The Korean War
North Korea invades the South; American-led UN forces and then Chinese armies join a war that kills millions, devastates the peninsula and ends in an armistice but no peace.
- The Korean War: A History — Bruce Cumings, Modern Library (2010)
- Rethinking the Korean War: A New Diplomatic and Strategic History — William Stueck, Princeton University Press (2002)
- China's Road to the Korean War: The Making of the Sino-American Confrontation — Chen Jian, Columbia University Press (1994)
- Korean War — Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History — Don Oberdorfer and Robert Carlin, Basic Books (2014)
Before dawn on 25 June 1950, North Korean forces crossed the 38th parallel in strength. Kim Il-sung had pressed Stalin for months for permission to unify the country by force, and Stalin agreed, on condition that Mao would back him. Seoul fell in three days.
- Rethinking the Korean War: A New Diplomatic and Strategic History — William Stueck, Princeton University Press (2002)
- China's Road to the Korean War: The Making of the Sino-American Confrontation — Chen Jian, Columbia University Press (1994)
The war of movement
The UN Security Council, which the Soviets were boycotting, called on members to help the South. US troops arrived from Japan, joined eventually by forces from fifteen other countries, including Britain, Turkey, Canada and Australia. By August the South Korean and UN forces held only a corner of the south-east around Busan. Then, on 15 September, General Douglas MacArthur landed at Incheon behind North Korean lines, recaptured Seoul and pushed north. UN forces crossed the 38th parallel, took Pyongyang and approached the Chinese border on the Yalu River.
- Rethinking the Korean War: A New Diplomatic and Strategic History — William Stueck, Princeton University Press (2002)
- The Korean War: A History — Bruce Cumings, Modern Library (2010)
In October and November 1950 hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops poured across the Yalu and drove the UN back in one of the longest retreats in American military history. In December nearly 100,000 civilians were evacuated by sea from Hungnam, among them the parents of future president Moon Jae-in. Seoul fell again in January 1951 and was retaken in March, its fourth change of hands in nine months.
- China's Road to the Korean War: The Making of the Sino-American Confrontation — Chen Jian, Columbia University Press (1994)
- The Korean War: A History — Bruce Cumings, Modern Library (2010)
- The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History — Don Oberdorfer and Robert Carlin, Basic Books (2014)
Stalemate
From mid-1951 the front settled near the 38th parallel, and two more years of bloody trench warfare followed while negotiators argued, above all about whether prisoners of war could refuse to go home. An armistice was signed at Panmunjom on 27 July 1953 by the UN Command, North Korea and China; South Korea’s president Syngman Rhee refused to sign. It created the Demilitarized Zone, about four kilometres wide, that still divides the peninsula. No peace treaty has ever followed.
- Rethinking the Korean War: A New Diplomatic and Strategic History — William Stueck, Princeton University Press (2002)
- Korean War — Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica
The cost
Casualty figures are uncertain. Most estimates put total deaths at around three million, with some reaching higher, and Britannica notes that more than half of the dead were civilians, a higher share than in the Second World War. About 36,500 Americans died. China’s official count is about 197,000 dead; Western estimates run higher.
- Korean War — Encyclopaedia Britannica, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- The Korean War: A History — Bruce Cumings, Modern Library (2010)
- The Korean War: A History — Bruce Cumings, Modern Library (2010)
- The Massacres at Mt. Halla: Sixty Years of Truth Seeking in South Korea — Hun Joon Kim, Cornell University Press (2014)
Separated families
The war scattered families across a line that could no longer be crossed. Some ten million Koreans are often said to have been separated from relatives. Mail and phone contact remain impossible. Since 1985, and especially after 2000, there have been brief, tightly controlled reunions, chosen by lottery, of elderly siblings, parents and children. More than 130,000 South Koreans registered to take part; by the mid-2020s fewer than 40,000 were still alive.
- Separated families statistics (Integrated Information System for Separated Families) — Ministry of Unification, Republic of Korea, Ministry of Unification
- The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History — Don Oberdorfer and Robert Carlin, Basic Books (2014)
Remembered as "6.25", the day the North launched an unprovoked invasion. The South survived thanks to its own soldiers and the UN allies, above all the United States, to whom many older South Koreans feel deep gratitude. Atrocities by the South's own forces were long taboo.
- The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History — Don Oberdorfer and Robert Carlin, Basic Books (2014)
- Rethinking the Korean War: A New Diplomatic and Strategic History — William Stueck, Princeton University Press (2002)
The "Fatherland Liberation War", which the regime says began with an American and South Korean attack and ended in victory under Kim Il-sung. US bombing that flattened almost every northern city is central to its teaching and to anti-American feeling. Soviet archives opened in the 1990s show that Kim planned the invasion with Stalin's approval.
- The Korean War: A History — Bruce Cumings, Modern Library (2010)
- Rethinking the Korean War: A New Diplomatic and Strategic History — William Stueck, Princeton University Press (2002)
- The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia — Andrei Lankov, Oxford University Press (2013)
A necessary stand against communist aggression and the first test of the UN, which saved South Korea at great cost. Revisionist historians such as Bruce Cumings argue it was also a civil war with roots in the 1945 division, and stress US bombing and massacres such as No Gun Ri.
- Rethinking the Korean War: A New Diplomatic and Strategic History — William Stueck, Princeton University Press (2002)
- The Korean War: A History — Bruce Cumings, Modern Library (2010)
A defensive intervention to protect China's border and an ally after UN forces crossed the 38th parallel and approached the Yalu River, fought by "people's volunteers" who stopped the world's strongest army.
- China's Road to the Korean War: The Making of the Sino-American Confrontation — Chen Jian, Columbia University Press (1994)
Why it matters today
The war fixed the division of Korea and created the two states that exist today. Almost every Korean family lost someone or was separated from relatives, and because it ended only in an armistice, the two Koreas are technically still at war. It explains South Korea's military service, its alliance with the United States and the North's siege mentality.
Often called "the Forgotten War", Korea was the first hot war of the Cold War and cost about 36,000 American lives. It turned the US into a permanent military power in Asia: some 28,000 US troops are still stationed in South Korea.
China calls it the "War to Resist America and Aid Korea". Fighting the US to a standstill is remembered as proof that the new People's Republic had "stood up", and the alliance with North Korea, "close as lips and teeth", dates from it. Mao's eldest son Mao Anying was among the Chinese dead.