korean - romantic video
- Duration: 7:43
- Published: 2006-03-04
- Uploaded: 2010-12-16
- Author: jeffie168
a very sad song - emo!
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The Korean War (1950–armistice, 1953) was a military conflict between the Republic of Korea, supported by the United Nations, and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and People's Republic of China (PRC), with air support from the Soviet Union. The war began on 25 June 1950 and an armistice was signed on 27 July 1953. The war was a result of the political division of Korea by agreement of the victorious Allies at the conclusion of the Pacific War. The Korean peninsula had been ruled by Japan from 1910 until the end of World War II. In 1945, following the surrender of Japan, American administrators divided the peninsula along the 38th Parallel, with United States troops occupying the southern part and Soviet troops occupying the northern part.
The failure to hold free elections throughout the Korean Peninsula in 1948 deepened the division between the two sides, and the North established a Communist government. The 38th Parallel increasingly became a political border between the two Koreas. Although reunification negotiations continued in the months preceding the war, tension intensified. Cross-border skirmishes and raids at the 38th Parallel persisted. The situation escalated into open warfare when North Korean forces invaded South Korea on 25 June 1950. It was the first significant armed conflict of the Cold War.
The United Nations, particularly the United States, came to the aid of the South Koreans in repelling the invasion. After early defeats by the North Korean military, when a rapid UN counter-offensive repelled the North Koreans past the 38th Parallel and almost to the Yalu River, the People's Republic of China (PRC) came to the aid of Communist North. Moreover, in American historical consciousness, the war has to a significant degree been "historically overshadowed by World War II and Vietnam," leading to the term "forgotten".
In South Korea the war is usually referred to as the 6–2–5 War (yuk-i-o jeonjaeng), reflecting the date of its commencement on 25 June. In North Korea the war is officially referred to as the Fatherland Liberation War (Choguk haebang chǒnjaeng). Alternately, it is called the Chosǒn chǒnjaeng ("Chosǒn war", Chosǒn being what North Koreans call Korea). In the People's Republic of China the war is called the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea (.) The "Korean War" (), with the word "Chao Xian", a general term for Korea, and officially North Korea, more commonly used today.
Korean nationalists and the intelligentsia fled the country, and some founded the Provisional Korean Government in 1919, which was headed by Syngman Rhee in Shanghai. This government-in-exile was recognized by few countries. From 1919 to 1925 and beyond, Korean communists led and were the primary agents of internal and external warfare against the Japanese.
Korea under Japanese rule was considered to be part of the Empire of Japan as an industrialized colony along with Taiwan, and both were part of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. In 1937, the colonial Governor–General, General Jirō Minami, commanded the attempted cultural assimilation of Korea's 23.5 million people by banning the use and study of Korean language, literature, and culture, to be replaced with that of mandatory use and study of their Japanese counterparts. Starting in 1939, the populace was required to use Japanese names under the Sōshi-kaimei policy. In 1938, the Colonial Government established labor conscription.
In China, the National Revolutionary Army and the Communist People's Liberation Army helped organize refugee Korean patriots and independence fighters against the Japanese military, which had also occupied parts of China. The Nationalist-backed Koreans, led by Yi Pom-Sok, fought in the Burma Campaign (December 1941 – August 1945). The Communists, led by Kim Il-sung, fought the Japanese in Korea and Manchuria.
During World War II, the Japanese utilized Korea's food, livestock, and metals for their war effort. Japanese forces in Korea increased from 46,000 soldiers in 1941 to 300,000 in 1945. Japanese Korea conscripted 2.6 million forced laborers controlled with a collaborationist Korean police force; some 723,000 people were sent to work in the overseas empire and in metropolitan Japan. By 1942, Korean men were being conscripted into the Imperial Japanese Army. By January 1945, Koreans comprised 32% of Japan's labor force. In August 1945, when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, around 25% of those killed were Koreans. Later, the Yalta Conference (February 1945) granted to the Soviet Union European "buffer zones"—satellite states accountable to Moscow- as well as an expected Soviet pre-eminence in China and Manchuria, in return for joining the Allied Pacific War effort against Japan. By 10 August, the Red Army occupied the northern part of the peninsula as agreed, and on 26 August halted at the 38th parallel for three weeks to await the arrival of US forces in the south.
Explaining why the occupation zone demarcation was positioned at the 38th parallel, Rusk observed, "even though it was further north than could be realistically reached by US forces, in the event of Soviet disagreement ... we felt it important to include the capital of Korea in the area of responsibility of American troops", especially when "faced with the scarcity of US forces immediately available, and time and space factors, which would make it difficult to reach very far north, before Soviet troops could enter the area." and manpower. North Korea also provided the Chinese Communists in Manchuria with a safe refuge for non-combatants and communications with the rest of China.
The North Korean contributions to the Chinese Communist victory were not forgotten after the creation of the People's Republic of China in 1949. As token of gratitude, between 50,000 to 70,000 Korean veterans that served in PLA were sent back along with their weapons, and they would later play a significant role in the initial invasion of South Korea. The Chinese support created a deep division between the Korean Communists, and Kim Il-Sung's authority within the Communist party was challenged by the Chinese faction led by Pak Il-yu, who was later purged by Kim.
After the formation of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the Chinese government named the Western nations, led by the United States, as the biggest threat to its national security. Basing this judgment on China's century of humiliation beginning in the early 19th century, American support for the Nationalists during the Chinese Civil War, and the ideological struggles between revolutionaries and reactionaries, the Chinese leadership believed that China would become a critical battleground in the United States' crusade against Communism. As a countermeasure and to elevate China's standing among the worldwide Communist movements, the Chinese leadership adapted a foreign policy that actively promoted Communist revolutions throughout territories on China's periphery.
On 8 September 1945, Lt. Gen. John R. Hodge of the United States arrived in Incheon to accept the Japanese surrender south of the 38th parallel. Appointed as military governor, General Hodge directly controlled South Korea via the United States Army Military Government in Korea (USAMGIK 1945–48). He established control by restoring to power the key Japanese colonial administrators and their Korean police collaborators. The Korean populace revolted; in the south, some protested, and some rose in arms; The USAMGIK declared martial law.
The right-wing Representative Democratic Council, led by nationalist Syngman Rhee, opposed the Soviet–American trusteeship of Korea, arguing that after 35 years (1910–45) of Japanese colonial rule most Koreans opposed another foreign occupation. The USAMGIK decided to forego the five year trusteeship agreed upon in Moscow, given the 31 March 1948 United Nations election deadline to achieve an anti-communist civil government in the US Korean Zone of Occupation.
On 3 April what began as a demonstration commemorating Korean resistance to Japanese rule ended with the Jeju massacre of as many as 60,000 citizens by South Korean soldiers.
On 10 May, South Korea convoked their first national general elections that the Soviets first opposed, then boycotted, insisting that the US honor the trusteeship agreed to at the Moscow Conference.
The resultant anti-communist South Korean government promulgated a national political constitution on 17 July 1948, elected a president, the American-educated strongman Syngman Rhee on 20 July 1948. The elections were marred by terrorism and sabotage resulting in 600 deaths. The Republic of South Korea was established on 15 August 1948. In the Russian Korean Zone of Occupation, the USSR established a Communist North Korean government President Rhee's régime expelled communists and leftists from southern national politics. Disenfranchised, they headed for the hills, to prepare for guerrilla war against the US-sponsored ROK Government. the North Koreans gained support from both the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. They escalated the continual border skirmishes and raids and then prepared to invade. South Korea, with limited matériel, could not match them.
In October 1948, South Korean left-wing soldiers rebelled against the government's harsh clampdown in April on Jeju island in the Yeosu-Suncheon Rebellion.
U.S. troops withdrew from Korea in 1949, leaving the South Korean army relatively ill-equipped. The Soviet Union left Korea in 1948. On 24 December 1949, South Korean forces killed 86 to 88 people in the Mungyeong massacre and blamed the crime on communist marauding bands.
Under the guise of counter-attacking a South Korean provocation raid, the KPA crossed the 38th parallel behind artillery fire at dawn on Sunday 25 June 1950. On 28 June, South Korea bombed the bridge across the Han River to stop the North Korean army.
Early the fighting, South Korea put its forces under the authority of the United Nations Command (Korea).
The USSR challenged the legitimacy of the war for several reasons. The ROK Army intelligence upon which Resolution 83 was based came from US Intelligence; North Korea was not invited as a sitting temporary member of the UN, which violated UN Charter Article 32; and the Korean conflict was beyond UN Charter scope, because the initial north–south border fighting was classed as a civil war. The Soviet representative boycotted the UN to prevent Security Council action, and to challenge the legitimacy of the UN action; legal scholars posited that deciding upon an action of this type required the unanimous vote of the five permanent members.
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President Truman announced that the US would counter "unprovoked aggression" and "vigorously support the effort of the [UN] security council to terminate this serious breach of peace."
The Battle of Osan, the first significant engagement of the Korean War, involved the 540-soldier Task Force Smith, which was a small forward element of the 24th Infantry Division.
Soon after the war began, General MacArthur had begun planning a landing at Incheon, but the Pentagon opposed him.
On September 27, MacArthur received the top secret National Security Council Memorandum 81/1 from Truman reminding him that operations north of the 38th parallel were authorized only if "at the time of such operation there was no entry into North Korea by major Soviet or Chinese Communist forces, no announcements of intended entry, nor a threat to counter our operations militarily…" On September 30, Defense Secretary George Marshall sent an eyes-only message to MacArthur: "We want you to feel unhampered tactically and strategically to proceed north of the 38th parallel."
On 1 October 1950, the UN Command repelled the KPA northwards, past the 38th parallel; the ROK Army crossed after them, into North Korea. On 4 August 1950, with the PRC invasion of Taiwan aborted, Mao Zedong reported to the Politburo that he would intervene in Korea when the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) Taiwan invasion force was reorganized into the PLA North East Frontier Force.
On 20 August 1950, Premier Zhou Enlai informed the United Nations that "Korea is China's neighbor ... The Chinese people cannot but be concerned about a solution of the Korean question". Thus, via neutral-country diplomats, China warned that in safeguarding Chinese national security, they would intervene against the UN Command in Korea. The Politburo authorized Chinese intervention in Korea on 2 October 1950, the day after the ROK Army crossed the 38th parallel. Later, the Chinese claimed that US bombers had violated PRC national airspace while en route to bomb North Korea, before China intervened.
In September, in Moscow, PRC Premier Zhou Enlai added diplomatic and personal force to Mao's cables to Stalin, requesting military assistance and materiel. Stalin delayed; Mao rescheduled launching the war from the 13th to the 19th of October 1950. The USSR limited their assistance to air support north of the Yalu River. Mao did not find this especially useful as the fighting was going to take place on the south side of the river. Soviet shipments of materiel were limited to small quantities of trucks, grenades, machine guns, and the like.
On 8 October 1950, Mao Zedong redesignated the PLA North East Frontier Force as the Chinese People's Volunteer Army (PVA), who were to fight the "War to Resist America and Aid Korea" under the command of Marshal Peng Dehuai.
, Uirson, Korea, August 1950]] UN aerial reconnaissance had difficulty sighting PVA units in daytime, because their march and bivouac discipline minimized aerial detection.
After secretly crossing the Yalu River on 19 October, the PVA 13th Army Group launched the First Phase Offensive on 25 October, attacking the advancing UN forces near the Sino-Korean border. After decimating the ROK II Corps at the Battle of Onjong, the first confrontation between Chinese and US military occurred on 1 November 1950; deep in North Korea, thousands of soldiers from the PVA 39th Army encircled and attacked the US 8th Cavalry Regiment with three-prong assaults—from the north, northwest, and west—and overran the defensive position flanks in the Battle of Unsan. The surprise assault forced the UN forces to retreat back to the Ch'ongch'on River, while the Chinese unexpectedly disappeared in their mountain hideouts following their victory.
The UN Command, however, were unconvinced that the Chinese had openly intervened due to the sudden Chinese withdrawal. On 24 November, the Home-by-Christmas Offensive was launched with the US Eighth Army advancing in northwest Korea, while the US X Corps were attacking along the Korean east coast. But the Chinese were waiting in ambush with their Second Phase Offensive.
On 25 November at the Korean western front, the PVA 13th Army Group attacked and over-ran the ROK II Corps at the Battle of the Ch'ongch'on River, and then decimated the US 2nd Infantry Division on the UN forces' right flank. was made possible because of the Turkish Brigade's successful, but very costly, rear-guard delaying action near Kunuri that slowed the PVA attack for two days (27–29 November). On 27 November at the Korean eastern front, a US 7th Infantry Division Regimental Combat Team (3,000 soldiers) and the US 1st Marine Division (12,000–15,000 marines) were unprepared for the PVA 9th Army Group's three-pronged encirclement tactics at the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, but they managed to escape under X Corps support fire—albeit with some 15,000 collective casualties.
By 30 November, the PVA 13th Army Group managed to expel the US Eighth Army from northwest Korea. Retreating from the north faster than they had counter-invaded, the Eighth Army crossed the 38th parallel border in mid December. The UN morale hit rock bottom when commanding General Walton Walker of the US Eighth Army was killed on 23 December 1950 in an automobile accident. the PVA 9th Army Group while establishing a defensive perimeter at the port city of Hungnam. They were forced to evacuate by 24 December in order to reinforce the badly depleted US Eighth Army to the south.
During the Hungnam evacuation, about 193 shiploads of UN Command forces and materiel (approximately 105,000 soldiers, 98,000 civilians, 17,500 vehicles, and 350,000 tons of supplies) were evacuated to Pusan. and on 16 December 1950, President Truman declared a national emergency with Presidential Proclamation No. 2914, 3 C.F.R. 99 (1953), which remained in force until 14 September 1978.
With Lieutenant-General Matthew Ridgway assuming the command of the US Eighth Army on 26 December, the PVA and the KPA launched their Third Phase Offensive (also known as the "Chinese New Year's Offensive") on New Year's Eve of 1951, utilizing night attacks in which UN Command fighting positions were encircled and then assaulted by numerically superior troops who had the element of surprise. The attacks were accompanied by loud trumpets and gongs, which fulfilled the double purpose of facilitating tactical communication and mentally disorienting the enemy. UN forces initially had no familiarity with this tactic, and as a result some soldiers "bugged out," abandoning their weapons and retreating to the south. However, upon the arrival of the charismatic General Ridgway, the esprit de corps of the bloodied Eighth Army immediately began to revive. MacArthur threatened to destroy China unless it surrendered. While MacArthur felt total victory was the only honorable outcome, Truman was more pessimistic about his chances once involved in a land war in Asia, and felt a truce and orderly withdrawal from Korea could be a valid solution. MacArthur was the subject of congressional hearings in May and June 1951, which determined that he had defied the orders of the President and thus had violated the US Constitution.
General Ridgway was appointed Supreme Commander, Korea; he regrouped the UN forces for successful counterattacks, which was unacceptable to the Chinese and North Koreans.
In 1952 the US elected a new president, and on 29 November 1952, the president-elect, Dwight D. Eisenhower, went to Korea to learn what might end the Korean War.
After the war, Operation Glory (July–November 1954) was conducted to allow combatant countries to exchange their dead. The remains of 4,167 US Army and US Marine Corps dead were exchanged for 13,528 KPA and PVA dead, and 546 civilians dead in UN prisoner-of-war camps were delivered to the ROK government. After Operation Glory, 416 Korean War unknown soldiers were buried in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (The Punchbowl), Hawaii. Defense Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) records indicate that the PRC and the DPRK transmitted 1,394 names, of which 858 were correct. From 4,167 containers of returned remains, forensic examination identified 4,219 individuals. Of these, 2,944 were identified as American, and all but 416 were identified by name. From 1996 to 2006, the DPRK recovered 220 remains near the Sino-Korean border.
The Western (US–UN Command) statistics for the number of Chinese and North Korean casualties are primarily based upon calculated battlefield casualty reports, POW interrogations, and military intelligence (documents, spies, etc.); one compilation is the democide web site (see Table 10.1). The Korean War dead: US: 36,940 killed; PVA: 100,000–1,500,000 killed; most estimate some 400,000 killed; KPA: 214,000–520,000; most estimate some 500,000. ROK: Civilian: some 245,000–415,000 killed; Total civilians killed some 1,500,000–3,000,000; most estimate some 2,000,000 killed.
The PVA and KPA published a joint declaration after the war reporting that the armies had "eliminated 1.09 million enemy forces, including 390,000 from the United States, 660,000 from South Korean , and 29,000 from other countries." No breakdown was given for the number of dead, wounded, and captured, which Chinese researcher Xu Yan suggests may have aided negotiations for POW repatriation. The KPA's tanks confronted a tankless ROK Army armed with few modern anti-tank weapons,
Countering the initial combat imbalance, the UN Command reinforcement materiel included heavier US M4 Sherman, M26 Pershing, M46 Patton, and British Cromwell and Centurion tanks that proved effective against North Korean armor, ending its battlefield dominance.
The Chinese intervention in late October 1950 bolstered the Korean People's Air Force (KPAF) of North Korea with the MiG-15 Fagot, one of the world's most advanced jet fighters. The fast, heavily armed MiG outflew first-generation UN jets such as the American F-80 and Australian and British Gloster Meteors, posing a real threat to B-29 Superfortress bombers even under fighter escort.
The United States Air Force (USAF) moved quickly to counter the MiG-15, with three squadrons of its most capable fighter, the F-86 Sabre, arriving in December 1950. Although the MiG's higher service ceiling— vs. —could be advantageous at the start of a dogfight, in level flight, both swept wing designs attained comparable maximum speeds of around . The MiG climbed faster, but the Sabre turned and dove better. The MiG was armed with one 37 mm and two 23 mm cannons, while the Sabre carried six .50 caliber (12.7 mm) machine guns aimed with radar-ranged gunsights.
By early 1951, the battle lines were established and changed little until 1953. In summer and autumn 1951, the outnumbered Sabres of the USAF's 4th Fighter Interceptor Wing—only 44 at one point—continued seeking battle in MiG Alley, where the Yalu River marks the Chinese border, against Chinese and North Korean air forces capable of deploying some 500 aircraft. Following Colonel Harrison Thyng's communication with the Pentagon, the 51st Fighter-Interceptor Wing finally reinforced the beleaguered 4th Wing in December 1951; for the next year-and-a-half stretch of the war, aerial warfare continued.
UN forces gradually gained air superiority in the Korean theater. This was decisive for the UN: first, for attacking into the peninsular north, and second, for resisting the Chinese intervention.. Alternative post-war data confirms only 379 Sabre kills. The Soviet Air Force reported some 1,100 air-to-air victories and 335 MiG combat losses, while China's People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) reported 231 combat losses, mostly MiG-15s, and 168 other aircraft lost. The KPAF reported no data, but the UN Command estimates some 200 KPAF aircraft lost in the war's first stage, and 70 additional aircraft after the Chinese intervention. The USAF disputes Soviet and Chinese claims of 650 and 211 downed F-86s, respectively, as more recent US figures state only 230 losses out of 674 F-86s deployed to Korea. The differing tactical roles of the F-86 and MiG-15 may have contributed to the disparity in losses: MiG-15s primarily targeted B-29 bombers and ground-attack fighter-bombers, while F-86s targeted the MiGs.
The Korean War marked a major milestone not only for fixed-wing aircraft, but also for rotorcraft, featuring the first large-scale deployment of helicopters for medical evacuation (medevac). In 1944-1945, during the Second World War, the YR-4 helicopter saw limited ambulance duty, but in Korea, where rough terrain trumped the jeep as a speedy medevac vehicle, helicopters like the Sikorsky H-19 helped reduce fatal casualties to a dramatic degree when combined with complementary medical innovations such as Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals. The limitations of jet aircraft for close air support highlighted the helicopter's potential in the role, leading to development of the AH-1 Cobra and other helicopter gunships used in the Vietnam War (1965–75).
As a result, eighteen of North Korea's cities were more than 50% destroyed. The war's highest-ranking American POW, US Major General William F. Dean, reported that most of the North Korean cities and villages he saw were either ruins or snow-covered wastelands.
Because the North Korean navy was not large, the Korean War featured few naval battles; mostly the combatant navies served as naval artillery for their in-country armies. A skirmish between North Korea and the UN Command occurred on 2 July 1950; the US Navy cruiser USS Juneau, the Royal Navy cruiser HMS Jamaica, and the frigate HMS Black Swan fought four North Korean torpedo boats and two mortar gunboats, and sank them.
The UN navies sank supply and ammunition ships to deny the sea to North Korea. The USS Juneau sank ammunition ships that had been present in her previous battle. The last sea battle of the Korean War occurred at Inchon, days before the Battle of Incheon; the ROK ship PC 703 sank a North Korean mine layer in the Battle of Haeju Island, near Inchon. Three other supply ships were sunk by PC-703 two days later in the Yellow Sea.
President Truman did not immediately threaten nuclear warfare after the October 1950 Chinese intervention, but, 45 days later, remarked about the possibility of using it after the PVA repelled the UN Command from North Korea.
In The Origins of the Korean War (1981, 1990), US historian Bruce Cumings reports that in a 30 November 1950 press conference, President Truman's allusions to attacking the KPA with nuclear weapons "was a threat based on contingency planning to use the bomb, rather than the faux pas so many assumed it to be." On 30 November 1950, the USAF Strategic Air Command was ordered to "augment its capacities, and that this should include atomic capabilities."
The Indian Ambassador, Kavalam Panikkar, reports "that Truman announced that he was thinking of using the atom bomb in Korea. But the Chinese seemed totally unmoved by this threat ... The propaganda against American aggression was stepped up. The 'Aid Korea to resist America' campaign was made the slogan for increased production, greater national integration, and more rigid control over anti-national activities. One could not help feeling that Truman's threat came in very useful to the leaders of the Revolution, to enable them to keep up the tempo of their activities."
President Truman remarked that his government was actively considering using the atomic bomb to end the war in Korea but that only he—the US President—commanded atomic bomb use, and that he had not given authorization. The matter of atomic warfare was solely a US decision, not the collective decision of the UN. Truman met on 4 December 1950 with UK prime minister and Commonwealth spokesman Clement Attlee, French Premier René Pleven, and Foreign Minister Robert Schuman to discuss their worries about atomic warfare and its likely continental expansion. The US's forgoing atomic warfare was not because of "a disinclination by the USSR and PRC to escalate" the Korean War, but because UN allies—notably from the UK, the Commonwealth, and France—were concerned about a geopolitical imbalance rendering NATO defenseless while the US fought China, who then might persuade the USSR to conquer Western Europe.
On 6 December 1950, after the Chinese intervention repelled the UN Command armies from northern North Korea, General J. Lawton Collins (Army Chief of Staff), General MacArthur, Admiral C. Turner Joy, General George E. Stratemeyer, and staff officers Major General Doyle Hickey, Major General Charles A. Willoughby, and Major General Edwin K. Wright, met in Tokyo to plan strategy countering the Chinese intervention; they considered three potential atomic warfare scenarios encompassinging the next weeks and months of warfare.
In occupied areas, North Korean Army political officers purged South Korean society of its intelligentsia by assassinating every educated person—academic, governmental, religious—who might lead resistance against the North; the purges continued during the NPA retreat. Immediately after the invasion in June 1950 the South Korean Government ordered the nation-wide "pre-emptive apprehension" of politically suspect or disloyal citizens.
The military police and right-wing paramilitary (civilian) armies executed thousands of left-wing and communist political prisoners at Daejeon Prison and in the Jeju Uprising (1948–49). The Americans on the island documented the events, but never intervened. The South Korean Truth and Reconciliation Commission has compiled reports of hundreds of thousands of civilian killings before and during the war.
In addition to conventional military operations, North Korean soldiers fought the UN forces by infiltrating guerrillas among refugees, who would approach soldiers for food and help. For a time, US troops fought under a "shoot-first-ask-questions-later" policy against every civilian refugee approaching US battlefield positions, a policy that led US Soldiers to kill between 8 and 400 civilians at No Gun Ri (26–29 July 1950) in central Korea because they believed some of the people killed might be North Korean soldiers in disguise.
The Korean armies forcibly conscripted available civilian men and women to their war efforts. In Statistics of Democide (1997), Prof. R. J. Rummel reports that the North Korean Army conscripted some 400,000 South Korean citizens.
To outmaneuver a possible fifth column in the Republic of Korea, President Syngman Rhee's régime assassinated its "enemies of the state"—South Koreans suspected of being communists, pro-North Korea, and leftist—by first imprisoning them for political re-education in the Gukmin Bodo Ryeonmaeng (National Rehabilitation and Guidance League, also known as the Bodo League). The true purpose of the anti–communist Bodo League, abetted by the United States Army Military Government in Korea (USAMGIK), was the régime's assassination of some 10,000 to 100,000 "enemies of the state" whom they dumped in trenches, mines, and the sea, before and after the 25 June 1950 North Korean invasion. Contemporary calculations report some 200,000 to 1,200,000. USAMGIK officers were present at one political execution site; at least one US officer sanctioned the mass killings of political prisoners whom the North Koreans would have freed after conquering the peninsular south.
The South Korean Truth and Reconciliation Commission reports that petitions requesting explanation of the summary execution of leftist South Koreans outnumber, six-to-one, the petitions requesting explanation of the summary execution of rightist South Koreans. These data apply solely to South Korea, because North Korea is not integral to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The father of Bodo League massacre survivor Kim Jong-chol was press-ganged to work with the KPA and later executed by the Rhee Government as a collaborator; his grandparents and a seven-year-old sister also were assassinated. About his experience in Namyangju city, he says:
USAMGIK officers photographed the mass killings at Daejon city in central South Korea, where the Truth Commission believe some 3,000 to 7,000 people were shot and buried in mass graves in early July 1950. Other declassified records report that a US Army lieutenant colonel approved the assassination of 3,500 political prisoners by the ROK Army unit to which he was military advisor when the KPA reached the southern port city of Pusan.
The KPA killed POWs at the battles for Hill 312, Hill 303, the Pusan Perimeter, and Daejeon—discovered during early after-battle mop-up actions by the UN forces. Later, a US Congress war crimes investigation, the United States Senate Subcommittee on Korean War Atrocities of the Permanent Subcommittee of the Investigations of the Committee on Government Operations reported that "... two-thirds of all American prisoners of war in Korea died as a result of war crimes".
Although the Chinese rarely execute prisoners like their Korean counterpart, mass starvation and diseases swept through the Chinese POW camps during the winter of 1950-51. About 43 percent of all US POWs died during this period. In comparison, only 34 percent of all US prisoners died under Japanese captivity during the World War II. The Chinese defended their actions by stating that all Chinese soldiers during this period were also suffering mass starvation and diseases due to the lack of competent logistics system. The UN POWs, however, disputed the claim by pointing out that most of the Chinese camps were located near the Sino-Korean border, and that starvation was used to force the prisoners to accept the communism indoctrinations programs, which were running in full swing after the starvation were over.
The North Korean Government reported some 70,000 ROK Army POWs; 8,000 were repatriated. South Korea repatriated 76,000 Korean People's Army POWs. Besides the 12,000 UN Command forces POWs dead in captivity, the KPA might have press-ganged some 50,000 ROK POWs into the North Korean military.
The North Korean Government denied having POWs from the Korean War, and, via the Korean Central News Agency, reported that the UN forces killed some 33,600 KPA POWs; that on 19 July 1951, in POW Camp No. 62, some 100 POWs were killed as machine-gunnery targets; that on 27 May 1952, in the 77th Camp, Koje Island, the ROK Army incinerated with flamethrowers some 800 KPA POWs who rejected "voluntary repatriation" south, and instead demanded repatriation north.
The Korean War (1950–53) was the first major proxy war in the Cold War (1945–91), the prototype of the following sphere-of-influence wars such as the Vietnam War (1959–75). The Korean War established proxy war as one way that the nuclear superpowers indirectly conducted their rivalry in third-party countries. The NSC-68 Containment Policy extended the cold war from occupied Europe to the rest of the world.
Fighting ended at the 38th parallel and the Korean Demilitarized Zone, a strip of land 248x4 km (155x2.5 mi), now divides the two countries. Even so, skirmishes, incursions, and incidents between the combatants have continued since the Armistice was signed.
The Korean War affected other participant combatants. Turkey, for example, entered NATO in 1952 and a foundation of bilateral diplomatic and trade relations was enhanced.
Post-war recovery was different in the two Koreas. South Korea stagnated in the first post-war decade, but later industrialized and modernized. Contemporary North Korea remains underdeveloped. The economy of South Korea is a modern free market economy, and South Korea is a member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and G-20 groups. In the 1990s North Korea faced significant economic disruptions. The North Korean famine is believed to have killed as many as 2.5 million people. The CIA World Factbook estimates North Korea's GDP (Purchasing power parity (PPP)) is $40 billion, which is 3.0% of South Korea's $1.196 trillion GDP (PPP). North Korean personal income is $1,800 per capita, which is 7.0% of the South Korean $24,500 per capita income.
Anti-communism remains in ROK politics. The Uri Party practiced a "Sunshine Policy" towards North Korea; the US often disagreed with the Uri Party and (former) ROK President Roh about relations between the Koreas. The conservative Grand National Party (GNP), the Uri Party's principal opponent, is anti-North Korea.
Category:Cold War Category:Civil wars Category:History of Korea Category:Wars involving Turkey Category:Wars involving Australia Category:Wars involving Canada Category:Wars involving Belgium Category:Wars involving the People's Republic of China Category:Wars involving Ethiopia Category:Wars involving France Category:Wars involving Greece Category:Wars involving Japan Category:Wars involving Luxembourg Category:Wars involving New Zealand Category:Wars involving South Africa Category:Wars involving Thailand Category:Wars involving the Netherlands Category:Wars involving the Philippines Category:Wars involving the Soviet Union Category:Wars involving the United Kingdom Category:Wars involving the United States Korea
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