20. MIDDLE AMERICA COMES OF AGE

THE KOREAN WAR 1950–1953

On 25 June 1950 Korean soldiers from the northern half of the country suddenly and without any warning invaded the southern part of the country.  With this, events took on features that made a mockery of the term Cold War. In Korea, this had become truly a Hot War.

The problem began back at Yalta with the decision designed to entice the Russians to enter the war against Japan – by promising to divide the Korean Peninsula into two occupation zones, separating North and South along the 38th parallel.  The Northern zone would be placed temporarily under Soviet occupation and the South under American occupation at war’s end.  The area had been held by the Japanese since 1910, and with the Japanese surrender was going to require some major nation-building to stabilize and rebuild Korean society.

Roosevelt seemed to have no qualms about awarding supervision of the North to the Soviets, trusting Stalin to cooperate with Roosevelt's vision of a new world of post-war democracies.  However, Roosevelt had also felt that he needed some kind of sweetener to ensure Soviet involvement in the war with Japan once Germany was defeated.  Anyway, the understanding with Stalin was that Korea was to be brought to unity and independence within five years after the end of the war.

But stabilizing a post-Japanese Korea turned out to be a very complicated matter. Many Koreans were incensed that Japanese occupation had been followed now by Soviet and American occupation, rather than the national independence that the Koreans had hoped for. In 1946, massive street demonstrations broke out, encouraged on the Left by Korean Communists – and on the Right by Korean conservatives under Syngman Rhee's leadership – and aimed against each other as well as against the occupying powers.  Also, America's relations with the Soviets were by this time becoming increasingly difficult.

Thus America decided in 1947 to call on the U.N. to conduct U.N.-supervised elections, in order to turn matters over to the Koreans themselves.  But the Soviets claimed that conditions were not ready for such an election and attempted to block the election. Nonetheless, in 1948 U.N.-sponsored elections did go forward (amidst much violence) as proposed – but only in the Southern half of the country. Stalin refused to allow the elections to be held in the North.  The elections (in the South) were won easily by Syngman Rhee, many Communists in the South having boycotted the elections.

The Soviets then responded by sponsoring their own elections three months later in the North (it's amazing how quickly conditions changed so as to ready the North Koreans for their own elections!) – not surprisingly resulting in a Communist victory there and the premiership of the local Communist leader Kim Il-sung.¹

The Rhee government, with much difficulty – and American assistance – succeeded in putting down a Communist-directed uprising in the South, using brutal repression in the process.  But this ended the hope in the North of a forceful unification of Korea through Communist revolution.

Meanwhile in the North, which had always been the more industrialized part of the country, Koreans were supplying massive amounts of aid to Mao’s army in China, from machinery to military manpower.  As a consequence, the two communist neighbors (Mao’s China and Kim Il-sung’s North Korea) drew close, both fearing an assault coming from America’s supposed plans to overthrow Asian Communism everywhere (they were hearing such threats coming from a highly alarmed Middle America rather than from the White House).

But it seemed that neither Stalin nor Truman were interested in making Korea a cause of mutual conflict.  The Soviets withdrew their troops from the North in 1948 and the Americans did the same the following year.  Things were now left in the hands of Rhee in the South and Kim in the North, both of whom engaged in massive arrests of political opponents in their respective zones.  Both also claimed to be the only legitimate voice for all of Korea, and both seemed to be laying out plans for the forced unity of the peninsula under their personal authority.

But with the detonation of the Soviets' first nuclear bomb in 1949 and with Mao's victory in China, Stalin surmised that the situation had shifted greatly strategically. He was willing to rethink Soviet involvement in Korea.  The Americans had not really intervened seriously in the war in China, indicating to Stalin a lesser American interest in Asian affairs.  Besides, a speech issued by Secretary of State Dean Acheson, defining America's zone of interest in Asia, had not mentioned Korea at all.  Also the Soviets new nuclear weapon more or less neutralized American nuclear superiority, in a sense removing that as a concern that the Soviets previously had about coming up directly against the Americans.  Furthermore, support of North Korean Communist unification of the entire Korean peninsula under Soviet sponsorship would give the Soviets a strategic position atop the Sea of China.  Thus by early 1950 the Soviets were massively helping Kim Il-sung get ready for an invasion of the South. And by June, Kim was ready for this invasion.

¹The Korean Communists had made themselves very popular by land reform (undertaken only in the North) which broke the power in the North of the old landed aristocracy which had traditionally dominated Korea.  But as in China, once the Communists were in full control of their society, these lands would be taken away from the newly independent Korean farmers and turned over to the state.