The initial results were devastating for the USA and the UN. The first US
troops to arrive, all taken from comfortable posts as occupation troops in Japan,
were undertrained, unwilling and ill-equipped, and were soundly beaten by
the North Koreans who not only captured the South Korean capital of Seoul,
but nearly drove the UN forces out of the country. Reinforcements from the
USA, coupled with contingents from several other UN members, including
the United Kingdom, Canada, France and Turkey, landed at Inchon in
September and forced the North Koreans well back into their own territory.
At this stage a disastrous political conflict took place between the US govern-
ment and the UN commander in Korea, the US war hero General Douglas
MacArthur. Fiercely anti-communist, MacArthur insisted on driving north,
with the intention of destroying the North Korean state. In so doing he came
to seem threatening to the newly-installed communist government of the
People’s Republic of China (PRC), which immediately sent huge, if also ill-
equipped, peasant armies to the aid of the North Koreans. The combined
communist forces succeeded again in driving the UN forces south, in vicious
battles that caused the USA to suffer more casualties than theVietnam War
was to do later. MacArthur was relieved of his command, and the UN finally
regained some of its ground, pushing the communist forces back to the original
frontier on the 38th parallel.
Peace negotiations started in July 1951, although fighting continued until an
armistice agreement was reached in July 1953. No peace treaty has ever been
signed between any of the combatants, and the North/South Korean border
remained a site of armed tension. However, some progress was made towards
an eventual peace treaty, and indeed reunification of the two Koreas, in the
early 1990s, including a reduction in the number of US forces stationed in
South Korea. Further progress in the late 1990s and early 2000s failed to bring
about a treaty, although the two states appeared less likely to resume open
hostilities than at any time since the war’s conclusion.
The Korean War was deeply unpopular with the US public, who saw no
reason why they should be engaged in a campaign that had no obvious
connection to their national interest. In a complex way the military experience
in Korea was to do the US military great harm 15 years later in Vietnam. The
military felt they had been defeated, or at the best only scored a draw in Korea,
and this seriously affected morale and planning in Vietnam. But the war had
even more far reaching consequences. Though there is little direct evidence
that the Soviet Union planned or approved of North Korea’s actions, they
supported their war effort as a way of competing with the USA. More than
anything else this Soviet involvement convinced US policy-makers of the need
for a firm military stand against ‘International Communism’, and led to the
arms racesand confrontations in Europe, Asia and Latin America (seeCuban
missile crisis) that characterized thecold warfor the next 35 years. One
Korean War