After
60 Years, It's Time To Recognize How Much The
Korean War Changed America
This is the continuation of a story begun on our October 2013 Home Page. To go to an archived version of
that page, click here: October
2013 Home Page Archive. To return to this
month'sactual Home Page, click on the Signal Corps orangeHome Page menu item in the
upper left corner of this page.
continuing...
Yet
while the men and women who fought the Korean War certainly
did their part and deserve praise, the question is not how
well did they do, but what did the war accomplish?
Just as in Vietnam and Iraq, the final measure of war is one
relating to whether it achieves its goals or not. And
clearly, without clear goals being set before a war ensues
it is hard to determine if they have been accomplished or not
when it ends. The problem then is that in the case of the
Korean War, as in our analogy
above of firing Roman Candles at a neighbors house, the
question as to what the expected end result was supposed to be
of that war was largely left blank at the time the war was
started. More simply put, it seems in retrospect that our
American government at the time was quite comfortable in using military
force, and even going to war, without clear sight of what
they expected to get done. That is, they took the attitude
that a quick response was necessary and that they would wait
and decide what the conclusion should be later on, down the
road, once the war was well
underway. Does this sound a bit like what was going on a few
weeks ago when Obama and Kerry were publicly opining on Syria's
use of chemical weapons?
Why
is this? Why have politicians become like this, where on the
issue of war they seem only too happy to act now and think
later?
We think that part of the answer lies in the fact
that the outcome of the Korean War helped water down in
America’s mind—from then until today—the idea of what the conclusion of a war
should look like. No longer is it necessary to have a clear
victor. Now a negotiated stalemate is enough to declare a
war over. One can see this in the
“negotiated” outcome of the Vietnam War, and the political
free for all that pulled every soldier out of Iraq as soon
as the political parties in Washington changed hands. What
we are saying is that starting with the negotiated
partitioning of Korea at the end of its war, and continuing
until today, this constant watering down of what
an acceptable conclusion to a war has become has resulted in
America losing sight of why wars are supposed to be fought
in the first place,
and what their outcome is supposed to be.
Has this helped America, or hurt it?
Whatever
your answer, it seems clear that war has lost its relevance
in terms of its original purpose. For one thing, it has lost
its impact on the life of the average American… not those
whose sons and daughters die in it, but the average American
who couldn’t point out Syria on a map if their life depended
on it.
War is no longer real to these people, and to many in
Washington. It has become just another political tool to be
wielded by our government leaders… a tool where the
relevance of its usage is more important within the realm of
political infighting than in terms of what the activity
itself will really accomplish. It has truly become what von
Clausewitz said of it, politics by just another means… and
unnecessary politics at that. In other words, we seem now to be at that stage in our nation’s growth where our
government goes to war more for the purpose of one party
scoring political points against the other, then for the
purpose of accomplishing a stated military objective or
social good. We, in the military, have, since the time the
Korean War ended, become pawns of politicians… politicians
playing a grand chess board game of one ups-manship,
brinksmanship and power politics.
One need only watch a senile McCain use the threat of
missile strikes against Syria as an argument with which to score
points against President Obama to see the truth of this. And
the same for the White House, whose press spokespeople cloak
every phrase of war they utter in terms meant to denigrate
the Republican point of view rather than state the intended
outcome of the conflict being proposed.
In the mean time, America’s military sits and waits… to see
if they will go to war and die, or not. "Boots on the
ground"... the triteness of the phrase is beyond offensive,
it is profane. We are not boots on the ground, we
are people... real men and women... real American
men and women, whose lives our government toys with as
though we are expendable.
Government is expendable. We, the people, are not.
The unfortunate fact is, it seems today that no one expects
war to actually accomplish anything. War has simply become
something our country periodically gets involved in, for
little to no intended purpose.
How did we get here?
Korea is part of the answer, as is most certainly Vietnam.
With these two wars America learned how to settle for second
best. By the time of Iraq, second best had become the stated
norm.
Most of our readers know the history of the Korean war… many
of them intimately. However, there are a surprisingly large
number of young readers who browse this website, one
presumes either out of curiosity or as a reference tool for
research. Looking at web reports, most seem to come from the
High School demographic and the early stages of college. For
these readers it might serve us well to pause and give a
simple overview of what the Korean War was all about, from a
soldier-historian's viewpoint.
The Korean War
For one thing, the Korean War was too significant for modern
day American’s to neglect to understand the impact of on our
daily lives today. Even now, sixty years from its
occurrence, it’s influence is still felt. Why? Because as we
alluded to above, the Korean War helped set the tenor of
what the American public expects as a normalized outcome
of war.
In part because it was fought long before today's youth were
ever born, very few people today know its story. But make no
mistake, the Korean War was much too momentous to
ignore, or more pointedly, it was too pivotal in creating
the precedent that Presidents today use to their political
advantage for us not to understand how this came about. In
this regard and many others, it is a war far too costly to
be forgotten.
In its most simple sense the Korean War was a civil war, as
was the Vietnam War, the war in Iraq, the war in
Afghanistan, and dare we say this… the war in Syria that
blazes across our TV screens each night. Much like all of
these wars the Korean War erupted into an international
conflict because of America’s viewpoint as to who should win
the civil war.
The complexities of how America ended up in the Korean War
are far too numerous for us to discuss here, suffice it to
say that the same can be said for the complexities that
dragged America into Vietnam and Iraq too, although not so
for Afghanistan. Unfortunately, for those trying to
understand today why America went to war in Korea 60 years
ago the complexities work against us, as the level of these
complexities makes it far too easy for a speaker today to
summarize America’s true purpose in entering the Korean War
by spouting simple sentence of twisted facts and
conclusions, usually for the purpose of supporting some
modern day political or ideological leaning. In other words,
if someone tells you why we went to war in Korea in anything
less than 100 paragraphs, don’t believe them. The cause of
the Korean War is much too complex to be so simply
explained.
Yet while the cause may be complex and subject to
ideological revisionism, the facts of the war are simple
and can be explained with ease.
The
Korean War owes much of the facts that surround it to
historical roots that are tied to the Japanese colonial
experience and the legacy it left after WWII ended. Under
Japanese colonial rule from 1910 to 1945 the Japanese
imperial government implemented what was referred to within
Japan as the “divide and rule” policy. This policy broke the
Korean peninsula into two geographic zones, with each being
set up on the basis of its respective ability to support
exploitation of the resources held within it. Because of
this the mountainous north, which was rich with raw
minerals, was targeted by Japan as an area for the
development of heavy industry. The southern portion of the
country, on the other hand, was intended to support light
industry and the production of rice and other crops.
Strangely, and here is where the cause of the Korean War
becomes more complex, it just so happened to occur that the
delineation the Japanese set up also coincided with a long
festering sociological and ideological division within the
Korean people themselves. Because of this, while the Korean people
may want the world to think otherwise, they are not without
fault themselves when it comes to why the South can not get
along with the North even today, or vice-versa.
In the early 1900s as communism as a form of government
began to take root in Asia, communist sympathizers made
their way into the northern part of Korea. When the Japanese
took over in 1910 small cells of communist sympathizers
were already there. Not surprisingly, the audacity of the
Japanese in taking control of the territory of Korea only
drove these sympathizers to redouble their efforts. As a
result, just as they were in fact doing elsewhere in Asia
from Singapore to Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia, the
Philippines and other countries, the communist sympathizers
incited guerrilla warfare in North Korea as a form of
resistance. In support of this conservatives (yes… what we
would see as Republicans in America…) and collaborationist
groups congregated and began to operate in the south, with
the intent of taking Korea back from the Japanese.
Needless to say, they failed. However, what they were unable
to do on their own World War II was able to do for them. With the end of
WWII came the expelling from the Korean Peninsula of Japan
and its occupying troops.
Unfortunately the Japanese (as occupiers) were replaced with U.S.
and Soviet Union troops. As can be expected these new
foreigners were seen by the locals as no more than just another
set of occupiers, even if they were only supposed to be in
country for a short while to help establish a new government. For the locals, the question was
‘where do these foreigners get off thinking they can
determine who will rule the future Korea?’ And so while we
in the west saw our occupation of Korea along with the
Soviets as having been a stabilizing step on the road
towards giving Korea full independence, many of the Korean
people saw it as simply one more occupying army coming to
replace the other.
At the time the decision the U.N. made to separate the
country along the 38th parallel seemed to be the only way
out. More to the point, it seemed to provide the only
solution to dealing with the legacy of Japan’s earlier
splitting of the country into two economic sectors,
providing a way to address the traditional sociological
differences that had evolved between North and South Korean
values, and the fact that the communist organizing efforts
that had taken place and were still taking place in the
North were very effective.
Today we wonder how anyone in their right mind could think
that this approach was going to work… or for that matter how
Henry Kissinger could have thought that North Vietnam would
stay on its side of the border while the people of South
Vietnam voted on what their future should be after America
left. Partitioning a country is not a solution to warfare,
it only sets the true beginning point of the conflict
between those left behind, once the overlord countries
leave.
At any rate, two separate Korean governments were formed in
1948. The one backed by the United States, the government of
the Republic of Korea (ROK), was headed by Syngman Rhee. His
northern counterpart, the Democratic People's Republic of
Korea (DPRK), was headed by the erstwhile Kim Il-sung… who
benefited from the support of the Soviet Union. What the
U.S. leaders of the time seemed to have closed their ears to
however was that both Syngman Rhee and Kim Il-sung were both
extremely loud and vocal in stating their intent to reunify
Korea under their own political systems, once the foreigners
left. In other words, long before the agreement to separate
the country was even written, both of these men were stating
that they would go to war if needed to unite the country.
Rhee called for a democratic government. Kim, as to be
expected, wanted to establish a unified communist Korean
government that represented the entire peninsula. Again, the
question is raised: why is it that the U.S. and the U.N. did not
forsee
that their endorsement of a splitting of the country would lead to war between the North and the South? Did they
not know or did they simply not care? Or was it possible
that the people of America were… dare we say this… war weary
because of the country's efforts in WWII... war weary and willing to let these two
countries go at it themselves rather than intervene with American
troops?
Sound familiar?
Whatever
the reason, as should have been expected, the competing
interests of each group created both tensions and enmity
between the South and the North. And rather quickly, this
turned into open persecution of both individuals and whole
groups, whenever they could be identified as affiliating
with the opposing political system. The result: in short
order the entire Korean peninsula was polarized and headed
towards war.
In our view this is the point in time when political
expediency in the U.S. began to replace logic in terms of
what should be expected as a normalized outcome of a
potential war in Korea. Where up until 1950 the world
expected that the normal outcome of war was that one side
would win and the other lose, and that therefore there would
be victors who would rule the subject country, with the
splitting of Korea along the 38th parallel this principle
was tossed out the window.
Splitting Korea into two, simply
to avoid having to deal with the dirty details left over
from Japan’s per-WWII occupation, doomed the logic of war to
the trash heap of history. From this point forward it became
acceptable for countries that had once been a battle ground
of war to be partitioned (by the world at large) in any and
every form imaginable, simply to avoid the leading powers of
the world having to argue over which political element in
the country being broken apart should rule if the country
was to stay united. That is, it was easier to set up two
rulers in one country by partitioning the country than have
the leading powers of the world argue ad nauseam
over which one ruler should take precedence.
And thus, no longer was the outcome of war considered on the
basis of what was best for the war torn country where the
battles took place (in this case, the battles of WWII to
defeat the Japanese forces that occupied Korea). Instead,
the consideration was now over what was best for the
opposing sides that, in many cases, had been fighting a
proxy war in the Korean battle space in the first place.
Remember, the comments we offer here apply to Korea at
the end of WWII... at that point in time the Korean War
that America fought had not yet started. Even so, as the
cartoon above shows, Korea was already full of proxy players
that had designs on what the new, evolving Korea should be.
Not the least of these was the Soviet Union, who actively
and even aggressively supported efforts to recruit and
organize communist sympathizers in the North. What is not
shown in the above cartoon however is that the U.S. was, at
the same time, supporting and aiding the South. With this
building situation it was only natural that both the U.S.
and the Soviets would opt to cut up the country like a piece
of cheap cloth on a cutting table, rather than concede one
to the other to either unify Korea under Northern Communist
rule, or Southern Korean Democracy.
As
far as the proxy players were concerned, with this little
nicety of splitting the country into two out of the way, and
with no regard for the potential consequences of this
decision, both sides could then set about removing the
troops they still had in Korea from the end of WWII and
sending them home. In the U.S’s case some of the post WWII
troops in Korea were sent home, while most were simply
re-stationed to occupied Japan.
With the foreigners gone, almost immediately open conflict
broke out between North and South Korea. At the time it was
more in the vein of a virtual war than a declared war, but
as nascent as it was, it was still a war.
Numerous skirmishes in the form of guerilla warfare and
border conflicts took place between the two Koreas,
literally on the heels of American troops loading their
equipment onto flights headed for Japan. In the period
between 1948 and 1950 the tensions between the South and the
North escalated exponentially. Unlike when the British left
India and conflict broke out sometime later between the
Hindus and the Muslims, in the case of North and South Korea
conflict exploded even as the U.S. and Soviet armies were
packing their bags to go home.
Didn’t anyone see that war between the North and the South
was inevitable if the peninsula was divided? Why then didn’t
the U.S. simply stop its plans to exit, invite the Soviets
to do the same, and agree to lower the threshold of violence
before the two departed? Why didn’t the U.N. step in… after
all, the U.N. was the catalyst for the splitting of the
country? Was it post-WWII war weariness? Was it that no one
frankly cared what happened on the Korean peninsula, as it
was thought too small a nation to impact life in America? Or
was it in reality a cynical effort on the part of the
political leaders of the day to redefine what the outcome of
war… WWII in this case… could be?
In our view, it was a little bit of all of this, but most
especially the latter. That is, as the only two strong man
victors of WWII, the U.S. and Soviet Union felt they could do
anything they wanted with the rest of the world... carve it
up, leave it alone or whatever. After all, who was going
to challenge them? The British? The French? The Germans? The
old Ottoman Empire? And
since at that time neither the U.S. nor the Soviets wanted
to confront each other in a new war, each likely felt it much
easier to simply agree to carve up those numerous, nasty
little countries with internal political problems of their
own, rather than fight over them.
This then set in motion in the minds of U.S leaders the idea
that perhaps there should be a middle ground in terms of how
wars end… not just with one side being the victor and
deciding how the underlying country should be ruled, and
with the other side losing and having no say in the decision,
but instead something in between… something where both the
victor and the loser agree to let the country where the
conflict took place fight it out on its own, internally, to
see who would end up running the place. Separate the two
sides through partition, and then hope for the best.
No, you say? How then to explain the eventual result of the
Korean War… or the Vietnam War… or the Iraq War… or what is
going on in Syria today?
Continuing with the story of the Korean War, during 1948 and
1949 conflict escalated, with neither side wanting to lose
to the other. During that time North Korea pushed the
Soviets for both permission to invade the South and for
support in its efforts. They made no bones about their
intention: they intended to reunify the Korean people under
communist rule.
Reluctant to risk a confrontation with the U.S. the Soviets
initially refused, but the North Koreans kept the pressure
on. In early 1950 the Soviet’s caved in and gave a somewhat
reluctant and tepid o.k. to the North’s plan… but only if
the North Korean’s could get China's blessing too.
We all know what happened next. On June 25, 1950, the Korea
People's Army (KPA) of the DPRK marched southward and
crossed the 38th parallel on their way to Seoul.
Again... one simply must stop and ask: did the politicians
in Washington really think that a bifurcated Korean
peninsula was going to work? Do the politicians in
Washington today really think that they can stem Syrian and
Iranian ambitions by sealing up a bunch of chemical weapons?
Or are they simply putting off the inevitability of war for
another day… or another administration?
In response to the DPRK’s invasion America entered the war.
Within short order Secretary of State Dean Acheson's
decision to intervene and to commit U.S. military forces to
the war was supported by President Truman, and the U.S.’
actions were later approved by the United Nations.
Unfortunately, even with a dominant number of US forces on
the ground, the North’s army continued to push southward. By
the summer of 1950 the ROK and US armies had retreated as
far south as Pusan, the most southeastern port city on the
peninsula.
Finally, in early August the North’s advance was halted,
albeit neither side saw any dramatic change of status until
MacArthur's successful landing at Inchon (a.k.a. Incheon,
Inch'on, 인천 상륙 작전) in mid-September.
At that time Mac did his usual magic and recaptured Seoul
from the KPA. With that one move, Kim Il-sung's plan to "win
and end the war in a month" was dashed.
Instead, the war that ensued proved to be much more
difficult than either side expected. For one thing, it
caught the United States flatfooted and totally unprepared
for combat. Drawing troops from the only logical place they
could come from, troops in Japan were rushed into battle
with little ammunition and ineffective weapons. Recognizing
that in scrapping its armament at the end of WWII the U.S.
military had acted shortsightedly, the military in the U.S.
went about scrounging for arms, finding them wherever they
could.
One could see this happening at Fort Knox when the Army,
short of tanks that worked, took down those on the concrete
pedestals outside the front gate and reinstalled engines,
transmissions and other equipment in them, before sending
them off to Korea. Rusting tank hulks from South Pacific
battlefields were scrounged up and sent to Japan for
refurbishing. Again, just as in the early days of WWII,
America found that if it weren’t for the shear economic
strength of the country things might have turned ugly.
Fortunately economic strength prevailed where political
decisions failed, and in less than three months from its
outbreak the U.S. found itself able to direct the tune to
which the war proceeded.
For the next year a tough and gritty war was waged up and
down the Korean Peninsula. After that it settled into what
seemed to be a two-year stalemate, not far from where it
began on the 38th parallel.
Three years after its start, fighting ended in a negotiated
armistice.
Legacy & Lessons
The lessons able to be learned from the Korean War are among
the best any nation has ever had presented to it for its own
improvement. One wonders why we haven’t learned from them...
or for that matter why the Koreans, Chinese or Russians
haven’t learned either.
The appalling, vicious fratricidal war that was the Korean
War left Korea with scars that have yet to heal. Sources
estimate that as many as 3,000,000 Koreans, at least half of
which were civilians, died in the war. Physical and
corporeal destruction aside, the war scarred the Korean
psyche beyond the norm, as Koreans killed Koreans to an
extent and in more troubling ways than is usually found in a
civil war. The animosity this has bread, and the fear felt
by one side for the other, did not end with the war. Instead
it continued to proliferate over all of the interceding days
from the signing of the armistice agreement up until today,
as incidents of conflict, such as border skirmishes,
espionage attempts, kidnappings, vessel sinkings, artillery
shelling, and the like continued to take place. And as we
all know too well, attempts to develop nuclear and chemical
weapons by the North have not made things any easier.
During all of this time the two Koreas have developed their
own states, each under the most different of conditions and
forms of government that can be imagined. As we know, South
Korea worked its way through a rocky period of democratic
autocracy to something approaching true democracy, layered
on top of an oligarchic form of capitalism. North Korea on
the other hand has developed… well… it’s hard to say what
North Korea has developed. Whatever it is, it remains one of
the most severe, strict and isolated quasi-communist states
in the world today. We say quasi-communist because without
any doubt what is being practiced in North Korea is not
communism in any sense of the word… not at least according
to what Marks and Engels defined, nor Mao for that matter.
In North Korea there is no sharing of resources, work
according to your means, receive according to your needs
type of thing going on. Instead, it’s simply a corrupt
dictatorship that prays on its own people.
The result of this has clearly given the South the edge in
terms of economic development. Beginning in the 1960s South
Korea underwent a rapid industrialization, and over the next
four decades it became a global player. The North on the
other hand says that it is adhering to a policy of juche,
or self-reliance. Not so, no matter what Dennis Rodman may
tell you when he’s sober. North Korea is simply a defunct
country whose leader rapes his people… both economically,
literally and figuratively. If it weren’t for foreign aid,
extortion and the sale of weapon systems, mostly used to
sustain its military, North Korea would have turned into a
sixth generation growth forest with no one living in it
except for a bunch of semi-naked hunter-gatherers.
This then is the legacy of the Korean War, where the country
was
partitioned in order to save the “victors” the trouble of
having to actually care what happened to the people that
remained behind. It happened first in Germany, although in
that case it was thought that the Germans had it coming to
them. It happened next in Korea. Then in Vietnam, and then
Iraq. Will it happen in Afghanistan? More to the point, is
it now considered acceptable to partition a country when a
war ends, or better still, leave it up to the remaining
citizens to fight it out among themselves to see who
triumphs and survives?
In Korea’s case the result was a nation where over 3 million
citizens lost their lives only to see the country evolve
into one where one-half of the remaining people live in the
dark ages while the other half learns about Twerking from
Miley Cyrus.
In Vietnam’s case the North overthrew the South
once America left, and then added to the 1.7 million it
had already killed in democide from 1945 to 1987 another 3.7 million
that it murdered (including Laotians and Cambodians) when it
took over the south.[1] It may be true that in the 25
years since the "war ended," and the North Vietnamese
took control and
unified the country, things have gotten ever so slightly
better, but does that justify 5.4 million people being
murdered by
the rulers of the country? Does that justify America walking away
from a war that it essentially started, knowing full well
that the partitioning of the country it signed off on would
not work, and leaving the people to their
own defenses?[2]And how should we classify Iraq? Have all we
have done with our effort in that war is to hand Iran a
client state that it can now control until it turns the country
into another Shi’a state that
subjugates its own minority Sunni brethren… another country
permanently split by how the western countries that fought
on its soil left it when they went home?
If one looks at these countries one cannot help but see that
in the years since World War II ended what has become an
accepted settlement to war has changed. We say again that in
our view this all began with the Korean War. Our state of
mind today as to how a war can end is a result of how the
Korean War was allowed to end by America's leaders at
the time.
To be sure, events of the time shaped what the world did in
dividing Korea into two countries and abandoning the
principle that when a war was over the objective should be
to rebuild the war torn country until it can take its
rightful place
again, back in global society, living with freedom and
economic health, on its own feet, under one united
government. That is clear. But what is less clear and what
few people realize is that since the results of the time
influenced how the Korean War ended, the Korean War itself…
especially its terrible destructiveness and near loss in the
early days… created an influence of its own that has trickled
down to influence events in our times today.
The legacy of
the Korean War has come home to roost in our own henhouse,
today, with the very concept of war now being thought of not
for the severity of the pain and anguish it inflicts on
those who fight it and/or are subject to it, not on the
ferociousness of force it can bring to resolve an
international dispute, but instead on the fact that after
the carnage is over politicians can revert back to spineless
indecision in carving up a country and peoples until what
is left is an ungovernable mass of humanity that will be of
little value to the world or the people themselves for years to come.
This kind of end result is not a fault of the soldiers who
fight these wars, for they only determine the kinetic
outcome. The political outcome is determined in Washington.
It is also not a
fault of the people who live in these war torn countries, as
they barely have enough influence to survive on what is left
when the war ends, never mind determine how their country
will move forward.
Whose fault is it then? We would say it is the fault of mid
20th century progressivism gone
wrong. Progressivism: a desire to feel good about what one
claims they are doing without actually doing anything
except talking about the good they are doing. The reader
should note, we are not taking a stand for or against
progressivism here, for progressivism is as much a political
ideology as it is a social hypothesis. All we are doing here is identifying the fact
that one of the more profound uses of it in the past 60
years was in the influence it had on the decision to end the Korean War
by partitioning the Korean peninsula. By breaking the
country in two along the 38th parallel all of the big players
of the day got to spout progressive logic and
feel good about themselves, without actually doing
anything except making a decision that impacted lives other
than their own.
And so the pattern was set; and so today we have pin prick missile attacks being proposed on
Syria. Lengthy discussions about rounding up chemical
weapons to seal them off from further use, while the man who
committed actual, real crimes against humanity is
allowed to walk free and proudly take interviews on CNN and
FOX News. Instead of arresting this man and his henchmen and taking
them to
the Hague for trial, the world acts to lock up his chemical
toys so that he can't play with them anymore. Progressivism:
the act of acting like something is being done when in fact
nothing is being done. Progressivism, the root cause of a
people of a nation suffering while the world twiddles its
fingers in indecision. Progressivism, a mode of thinking and
axiom that says it is better for the proxy overlords to
partition a country as a viable means to end a war than deal
with the messy fact that neither side is winning and
therefore the war may go on for years to come.
Progressivism: a concept that first gained acceptance at the
end of the Korean War, when it was used to allow the proxy
fighters to walk away from the stalemate they had created.
Our point then is that the Korean War had a far greater
influence on America today than many give it credit for. The
guns went silent long ago, but their reverberations
continue until today. In our estimation the biggest impact
the Korean War has had on the world is that a) it ushered in
and gave credibility to the
concept of modern day progressive thinking and b) that progressive
thinking brought to the fore the acceptance of partition as
a means for two proxy fighters to walk away from a
battlefield without either having to admit defeat.
Watch for these two "P"s: Partitioning and Progressivism...
used in unison as a means to end
a war. Watch for them. They will be coming again soon to a battlefield
near you.
The Korean War – Other Impacts and Effects
In terms of what other affects the Korean War and the
division of the Korean peninsula had on society, we offer
these too for your consideration:
●
The Korean War militarized and hardened the Cold War,
creating a permanent state of political and military tension
between the U.S. and the Soviet Union that lasted from 1947 to 1991.
The reason for this is simple: while both sides knew that
they had taken the easy way out in ending the Korean War via
a partitioning of the country, both also knew that they
hadn't solved the problem, and that while progressive
thinking made them feel good it wasn't solving any
problems... not in Korea, nor anywhere else around the
world.
● The failure of the partition of Korea to solve the
country's problems and especially to stem the desire of the
communists to spread their doctrine around the world focused U.S. resistance to communist
expansion on other countries in the Far East. Thus, within a few years Vietnam
came to center stage, as the U.S. recognized that rather
than slow the advance of communism the partitioning of Korea
did the opposite. It gave the communist organizers and
sympathizers hope that if they fought hard
enough in other countries... like Vietnam, Malaysia,
Indonesia and the Philippines... they might force the U.S.
to allow the partition of these countries too, rather than
suffer a prolonged war on the battlefield for a country most
Americans could care less about.
● Economically, the enormous amount of
money that the U.S. spent in Japan, as it used it as a base
from which to fight the Korean War, helped Japan quick start
its own economic recovery after WWII. In this sense the
Korean War had a good impact on society. Unfortunately, this
is one of the few instances where positive benefit can be
claimed.
●
The Korean War poisoned U.S.–China relations for twenty
years. During that time, in the eyes of much of the world, China attained the status of a great
power. In reality however it
struggled on its home grounds to feed its own people and
figure out a political system of its own that would work. It
was not until its abandonment of communism in all but name
that China was able to improve the lives of its people.
All in all, the Korean War was a watershed event, as it
altered for all time not just the nature of international
affairs but what the world considers an acceptable outcome
of war. Yet while we toy here with the philosophical nature
and product of the Korean War, and do so as though we are
enlightened academics, the fact still remains that America
lost 36,913 men and women in the Korean War. And the Korean people, in
addition to their loses, have carried around their neck the
albatross of an attitude of antipathy towards each other,
something made worse by the partition of the country
along the 38th
parallel.
[3]
Miscellaneous Korean War Facts
A) In addition to a fledgling nuclear arsenal, the North
Korean army has more than 13,000 artillery tubes—more than
any other country— with most of them aimed at South Korea.
Their artillery arsenal includes chemical weapons.
B) North Korea has the world's largest special operations
forces and more submarines than any other nation. The
North's military—the fourth-largest on the planet—includes
the world's third-largest ground army. Three-fourths of the
army is deployed between the North Korean capital of
Pyongyang and the DMZ.
C) Except for the un-electrified black hole that is North
Korea, northeast Asia is a booming corner of the world—one
of the fastest-growing pieces of the global economy. It
produces one-fifth of the world's economic output and trade.
The area also represents 25% of all U.S. trade and $221
billion in direct U.S. investment.
D) More than 2,000 American companies operate in South
Korea, which in a little more than a decade transformed
itself from an agricultural-based economy to the world's
largest shipbuilder and a leading microchip producer.
E) South Korea was the second-largest provider of ground
troops (following the U.S.) in the Vietnam War. At any one
time South Korea had about 50,000 troops in South Vietnam.
Footnotes
[1] In 1974 Congress voted not to enforce the
commitments agreed to in the Paris Peace Accords. Air support for Cambodia,
South Vietnam, and Laos was cut off. The military aid promised was scaled
back or never materialized, the North was allowed to resume support for the
Khmer Rouge, and to invade the south and take control.
- To return to your place in the text click here:
[2] Statistics of Democide; Chapter 6, Statistics Of
Vietnamese Democide; Estimates, Calculations, And Sources, R.J. Rummel External link: é- To return to your place in the text click here:
[3] CBS News, How Many Americans Died In Korea?,
February 11, 2009. External link: é- To return to your place in the text click here:
Additional Sources
Overview of the Korean War and its Legacy; HyoJung Julia Jang,
Graduate Student, Center for East Asian Studies, Stanford University.
External PDF link:
é
Though all but forgotten now, Korean War leaves
far-reaching legacy, David Hendee, World-Herald staff writer,
Omaha.com.
Stanford
Program on Cross Cultural Education; External link:
é
Certain
photos in this article courtesy of Kim Jae-Hwan, by AFP, Getty Images.
Lynn,
Hyung Gu. Bipolar Orders: the Two Koreas Since 1989. Halifax, NS: Fernwood
Pub., 2007.
The
Korean War: A History; Cumings, B. (2010), New York: Modern Library.
The
Government Role in Economic Development, South Korea: A Country Study;
Andrea Matles Savada and William Shaw, editors, Washington: GPO for the
Library of Congress, 1990. External link: é
Like this article? Let us know by
helping us with our scholarship fund efforts. A $30.00 donation
to our
Scholarship Fund
will help us get one step closer to helping another deserving High School
graduate attend college. Your donation is tax deductible and your
kindness will go father than you think in making
it possible for another young American to fulfill their dream of a college
education. Thank You!
Original Site Design and Construction
By John Hart, Class 07-66. Ongoing site design and maintenance
courtesy Class 09-67.
Content and design Copyright
1998 - 2013 by ArmySignalOCS.com.