Princeton Studies in International History and Politics

An International History

William Stueck

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 1997
• ISBN:
  9781400821785
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

This first truly international history of the Korean War argues that by its timing, its course, and its outcome it functioned as a substitute for World War III. Stueck draws on recently available materials from seven countries, plus the archives of the United Nations, presenting a detailed narrative of the diplomacy of the conflict and a broad assessment of its critical role in the Cold War. He emphasizes the contribution of the United Nations, which at several key points in the conflict provided an important institutional framework within which less powerful nations were able to restrain the aggressive tendencies of the United States.
In Stueck's view, contributors to the U.N. cause in Korea provided support not out of any abstract commitment to a universal system of collective security but because they saw an opportunity to influence U.S. policy. Chinese intervention in Korea in the fall of 1950 brought with it the threat of world war, but at that time and in other instances prior to the armistice in July 1953, America's NATO allies and Third World neutrals succeeded in curbing American adventurism. While conceding the tragic and brutal nature of the war, Stueck suggests that it helped to prevent the occurrence of an even more destructive conflict in Europe.

• CHAPTER 1 •

The Origins of the Korean War

FROM CIVIL WAR TO INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT: 25–30 JUNE 1950

The wet season had begun. Heavy rain fell along much of the 38th parallel, the two-hundred-mile boundary between North and South Korea. In the Ongjin region, an isolated area on Korea’s west-central coast, the crackle of small arms fire and the hollow boom of artillery suddenly interrupted the monotonous patter of the raindrops. It was the early hours of Sunday morning, 25 June 1950.

Who started the firing in the predawn hours of this dreary morning remains in doubt. The Ongjin region had long been the setting for border skirmishes between North and South Korean troops, and often the South had initiated the combat. The evidence for this day in June is ambiguous, even contradictory.

What followed the outbreak in Ongjin, however, is less uncertain. By daybreak, North Korean artillery had commenced firing at six other points along the 38th parallel. Soon thousands of North Korean soldiers poured southward. Some troops struck from the sea, landing along South Korea’s east coast. By 9:30 in the morning the attackers had seized Kaesong, a key town located on the main railroad line leading to Seoul, South Korea’s capital city. Two infantry divisions, with Soviet-built tanks in the vanguard, swarmed the main roads approaching the Uijongbu corridor, another gateway to Seoul. Before noon, YAK fighter planes attacked both the capital and nearby Kimpo airfield. A large-scale invasion was under way.¹

The attack should have come as no surprise to South Korea or its sponsor, the United States. Top South Korean officials had warned for some time that an invasion was imminent. U.S. observers on the scene, though less alarmist, all recognized the possibility of an assault from the North.

Yet the North Korean onslaught caught the South off guard. Many of South Korea’s military leaders were abroad, either in Japan or the United States. Numerous officers assigned to units along the tense boundary were away from their posts on weekend passes, as were many of the U.S. advisers attached to those forces. Of the four divisions and one regiment assigned to border duty, only four regiments and one battalion were positioned along the front. The permanent head of the U.S. advisory group in Korea had recently left the country for reassignment in the United States. His temporary replacement was in Tokyo saying good-bye to family members, who were themselves returning home.

The explanation for this gross lack of preparation rests in the psychology of individuals who, as Harold Joyce Noble, the first secretary of the U.S. embassy in Seoul, later wrote, “had lived so long on the edge of a volcano…[that they] had become accustomed to it.” “We knew it would explode some day,” he recalled, “but as day after day, month after month, and year after year passed and it did not blow up, we could hardly believe that tomorrow would be any different.”²

“Tomorrow” was different, though, on 25 June 1950, and the failure of South Korean and U.S. officials to prepare for that contingency was to cost them dearly in the days ahead. Had the United States anticipated the offensive, diplomatic moves might have been initiated to discourage it. Even had these failed, the South Koreans and Americans might have taken military precautions that would have reduced the impact of North Korea’s early thrusts. As it turned out, the attack greatly confused inexperienced South Korean officers and soldiers, and this confusion proved a tremendous asset to North Korean forces. By midnight on 27 June Seoul’s defenses neared collapse, and, in the panic created by a rapid evacuation, South Korean troops blew up a key bridge over the Han River before critical supplies and several military units had escaped across it. The action destroyed any prospect of maintaining a position on the southern bank of the river. More formidable South Korean resistance, especially if reinforced by U.S. air and naval power, would have improved immeasurably the chances for a quick end to hostilities.

The surprise element only partially explains North Korea’s rapid advance. The attackers both outgunned and outmanned their opponents. Supplied generously by the Soviet Union, North Korea had 150 medium-sized tanks and a small tactical air force; South Korea had no tanks and virtually no military aircraft. North Korea had a three-to-one numerical advantage in divisional artillery, and its best guns far outranged those of South Korea. Although both sides had a relatively equal number of contestants, tens of thousands of Koreans, hardened by combat in the Chinese civil war, filled North Korea’s lead divisions.³ The war began with Koreans fighting Koreans, but the inequality of the contest had much to do with the relative support given the two sides from beyond Korea’s boundaries.

Alarmed, the United States moved quickly to prevent South Korea’s extinction. In Tokyo, General Douglas MacArthur, the commander of U.S. forces in the Far East, began shipping arms and ammunition from Japan to South Korea, without even requesting prior approval from Washington. On the evening of 25 June (the morning of 26 June in Korea, which is thirteen hours ahead of America’s eastern standard time), President Harry S. Truman ordered U.S. air and naval forces to assist in and protect the evacuation of Americans from South Korea. On the following day, after General MacArthur reported that South Korean forces could not hold Seoul and were in danger of collapse, Truman removed restrictions on U.S. air and naval operations below the 38th parallel. Four days later, after increased air and naval action had failed to halt North Korea’s advance, the president committed U.S. ground units to combat on the peninsula.⁴

From almost the beginning, the involvement of the United Nations magnified the international aspects of the conflict. That organization had played a central role in Korea since late 1947, even sponsoring the creation of the Republic of Korea in the South. The United States now sought to perpetuate that role so as to cast its effort to repulse North Korea in a framework of collective security. On 25 June the UN Security Council rejected a neutrally worded measure advanced by Yugoslavia and, instead, adopted a resolution calling for “the immediate cessation of hostilities” on the peninsula, the withdrawal of North Korean forces to the 38th parallel, and “every assistance” from member nations in implementing the resolution. Two days later, with the North Koreans showing no intention of abiding by Security Council action, the council met again—an d again the Soviet delegate, despite his veto power, chose not to attend. In his absence, the Security Council considered another U.S. resolution, which called on “members of the United Nations to furnish such assistance to the Republic of Korea as may be necessary to repel the armed attack and to restore international peace and security in the area.”⁵

By this time the Security Council had received a report from the UN Commission on Korea (UNCOK), which had been created the previous year by the U.S.-dominated General Assembly. Among other activities, the body was to “observe and report any developments which might lead to, or otherwise involve, military conflict in Korea.” UNCOK, whose military observers had returned to Seoul from an inspection tour along the 38th parallel only forty-eight hours before the hostilities began, stated that North Korea was “carrying out a well-planned, concerted and full-scale invasion of South Korea” against forces “deployed on [a] wholly defensive basis in all sectors of the parallel.” Limited in numbers, transportation facilities, and familiarity with the terrain and the people, the military observers were in a poor position to render such judgments; moreover, UNCOK was far from nonpartisan in outlook. Nevertheless, the United States now used the UNCOK report to persuade six other Security Council members to support the resolution, the bare minimum needed for passage.⁶ Before the end of the month, the British and the Australians had offered their air and naval units stationed in Japan to bolster U.S. and South Korean forces engaged on the peninsula, and Canada, the Netherlands, and New Zealand had offered naval vessels.⁷

More aid was sure to come, as most UN members agreed that the “aggression” could be the first stage in a tragic repetition of events of the 1930s, when Western democracies had stood idly by while dictators swallowed up one small nation after another.⁸ K.C.O. Shann, head of the Australian mission at Lake Success, expressed a common thought among UN representatives from non-Communist nations when he wrote home that, “for all sorts of reasons of justice and reciprocity and the long-term effect on the American people toward the rest of the world, it must be hoped that…the burden of carrying through…is shared amongst the more fortunate of the United Nations.”⁹ By 3 July forty-one of the fifty-nine UN members had announced their approval of the Security Council action.¹⁰ What had begun as a conflict between Koreans aimed at eradicating the division of their country soon became a struggle of broad international proportions, one that threatened to escalate into a direct confrontation between the West and the Soviet bloc.

KOREA AND THE WORLD BEYOND: THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT

That North Korea’s attack on June 1950 did not long remain an internal affair is hardly surprising. Frequent invasions and almost perpetual foreign influence mark Korea’s long history. China’s involvement on the peninsula extends back over two millennia, and the Tang dynasty played a prominent role in Korea’s unification thirteen centuries ago. For much of the next twelve hundred years, Korea was a “tributary” state of China, relying on a deferential relationship with that power to preserve its independence. Even so, from the thirteenth through the seventeenth centuries, Korea endured successive invasions from the Mongols, the Japanese, and the Manchus. For two centuries after that, Korea maintained itself as the “hermit kingdom,” using its younger brother status in relation to China in the Confucian system of East Asia to maintain its isolation from the rest of the world. In the mid-nineteenth century that system began to break down and with it went Korea’s ability to separate itself from outsiders.

“When whales fight, the shrimp in the middle get crushed.” So goes an old Korean proverb, and the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries illustrate its application to the peninsula. This period witnessed a transformation of the balance of power in northeast Asia. The Manchu dynasty of China, staggering from internal decay and Western incursion, could not shield Korea from either a rapidly modernizing Japan or an ever-expansive Russia. After trying for more than a decade to contain China’s effort to reinforce its privileged position in Korea, Japan went to war in 1894. Japan’s victory effectively eliminated China from the scene.

Now Russia emerged as the protector of Korea’s independence. Protection meant exploitation and domination as well, an arrangement the Japanese proved unwilling to accept. In February 1904, after several years of indecisive jockeying over Korea, Japan suddenly attacked and defeated Russian forces at Port Arthur and Inchon. Korea announced its neutrality, but soon found itself occupied by Japanese troops. By this time Japan enjoyed an alliance with Great Britain and the benevolent neutrality of the United States, an emergent power in Asia, which was perfectly willing to concede Korea to Japan in return for the latter’s assurances regarding the U.S. position in the Philippines. Following Russia’s military defeat at the hands of Japan, the great powers acquiesced in Japan’s control of Korea. In 1905 Japan established a protectorate over the hapless nation. Five years later, after the occupying army had largely suppressed indigenous independence movements, Japan annexed the peninsula. The whales had fought, and the victor engulfed the shrimp.¹¹

Korea’s traditional politics of factionalism hastened its demise. Like China, Korea at the turn of the century was in a state of political disintegration. Its Yi dynasty wallowed in corruption and inefficiency. The monarch offered erratic leadership, and the royal court occupied itself with petty squabbling and a venal quest for the king’s favor. The struggle to maintain independence centered, as in China, on efforts to manipulate relations between rival foreign powers. Between 1896 and 1898 the Independence Club, a reform group influenced by American ideas of democracy and constitutionalism, made some gains, but it lacked organizational cohesion and a sufficient commitment to radical change to prevail over well-entrenched elites.¹² Although the monarchy squelched internal pressures for reform, it proved incapable of mobilizing resistance to Japanese incursion. From the establishment of the protectorate in 1905 to Japan’s final defeat by the Allies in World War II, Korea never approached success in casting off the foreign yoke.

A flurry of activity did occur in the aftermath of World War I and U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s rhetoric about national self-determination. Korean patriots petitioned the peace conference at Paris and U.S. officials in Washington, while, at home, hundreds of thousands of Koreans demonstrated against Japanese rule. In both Shanghai and Seoul, Nationalist leaders established provisional Korean governments. The Bolshevik revolution in Russia inspired the creation of the Korean Communist movement in Manchuria and eastern Siberia, areas that thousands of Korean exiles had long used as bases for guerrilla activity against the Japanese in their homeland.

Yet these efforts lacked both coordination and substantial international support. The Provisional Government in Shanghai tried to weld together the independence forces, but the exiles were so scattered geographically and so varied in background as to preclude concerted action and harmonious relations among them. During 1921 the fragile coalition of groups represented in the Provisional Government all but disintegrated.

Events of the immediate postwar years manifested two conditions that remained central to the independence movement before 1945 and to Korean politics in general following Korea’s liberation from Japan. First was the split between the Left and the Right, between people influenced by Marxism Leninism, the Soviet Union, and/or the Chinese Communists and those subscribing to Western liberal ideas, Confucianism, or an amalgam of the two. Within Korea, the Communists and non-Communist nationalists achieved a united front in 1927, only to watch it disintegrate four years later. Right- and left-wing components of the exile movement located in Nationalist China combined forces under the Provisional Government early in 1944, but this was the first such alliance in a generation and it turned out to be more apparent than real.

Divisions within the independence movement frequently rested on less exalted grounds than ideology. Factionalism drained strength from Korean patriot organizations, left and right alike. In 1919 the Communist movement split into two factions: the Irkutsk group made up of “Russianized Koreans” who, though of Korean origin, had lived in Russia for some time and attached themselves firmlyto the Soviet Communist Party, and the Shanghai group, which generally regarded communism as subservient to the goal of Korea’s liberation from Japanese control. By 1945 the Communist exiles were even more divided. The Soviet faction constituted those who had long resided in the Soviet Maritime Province; the Yanan faction, peopled by Koreans who had been active in China between the world wars, had close associations with the Chinese Communists led by Mao Zedong; the Kapsan faction included Koreans who had operated in Manchuria during the 1930s but had moved into Soviet territory during World War II. These groups had limited contact with Communists in Korea, who themselves split into numerous factions.

Unity also eluded right-wing groups. In the mid-1920s feuding within the Provisional Government reached near comical proportions. When President Syngman Rhee halted the flow of money, collected in the United States, to government headquarters in Shanghai, the Provisional Legislative Assembly impeached him, and a five-member board found him guilty as charged. Rhee declared the decision illegal and went on with his fund-raising and lobbying activities in Hawaii and the continental United States, where Koreans also squabbled among themselves. In 1941 some progress occurred toward unity and even toward reconciliation between Rhee and the Provisional Government, but factionalism burst forth two years later when Rhee and his supporters seceded from the United Korean Committee in the United States. The politics of the Koreans in exile mirrored the familial and small-unit relationships that had prevailed in their homeland during the last centuries of the Yi dynasty. This pattern provided a weak foundation for either effective resistance to Japanese rule or an orderly transition to independence once that rule ended.

International conditions between Korea’s annexati...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• List of Maps
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: The Origins of the Korean War
• Chapter 2: The Diplomacy of Confrontation and Consolidation
• Chapter 3: Diplomacy Fails: The UN Counteroffensive and Chinese Intervention
• Chapter 4: Limiting the War
• Chapter 5: The Dimensions of Collective Action
• Chapter 6: Armistice Talks: Origins and Initial Stages
• Chapter 7: Progress
• Chapter 8: Deadlock
• Chapter 9: Concluding an Armistice
• Chapter 10: The Korean War as International History
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index