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The War In Korea Was On

B-29's penetrated far into North Korea, as ground troops struggled toward the Yalu River.

Background Of The War

The end of hostilities, in 1945, did not bring peace or security to the victorious alliance known as the United Nations. In many parts of Europe and Asia factories and farms were in ruins; machinery and livestock had been looted. Families were broken up and scattered. Millions of people were hungry, homeless, and without jobs.

These war-created conditions were ideal for Communist penetration, and it soon became evident that Soviet leaders were pursuing their purpose of Communizing and dominating the world. They interpreted "occupation" to mean annexation or at least, subjugation. As a result, the thin veneer of wartime cooperation between the allies and the Soviet Union quickly wore away.

Evidences of this appeared wherever the Red Army went, and stayed . . . in Eastern Europe, in Austria, in Manchuria, and in Northern Korea where "liberation" brought looting and terror. Wherever the Red Army went, there also went Soviet agents to set up police states and to liquidate every vestige of democratic processes.

In Asia, China was still engaged in civil war. Independence movements brewed among colonial peoples. Korea, a peninsula (600 miles long and 135 miles wide) projecting southward from Manchuria and separating the Yellow Sea from the Sea of Japan, was arbitrarily cut in two by an imaginary line which separated more than 20,000,000 people in the southern 36,700 square miles from their 10,000,000 countrymen in the 48,468 square miles north of the 38th Parallel.

Although Koreans are neither Chinese nor Japanese, but a distinct Mongoloid race of ancient culture, they were mostly under the political and cultural influence of China for some 2,000 years until 1894-95 when the Japanese, by force of arms, supplanted the Chinese. At that time, Russia was becoming interested in warm water ports in Korea; and the resulting rivalry between Japan and Russia was climaxed in the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05 from which Japan emerged the victor. For the next five years Japan governed the Koreans under a trusteeship. In 1910 the peninsula was declared an integral part of the Japanese Empire. It was part of Japan in World War II.

When the Allied leaders met at Cairo in 1943, the United States, Great Britain, and China joined in declaring, "in due course Korea would become free and independent." This promise was reaffirmed in the Potsdam Declaration of 1945; and if was agreed to by the Soviet Union when it declared war on Japan, at long last, in August 1945.

In arranging for the surrender of the Japanese forces, the Allies agreed at Potsdam that, mainly for purposes of practical administration, Soviet forces would accept surrender above the 38th Parallel while United States forces would accept surrender south of that line. Thus Korea was bisected by the controversial 38th Parallel when, on September 8, 1945, the first American troops entered the country. The next day General John Hodge, representing the Allies, accepted surrender south of the line.

The Soviet army meanwhile had occupied all of Korea north of the 38th Parallel and immediately halted all travel and traffic across the line. The 38th Parallel had become an iron curtain behind which Soviet agents were even then setting up a Communist regime.

For a country dependent upon all its sections for its economic life, this territorial severance was a serious blow. The Potsdam agreement had never been intended to make the 38th Parallel more than a temporary line to be used only during the Japanese surrender; but Soviet intransigence blocked every effort to reestablish the country's unity.

The matter was taken up at the Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers in December 1945 when the Soviet, American, and British governments agreed that a temporary Korean democratic government should be set up in that country. The agreement, adhered to by the Chinese government, provided that the United States and Soviet commands in Korea would form a joint commission which would consult with democratic elements in the Korean population on plans for forming a new government. Since, under Japanese rule, the Koreans had had little experience in government, the Moscow Agreement also provided that a four-power trusteeship would be established for a period up to five years, to give Korean leaders guidance in self-government.

This provision for a trusteeship aroused the democratic elements in Korea. They remembered the old Japanese trusteeship which had ended in annexation and feared that the proposed new trusteeship might rob them of the independence they had sought. The Communist groups in Korea on orders from the international Communist organization did not protest the proposal.

The Soviet representatives on the joint commission insisted that au organizations and individuals who opposed the trusteeship should be considered anti-democratic and that, therefore, only the Communist elements should have a voice in establishing a Korean government. The United States delegates held that this would have given the Communist minority a predominant position. This fundamental issue was never resolved. Thus, in August 1947, the United States proposed a four-power conference to seek agreement on the independence of Korea. The Soviet Union rejected the proposal. Then, in September 1947, the United States asked the General Assembly of the United Nations to consider the problem. The Soviet Union opposed the suggestion. The General Assembly, on November 14, 1947, created the United Nations Temporary Commission on Korea and recommended that elections be held. The Soviet representative refused to vote.

The Soviet authorities refused to permit the United Nations Commission to cross the 38th Parallel into North Korea, with the result that on May 10, 1948, free elections were held only in South Korea under observation of the United Nations Commission. Two hundred members of the Korean Assembly were elected and 100 seats were held open for North Koreans who represented one-third of the entire population of the country. The Assembly later chose Syngman Rhee as President of the new Republic of Korea.

A crewman loads an Okinawa-based B-29 with ammunition for another strike at the Red Chinese.

In August 1948, a Communist-type election was held in Northern Korea. A limited number of voters were given lists of candidates chosen by the Communist North Korean People's Committee for approval or disapproval. A Supreme People's Council was thus elected and it promptly claimed authority over the entire country. The Soviet Union announced that Soviet troops would be withdrawn from Korea by the end of the year. Meanwhile they continued to train and equip Korean military forces.

On December 12, 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations declared the government of South Korea the only lawful government in that country, and recommended that the occupying powers withdraw their forces. At the same time, the United Nations appointed a new Commission on Korea to try to bring about the unification of the country under a representative government freely chosen by its people. The United States and 30 other countries recognized the government of the Republic of Korea, while the Soviet Union and ifs satellite countries recognized the Communist government of North Korea. In April, the United Nations voted, 9-to-2, to give the Republic of Korea membership in the United Nations. The Soviet Union vetoed the action.

The United Nations Commission, on June 19, 1949, observed the withdrawal of United States forces from Korea, but was not permitted to cross into North Korea to observe the withdrawal of Soviet forces. All its efforts to reunite the country failed.

The border along the 38th Parallel was the scene of many raids and armed incidents until June 25, 1950 (June 24, U. S. date) when the Commission reported to the United Nations that North Korean forces had launched attacks all along the 38th Parallel. The War in Korea was on.

Half a century ago, American forces went toe-to-toe with a fanatic Chinese colossus fighting in its own backyard. The Korean War set all the rules for East/West superpower conflict in the nuclear age, and in so doing brought the world closer to all-out atomic war than has ever been told.

The Korean War was not so much a test of power as a crucial test of wills. The 3-year conflict that took more than 2,000,000 lives. The numerous firsts made the Korean conflict unique. It was the first jet war, the first war where unleashing full power was not an option, the first all-out battlefield test of the dynamics of the Cold War.

Pain, glory and pathos defined the Korean War.

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