriation of prisoners under
congressional testimony in May. In July, peace talks the auspices of a mixed commission. On June 18, Rhee
begin at Kaesong, following the failure of the nearly disrupts the armistice agreement when he
Communists' spring offensive. At the end of November, arranges for twenty-five thousand North Korean POWs
the two sides enter into a thirty-day cease fire. to break out of their prison camp. Despite Rhee's efforts
to obstruct the peace talks, the war comes to an end on
1952 July 27 with the conclusion of an armistice at
Both the stalemate on the battlefield and the deadlock at Panmunjon. The signing of the armistice sets the stage
the peace talks continue. In February, Chinese and for a massive prisoner exchange. Code-named
North Korean prisoners riot in their camps on Koje-do Operation Big Switch, the main swap of POWs begins in
Island. At the same time, the USSR and the PRC began August on the basis of voluntary rather than forcible
accusing the United States of using germ warfare in repatriation.
Korea. In May, the negotiations between Communist
and UN officials bog down over the issue of the 1954
repatriation of POWs. Believing that many Communist The Geneva Conference on Asian Cold War issues
soldiers had been impressed against their wills, the convenes. Though called in part to arrive at a permanent
United States seeks to make repatriation voluntary; in peace in Korea, the conference fails to make any
contrast, the Communists insist upon forced repatriation progress on that issue. As a result, the armistice is
in keeping with a strict interpretation of the Geneva extended indefinitely.
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