ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am using this opportunity to express gratitude to everyone who

supported me throughout the course of this project. I am thankful for
their aspiring guidance.

I express warm thanks to Manoj Mishra for his guidance for the
completion of this project as I believe it would not have been possible
without his support.
I would like to thanks my professor and the people who provided me
with the facility required and conductive conditions for my Political
Science Project.

Thank You,

Amartya Mishra
Roll No. 11

TABLE OF CONTENT
INTRODUCTION
CAUSES OF KOREAN WAR
THE TWO KOREAS
THE KOREAN WAR AND COLD WAR
NO SUBSTITUTE FOR VICTORY
THE KOREAN WAR REACHES A STALEMATE
AFTERMATH
TIMELINE
BIBLIOGRAPHY

INTRODUCTION
The Korean War was an episode in the Cold War. It seemed to be a war between
South and North Korea, but America and Russia were using it to fight without
having a hot war.
The USA went to war in Korea for three reasons.

The first reason was the Domino theory China turned Communist in 1949 and
Truman feared that the next domino would be Japan. The second was to
undermine Communism and protect the American way of life in 1950 the
American National Security Council recommended that America start 'rolling back'
Communism. Thirdly, Truman realized the USA was in a competition for world
domination with the USSR.
Russia went to war because Stalin wanted Communism to grow. In 1949, Kim Il
Sung persuaded Stalin and Mao Tse Tung to support an invasion of South Korea.
In 1950, Syngman Rhee threatened to attack North Korea. It was an excuse the
trigger for war: the NKPA invaded South Korea.

North Korea invaded the south in an attempt to unify the country under the norths
government. The attempt failed, and Korea is still divided in two. Both sides
maintain armies along the border where there is an uneasy peace sometimes
interrupted by exchanges of artillery fire.

The war cost more than more two million lives and ruined the economy of Korea
for twenty years. It also had implications for a wider conflict, the Cold War. The

main protagonists of that political, economic, military and ideological contest, The

Soviet Union and the United States of America, intervened in the Korean War. The
Soviet Union and its ally China backed North Korea, while the United States

gathered an alliance under the auspices of the United Nations (UN) to support the
south. One of the 21 UN countries offering support was Australia which sent
almost 18,000 army, navy and air force personnel. These are remembered in

Australia each year, especially the 340 who died, on 24 October, United Nations
Day.

Containment had not gone so well in Asia. When the Soviet Union entered the war
against Japan, they sent troops into Japanese-occupied Korea. As American troops
established a presence in the southern part of the Korean peninsula, the Soviets
began cutting roads and communications at the 38TH PARALLEL. Two separate
governments were emerging, as Korea began to resemble the divided Germany.
Upon the recommendation of the UN, elections were scheduled, but the North
refused to participate. The South elected SYNGMAN RHEE as president, but the
Soviet-backed North was ruled by KIM IL SUNG. When the United States
withdrew its forces from the peninsula, trouble began.
Northern Korean armed forces crossed the 38th parallel on June 25, 1950. It took
only two days for President Truman to commit the United States military to the
defense of southern Korea. Truman hoped to build a broad coalition against the
aggressors from the North by enlisting support from the United Nations.

Of course, the Soviet Union could veto any proposed action by the Security
Council, but this time, the Americans were in luck. The Soviets were boycotting
the Security Council for refusing to admit RED CHINA into the United Nations.
As a result, the Council voted unanimously to "repel the armed attack" of North
Korea. Many countries sent troops to defend the South, but forces beyond those of
the United States and South Korea were nominal.

The commander of the UN forces was none other than Douglas MacArthur. He had
an uphill battle to fight, as the North had overrun the entire peninsula with the
exception of the small PUSAN PERIMETER in the South. MacArthur ordered an
amphibious assault at Inchon on the western side of the peninsula on September
15.
Caught by surprise, the communist-backed northern forces reeled in retreat.
American led-forces from INCHON and the Pusan Perimeter quickly pushed the
northern troops to the 38th Parallel and kept going. The United States saw an
opportunity to create a complete indivisible democratic Korea and pushed the
northern army up to the Yalu River, which borders China.

With anticommunism on the rise at home, Truman relished the idea of reuniting
Korea. His hopes were dashed on November 27, when over 400,000 Chinese
soldiers flooded across the YALU RIVER. In 1949, Mao Tse-tung had established
a communist dictatorship in China, the world's most populous nation. The Chinese
now sought to aid the communists in northern Korea.

In no time, American troops were once again forced below the 38th Parallel.
General MacArthur wanted to escalate the war. He sought to bomb the Chinese
mainland and blockade their coast.

Truman disagreed. He feared escalation of the conflict could lead to World War
III, especially if the now nuclear-armed Soviet Union lent assistance to China.
Disgruntled, MacArthur took his case directly to the American people by openly
criticizing Truman's approach. Truman promptly fired him for insubordination.

CAUSES OF KOREAN WAR

Under Japanese rule before and during World War II, Korea was divided into two
parts after the Japanese surrender. The Soviet Union occupied the area north of the
38th parallel and the United States occupied the area south until 1948. Two new
ideologically opposite countries were established in 1948. North Korea wants
reunification under communist rule.

Facts

The first war in which the U.N. played a role. When asked to send military aid to
South Korea,16 countries sent troops and 41 sent equipment or aid. China fought
on the side of North Korea, and the Soviet Union sent them military equipment.
The U.S. sent about 90% of the troops that were sent to aid South Korea. The first
war with battles between jet aircraft. The U.S. spent around $67 billion on the war.
The truce talks lasted two years and 17 days.
The casualty toll had been reported as 54,246 until June 2000, when the Pentagon
acknowledged that a clerical error had included deaths outside the Korean War
theater in the total. There are more than 7,800 American soldiers are still
unaccounted for from the Korean War as of April 2015. There has never been a
peace treaty, so the Korean War has technically never ended.

THE TWO KOREAS

If the best minds in the world had set out to find us the worst possible location in
the world to fight this damnable war, U.S. Secretary of State Dean
Acheson(1893-1971) once said, the unanimous choice would have been Korea.
The peninsula had landed in Americas lap almost by accident. Since the beginning
of the 20th century, Korea had been a part of the Japanese empire, and after World
War II it fell to the Americans and the Soviets to decide what should be done with
their enemys Imperial possessions. In August 1945, two young aides at the State
Department divided the Korean peninsula in half along the 38th parallel. The
Russians occupied the area north of the line and the United States occupied the
area to its south.
By the end of the decade, two new states had formed on the peninsula. In the south,
the anti-communist dictator Syngman Rhee (1875-1965) enjoyed the reluctant
support of the American government; in the north, the communist dictator Kim Il
Sung (1912-1994) enjoyed the slightly more enthusiastic support of the Soviets.
Neither dictator was content to remain on his side of the 38th parallel, however,
and border skirmishes were common. Nearly 10,000 North and South Korean
soldiers were killed in battle before the war even began .

THE KOREAN WAR AND THE COLD

WAR
Even so, the North Korean invasion came as an alarming surprise to American
officials. As far as they were concerned, this was not simply a border dispute
between two unstable dictatorships on the other side of the globe. Instead, many
feared it was the first step in a communist campaign to take over the world. For
this reason, nonintervention was not considered an option by many top decision
makers. (In fact, in April 1950, a National Security Council report known as NSC68 had recommended that the United States use military force to contain
communist expansionism anywhere it seemed to be occurring, regardless of the
intrinsic strategic or economic value of the lands in question.)
If we let Korea down, President Harry Truman (1884-1972) said, the Soviet[s]
will keep right on going and swallow up one [place] after another. The fight on
the Korean peninsula was a symbol of the global struggle between east and west,
good and evil. As the North Korean army pushed into Seoul, the South Korean
capital, the United States readied its troops for a war against communism itself.
At first, the war was a defensive onea war to get the communists out of South
Koreaand it went badly for the Allies. The North Korean army was welldisciplined, well-trained and well-equipped; Rhees forces, by contrast, were
frightened, confused, and seemed inclined to flee the battlefield at any provocation.
Also, it was one of the hottest and driest summers on record, and desperately
thirsty American soldiers were often forced to drink water from rice paddies that
had been fertilized with human waste. As a result, dangerous intestinal diseases
and other illnesses were a constant threat. By the end of the summer, President
Truman and General Douglas MacArthur(1880-1964), the commander in charge of
the Asian theater, had decided on a new set of war aims. Now, for the Allies, the
Korean War was an offensive one: It was a war to liberate the North from the
communists.

Initially, this new strategy was a success. An amphibious assault at Inchon pushed
the North Koreans out of Seoul and back to their side of the 38th parallel. But as
American troops crossed the boundary and headed north toward the Yalu River,
the border between North Korea and Communist China, the Chinese started to
worry about protecting themselves from what they called armed aggression
against Chinese territory. Chinese leader Mao Zedong (1893-1976) sent troops to
North Korea and warned the United States to keep away from the Yalu boundary
unless it wanted full-scale war.

NO SUBSTITUTE FOR VICTORY

This was something that President Truman and his advisers decidedly did not
want: They were sure that such a war would lead to Soviet aggression in Europe,
the deployment of atomic weapons and millions of senseless deaths. To General
MacArthur, however, anything short of this wider war represented appeasement,
an unacceptable knuckling under to the communists.
As President Truman looked for a way to prevent war with the Chinese,
MacArthur did all he could to provoke it. Finally, in March 1951, he sent a letter to
Joseph Martin, a House Republican leader who shared MacArthurs support for
declaring all-out war on Chinaand who could be counted upon to leak the letter to
the press. There is, MacArthur wrote, no substitute for victory against
international communism.
For Truman, this letter was the last straw. On April 11, the president fired the
general for insubordination.

THE KOREAN WAR REACHES A

STALEMATE
In July 1951, President Truman and his new military commanders started peace
talks at Panmunjom. Still, the fighting continued along the 38th parallel as
negotiations stalled. Both sides were willing to accept a ceasefire that maintained
the 38th parallel boundary, but they could not agree on whether prisoners of war
should be forcibly repatriated. (The Chinese and the North Koreans said yes; the
United States said no.) Finally, after more than two years of negotiations, the
adversaries signed an armistice on July 27, 1953. The agreement allowed the
POWs to stay where they liked; drew a new boundary near the 38th parallel that
gave South Korea an extra 1,500 square miles of territory; and created a 2-milewide demilitarized zone that still exists today.

CASUALTIES OF THE KOREAN WAR

The Korean War was relatively short but exceptionally bloody. Nearly 5 million
people died. More than half of theseabout 10 percent of Koreas prewar
populationwere civilians. (This rate of civilian casualties was higher than World
War IIs and Vietnams.) Almost 40,000 Americans died in action in Korea, and
more than 100,000 were wounded.

TIMELINE
November 1947 - The United Nations General Assembly approves elections to be
held throughout Korea to choose a provisional government for the entire county. The
Soviet Union opposes this.
May 10, 1948 - The people of South Korea elect a national assembly. The assembly
set up the government of the Republic of Korea. The people of north refused to take
part.

September 9, 1948 - North Korean Communists establish the Democratic People's

Republic of Korea.
June 25, 1950 - 135,000 soldiers from the communist North Korean People's Army
(NKPA) cross the 38th parallel and invade Republic of Korea (ROK).

June 25, 1950 - The U.N. Security Council denounces North Korea's actions and
calls for a cessation of hostilities and withdrawal of the NKPA to the 38th parallel.
June 26, 1950 - U.S. President Harry S. Truman directs General Douglas MacArthur
to evacuate American dependents from Korea and to assist the ROKA.
June 30, 1950 - Truman orders ground troops into action.

July 1950 - In the first month of the war, U.S. soldiers kill significant numbers of
Korean civilians under a bridge, near a village called No Gun Ri. It is unclear
whether the soldiers were ordered to kill civilians or acted on their own.

July 5, 1950 - For the first time since the end of World War II U.S. troops go into
battle, at Osan, 30 miles south of Seoul. The first American casualty of the Korean
War dies here, Private Kenneth Shadrick of West Virginia.
June 23, 1951 - Jacob Malik, a Soviet delegate to the U.N., proposes a cease-fire.
July 10, 1951 - Truce talks begin at Kaesong.

October 25, 1951 - Truce talks are moved to Panmunjom.

November 27, 1951 - Both sides agree that the existing battle lines would be the
final dividing line between North and South Korea if a truce is reached in 30 days.
April 1952 - Truce talks are deadlocked over voluntary repatriation.

October 8, 1952 - Truce talks are adjourned.

April 26, 1953 - Truce talks are resumed and the Communists agree to voluntary
repatriation.
July 27, 1953 - Democratic People's Republic of Korea (north), Chinese People's
Volunteers and the UN sign an armistice agreement. The Republic of Korea refused
to sign. However hostilities ceased within 12 hours.
July 27, 1953 - Terms of the armistice include creation of the demilitarized
zone, DMZ. Each side is 2,200 yards form a center point. The DMZ is patrolled by
both sides at all times.
1990-1994 - North Korea recovers remains claimed to be 208 American servicemen.
2007 - Four sets of American servicemembers' remains are delivered to U.N. honor
guards in Panmunjon.
2011 - The remains of 26 U.S. Korean War servicemembers that had been listed as
MIA are identified.
2012 - The remains of 40 U.S. Korean War servicemembers are identified.
January-May 2013 - Fifteen U.S. MIA Korean War servicemembers are
identified.

June 2013-April 2014 - The remains of 49 U.S. military servicemembers

unaccounted for after the Korean War are identified.

May 2014 - May 2015 - The remains of 46 U.S. military servicemembers missing
from the Korean War are identified.

CONCLUSION

The Korean War was an event that drawed many nations' attention to the small
peninsula. Minor and major causes that contributed to the outbreak of the war were
continuously developed, starting from 1910, the year of Japanese Regime, untill
June 25th, 1945, the start of the war.
What can be first examined as one of the causing factors is the conflict between the
korean nation. Koreans began to socially divide themselves into two separate
groups, each serving different leaders: Kim Il-Sung from North and Syng-Man
Rhee from South. The role of foreign involvement can be also examined while
examining the split of one nation as certain responsibilities lie on the United States
and USSR. The Americans are greatly responsible for independently dividing the
land - without Korea's opinion - and for appointing pro-Japanese soldiers to the
South's government. Considering the circumstances of Korea post liberation from
the long period of Japanese regime, USSR and United States only worsened the
disorganized political situation by each support contradicting leaders. The reason
for supporting two opposing men is relevant to the issue of the Cold War which
was encompassing Korea through the period of war time. United States and USSR
were in opposing relationship with different ideologies. In this sense, although the
Korean War had the characteristic of a civil war, it can be argued that the
involvement of foreign countries overshadowed the civil conflict with more
internationally conflicting ideas.
Even so, the initial action for the commencement of Korean War is considered to
be happened by the North, more specifically by Kim Il-Sung. And this emphasizes
that even though the foreign intervention was overwhelming Koreans, the direct
motivation of the war comes from the struggle of one nation. It is not incorrect for
readers to view that the origins of the Korean war began since the conflict among
Koreans during the Japanese empire era. To provide an answer for the question of
the origins, it can be concluded that the Korean War was a combination of
civil and international conflicts, yet with more weight on the collision of one
nation that began the Korean War.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
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1.
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Center. http://www.history.navy.mil/ac/korea/korea1.htm.Retrieved 200708-16.

Stokesbury, James L (1990). A Short History of the Korean War. New

York: Harper Perennia

Appleman, Roy E (1998). South to the Naktong, North to the Yalu. Dept.
of the Army. pp. 3
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2010/jun/25/korean-war-veteranwang-xinshan-barbara-demick
Korean War by Max Hastings