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KOREAN WAR.   Term Paper ID:27018 Click to get this paper

Essay Subject: Background & causes, major events & battles, nations involved, leadership, goals, strategies, politics, brutality, prisoners of war, outcome.... More...

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Paper Abstract: Background & causes, major events & battles, nations involved, leadership, goals, strategies, politics, brutality, prisoners of war, outcome. Paper Introduction: KOREAN WAR This position paper addresses some of the critical events which occurred, key decisions taken and personalties involved in the Korean War (1950-1953). Background and Causes of the Conflict For more than a century, the fate of the Korean peninsula has been largely shaped by rivalries among great powers with interests in the Far East. By winning the Sino-Japanese War of 1893-4 and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5, Japan obtained control of Korea. Hastings said that until 1945, "the Japanese maintained their ruthless, detested rule in Korea" (25). After Japan's defeat, Korea was temporarily divided along the 38th parallel between invading Soviet and arriving American occupation forces. In 1946-1948, the Soviet Union and the West failed to Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. The United States Army left behind arms and equipment worth$11 million, but Congress authorized only very small aid to South Korea in1949-195 . . This assertion ran directly counter to the directobservations of United Nations and other neutral observers then in SouthKorea. By routing ROK before the Americans could intervene, Kim Il Sunghoped, said Goulden, "to take advantage of both Rhee's weakened politicalcondition and the departure of the American military to strike forunification" (36). Kolko, J., & G. Apart from the germ warfareconfessions, 'brainwashing' had relatively little effect. Senator Joseph McCarthy's reckless charges concerning communists ingovernment and the alleged conspiracy of Acheson and other officials toappease communists in Asia fed public fears of conspiracy, inhibited thegovernment's flexibility in finding a compromise solution to the stalematewhich developed in Korea in 1951-1953 and threatened civil liberties inAmerica. 95). Good or Bad Final Results One view, Whelan's, is that the Korean War "resolved nothing" (373).Korea still remains divided. In the spring of 195 ,Whelan says "the Soviets made very large deliveries of military equipmentto North Korea" (95). The forgotten war America in Korea 195 -1953. Trumanerred in labelling that intervention a 'police action' and in failing toobtain Congressional approval (Goulden 88). The American JCS was craven in the face of MacArthur'sinsubordination and unimaginative. The American refusal to return POWs who refused repatriation wasmorally commendable, but delayed the end of the war. determined the outcome" of the spring 1948election won by Rhee and his followers (46). Goulden, J. KOREAN WAR This position paper addresses some of the critical events whichoccurred, key decisions taken and personalties involved in the Korean War(195 -1953). Truman, Acheson and MacArthur discounted thatwarning. In Operation BigSwitch on August 5, 1953, 4911 UN POWs were handed over, including 3597Americans. C. There was no dissent among Truman's topcivilian and military advisers, who were unanimous in the belief that theSoviet Union must have sanctioned the attack and that it represented achallenge posed by the communist world which the United States and theother Western nations must meet. According to Whelan,after August 1948, there were "hundreds of minor clashes along the border,a few of which escalated into major battles" (p. His penchant forstretching his orders went beyond permissible bounds when he directlychallenged Truman's authority by sending an ultimatum to the PRC on March24, 195 , thereby undermining American peace initiatives and threatening toignite a world war, which was not in America's interest. MacArthursupported American policy in Korea prior to the time of the Chineseintervention in the Korean War. Chairman Omar Bradley of the JCS said atthe first Blair House meeting on June 25: "we must draw the line [againstCommunist expansion] somewhere] . Memoirs 195 -1963. This was not empty rhetoric because of theimportance the Democratic administration accorded the UN, but his speech"was certainly not a clear and open declaration to defend South Korea"(Chace 223). The goals of the Soviets in sanctioning the North Koreaninvasion were less clear. That Army suffered a bloody noseduring the retreat to the Pusan Perimeter in the summer of 195 , and verynearly was defeated by the Chinese after they intervened militarily inNovember-December 195 . Particularly odious were theBritish traitors Kim Philby, Guy Burgess and Donald MacLean, who betrayedAmerican orders to MacArthur during the latter's ill-fated march to theYalu in late 195 (Goulden 245-247). Given the domestic furor whicherupted over the fall of Nationalist China to the communists in 1949, sucha foreign policy course was politically impossible in America. The communist line was that NorthKorea had reacted to "armed aggression" by South Korea "north of the 38thparallel" (Hastings 53). WaltonWalker, after the latter was killed accidentally on December 23, 195 .Hastings said: "Ridgway deserves a great measure of credit for turningaround a beaten army and directing it in such a fashion that it inflicted aseries of shattering defeats upon the Communists" (333). Mao and thetop Chinese military leaders condemned hundreds of thousands of Chinesetroops to their deaths by ordering senseless 'human wave' assaults onfortified American positions in 1951-1953. Over a series of days culminating in PresidentHarry Truman's decision on the morning of June 3 , 195 to commit Americanground troops in Korea, the United States became irrevocably committed toopposed the North Korean invasion. Fears of Manchurian Candidates, brainwashed spiesreturning home, were featured by Western media. Trumanmisspoke at a press conference on November 3 , 195 when he indicated thatconsideration had been given to the employment of nuclear weapons and "themilitary commander in the field will take charge of [their use], as healways has" (Goulden 396). The limits of power: The world and UnitedStates foreign policy, 1945-1954. The Chinese regularlyengaged in political indoctrination of POWs. The North Koreans, Chinese and Soviets launched in early 1951 apropaganda campaign alleging that allied planes dropped containers on NorthKorea containing deadly germs. However, Truman and the Congress must shareresponsibility for "five years of fatal neglect between 1945 and 195 whichproduced a rundown of men, training, leadership and equipment" (Hastings333). He returned to Moscow in lateFebruary or March with an invasion plan and was given the green light byStalin who, nevertheless, cautioned him: "if you get kicked in the teeth, Ishall not lift a finger. Decision to Intervene ROK forces rapidly crumbled under the weight of the NKPA assault. Scoundrels and Heroes The leading candidate for scoundrel is Kim Il Sung, who ran for manydecades what remains today one of the last and most despicable Stalinistregimes in the world and which had principal responsibility for launchingthe Korean War which cost the lives of more than four million people,including over one million civilians killed, over 1.5 million North Koreanand Chinese casualties, 85 , ROK casualties, including 415, killed,142, 91 American casualties, including 33,629 killed and 4 , casualtiesamong other UN troops (from 14 nations) (Hastings 329; Whelan 372; andGoulden 646). Nothing was gained bydriving north in 195 . NoAmerican government under the political circumstances of the time couldhave accepted such terms, certainly not at the point of a gun. Above all, theKorean War was an instructive but frustrating lesson on the limits ofmilitary power in a nuclear age. During their drive south inthe summer of 195 , NKPA used civilians as human shields and "killedAmerican prisoners of war whenever it suited their convenience to do so"(Hastings 287; and Goulden 295). Only 21 Americans and one Britisher elected to remain in NorthKorea (Hastings 328). the Korean situation offered as goodan occasion for action in drawing the line as anywhere else" (Whelan xvi).Truman said failure by the United States and the UN to repel communistaggression in Korea "would mean a third world war," a reference to Westerntimidity vis-a-vis Nazi Germany's aggressive expansion in the late 193 s(Hastings 254). Under duress, 36 American air force pilotspublicly confessed to having engaged in germ warfare (Rees 354). New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998. Its active forces in June 195 numbered65, . Nevertheless, in the wake of Inchon's success,Averell Harriman said "it would have taken a superhuman effort to say no;"and Whelan said any failure by the United States to attempt to punish theNorth Korean aggressors would have left "the administration open to furthercharges of being soft on communism" (236). . The PRC had a better record than NKPA in their treatment ofprisoners, especially the wounded (Goulden 296); nevertheless, 273 of 719 American POWs died in captivity (Hastings 3 4). . Goulden said"to the Chinese and North Korean leaderships, the POW compounds were anextension of the battlefield" (593). Background and Causes of the Conflict For more than a century, the fate of the Korean peninsula has beenlargely shaped by rivalries among great powers with interests in the FarEast. Mao Ze-dong was informed and did not demur. Kennan said "the impulse for the campaigncame directly from Stalin" (124). Another theory, which is a favorite among Republican hawks, is thatSecretary of State Dean Acheson invited the North Korean invasion byleaving South Korea outside the American defensive perimeter in his January12, 195 Press Club speech. In the South, the Americanmilitary government spurned Korean nationalists with left-wing supportersand helped conservative (and anti-communist) factions led by Dr. SyngmanRhee gain power. Kennan, G. After the Chinese offensives of the winter of 195 -51, thewar of movement turned into static positional warfare at or near the 38thParallel which cost both sides enormous casualties. You have to ask Mao for all of the help" (Chace291). According to Hastings, "casual brutality" by American and ROK guardstoward North Korean and Chinese POWs was not uncommon (3 6). The 7th Fleet was sent to the Formosa Straits to separate thecombatants there; Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-Shek's offer of33, troops for Korea was declined for fear of spreading the war. MacArthur was neither a scoundrel nor a hero, but rather a bit ofboth. Kennan'srecommendations were rejected by Acheson. The Chinese intervention, whichKennan, Winston Churchill and others warned against at the time, shouldhave been foreseen because, as Whelan noted, "neither the Soviet Union norChina could possibly tolerate, directly on highly sensitive stretches ofits border, an anti-Communist Korea allied with the United States andJapan" (235). . Chace, J. Kolko. Americans learned that total victory,World War II style, was no longer attainable because of the balance ofinternational forces which prevailed during the Cold War and the graverisks inherent in foreign policy or military miscalculations. to force the truce talks to endon reasonable terms" (352). He discounted intelligence that theChinese were intervening, which he assured Truman at their October 15, 195 Wake Island conference would not happen, but if it did, "there would be thegreatest slaughter" of the Chinese (Whelan 233). In 1946-1948, the Soviet Union and the West failed to agree on the peacefulunification of Korea. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987. New York:Times Books, 1987. Hastings, M. According to Rees, "the ROK was little morethan a constabulary force" (16). . Whelan, R. Hastings said "if the Korean War was afrustrating, profoundly unsatisfying experience, more than thirty-fiveyears later, it still seems a struggle that the West was utterly right tofight" (344); (3) it intensified the Cold War. Rees said the appeal of thebacteriological warfare campaign lay "in the 'scientific' image of the Westin Asia, and in the fact that United Nations air power was the single mostpowerful weapon its Command possessed . Thecharges, which were utterly without substance, helped explain widespreadepidemics in North Korea and northern China. References Blair, C. Hastings said that until 1945,"the Japanese maintained their ruthless, detested rule in Korea" (25).After Japan's defeat, Korea was temporarily divided along the 38th parallelbetween invading Soviet and arriving American occupation forces. He believes the Korean War couldhave been avoided if both Japan and Korea had been militarily neutralizedin 1949-195 and relations between the recently proclaimed People'sRepublic of China (PRC) and the United States had been normalized. Hastings said that "Kim Il Sung's invasion of June 25, 195 was anunprovoked act of raw aggression" (339). New York: St. . MacArthur's endrun, the surprise amphibious landing at Inchon in mid-September 195 , was a strategic masterstroke, which enabled 8th Army tobreak out of the Pusan Perimeter and together with the landing force toliberate Seoul and send the NKPA reeling north. Stalin also bore a heavy responsibility for starting the war,but he was careful to keep it from spreading into a world war. The Big Lie of the communists was not remotely plausible because, asWhelan pointed out, "a country which suffered a full-scale invasion wouldbe thrown more or less into confusion and compelled to retreat" (49). Martin's Press, 1964. According to Whelan, "violence and repression rather thandemocratic freedom . Rheewanted to unify the country and made bellicose statements to that effect.South Korea, however, lacked the capacity to do so alone. uponthe commitments of the entire civilized world under the Charter of theUnited Nations" (Chace 222). Random acts of violence were committed byUS and other UN troops during the heat of battle, but the worst abusers ofcaptured communist troops were ROK forces (Hastings 287; and Blair 358). The United States did make large-scaleconventional air raids on populated areas in North Korea in 1951-1953 toaccelerate the armistice talks and to disrupt enemy communications andtransport. Korea the untold story of the war. Boston: Little, Brown, 1972. When they attacked South Korea on June 25, 195 , theNorth Korean People's Army (NKPA) had 135, troops, amply supplied with15 Soviet-made T-34 tanks, heavy artillery, self-propelled guns and morethan 2 combat aircraft and invasion plans developed by Soviet militaryadvisers (Hastings 52-53; Goulden 35). In the North, the Soviets and Kim Il Sung, acommunist and nationalist guerrilla leader in the 193 s and 194 s,"established a totalitarian police state," known after August 1949 as thePeople's Democratic Republic (Whelan 33). Rees, D. The one truly effective American generalwas Matthew Ridgway, who replaced former 8th Army commander Gen. American military budgetsquadrupled within four years, NATO was transformed from a skeletonstructure into an effective military alliance and the policy of containmentprevailed, albeit at the cost of a huge nuclear and conventional arms race;(4) unless it wanted to provoke a nuclear Armageddon, the West learned thatit could only project military power abroad by retaining substantialconventional forces and could not rely on air and naval power alone; (5)the PRC largely displaced Soviet influence in North Korea and Manchuria,but the war envenomed Sino-American relations for decades; and (6) thebattle-tested American army "emerged from Korea convinced that its vastlysuperior firepower and equipment could always defeat a poorly engaged Asianarmy" (Hastings 334). Kennan believed that Stalin was reacting to thethen pending American peace treaty with Japan under which the United Stateswould retain forces and bases there (49). The decision to cross the 38thparallel after Inchon was a disastrous mistake. In doing so, Acheson repeated what MacArthurand the JCS had been saying. Brutality The Korean War was exceptionally brutal. Causes of the War. The American response from the outset was to keep thefighting limited to Korea and to avoid world war with the Soviets or thePRC. The Chinese warned theAmericans through the Indian Ambassador in Beijing, Kavalam Panikkar, onOctober 3, 195 that they would enter the war if American troops crossedthat parallel (Chace 299). The Korean war, 195 -1953 drawing the line. Some prisoners were killed and otherswounded when a communist-organized rebellion erupted at the Koje-do camp inMay 1952. . The United States did not use nuclear weapons in the Korean War;however, Eisenhower warned the Chinese and North Koreans in the spring of1953 that they might be used in order to induce them to conclude thearmistice talks which finally resulted in a truce on July 27, 1953. The Korean war. Louis Johnson, the American Defense Secretary from March 1949 untilTruman fired him in August 195 , presided over penny-wise, pound-foolishdefense budgetary policies which rendered American forces incapable ofresponding effectively in Korea in the summer of 195 . Boston:Little, Brown, 199 .----------------------- 1 Soviet forces were withdrawn from North Korea byDecember 1948 and American forces on June 3 , 1949. Korea: The limited war. Mounted against thereservations of the JCS, Rees said "it remains an astonishing achievementprecisely because it was a triumph not of military logic and science, butof imagination and intuition" (96). Acheson the Secretary of State who created the Americanworld. The need to respond militarily was also conditioned by aseries of Soviet actions which had occurred in 1948-195 in Europe andwhich had been regarded as threatening by the West and the communisttakeover in China. According to most accounts, Kim Il Sung sought and obtained JosephStalin's tentative approval to invade South Korea at a meeting in Moscow inNovember or December 1949 (Whelan 98). By winning the Sino-Japanese War of 1893-4 and the Russo-Japanese Warof 19 4-5, Japan obtained control of Korea. Bythe end of the first week of fighting, South Korea had lost 44, of its98, troops (Goulden 83). New York: Harper & Row, 1972. . New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982. Chace describedJohnson as "a former American Legion Commander and Truman fund-raiser,Johnson was a most unstable character, given to extreme shifts of mood andtemper" (232). The alternatives open to the United States were to do nothing whichwould have meant American acquiescence in the forcible unification of allof Korea under Kim Il Sung's rule. Some revisionist historians, such as Kolko and Kolko, have suggestedthat General Douglas MacArthur, then Supreme Allied Commander in Japan, andRhee conspired to begin the war in an effort to unify Korea (57 -585). Britain and India floated cease-fireproposals under which the PRC and Russia would, in effect, prevail uponNorth Korea to withdraw its forces from South Korea in return forinternational recognition of the PRC and its admission to the UN. Faced with decliningdefense budgets in 1946-195 , General Dwight Eisenhower, Chairman of theAmerican Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), said in a memorandum of September 25,1947 that South Korea "had little strategic interest" to the United States(Goulden 25). MacArthur was unwise to split hisforces on the drive into North Korea. On September 28, Secretary of Defense George Marshall sentMacArthur with Truman's approval an 'eyes only' wire stating: "we want youto feel unhampered tactically and strategically to proceed north of thethirty-eighth parallel" (Chace 298). The only heroes of the war were the ordinary soldiers and officers onboth sides. Under at least as dismal political and lesspropitious military conditions, the United States was defeated by a thirdrate power in Vietnam which captured the mantle of Vietnamese nationalism;and (7) the Democrats lost their monopoly on the White House in 1952 andpoliticians ever since have sought to prove their toughness in meeting realand imagined threats to American interests in East Asia. South Korea's forces (ROK) had no heavy artillery, tanks, combataircraft or anti-aircraft guns. The war had many other consequences: (1)partly due to massive American postwar aid, South Korea became a prosperousnation, and, after a long period of military dictatorships, in 1987, ademocracy; (2) the West did indeed draw a line against further communistmilitary aggression in Asia. Truman and Acheson made a very courageous decision to intervenemilitarily in 195 and to enlist the UN in support of that effort. He also cautioned in that speech that theUnited States bore "a direct responsibility for Korea" and in case theSouth Koreans could not defend themselves, "reliance must be . In pressing for further budget cuts at a time of extremeCold War tension, Johnson helped make 195 what Blair called "a ghastlyordeal for the United States Army," (xi). If this paper is not what you are looking for, you can search again: Search for: or Click here to request an essay written just for you.