II DIVISION OF KOREA
The Korean War was the result of the
division of Korea, a country with a well-recognized, ancient integrity. Despite
its long history as an independent kingdom, Korea had been forcibly annexed by
Japan in 1910. Japan controlled Korea up to the end of World War II. Late on
the night of August 10, 1945, as World War II was coming to a close, the United
States made the decision that it would occupy the southern half of Korea. The
U.S. government did so out of fear that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
(USSR, or Soviet Union)—which had joined the fight against Japan in northern
Korea a week earlier—would take control of the entire Korea Peninsula. American
planners chose to divide Korea at the 38th parallel because it would keep the
capital city, Seoul, in the American-occupied southern zone; the USSR
acquiesced to the division, with no official comment.
Both the Soviet Union and the United
States proceeded, with much help from Koreans, to build regimes in their halves
of Korea that supported their interests. In so doing, they had to contend with
major rifts between Korean political factions representing left-wing and
right-wing views. These factions originally were united against Japan but had
begun to split as early as the 1920s. In the post-World War II era, the main
conflict centered around the left’s call for—and the right’s resistance to—a
thorough reform of Korea's land ownership laws, which had allowed a small
number of wealthy people to own most of the land. As a result, many Korean
farmers were forced to eke out an impoverished existence as tenant farmers.
During its occupation of the South
(1945-1948), the United States responded to the left-right conflict by
suppressing the widespread leftist movement and backing Syngman Rhee. A
70-year-old expatriate who had lived for decades in the United States, Rhee had
solid anti-Communist credentials and was popular with the right. In the North,
the Soviet Union threw its support to the left, embodied by 33-year-old Kim Il
Sung, who also received significant support from North Koreans and from China.
Kim was a Korean guerrilla who had fought with Chinese Communist forces against
the Japanese in Manchuria in the 1930s. Among Kim’s first acts in power was to
force through a radical redistribution of land. By the end of 1946 the regimes
of both North and South Korea were effectively in place, although the division
of the peninsula was not formalized until 1948. In that year, the Republic of
Korea (ROK), backed by the United States and the United Nations, emerged in the
South under Rhee, and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) emerged
in the North under Kim, backed by the USSR and China.
III EARLY SKIRMISHES
The southern government was barely
inaugurated before it had to contend with a left-wing guerrilla movement.
Although this movement received support from the North, it had its greatest
strength in the South, particularly in the southernmost provinces and on Cheju
Island off the southern coast. The ROK Army required the better part of 1948
and 1949 to suppress the rebellion, and it did so with the support—and often
the direction—of a 500-man contingent of American advisers. By early 1950 the
guerrillas appeared to be defeated.
Although the Soviets withdrew their
troops from the Korea Peninsula at the end of 1948, the Americans, concerned
about the rebellion in the South and the potential of invasion from the North,
delayed their withdrawal until the end of June 1949. By this time, troops from
both North and South Korea were concentrated along the 38th parallel. In May
1949 border fighting broke out and continued, on and off, through December.
Thousands of troops were involved. According to formerly classified American
reports, the South provoked the majority of the 1949 border fights, prompting
American advisers to try to restrain the South. After a U.S. request, military
observers from the United Nations were dispatched to Korea. In addition, the
United States denied the ROK Army’s requests for combat airplanes and tanks. At
about the same time, U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson delivered what became
known as the “Press Club” speech in Washington, D.C., in which he was ambiguous
about whether the United States would defend the ROK in a war.
Although Kim Il Sung would be eager to
fight in 1950, he was not ready in the summer of 1949. Large contingents of his
best North Korean soldiers were still in China, fighting on the side of the
Communists in that country’s civil war. In the early months of 1950, however,
tens of thousands of these soldiers returned to the DPRK, including the 6th
Division under General Pang Ho-san, which had a distinguished record in China.
In May 1950 Kim perched this division just above the 38th parallel. He hoped
that the summer of 1950, like the summer of 1949, would bring South Korean
provocations, which he could use to justify an invasion by the North. Kim
claimed he got his provocation with a minor lunge by the South across the
parallel in the early morning hours of June 25, 1950. Whether or not the South
lunged across the parallel still awaits further evidence, but the North bears
the major responsibility for escalating a minor skirmish to the level of
massive conventional warfare.
IV THE WAR BEGINS: SOVIET, CHINESE, AND U.S. SUPPORT
Throughout 1949 the Soviet Union feared
the consequences that an invasion by North Korea would have on U.S.-Soviet
relations. Consequently, for months Soviet leader Joseph Stalin declined to
support Kim’s plans for war. In early 1950, however, Stalin appeared to give his
endorsement to Kim; he also suggested that Kim seek support from Chinese leader
Mao Zedong. The reasons for Stalin’s shift are still not clear but may have
been related to American plans for a major Cold War military buildup. The
Chinese response to Kim's entreaty is also still unknown, but it seems unlikely
that the Chinese did not know of Kim's plans. Indeed, they sent many
experienced Korean soldiers back to Korea from China just before the war
erupted.
The United States maintained throughout
1949 and 1950 that it would not support an invasion of the North by the South.
As early as 1947, however, Acheson and his advisers had come to see South Korea
as important to the revival of the Japanese industrial economy, which provided
goods and services to Korea. From that time on, U.S. policymakers were
privately committed to extending the Truman Doctrine, which called for the
containment of Communism, to South Korea. Even after U.S. combat troops left
South Korea in 1948, a large military advisory group remained in the ROK, and
the United States gave the republic great amounts of economic aid. When the
Soviet-backed North invaded—unprovoked, in the perception of the U.S.
government—Acheson and President Harry S. Truman led the United States into the
war, despite objections from many U.S. military commanders who thought Korea
was the wrong place to make a stand against Communism.
V NORTH KOREAN VICTORIES
During the summer of 1949, South Korea
had expanded its army to about 90,000 troops, a strength the North matched in
early 1950. The North had about 150 Soviet T-34 tanks and a small but effective
air force of 70 fighters and 62 light bombers—weapons either left behind when
Soviet troops evacuated Korea or bought from the USSR and China in 1949 and
1950. By June 1950 American data showed the two armies at about equal strength,
with roughly equal numbers amassed along the 38th parallel. However, this data
did not account for the superior battle experience of the North Korean army,
especially among the troops who had returned from China.
The fighting began around 3 or 4 AM on June 25 at the western end of the
parallel. Initial intelligence reports were indeterminate as to who started the
fighting, but by 5:30 AM the
formidable 6th Division of the (North) Korean People’s Army (KPA) had joined
the fighting in the west. At roughly the same time, KPA forces in the center of
the peninsula dealt a heavy blow to the ROK Army (ROKA) south of
Ch’ŏrwŏn. The ROKA fell back and two KPA divisions and an armored
brigade crashed through the 38th parallel, beginning a daunting march toward
Seoul, which lay just 50 km (30 mi) to the south.
Just 20 km (12 mi) north of Seoul stood
the town of Uijŏngbu, a critical line of defense for the South maintained
by an ROKA division. By the morning of June 26, the division at Uijŏngbu
had not committed its forces to battle, probably because it was waiting to be
reinforced by another division from the interior of South Korea. However, when
the reinforcing division finally arrived on June 26, troops panicked, mutinied,
and fled. The reasons for the mutiny were many, including the relative lack of
ROKA firepower, poor training, and ultimately the unpopularity of the Rhee
government—which had nearly been voted out of office in relatively free
elections held a month earlier. The collapse at Uijŏngbu left a gaping
hole in the South Korean defensive line, and North Korean troops poured through.
The ROK government fled Seoul, which was taken on June 28 by a force of about
37,000 North Korean troops.
VI U.S. TROOPS TO KOREA
The quick and virtually complete
collapse of resistance in the South energized the United States to enter the
war in force. Secretary of State Acheson dominated the decision making and soon
committed American air and ground forces to the fight. Acheson successfully
argued that the United States should increase military aid to the ROK and
provide air cover for the evacuation of Americans from Korea. He also persuaded
the president to place the Seventh Fleet of the U.S. Navy in the Taiwan Strait.
This was needed, he argued, to prevent the Communist Chinese government on the
mainland from invading the island of Taiwan, where the Nationalist Chinese
government had retreated after the mainland fell to the Communists in 1949. The
following day Acheson developed the fundamental strategy for committing
American air and naval power to the Korean War, a strategy approved by Truman
that evening but not yet approved by the United Nations, the Department of
Defense, or the U.S. Congress.
UN support for the defense of South
Korea enabled Truman and Acheson to gain public support for U.S. intervention.
Only two days after the invasion, on June 27, at the urging of the United
States, the UN Security Council voted to repel the North Korean invasion. The
USSR, which could have vetoed the vote, instead boycotted it. The USSR claimed
its boycott was a response to the UN’s refusal to admit Communist China;
however, historians have been unconvinced by this argument. On June 25 Stalin
explicitly told the USSR’s UN representative not to return to the Security
Council, but Stalin's reasons for this order are not known. Some historians
speculate that Stalin either wanted to draw U.S. forces into a war that would
drain the country of troops and money, or that he hoped to reveal the UN as an
American tool.
American ground troops were finally
committed in the early morning of June 30, over the reluctance of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff (the United States’ top military officers). The Joint Chiefs
were concerned about the limits of American power. In June 1950 the total armed
strength of the U.S. Army was 593,167, with an additional 75,370 Marines. North
Korea alone was capable of mobilizing perhaps 200,000 combat soldiers, in
addition to the immense reserve of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
Nonetheless, Truman and others were motivated by the news that the ROKA had
mostly ceased to fight. Truman did not seek a declaration of war from the U.S.
Congress, relying instead on the United Nations’ support.
In July, World War II hero General
Douglas MacArthur was placed in command of U.S. troops in Korea. At first
MacArthur wanted only a regimental combat team. Within a week, however, he
cabled Washington that the KPA was “operating under excellent top level
guidance and had demonstrated superior command of strategic and tactical
principles.” He consequently asked for a minimum of 30,000 American combat
soldiers in the form of four infantry divisions, three tank battalions, and
assorted artillery.
VII THE PUSAN PERIMETER
In the summer of l950 the Korean
People’s Army pushed southward with dramatic success, inflicting one
humiliating defeat after another on the American forces. An army that had
defeated Germany and Japan in World War II found itself overwhelmed by what
many thought was a hastily assembled, ill-equipped peasant army said to be
doing the bidding of a foreign imperial power. By the end of July 1950, the combined
U.S. and ROK forces numbered 92,000 at the front (47,000 were Americans),
compared with 70,000 KPA soldiers at the front. Nonetheless, the KPA advance
continued until the North Korean forces occupied roughly 90 percent of South
Korea. Kim Il Sung later said that his plan had been to win the war in a single
month, and by the end of July he nearly had done so.
In the first week of August the U.S.
1st Marine Brigade arrived and finally stabilized the U.S. and ROK forces,
which by that time guarded only a small area on the southeasternmost part of
the peninsula. The right-angled front, known as the Pusan Perimeter, stretched
80 km (50 mi) from P’ohang on Yŏgil Gulf to Taegu in the interior before
bending south 110 km (70 mi) to the coastal Chinju-Masan region. The port city
of Pusan lay behind the front on the peninsula’s southeastern tip.
The city of Taegu became a symbol of
the American determination to halt the KPA's advance, and many attacks were
repelled there. However, it was probably due to a tactical error at P’ohang, on
the northeastern perimeter, that the KPA failed to occupy Pusan and unify the
peninsula. The official American historian of the war, Roy Appleman, wrote that
the "major tactical mistake" of the North Koreans was not to press
their advantage on the eastern coastal road between P’ohang and Pusan. The KPA
division near P’ohang was concerned about covering its flanks and so held its
position. Had it instead moved quickly on P’ohang and then combined with other
KPA divisions, Appleman concluded that Pusan in all likelihood would have
fallen. In any event, the perimeter held for most of August.
At the end of August KPA forces
launched their last major offensive at the perimeter, severely straining the
American-Korean lines for the next two weeks. On August 28 three of the
advancing KPA battalions succeeded in breaching the critical parts of the
perimeter. The cities of P’ohang and Chinju were both lost, with KPA forces
advancing along both coasts to Pusan. Another assault was being launched on the
city of Taegu, with enough success that U.S. commanders evacuated the Eighth
Army headquarters from Taegu to Pusan. Prominent South Koreans began leaving
Pusan for the nearby Tsushima Islands of Japan. Only in mid-September did it
become clear that the U.S. and ROK armies would stop the advance. The decisive
factor was numbers. MacArthur succeeded in committing most of the battle-ready
divisions in the entire American armed forces to the Korean fighting; by
September 8 the 82nd Airborne Division was the only combat-trained Army unit
not in Korea. Although many of these units were with the pending amphibious
operation that would land at Inch’ŏn, near Seoul, some 83,000 American
soldiers and another 57,000 South Korean and British troops faced the North Koreans
at the Pusan front. North Korean forces at the front, including guerrillas and
a sizable number of female soldiers, numbered 98,000. The Americans had also
accumulated five times as many tanks as the KPA and vastly superior artillery.
They also had complete control of the air, which they had maintained since the
early days of the war. The price for repelling the assault was steep
casualties, totaling 20,000 Americans, with 4,280 dead, by September 15.
VIII INVASION AT INCH’ŏN
In mid-September 1950, MacArthur
oversaw an amphibious landing at Inch’ŏn, a port 35 km (22 mi) west of
Seoul. The harbor at Inch’ŏn had treacherous tides that could easily have
grounded a flotilla of ships landing at the wrong time. Fortunately, Admiral
Arthur Dewey Struble, the Navy's foremost expert on amphibious landings,
commanded the flotilla. Struble had led the World War II landing at Leyte in
the Philippines, and he had directed naval operations off Omaha Beach during
the Normandy invasion in Europe. These World War II experiences served him well
at Inch’ŏn, where he commanded an enormous fleet of 261 ships through the
shifting bays and flats, depositing 80,000 Marines ashore with very few losses.
Although the Marines landed almost
unopposed, they faced a deadly gauntlet before arriving at Seoul. By the end of
September, however, U.S. forces had fought their way into Seoul and recaptured
the capital. For years, many American historians held that the North Koreans
were surprised by the invasion, but new evidence suggests that this was not the
case. The North Koreans simply could not resist the assault and so began what
North Korean historians have called euphemistically "the great strategic
retreat," removing their troops from the South to guard their northern
homeland.
Shortly after the Inch’ŏn landing,
U.S. forces retrieved a document that contained Kim Il Sung’s thoughts on the
fighting in the South. “The original plan was to end the war in a month,” he
wrote, but “we could not stamp out four American divisions.” Instead of
following orders to march promptly southward, the North Korean units that had
captured Seoul dallied, thereby giving “a breathing spell” to the Americans.
Kim wrote that from the beginning the North’s “primary enemy was the American
soldiers,” but he acknowledged that “we were taken by surprise when United
Nations troops and the American Air Force and Navy moved in.” This suggests
that Kim anticipated the involvement of American ground forces, but not in such
size, and not with air and naval units. Perhaps the North Koreans believed that
Soviet air and naval power would either deter or confront their American
counterparts. Or perhaps they simply believed, like the U.S. Joint Chiefs of
Staff, that the vast majority of American battle-ready infantry would not be
transferred from all over the globe to this small peninsula of seeming marginal
importance to U.S. global strategy.
Regardless, by early October 1950 the
North had been pushed from South Korea. The war for control of the South left
111,000 South Koreans killed, 106,000 wounded, and 57,000 missing; 314,000
homes had been destroyed, 244,000 damaged. American casualties totaled 6,954
dead, 13,659 wounded, and 3,877 missing in action. North Korean casualty figures
are not known.
IX THE MARCH NORTH AND CHINA’S ENTRY
The U.S.-led forces might have
reestablished the 38th parallel as the border between North and South Korea,
ended the war, and declared that the Truman Doctrine’s policy of containing
Communism had been achieved. Instead, MacArthur sent troops across the parallel
into North Korea in early October. Historians later faulted MacArthur for
taking this action without Truman’s approval, but evidence has since shown that
Truman approved the march north at the end of August, even before the landing
at Inch’ŏn. As the summer progressed, nearly all of Truman’s senior
advisers decided the chance had come not only to contain Communism but to roll
it back. Thus, National Security Council document 81 authorized MacArthur to
"roll back" the North Korean regime if there were no Soviet or
Chinese threats to intervene. The document also instructed MacArthur to use
only Korean troops near the Chinese border so as not to further antagonize
China.
In September and October 1950 U.S.
intelligence agencies generally concluded that China would not enter the war.
On September 20 the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) noted that there was a
slight possibility that Chinese "volunteers" might enter the
fighting, and a month later it noted "a number of reports" that units
from Manchuria (along the Chinese border with Korea) might be sent to North
Korea. Nonetheless, the CIA decided that "the odds are that Communist
China, like the USSR, will not openly intervene in North Korea." MacArthur
swept confidently onward. By October 19 UN troops had captured the North Korean
capital, P’yŏngyang, lying 150 km (90 mi) northwest of the 38th parallel.
Three days earlier, Chinese troops had
crossed their border at the Yalu River into North Korea. They dealt heavy
losses to ROK troops and bloodied U.S. forces as well, then abruptly ceased
offensives for three weeks. This incursion by China did not stop the American
march to the Yalu. General Walter Bedell Smith, director of the CIA, wrote on
November 1 that the Chinese "probably genuinely fear an invasion of
Manchuria." He also predicted the Chinese would try to establish a buffer
zone along the border for security "regardless of the increased risk of
general war." However, the CIA still found insufficient evidence
throughout November that China would mount a major offensive.
North Korean and Chinese documents
released or declassified in the 1980s and 1990s tell a different story. China
did not enter the war purely to protect its border. Rather, Mao decided early
in the war that should the North Koreans falter, China had an obligation to
help them because many North Koreans had sacrificed their lives alongside
Chinese—in the Chinese revolution that overthrew the imperial government in
1911 to 1912, in resistance to Japan’s decades of occupation, and in the
Chinese civil war of 1946 to 1949. On August 4, 1950, Mao told the Chinese
Politburo (the highest decision-making body of the Chinese Communist Party)
that he intended to send troops to Korea "in the name of a volunteer
army" should the Americans reverse the tide of battle. The day after UN
troops crossed the 38th parallel, Mao informed Stalin of his decision to
invade. In other words, it was not the approach of American troops on the
Chinese border that prompted China’s attack; it was the American strategy to
roll back North Korean Communism.
The North Koreans and Chinese
apparently waited to attack UN forces until they were well inside North Korea
in order to stretch the UN supply lines and gain time for a dramatic reversal
on the battlefield. On November 24 MacArthur launched a general offensive all
along the northern front, which was nearing the Yalu. He described it as a
"massive compression and envelopment," a pincer movement to trap the
remaining KPA forces that were backed into the mountainous northern part of the
peninsula. The offensive rolled forward for three days against little or no
resistance, with ROK units succeeding in entering the important city of
Ch’ŏngjin on the upper east coast, 70 km (45 mi) short of China. Lost amid
the victory were reports from U.S. reconnaissance pilots that long columns of
enemy troops were "swarming all over the countryside."
X CHINA TAKES NORTH KOREA
Chinese and North Korean troops began
strong counterattacks on November 27, 1950, dealing devastating blows to U.S.
and ROK troops. The U.S. 1st Marine Division was pinned down at the Changjin
Reservoir, the ROK II Corps collapsed, and within two days a general withdrawal
ensued. By December 6, Communist forces occupied P’yŏngyang, and the next
day the front was only 32 km (20 mi) above the 38th parallel. A little more
than two weeks after the Sino-Korean offensive began, North Korea was cleared
of enemy troops. Chinese troops in North Korea numbered approximately 200,000.
On New Year’s Eve Chinese and North Korean troops launched another major
offensive, once again capturing Seoul. Secretary of State Acheson later called
this the worst American defeat since the Battle of Bull Run during the American
Civil War (1861-1865).
Under the field command of U.S.
Lieutenant General Matthew Ridgway, UN troops finally stiffened their defenses
south of Seoul in early 1951. Bloody weeks of fighting ensued as UN troops
fought northward to the Han River, opposite the capital. Several more weeks
passed before Seoul changed hands again, and in early April, Ridgway's forces
again crossed the 38th parallel. By then fighting had stabilized more or less
along what later became the Korean demilitarized zone, with UN forces in occupation
north of the parallel on the eastern side, and Sino-North Korean forces
occupying swatches of land south of the parallel on the western side.
XI THE ATOMIC THREAT AND THE REMOVAL OF MACARTHUR
As early as November 30, 1950, Truman
said the United States might use any weapon in its arsenal to hold back the
Chinese, an oblique reference to the atomic bomb. This threat apparently deeply
worried Stalin. According to a high official who served at the time in the KGB
(the Soviet intelligence agency), Stalin feared that global war would result
from the American defeat in northern Korea and favored letting the United
States occupy all of Korea. "So what?" Stalin is reported to have
said. "Let the United States of America be our neighbors in the Far East.
… We are not ready to fight." China, however, held a different view,
apparently willing to fight at least to the middle of the Korea Peninsula,
though not further if the consequence might be a third world war.
The U.S. government seriously
considered using nuclear weapons in Korea in early 1951. The immediate threat
was the USSR’s deployment of 13 air divisions to East Asia, including 200
bombers that could strike not just Korea but also American bases in Japan; and
China’s deployment of massive new forces near the Korean border. On March 10,
1951, MacArthur asked Truman for a "D-Day atomic capability"—the
ability to launch a massive nuclear assault. Truman complied, ordering the Air
Force to refurbish the atomic bomb loading pits at Okinawa, Japan, which were used
during World War II. Atomic bombs were then carried to Okinawa unassembled and
put together at the base, lacking only the essential nuclear cores.
On April 5, the Joint Chiefs of Staff
ordered immediate atomic retaliation against Soviet and Chinese bases in
Manchuria if large numbers of new troops entered the war. Also on April 5,
Gordon Dean, chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), arranged for the
transfer of nine nuclear capsules held by the AEC in the United States to the
Air Force bomb group that would carry the weapons. Truman approved the transfer
as well as orders outlining their use the next day.
The president also used this
extraordinary crisis to get the Joint Chiefs of Staff to approve MacArthur's
removal. For some time, MacArthur had chafed against restrictions placed on him
by Truman. MacArthur sought to expand the war to mainland China and ignored
Truman’s orders to use only Korean troops near the Chinese border. On April 11,
1951, Truman asked for MacArthur’s resignation. Most observers assumed Truman
wanted a more subordinate commander. Although this observation was partly true,
U.S. government documents later made clear that Truman wanted a reliable
commander in the field should Washington decide to use nuclear weapons. Truman,
in short, was not sure he could trust MacArthur to use nuclear weapons as
ordered.
XII STALEMATE
By early summer 1951 the war had
settled into the pattern it would follow for the next two years: bloody
fighting along the 38th parallel, most of it in trench warfare reminiscent of
World War I (1914-1918), and tortuous peace negotiations. During this time the
UN forces engaged mainly in a series of probing actions known as the active
defense. Periods of heavy fighting continued, however, both on the ground and
in the air. Although the Communists could not sustain another major offensive,
their well-entrenched forces made even the UN's active defense strategy very
costly. Some of the most desperate battles took place on the hills called Old
Baldy, Capital, Pork Chop, T-Bone, and Heartbreak Ridge. On June 23, 1951, the
USSR’s representative to the UN, Adam Malik, proposed that the warring parties
begin discussions for a cease-fire. Truman agreed, and the ancient Korean
capital of Kaesŏng, located just south of the 38th parallel, was chosen as
a meeting place. Truce talks began on July 10, led initially by U.S. Vice
Admiral C. Turner Joy for the UN side, and Lieutenant-General Nam Il of North
Korea. The talks dragged on interminably, with several suspensions and a
removal of the truce site to the village of P’anmunjŏm, just southeast of
Kaesŏng.
There were months of haggling over how
to properly and fairly mark each side's military lines, but the main issue that
prolonged the negotiations was the disposition of the many prisoners of war
(POWs) on both sides. The North Koreans had maltreated many American and allied
POWs, harshly depriving them and subjecting many to political thought reform
that was decried as "brainwashing" in the United States. In the
South’s POW camps, a virtual war ensued over repatriation. About one-third of
North Korean POWs and a much larger percentage of Chinese POWs did not want to
return to Communist control, prompting struggles among pro-Communists and
anti-Communists. Meanwhile South Korea refused to sign any armistice that would
keep Korea divided, and the South’s Syngman Rhee sought to hinder the talks by
abruptly releasing thousands of North Korean POWs who did not want to return
home. The United States decided Rhee could not be trusted and developed plans
to remove him in a coup d'état. The coup was never carried out.
The POW issue was finally settled on
June 8, 1953. The Communists agreed to the placement of POWs who refused
repatriation under the control of a neutral commission of nations for three
months; at the end of this period those who still refused repatriation would be
set free. Two final and costly Communist offensives in June and July 1953
sought to gain more ground but failed, and the U.S. Air Force for the first
time destroyed huge irrigation dams that had provided water for 75 percent of
the North's food production. Although not widely reported, hundreds of square
miles of farmland were inundated.
On July 27, 1953, the UN, North Korea,
and China signed an armistice agreement—South Korea refused to sign—and the
fighting ended. The armistice called for a buffer zone 4 km (2.5 mi) wide
across the middle of Korea, from which troops and weapons were supposed to be
withdrawn. This "demilitarized zone" was in fact heavily fortified;
as of the late 1990s, more than 1 million soldiers confronted each other along
the zone. With no peace treaty signed, the two Koreas remained technically
still at war; only the armistice agreement and demilitarized zone kept a
tenuous peace.
XIII AFTERMATH
The Korean War was one of the most
destructive of the 20th century. Perhaps as many as 4 million Koreans died
throughout the peninsula, two-thirds of them civilians. (This compares, for
example, with the 2.3 million Japanese who died in World War II.) China lost up
to 1 million soldiers, and the United States suffered 36,934 dead and 103,284
wounded. Other UN nations suffered 3322 dead and 11,949 wounded. Economic and
social damage to the Korea Peninsula was incalculable, especially in the North,
where three years of bombing left hardly a modern building standing.
The war also had lasting consequences
beyond Korea. Much of the materiel used in the war was bought from nearby
Japan. This gave the Japanese economy such a dynamic boost after the ravages of
World War II that some have called the Korean War "Japan's Marshall
Plan," a reference to the U.S. economic aid program that helped rebuild
post-war Europe. The Korean War had similar effects on the American economy, as
defense spending nearly quadrupled in the last six months of 1950. Perhaps even
more so than World War II, the Korean War was responsible for establishing
America’s chain of military bases around the world and its enormous defense and
intelligence system at home.
Decades later, Koreans still seek
reconciliation and eventual reunification of their torn nation.