Remembering the Forgotten War

Completion of the War

Just as the United Nations coalition was about to reach the Yalu River, the border between North Korea and China, thus ending the war in total victory for the south, something terrible happened. On November 1st, 1950, human tidal waves swarmed down from the north, overrunning and annihilating UN units. The Chinese had entered the war. If the United States saw a communist Korea as a danger from the other side of the world, then China saw a capitalist/democratic Korea on the border as even more of a threat. If all Korea were united under the Western influenced government, it would be a thorn in China's side. It is not unreasonable to compare China's fear of American involvement in Korea to American's later fear of Soviet involvement in Cuba.

In the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, 30,000 UN troops were surrounded and attacked by 120,000 Chinese soldiers. Commanding "the Chosin few" was 1st Marine Division General Oliver Smith, who had also fought in the Battle of Inchon. "Retreat hell!" General Smith said about the situation. "We're just attacking in a different direction!" His isolated force "attacked" non-stop for the next two weeks, pushing their way through the Chinese lines and in sub-zero temperatures. On December 13th, they reached the harbor city of Hungnam, where they and tens of thousands of Koreans fleeing Communist rule were evacuated.

Throughout the winter of 1950-51, Communist forces crossed the 38th Parallel a second time, but were repulsed back to it by late spring 1951. More battles occurred between the hundreds of thousands of men on both sides than I am at liberty to discuss in this essay. Just to mention a few, at the Battle of Yultong on April 22-3 Filipino forces distinguished themselves by defeating a much larger Chinese force, and Australian and Canadian troops defeated the Chinese at the Battle Kapyong, April 25, and the Battle of Heartbreak Ridge in September 1951 between the United States and China.

Although General Douglas MacArthur and President Harry Truman were both loved by the American people and skilled in their field, the two were frequently on strained terms due to difference of opinion in the Korean War. While President Truman wanted to limit the war and make peace once the 38th parallel had be reached, General MacArthur wanted to go all out absorb North Korea into the South, and even push into China once they got involved. This mindset was summarized in the 1951 song "When They Drop The Atomic Bomb" by Jackie Doll and his Pickled Peppers:

"Old MacArthur has the power to stop those murdern' thieves,

And he'll make them sorry for their underhanded schemes

Just leave it to the general for he really has the nerve

To give those no good Communists just what they deserve."

Fearing the war would last indefinitely and frustrated by the General's blatant disregard for his instructions, President Truman dismissed him on April 11 1951. MacArthur was welcomed back to the United States and into retirement by a ticker tape parade in New York City similar in scale to the one when Japan surrendered, ending WWII. He ended his career with a famous farewell speech to Congress on April 19, ending with, "I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Good-by." The Korean Conflict would continue 27 for more months.

In July 1951, a first attempt at armistice negotiation was brokered by the US and the USSR at Kaesong, North Korea. This failed in great part due to President Rhee's stubborn refusal, "no unification, no armistice." In October a second attempt at armistice was made, but this time failed because of the question of returning prisoners of war (POWs). The Geneva Convention stated that all POWs must be returned at cessation of hostilities. However, tens of thousands of Communist soldiers begged to not be returned. North Korea and China insisted that the rule be followed, but again, President Rhee was adamant. Neither side budged, and the war dragged on.

In August 1952, Syngman Rhee was re-elected President of South Korea, and in November, Dwight Eisenhower was elected President of the United States. Though there was frequent fighting, the frontline changed little throughout 1952, remaining within about 30 miles either north or south of the 38th parallel.

September 1950, November 1950, January 1951, July 1953

On March 6, 1953, the government of the USSR announced that Joseph Stalin was dead. The new government under Georgy Malenkov and Nikita Khrushchev was eager to end the war in Korea, and negotiations resumed at Panmunjom in June.

On July 27, an armistice was signed by a North Korea, Chinese, and United States delegate, effectively ending hostilities. President Syngman Rhee refused to participate, so even though the war ended, no South Korean signed the document. Further, the treaty was only a ceasefire for an indefinite period of time, rather than a proper peace treaty, so the two Koreas still consider themselves at war.

Throughout August-December 1953, Operation Big Switch went into effect. China and North Korea had at last relented on the POW question, so this was to discern which prisoners wished to be returned to their country, and which wished to remain in the country that had captured them. While around 76,000 Communist prisoners (both Chinese and North Korean) were returned, some 22,400 declined, choosing instead to remain in South Korea. 12,773 United Nations soldiers were returned, while, surprisingly, 325 South Koreans, 21 Americans, and 1 Briton chose to remain in the communist north.

Throughout the war, tens of thousands of Koreans fled from the northern regime into the southern to escape Communist rule, so it might be asked, how could not only Koreans who had known freedom in the south, but even Americans choose to remain in the communist regime? To explain this in part, (for explaining it in full could be the subject of another entire essay) the first answer is that at the time the south was not much better. Far from being a paragon of democracy, President Rhee's government was rife with purges, suppression of the press, arresting of political opponents, and other underhanded measures, as will shortly be discussed further. Secondly, it should be understood that the impact of Communist propaganda cannot be overestimated. Something that united all Koreans was a longing for independence and a loathing of occupation, whether by the Japanese or anyone else. While the United States claimed that they respected Korean sovereignty and were helping defend against communist control, the Communist Russians and Chinese claimed the same in reverse.

The logical jump of connecting the United States with the previous Japanese occupation was not a long or difficult one to make. Just as the Americans first had first seen Russia as a necessary ally during WWII, and then the enemy of liberty and world peace throughout the Cold War, America had seen Japan as the second greatest threat to world peace as a major Axis Power during the war, but after the war as a useful ally against the new Soviet menace. The 1943 song "Stalin Wasn't Stallin'" celebrating the USSR in WWII, and referring to Joseph Stalin as "that noble Russian," is a testimony to this shift in national view.

The United States condemned Japan for its imperialistic expansion in the late 1930s and early 1940s. But Japan's very expansion was in response and retaliation to European imperialism in Asia and the Pacific; Britain, Germany, and France claimed portions of China, and the Dutch claimed the East Indies, before Japan did. We often forget that even the United States had claimed Cuba, Hawaii, and the Philippines in the same imperialistic national philosophy.

"China defending world peace against US aggression"

"Fight on to Asia with Asia's own," read one Japanese propaganda poster in WWII. "Drive out the imperialist, aggressive American. The sole goal of the white peoples of the earth is to exploit colored people."

This might be dismissed as absurd totalitarian lies, but there was some truth in the attack. Institutionalized slavery lasted in the United States until 1865, and violent racial persecution continued throughout the south for over a hundred years after that. Britain, another good, civilized, western country, built an empire long before the Japanese did on the back of Africans, Indians, and East Asians. In fact, back in 1919, the Japanese proposed racial equality as a provision in the League of Nations, but it was met with resistance, predominantly from, in dark irony, President Woodrow Wilson and the United States.

All the communists had to do was emphasis incidents like this from history, and associate American influence with that of the Japanese and similarly intrusive European imperial influence, and present themselves as the liberating force from them all. To this day, the war is known in China as the "War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea," and in North Korea as the "Liberation War."