The panicked evacuation symbolized the dramatic reversal of fortune experienced by General Douglas MacArthur’s United Nations forces. Just a few weeks earlier, the general had promised U.S. President Harry S. Truman that he was ready to unify Korea. If Pyongyang falls and the military offensive against North Korea completely collapses, MacArthur will threaten all-out nuclear war.
mayhem and bloodshed caused by korean war It started half a year ago. In the years leading up to the end of World War II, South Korea suffered under brutal Japanese occupation. The United States proposed to its wartime ally, the Soviet Union, that control of Korea be temporarily divided between the two countries following Japan’s surrender. It was thought that it would help control the removal of Japanese forces. In 1945, the superpowers divided the country in two along an arbitrary border, the 38th parallel. The Soviet Union supported Kim Il Sung in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in the north, and the United States supported Syngman Rhee in South Korea in the south.
From the beginning, neither of the newly created South Korean governments accepted the legitimacy or boundaries of the other. “Koreans never thought it was legitimate or meaningful in any way. It was completely meaningless to them,” said Dr. Owen Miller of the SOAS Center for Korean Studies at the University of London. BBC History Magazine Podcast Both leaders hoped to unify the country by force. By 1949, both superpowers had withdrawn most of their occupation forces from Korea, but this did little to ease smoldering tensions. Bloody clashes began to break out regularly along the de facto border.
June 25, 1950North Korean communist leader Kim Il-sung took action. Early in the morning, he led a well-trained fighting force across the 38th parallel and launched a surprise attack. Equipped with Soviet weapons, the North Korean army quickly overwhelmed the South Korean army. Within days, they captured the southern capital, Seoul, forcing many residents to pledge allegiance to the Communist Party or face imprisonment or execution.
In the United States, President Truman was caught off guard by the speed and success of the North Korean attack. A believer in the “domino theory,” which states that if one country falls into communism, other countries will follow suit, he appealed to the newly established United Nations to protect South Korea. The Soviet Union could have vetoed this vote. At the time, however, China was boycotting the United Nations Security Council for refusing to recognize the People’s Republic of China. On June 28, 1950, a resolution was passed calling on all United Nations member states to assist in repelling the invasion. MacArthur, the American general who accepted Japan’s surrender at the end of World War II, was appointed commander of the United Nations Forces.
change the flow
The United States is be the first to respondhurriedly dispatched soldiers to station in Japan. However, these forces were unprepared to fight the superior North Korean military, which rapidly swept through the country and pushed them back. Thousands of South Korean civilians caught up in the conflict died as the fighting raged. By September, South Korean and UN forces were pinned down, defending a small enclave around the southernmost port of Busan. North Korea appeared to be on the brink of unifying the entire Korean peninsula.
In an ambitious gamble, MacArthur decided to attempt a dangerous sea attack on Incheon, a port deep within the North Korean front. Under heavy artillery fire, UN forces landed on September 15, 1950, captured the port, and quickly moved on to retake Seoul. After retaking the capital, tens of thousands of residents who had sworn loyalty to the former occupiers were shot dead by South Korean forces as collaborators. It was just one of a series of indiscriminate massacres of civilians that occurred during the war. “During the war, a lot of the massacres took place not at the front lines, but in areas away from the front lines, where people were rounded up because they were considered disloyal,” Dr Miller said.
Operation Inchon succeeded in cutting off North Korean military supply lines and communications, allowing UN forces to escape from Busan and launch a fierce counterattack. This changed the course of the conflict, forcing North Korean soldiers to retreat north and across the 38th parallel.
However, having achieved the UN resolution, MacArthur was determined to completely destroy the communist army and ordered his troops to pursue North Korea across the border. By October 19, 1950, UN forces had occupied Pyongyang and advanced toward the Yalu River on the Chinese border. The situation was very dire for South Korea just a few months ago, but now it appears to be reversing.
