Korean War

The Korean conflict was “quite possibly the most important event since World War II” as Mueller described it or even “a substitute for World War III” as Stueck points out. By 1950, a full military war had burst in Korea. With the Soviet Union and the USA both involved in a conflict in which the state of political hostility between the countries was characterized by threats, propaganda, and other measures short of open warfare, their involvement in the Korean conflict materialised the Cold War that had previously been going on. It would be over-simplistic to suggest that the role of the US and the Soviet Union in bringing about the war was the main one. The northern and southern leaderships’ desire for unification must be considered. They both helped to create the preconditions for war, especially in instigating the divide along the thirty-eighth parallel which was a result of their global rivalry. The two superpowers also provided the political and economic support for each side and ultimately supplied the military equipment with which the war would be fought.

There can be no more striking reflection of Korea’s dependence on others than the decision to divide the peninsula into occupation zones in 1945. Koreans had no input in the decision because they had no recognized government or armed forces to defend their interests. They had been swallowed up in the Japanese empire early in the century and were now being freed from that status because of Japan’s defeat in a war in which Koreans had contributed more to the losing than the winning side. Prospects for the peaceful unification of Korea from August 1945 onwards were between slim and nil. The first step towards June 25, 1950, had been taken by the great powers – alone.

In both the North and the South, outsiders set the boundaries of political action. The Americans and the Soviets refused to work with the People’s Republic, led by some Korean leaders of the moderate and extreme Left. Americans in the South favoured conservative Koreans, initially ones who had collaborated with the Japanese, then returning exiles from China and the United States; the Soviets in the North favoured leftists, at first mostly ones from the Korean underground but eventually many who had spent the bulk of the last decade in exile in Manchuria and/or the Soviet Union. By the end of 1948, two indigenous governments existed on the peninsula, one exercising authority above the thirty-eighth parallel, one below it, one leftist in orientation and aligned with the Soviet Union, the other rightist and aligned with the United States. With this powerful control over the Korean peninsula, it is clear that the Korean conflict resulted from strong Cold War tensions.

Outsiders played a prominent role in the violence. Historian Bruce Cummings notes that the Americans “organized and equipped the southern counterinsurgent forces, gave them their best intelligence materials, planned their actions, and occasionally commended them directly.” On the other side of the 38th Parallel, the assistance included massive amounts of military hardware given to the newly formed Korean People’s Army when the Soviet 25th Army pulled out at the end of 1948. Additionally, the KPA inherited the armaments seized from Japan’s defeated 34th and 58th armies. According to a Soviet source, Moscow’s military assistance to the KPA in the late 1940s and early 1950s exceeded that given to Mao’s PLA during the same period.

If the Americans were instrumental in suppressing the activity, the Soviets played an integral role in fostering it. Although the general strike in South Korea of September 1946 appears to have begun at the initiative of the Korean Communist Party below the thirty-eighth parallel, the Soviets soon took an active part, giving advice, which the southern rebels often solicited, encouragement and considerable financial aid. The Soviets also pushed successfully for the merger of the three leftist parties in the two zones and participated in the training and infiltration of North Korea agents and guerrillas into the South.

Yet if the situation in Korea at the end of 1948 cannot be grasped without the reference to the foreign presence since 1945, it is also fair to say that the picture is incomplete without mention of the civil conflict between the South and the North. The two sides were most at odds about which political parties or organizations should participate in a government for a unified Korea. Kim Il Sung and the South Korea leader Syngman Rhee were both claiming to have the broad support of the Korean people. They also were fiercely nationalistic and determined to reunite their country under their own rule. Kim was a dedicated nationalist, committed passionately to the unification of his country and a leader of a great ruthlessness. He had worked with the Chinese and the Russians in earlier stages of his career but could not have become the leader of the DPRK without Soviet support. As historian Weathersby remarks, North Korea was “utterly dependent economically on the Soviet Union… The collapse of the Japanese empire, Soviet occupation policy, and the civil war in China [had cut] North Korea… off from its former economic ties with southern Korea, Japan and Manchuria. Except for very limited

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