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South Korea THE KOREAN WAR, 1950-53
In the meantime, the communists had built a formidable
political and military structure in North Korea under the aegis
of the Soviet command. They had created a regional Five-Province
Administrative Bureau in October 1945, which was reorganized into
the North Korean Provisional People's Committee in February 1946
and shed the "Provisional" component of its name twelve months
later. The communists also expanded and consolidated their
party's strength by merging all of the left-wing groups into the
North Korean Workers' Party in August 1946. Beginning in 1946,
the armed forces also were organized and reinforced. Between 1946
and 1949, large numbers of North Korean youths--at least
10,000--were taken to the Soviet Union for military training. A
draft was instituted, and in 1949 two divisions--40,000
troops--of the former Korean Volunteer Army in China, who had
trained under the Chinese communists, and had participated in the
Chinese civil war (1945-49), returned to North Korea.
By June 1950, North Korean forces numbered between 150,000
and 200,000 troops, organized into ten infantry divisions, one
tank division, and one air force division. Soviet equipment,
including automatic weapons of various types, T-34 tanks, and Yak
fighter planes, had also been pouring into North Korea in early
1950. These forces were to fight the ill-equipped South Korean
army of less than 100,000 men--an army lacking in tanks, heavy
artillery, and combat airplanes, plus a coast guard of 4,000 men
and a police force of 45,000 men.
The events following the June 1950 invasion proved the
superiority of North Korean military forces and the soundness of
their overall invasion strategy. South Korea's army was simply
overwhelmed; Seoul fell within three days. By early August, South
Korean forces were confined in the southeastern corner of the
peninsula to a territory 140 kilometers long and 90 kilometers
wide. The rest of the territory was completely in the hands of
the North Korean army.
The only unforeseen event complicating North Korea's strategy
was the swift decision by the United States to commit forces in
support of South Korea. On June 26, 1950, Truman ordered the use
of United States planes and naval vessels against North Korean
forces, and on June 30 United States ground troops were
dispatched. The United States, fearing that inaction in Korea
would be interpreted as appeasement of communist aggression
elsewhere in the world, was determined that South Korea should
not be overwhelmed and asked the UN Security Council to
intervene. When Douglas MacArthur, the commanding general of the
United Nations forces in Korea, launched his amphibious attack
and landed at Inch'on on September 15, the course of the war
changed abruptly. Within weeks much of North Korea was taken by
United States and South Korean forces before Chinese "volunteers"
intervened in October, enabling North Korea to eventually restore
its authority over its domain. The war lasted until July 27,
1953, when a cease-fire agreement was signed at P'anmunjom. By
then, the war had involved China and the Soviet Union, which had
dispatched air force divisions to Manchuria in support of North
Korea and had furnished the Chinese and North Koreans with arms,
tanks, military supplies, fuel, foodstuffs, and medicine. Fifteen
member-nations of the United Nations had contributed armed forces
and medical units to South Korea.
The war left indelible marks on the Korean Peninsula and the
world surrounding it. The entire peninsula was reduced to rubble;
casualties on both sides were enormous. The chances for peaceful
unification had been remote even before 1950, but the war dashed
all such hopes. Sizable numbers of South Koreans who either had
been sympathetic or indifferent to communism before the war
became avowed anticommunists afterwards. The war also intensified
hostilities between the communist and noncommunist camps in the
accelerating East-West arms race. Moreover, a large number of
Chinese volunteer troops remained in North Korea until October
1958, and China began to play an increasingly important role in
Korean affairs. Because tension on the Korean Peninsula remained
high, the United States continued to station troops in South
Korea, over the strenuous objections of North Korean leaders. The
war also spurred Japan's industrial recovery and the United
States' decision to rearm Japan.
Data as of June 1990
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