American History - Part 198 - All About the Korean War

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• published: 04 Sep 2013
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Truman speech firing MacArthur North Korea decided the time was right to invade. On June 20-fifth, 9teen-fifty, North Korean soldiers crossed the thirty-eighth parallel. The UN Security Council demanded that they go back. 2 days later, the council approved military support for South Korea. The Soviet delegate boycotted the meeting that day. If he had been present, the resolution would have been defeated. The UN demand did not stop the North Korean troops. They continued to push south. In a week, they were on the edge of the capital, Seoul. Harry Truman, America's President at that time, ordered air and sea support for South Korea. A few days later, he announced that American ground forces would also be sent. Truman wanted an American to command UN troops in Korea. The UN approved his choice: General Douglas MacArthur. Week after week, more U.N. forces arrived in the South. Yet by August, they had been pushed back to the Pusan perimeter. This was a battle line around an area near the city of Pusan in the southeast corner of Korea. North Korean forces attempted to break through the Pusan perimeter. They began a major attack on August 6th. They lost many men, however. By the end of the month, they withdrew. The next month, General MacArthur directed a surprise landing of American Marines in South Korea. They arrived at the port of Inchon on the northwest coast. The landing was extremely dangerous. Water levels could rise or fall as much as 9 meters in a single day. The boats had to get close to the coastline and land at high tide. If they waited too long, the water level would drop, and they would be trapped in the mud with little protection. The soldiers on the boats would be easy targets. The landing at Inchon was successful. The additional troops quickly divided the North Korean forces, which had been stretched from north to south. At the same time, UN air and sea power destroyed the northern army's lines of communication. On October 1st, South Korean troops entered North Korea. They captured the capital, Pyongyang. Then they moved toward the Yalu River, the border between North Korea and China. China warned against moving closer to the border. General MacArthur ordered the troops to continue their attacks. He repeatedly said he did not believe that China would enter the war in force. MacArthur was wrong. Several hundred thousand Chinese soldiers crossed into North Korea in October and November. Still, MacArthur thought the war would end by December 20-fifth, the Christmas holiday. This was not to happen. The UN troops were forced to withdraw from Pyongyang. And, by the day before Christmas, there had been a huge withdrawal by sea from the coastal city of Hungnam. In the 1st days of 9teen-fifty-one, the North Koreans recaptured Seoul. The UN troops withdrew about forty kilometers south of the city. They re-organized and, 2 months later, re-gained control of Seoul. Then the war changed. The 2 sides began fighting in an area north of the thirty-eighth parallel. They exchanged control of the same territory over and over again. Men were dying, but no 1 was winning. The cost in lives was huge. General MacArthur had wanted to enter China and attack Manchuria. He also had wanted to use Nationalist Chinese troops against the communists. President Truman feared that these actions might start another world war. "If we do have another world war, it would be an atomic war. We could expect many atomic bombs to be dropped on American cities, and a single 1 of them could cause many more times the casualties than we have suffered in all the fighting in Korea. I do not want to be responsible for bringing that about." The war in Korea damaged almost all of the country. As many as 2 million people may have died, including many civilians. After the war, the United States provided 100s of 1000s of soldiers to help the South guard against attack from the north. Half a century has passed since the truce. Yet Korea is still divided. And many of the same issues still threaten the Korean people, and the world. The Korean conflict increased efforts in the United States to develop a weapon more deadly than the atomic bombs that had been used against Japan to end WWII. These efforts led to the hydrogen bomb. The Soviets were developing such a weapon, too. They had already developed-- and tested-- an atomic bomb. The 9teen fifties found Americans at home feeling hopeful about the future while also living under the threat of nuclear war. That will be our story next week.