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The KOREAN WAR

"Heartbreak Ridge"

U.S. 7th Infantry, July 7, 1963

Chinese soldiers welcomed home,
October 1954

On March 14, 1951, UN forces retook Seoul. In April, UN forces were again crossing the 38th parallel, not to take possession of the North but in pursuit of the enemy. Mao, meanwhile, had been amassing more troops for a spring offensive. The Communist forces in North Korea at this time has been described at 700,000, and they had more artillery and sub-machine guns than before.

Matthew Ridgway had been appointed Supreme Commander of NATO, and the new UN commander in Korea, Lieutenant General James Van Fleet, had approximately 230,000 troops on his front line.

Mao's spring offensive began on April 22. Within a week his forces were on the outskirts of Seoul. Casualties on the UN side were heavy, but they turned the drive around. The Communists lost 90,000 in one week of fighting. Many were killed by napalm. The UN forces started driving the Communist forces back across the 38th parallel. The UN forces tried to be scrupulous about taking prisoners, and in the last two weeks of May they took 17,000 -- men destined for a camp on Koje Island on Korea's southern coast.

In the United Nations, meanwhile, delegates were becoming impatient with Communist China's intransigence and were moving closer to the embargo on trade against China advocated by the United States. In June, China proposed negotiations. Washington responded by ordering an end to its offensive and allowing the Chinese to dig nearly impregnable positions across mountainous terrain north of the 38th parallel.

The War Drags On

General Mark Clark replaced Van Fleet as UN commander in Korea. Clark was opposed to a negotiated settlement of the war, and he believed in throwing everything at the enemy he could. He chose to bomb reservoir dikes in the North, flooding the North's sparse agricultural lands, threatening the North Koreans with starvation. He bombed North Korea's hydroelectric plant just south of the Yalu River, and he gave the Air Force permission to strike again at North Korea's industrial and population centers. Pyongyang was bombed again, including the use of napalm, and the burning to death of civilians was extensive. The Air Force was after military targets, but distinction between military targets and civilians was blurred and was recognized as such by Air Force commanders.

The U.S. Navy joined in the overkill by attacking North Korean fishing vessels, crippling this source of food for the Koreans. General Curtis LeMay, of Tokyo firebombing fame, agreed with the Air Force's plan to flatten North Korea's cities, and in retirement was to describe the U.S. as having "burned down every town in North Korea." [link] An estimated 2 million civilians died in North Korea. The bombings created hatred for Americans, and U.S. airmen downed in North Korea were beaten to death.

A few people wrote letters of protest against the bombing, among them the Archbishop of New York, Methodist leaders and the Free Church of Scotland. Winston Churchill, again Prime Minster in Great Britain, and his nation involved in the UN effort in Korea, said he would not take responsibility for napalm being splashed "about all over the civilian population." [note]

No matter how intensive the bombing, the Chinese were able to move their supplies south, largely through deep and narrow trenches. That the extended bombing by the U.S. Airforce contributed to a quicker end of the war is doubtful. The North Koreans were no more inclined to give in to terror bombing than had been the British or the Germans.

In hope of winning a favorable and quick end to the Korean War, the United States let it be known that it was considering the use of atomic weapons. Perhaps more than the atomic bomb, China, was concerned about the economic costs involved in continuing the war. Zhou Enlai met with Stalin in late 1952, and they agreed that the war should be ended.

Armistice

Stalin died in March 1953, and the new Soviet Premier, Gregori Malenkov, made overtures for peaceful coexistence between the superpowers and for peace in Korea. Two days after Zhou Enlai returned from Stalin's funeral he announced China's new effort to end the war in Korea. The U.S. had a new president, Dwight Eisenhower, with John Foster Dulles as his Secretary of State. Dulles remained opposed to ending the war, wishing to appeal to those in the U.S. opposed to anything that could be construed as appeasing communism. And General Clark was also opposed, and he wished to extend the war to China to end communism there.

Between March 27 and July 7, the Chinese and U.S. fought over what was called Pork Chop Hill, and in June the Chinese launched attacks against ROK forces. A sticking point in the negotiations, meanwhile, was the return of prisoners to Communist areas who did not want to return, the U.S. adamant that they should not have to return.

Syngman Rhee was opposed to a compromise armistice. He favored using nuclear weapons for a quick and complete victory. Others fighting alongside the Americans in Korea protested the U.S. inflexibility. Canada, which had troops in Korea, was especially upset with the U.S. position, and Churchill was opposed to Dulles' preference for escalating the war. President Eisenhower, who had suggested during his 1952 campaign that he could end the war in Korea, defied the wishes of Dulles and moved to an agreement with the Communists.

An armistice was signed on July 27, 1953. A peace treaty was not signed, and South Korea did not sign the armistice. North and South Korea remained technically at war. North Korea was to remain under Communist rule and China intervening in Indochina was not forbidden. Eisenhower's prestige as a soldier was great enough that only a very few hardliners accused him of appeasement. Senators Willam Jenner of Nevada and George Malone of Nevada called the settlement a victory for communism. Senator William Knowland of California spoke of the U.S. losing Asia. But rather than the public attacks that Truman and Acheson had received, the public praised Eisenhower for ending the war. Eisenhower had achieved what Truman had set out to achieve in late 1950.

Casualties

Rather than having appeased communism, Truman had saved South Korea from from Kim Il Sung. But the U.S. had suffered 36,516 combat deaths and South Korean military dead is listed as 58,127 -- these figures from Wikipedia. Other UN nations fighting in Korea suffered a total of 3,221 war dead:

Australia 339 Belgium 106 Canada 516 Colombia 140 Ethiopia 120 France 288 Greece 169 Netherlands 123 New Zealand 31 Norway 3 Philippines 92 South Africa 20 Thailand 114 Turkey 717 United Kingdom 670

The Soviet Union is said to have lost 299 dead in Korea. Wikipedia lists Chinese combat deaths at 114,000.

In the view of Mao and his associates they had gained something, having driven "the imperialists" back toward the 38th parallel.

North Korea and Kim il Sung were big losers. North Korea's military dead is listed by Wikipedia as 215,000. How many civilians died from the bombing of their cities and other warfare is unknown.

In 1945, North Korea's population is estimated to have been 10 million and South Korea's population to have been 21.45 million. In 1997, North Korea's population was estimated at 25 million, and, in the year 2000, South Korea's at 44.6 million. Valuing education and industry, South Korea had become one of the world's economic success stories.

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Copyright © 2001 by Frank E. Smitha. All rights reserved.