THE WAR IN KOREA

The Forgotten War

A Research

In Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements in
English - 10

RESEARCHERS:

Don Carlos Binamira

Catherine Sumobay
Nelbert Cena
Janna Rose Mondragon
Joshua Ulrik Galano

10 - Stanislaus Kubista

JULY 2019
 THE KOREAN WAR

Preface

The Korean War was a conflict between the Democratic People’s Republic of
Korea (North Korea) and the Republic of Korea (South Korea) which took on inter-
national proportions in June 1950 when North Korea, emboldened after having been
supplied and advised by the Soviet Union, invaded the South.

This merited a stern condemnation from the United Nations, which subsequently
recommended that member states provide military assistance to South Korea. Twenty-
one (21) UN member-countries, including the Philippines, with the United States as the
primary contributor, thus got involved in the war on the side of the South Koreans.

The People’s Republic of China subsequently came to North Korea’s aid after
securing Moscow’s commitment of Russian military equipment and ammunitions. The
Chinese framed their involvement as safeguarding its national security out of its concern
that the escalating conflict may spill over its side of the Yalu River.

The fighting ended in July 1953 with Korea still divided into two hostile states,
with more than a million combat casualties suffered on both sides. Negotiations in 1954
produced no further agreement and the front line which straddled the 38th parallel has
been accepted ever since as the de facto boundary between North and South Korea.

Both North Korea and South Korea failed to achieve its respective goals which are
the destruction of the opposing regime and the reunification of the divided peninsula.

The three-year war in Korea which pitted communist and capitalist forces against
each other set the stage for decades of tension among North Korea and South Korea.

According to historians, the resultant conflict also helped set the tone for Soviet-
American rivalry during the Cold War, profoundly shaping the world we live in today.

Years after the war, South Korea had reached the status of an economic power-
house. Yet many of its citizens now know little about the conflict and have “a fatalistic
orientation” toward the economically isolated North, according to one expert.

Meanwhile, North Korea became “the world’s most amazing garrison state with
the fourth largest army in the world,” the same expert added.
 BACKGROUND OF THE WARRING PARTIES

Since the beginning of the 20th century, Korea had been a part of the Japanese
empire after its annexation in 1910. Unlike China, Manchuria, and the former Western
colonies seized by Japan, Korea did not have a native government or a colonial regime
waiting to return after hostilities ceased.

After Japan’s surrender in World War II, it fell to the Americans and the Soviets
to decide what should be done with Korea, one of their enemy’s imperial possessions.
The United States proposed temporarily dividing the country along the 38th Parallel as
a way to maintain its influence on the peninsula, which bordered Russia.

The divide lasted in part because of competing visions among Koreans for the
country’s future. It was fundamentally a civil war, fought over issues going back into
Korea’s colonial experience.

In 1948, the American-backed, anti-communist southern administration, based

in Seoul, declared itself the Republic of Korea. It was led by Syngman Rhee, who lived in
exile in the United States for many years and was installed as the South Korean leader
by the Office of Strategic Services, a predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency.

Soon after, the Soviet-backed, communist northern administration, based in

Pyongyang, declared itself the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Its leader was
Kim Il-sung, who fought alongside communist forces during the Chinese civil war and
was the grandfather of North Korea’s current dictator, Kim Jong-un.

As far as the Americans were concerned, this was not simply a border dispute
between two unstable dictatorships on the other side of the globe. Then US President
Harry Truman 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.

Accordingly, in April 1950, a National Security Council report known as NSC-68

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.”

After an amphibious assault at Inchon pushed the North Koreans out of Seoul
and back to their side of the 38th parallel, the 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 sent troops to
North Korea and warned the United States to keep away from the Yalu boundary unless
it wanted a full-scale war
 CAUSE OF THE CONFLICT

In their hurried effort to disarm the Japanese army and repatriate the Japanese
population in Korea, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed in August 1945
to divide the country for administrative purposes at the 38th parallel (latitude 38° N).

At least from the American perspective, this geographic division was a temporary
convenience; however, the Soviets began a short-lived reign of terror in northern Korea
that quickly politicized the division by driving thousands of refugees south. The two
sides could not agree on a formula that would produce a unified Korea.

Most claimants to power were harried exiles in China, Manchuria, Japan, the
U.S.S.R., and the United States. They fell into two broad categories. The first was made
up of committed Marxist revolutionaries who had fought the Japanese as part of the
Chinese-dominated guerrilla armies in Manchuria and China. One of these exiles was a
minor but successful guerrilla leader named Kim Il-sung, who had received some
training in Russia and had been made a major in the Soviet army.

The other Korean nationalist movement, no less revolutionary, drew inspiration

from the best of science, education, and industrialism in Europe, Japan, and America.
These “ultranationalists” were split into rival factions, one of which centered on
Syngman Rhee, educated in the United States and at one time the president of a
dissident Korean Provisional Government in exile.

Each regime was unstable, rejected the legitimacy of the other and considered
itself to be Korea’s sole rightful ruler. Neither accepted the border as permanent. Border
skirmishes between the two were frequent even before the Korean War began.

The conflict escalated into warfare when North Korean military (KPA) forces
-supported by the Soviet Union and China - crossed the border and advanced into South
Korea on 25 June 1950.

The United Nations Security Council authorized the formation of the United
Nations Command and the dispatch of forces to Korea to repel what was recognized as a
North Korean invasion. Twenty-one countries of the United Nations contributed to the
UN force. Still, they were on the point of defeat, forced back to a small area behind a
defensive line known as the Pusan Perimeter.

In September 1950, an amphibious UN counter-offensive was launched at

Incheon, and cut off many KPA troops in South Korea. Those who escaped envelopment
and capture were forced back north. UN forces invaded North Korea in October 1950
and moved rapidly towards the Yalu River - the border with China.

On 19 October 1950, Chinese forces of the People's Volunteer Army (PVA)

crossed the Yalu and entered the war. The surprise Chinese intervention triggered
a retreat of UN forces back below the 38th Parallel by late December.
 RESOLUTION

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.”

Finally, after more than two years of negotiations, the fighting ended on 27 July
1953, when the Korean Armistice Agreement was signed. 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 the Korean
Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) to separate North and South Korea, a 2-mile-wide area that
still exists today.

The US, China and North Korea signed the armistice but South Korea did not,
and no formal peace treaty was ever signed. Thus, there is still a technical state of war
between North and South Korea.

Neither North nor South Korea had achieved its goal, which is the destruction of
the opposing regime and reunification of the divided peninsula.

Since 1953 there has been an uneasy coexistence between North and South
Korea, which hosts over 20,000 American troops. At one time hundreds of American
nuclear weapons were based there.

Technically, the Korean War did not end.

CASUALTIES AND DAMAGES

In these battles, Seoul changed hands four times, and the last two years of
fighting became a war of attrition, with the front line close to the 38th Parallel. The war
in the air, however, was never a stalemate. North Korea was subject to a massive
bombing campaign. Jet fighters confronted each other in air-to-air combat for the first
time in history, and Soviet pilots covertly flew in defense of their communist allies.

No one knows exactly how many people died in this war. In a sense it was a civil
war fought out with foreign participation on both sides. It was the first military test of
the United Nations.

The American Department of Defence acknowledges that almost 40,000 of its

servicemen died, either in battle or of other causes. American combat casualties were
over 90 percent of non-Korean UN losses. U.S. battle deaths were 8,516 up to their first
engagement with the Chinese on 1 November 1950.
 The true casualty figures for the North and South Koreans and Chinese will never
be known. It is estimated that South Korea incurred some 373,599 civilian and 137,899
military deaths.

The Chinese are estimated by the Pentagon as having lost over 400,000 killed
(including Mao Tse-tung's son) and 486,000 wounded, with over 21,000 captured. The
North Koreans lost about 215,000 killed, 303,000 wounded and over 101,000 captured
or missing.

The U.S. spent $30 billion in total on the war. Some 1,789,000 American soldiers
served in the Korean War, accounting for 31 percent of the 5,720,000 Americans who
served on active-duty worldwide from June 1950 to July 1953.

Data from official Chinese sources reported that the PVA had suffered 114,000
battle deaths, 34,000 non-battle deaths, 340,000 wounded, and 7,600 missing during
the war. 7,110 Chinese POWs were repatriated to China. Overall, 73 percent of Chinese
infantry troops served in Korea (25 of 34 armies, or 79 of 109 infantry divisions, were
rotated in).

More than 52 percent of the Chinese air force, 55 percent of the tank units, 67
percent of the artillery divisions, and 100 percent of the railroad engineering divisions
were sent to Korea as well. Chinese soldiers who served in Korea faced a great chance of
being killed than those who served in World War II or the Chinese Civil War.

In 2010, the Chinese government would revise their official tally of war losses to
183,108 dead (114,084 in combat, 70,000 outside of combat) and 25,621 missing.
Chinese sources also reported that North Korea had suffered 290,000 military
casualties, 90,000 soldiers captured, and a large number of civilian deaths.

In terms of financial cost, China spent over 10 billion yuan on the war (roughly
$3.3 billion), not counting USSR aid which had been donated or forgiven. This included
$1.3 billion in money owed to the Soviet Union by the end of it. This was a relatively
large cost, as China had only 1/25 the national income of the United States. Spending on
the Korean War constituted 34-43 percent of China's annual government budget from
1950 to 1953, depending on the year.

The exact cost of the war for North Korea is unknown, but was known to be
massive in terms of both direct losses and lost economic activity; the country was
devastated both by the cost of the war itself and the American strategic bombing
campaign, which among other things destroyed 85 percent of North Korea's buildings
and 95 percent of its power generation capacity.

CNN reported, citing Encyclopædia Britannica, that North Korean civilian

casualty was 600,000 while South Korean civilian casualties reached one million.
Recent scholarship puts the full battle death toll on all sides at just over 1.2 million.
 RECENT HAPPENINGS

Postwar recovery was different in the two Koreas. South Korea stagnated in the
first postwar decade. In 1953, South Korea and the United States signed a Mutual
Defense Treaty.

In 1960, the April Revolution occurred and students joined an anti-Syngman

Rhee demonstration; 142 were killed by police; in consequence Syngman Rhee resigned
and left for exile in the United States.

Park Chung-hee's May 16 coup enabled social stability. In the 1960s, prostitution
and related services represented 25 percent of South Korean GNP. From 1965 to 1973,
South Korea dispatched troops to South Vietnam and received $235,560,000 in
allowance and military procurement from the United States. GNP increased fivefold
during the Vietnam War.

South Korea industrialized and modernized. It had one of the world's fastest-
growing economies from the early 1960s to the late 1990s. In 1957 South Korea had a
lower per capita GDP than Ghana, and by 2010 it was a developed country and ranked
thirteenth in the world (Ghana was 86th).

Following extensive USAF bombing, North Korea "had been virtually destroyed
as an industrial society."

After the armistice, Kim Il-Sung requested Soviet economic and industrial
assistance. In September 1953, the Soviet government agreed to "cancel or postpone
repayment for all ... outstanding debts", and promised to grant North Korea one
billion rubles in monetary aid, industrial equipment and consumer goods.

Eastern European members of the Soviet Bloc also contributed with "logistical
support, technical aid, [and] medical supplies."

China canceled North Korea's war debts, provided 800 million yuan, promised
trade cooperation, and sent in thousands of troops to rebuild damaged infrastructure.
Contemporary North Korea remains underdeveloped.

In April 2018, the leaders of North and South Korea met at the DMZ and agreed
to work towards a treaty to formally end the Korean War.

Just recently, Russia, China, South Korea and Japan figured in an aerial show-
down in the Sea of Japan. Pundits labeled said incident as nearly having started World
War III. It is obvious that the simmering animosity is still existent between the parties.
 RESEARCHER’S REFLECTION

When we were in our formative years, we generally look at war as a battle

between good and evil. We tend to identify with who we thought were the good guys,
and romanticize their heroics when playing “war” with our playmates.

It was all good. This notion is even reinforced by the movies that we often see as
children – war as a means to an end for the good guys to save the day.

It is through research like this that one’s eyes are opened to the fact that in war,
nothing is so clear cut – there is no definitive black or white. There are way too many
gray areas that even the good guys comes out as very bad depending on the situation.

The war in Korea was made possible because of the external interests that
undermined the citizen’s noble intent to have a unified nation.

That two mere mid-level bureaucrats in Washington DC were responsible for

demarcating the two Koreas with the goal of giving each to the control of the USSR and
the US is astounding, albeit utterly tragic.

There is no question that the two warring factions have different ideologies, and
that these ideologies were respectively fanned by external forces. There is no doubt too,
that each has its own merits and flaws; and if only the external forces endeavored to
unite rather than divide the warring factions, the resultant casualties and devastation
could have been averted.

The leaders of both Koreas preferred to go to war to sustain their respective

ideologies regardless of the cost, and for that their respective citizens bore the brunt of
the loss and hardship.

In the end, nobody really won. Not one party can even claim a moral victory. The
worst part is that the external powers that supported this war never really learned their
lessons as they made the same blunder in Vietnam.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

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https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/a-short-history-of-the-korean-war

Hickey, M. (2011 March 31). The Korean War: An Overview. Retrieved from
https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/coldwar/korea_hickey_01.shtml

Wikipedia contributors. (2019 July 26). Korean War. In Wikipedia, The Free
Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War#Aftermath

History.com Editors (2009 November 9). Korean War. Retrieved from

https://www.history.com/topics/korea/korean-war

Millett, A. (2019 July 4). Korean War. Retrieved from

https://www.britannica.com/event/Korean-War

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Roblin, S. (2019 July 27). World War III? How Russia, China, Japan and South Korea
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war-iii-how-russia-china-japan-and-south-korea-nearly-started-war-69522