INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF KOREAN STUDIES
Spring/Summer 2001
Volume V, Number 1
Editor-in-Chief: Hong Nack Kim, West Virginia University
Managing Editor: Jack C. Hammersmith, West Virginia University
Editors
Alfred M. Beck, Retired USAF History
ProgramNicole Sheets, West Virginia University
Young Whan Kihl, Iowa State University
Whee Gook Kim, East-West ResearchInstituteYoun Suk Kim, Kean University
Young Ki Kim, George Washington
University
Eui Hang Shin, University of South Carolina
Tong Whan Park, Northwestern University

Editorial Advisory Board

Bruce Cummings, University of Chicago

Carter Eckert, Harvard University

Hak-joon Kim, University of Inchon

Han Kyo Kim, University of Cincinnati

Samuel Kim, Columbia University

Il-Pyong Kim, University of Connecticut

Gil-Chin Lim, Michigan State University

Chae-Jin Lee, Claremont-McKenna College

John K.C. Oh, Catholic University ofAmericaMarcus Noland, Institute for Internationall
Economics

Hang Yul Rhee, Shepherd University

Edward A. Olsen, Naval Post Graduate
SchoolSteve Y. Rhee, Armstrong Atlantic State
University

Robert G. Sutter, Congressional ResearchServiceDavid I. Steinberg, Georgetown University

Jang-Hee Yoo, Ewha Woman's University

Richard W. Wilson, Rutgers University

Jane Shapiro Zacek, Union College

Young-Kwan Yoon, Seoul National
University

William J. Taylor, Jr., Taylor Associates,Inc.

EDITORIAL INFORMATION: Contributors may submit one copy of papers of 20 to 35 pages indouble-spaced format, with endnotes, accompanied by a computer disk in an electronic format
compatible with WordPerfect 5.0 or later versions. Original and unpublished papers must
provide full documentation in conformance with the standards in the current edition of the
Chicago Manual of Style. Papers are to be submitted to Professor Hong Nack Kim, Editor-inChief, International Journal of Korean Studies, Department of Political Science, West Virginia
University, PO Box 6317, Morgantown, WV 26506-6317. E-mail address: hongkim@wvu.edu;
Tel. (304) 293-3811; Fax: (304) 293-8644.
The International Journal of Korean Studies is abstracted and indexed in OCLC PAIS
International.

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF KOREAN STUDIES
Spring/Summer 2001 • Volume V, Number 1
SPECIAL ISSUE ON THE KOREAN WAR (1950-1953)
AND ITS IMPACT
The Korean War after Fifty Years: Challenges for Peace andProsperity
George H. Quester

1

The North Korean War Plan and Opening Phase of the Korean
War
Kwang-Soo Kim

11

The South Korean Military and the Korean War
Chang-IlOhn

35

Strategic Errors of the Korean War from the Origin to theArmistice: A U.S. Perspectives
William Stueck

55

China's Conflict Behavior in Korea Revisited: Implications for
East Asian Security
BinYu

71

The Impact of the Korean War on the Korean Economy
Jong Won Lee

97

The Impact of the Korean War on Korean Politics
Tong Whan Park

119

Effects of the Korean War on Social Structures of the Republicof Korea
Eui Hang Shin133

The Impact of the Korean War on the Korean Military
ChoongNamKim

159

The InternationalJournal of Korean Studies is copyrighted under U.S. law.
©2001 International Council on Korean Studies

The Korean War after Fifty Years
Challenges for Peace and Prosperity
George H, Quester
University of Maryland
The Korean War, as a model for the possibilities of limited war
which hovered in the background for the entire Cold War, has
inevitably drawn conflicting interpretations. Now that the Cold War isover, now that a half-century has passed since the Korean War, we
ought to be able to sort and evaluate these interpretations.
We will begin with some general issues of interpretation, and thenturn to some stages in time when greater optimism or pessimism
seemed to take hold.

Some General Possibilities
First, some analysts would stress that the United States, instatements by Secretary of State Dean Acheson and General Douglas
MacArthur and others, did not adequately warn Joseph Stalin and his
Communist allies beforehand that the United States would defend
South Korea if it were attacked. One could indeed extrapolate a broader
lesson from this that Americans are generally not good about
advertising their intentions here, with Saddam Hussein in his invasionof Kuwait, and the Soviets in their invasion of Afghanistan, also
discovering that Americans react more strongly to such aggressions
than they show in advance. The Japanese in 1941 similarly under-rated
the American willingness to fight World War II out to a close; one
would hope that any Beijing leaders contemplating an armed attack on
Taiwan have noticed these prior examples.
Second, some analysts of military strategy would have seen the
Korean War as what could have been predicted once Stalin's Soviet
Union had its own nuclear weapons, i.e. that Communist tanks wouldInternational Journal of Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 20011

now be free to roll forward, by the theories of limited war, by thewarnings that had already been articulated by Paul Nitze's staff in NSC68, as the United States could not retaliate with nuclear weapons when
Moscow now had such weapons, and when Moscow had not yet usedthem.
Third, most of us would have seen the war as the necessary
standing up to Communism and its advance by military aggression. As
Communist rule had been imposed, by brute force of one kind or
another, on the unwilling populations of Eastern Europe, the analogies
had emerged with the earlier advance of Fascist rule, and with the needto resist such advances, by threat of force, by actual force where thesimple threat had not sufficed to deter aggression.

The War's End: 1953
Turning now to the trend of impressions over time, Americans havealso had more than one way of interpreting the outcome of the Korean
War, as it was negotiated to a halt in 1953.
Most important of all, Communism's advance was reversed andhalted on the Korean peninsula, as Seoul changed hands four times, as
the Republic of Korea was freed to achieve all that it was to accomplish
in the south in the following half-century.
Related to this, it could be argued that a successful defense, by
American blood sacrifice, locked in commitments that would not havebeen in place otherwise. Just as America had to defend West Berlin,
once it had made an issue of its protection in the 1948 Berlin Airlift,
and just as America could never tolerate Soviet nuclear weapons in
Cuba after President Kennedy stood up to Khrushchev in the 1962
missile crisis, Americans would find it much harder to withdraw from
Korea after the casualties suffered in the Korean War.
But a third legacy of the war's ending was less fortunate, as the
final truce line, seemingly determined by the bloody battlefieldstalemate, left the DMZ much too close to Seoul. American Professors
often have a longer commute to the campuses on which they teach thanthe drive from the truce line to the center of Seoul, the capital of the
Republic of Korea. The American generals who wished to push the line
further northward in 1953 were overruled by higher American
authority, simply because of the human cost that would be involved.
The final memory of 1953 was more generally pessimistic for the
future of containment, as Americans had demonstrated a sense offrustration with limited wars fought on the Asian continent, with a war
which had see-sawed from prospects of the loss of all Korea to theprospect of a unification of Korea under non-Communist rule, and thenback and forth again. The collective memory was thus one of2

International Journal of Korean Studies • Volume V, Number 1

disappointment and casualties, of frustration and futility.

The Fall of Saigon: 1975
If one were pessimistic about the lessons and achievement of the
1950-53 Korean War, an even deeper pessimism might then haveloomed when South Vietnam fell to Communist rule in 1975, after aguerrilla war that turned into a tank war at the end, after a guerrilla war
in which the Republic Korea had sent troops to assist in the defense ofSouth Vietnam. Many leftists around the world, and especially on
American campuses, drew analogies here between South Vietnam andSouth Korea, asserting that each were artificial regimes serving
American interests, asserting a wave of the future by which what had
happened in Saigon would soon enough happen also in Seoul. As a signof how pervasive this impression was among the member nations of theUN. there were meetings of the "non-aligned" nations "Group of 77"
in 1975 to which Pyongyang was invited to send a representative, but
Seoul was not.
There were at least three strands of argument by which theCommunist world was expected to advance across Asia in the middle
1970s in a chain of following dominoes. Many people now saw
Communism as more appropriate to the real needs of ordinary Asians
than anything democracy had to offer; ideologically, they saw
Communism as what the poor peasant wanted. Second, leaving aside
ideology, anyone understanding basic geopolitics would have expected
the Communist side to have the military advantage now, with its control
over the center of the Eurasian land-mass, with the west having adifficult time defending all the promontories; Mackinder had long ago
foreseen the difficulty here, when it was the British who had to worry
about the plans of the Czar, rather than the United States having toworry about Moscow's plans. And third, in a simple contest of wills, a
simple matching of resolve, the United States had quit the Vietnam
contest, as military-age students and others crowded into Washington
chanting "Hell no, we won't go."Symptomatic of the seeming erosion of American commitments,
the seeming erasure of the beneficial lessons of the Korean War, werestatements of Jimmy Carter during his 1976 campaign for office, to theeffect that American nuclear weapons, and American ground forces as
well, might be withdrawn from Korea.
But the same nuclear weapons which had given the USSR a
counter-deterrent to the U.S. after 1949, and which had thus made"limited war" the norm for Cold War conflict thereafter, could be used
for other purposes, could be used as a form of deterrent reinsurance bya state whose very existence was in danger. It was thus hardly soInternational Journal of Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 20013

surprising that both the Republic of Korea and the Republic of China
on Taiwan moved closer to a de facto nuclear weapons capability inthese years, prodding an application of American influence to head off
the plutonium reprocessing efforts involved here, prodding the UnitedStates to reconsider somewhat its erosion of commitments.

Pleasant Surprise Post-1975
The pessimistic picture drawn at the time of the fall of Saigon was
not to be realized. Rather than strings of new violent conflicts leading
to new Communist regimes in a chain of falling dominoes, the East
Asian region has been remarkably free of war since 1975, and a variety
of explanations again are to be found for this.
Someone focusing mainly on the factors of power politics would
point to Communist China in effect switching sides toward the end of
the Vietnam War. In a classic balance-of-power strategy, by which one
always supports the weaker against the stronger, to head off a possible"hegemon," Beijing had apparently decided that Moscow was getting
too strong, and Washington too week. The visits of Kissinger andNixon to Beijing were widely interpreted as a simple reshuffling ofalliances, one any "realist" political scientist might have anticipated.
Apart from this, the United States appeared to get a second wind ofresolve, especially after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1978; theelection of Ronald Reagan as President in 1980 seemed to show that
Americans were once again willing to invest resources, and risk armed
conflict, as part of standing up to the advance of Communism.
Third, and perhaps the very most important, and most relevant to
the Korean case, the western system of economic and political freedom
now was seen to have proved itself, delivering economic growth in East
Asia such as the world had never seen before, delivering benefits topeasants that contradicted the ideological assumptions of leftists on
American campuses or anywhere else.
Communist China's opening to the west, and its very enthusiastic
opening of relations with the Republic of Korea, surely then reflected
a little more than simple power politics. As China, under Deng Xiaoing,
now abandoned Marxist solutions for its own economic growth, it heard
Deng calling specifically for a Chinese imitation of the four East Asian"tigers" or "dragons": Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, — and South
Korea. In the time that had been won in the prolonged but unsuccessful
Vietnam War, and in the time and space that had been won in thefrustrating and stalemated defense of South Korea in the Korean War,the advantages of market methods and an open society had become
evident, so that the appeal of Communist guerrilla insurgency wasnever to be what had been projected.
4International Journal of Korean Studies • Volume V, Number 1

If nuclear weapons had once been an important option for Seoul orTaipei, they faded in significance in the 1980s, as Taiwan and South
Korea became major trading partners for the entire world, and indeed
even with Communist China and Communist Vietnam. Ironically, it
would be North Korea that in the 1990s became the outcast "pariah
state,", rather than South Korea. Yet it has to be remembered that thestrategic significance of such weapons, as a deterrent to any foreign
dreams of a conventional military takeover, might work as well for bad
regimes as for good, i.e. might be as attractive for North Korea in the
future, as for Israel or Taiwan or South Korea in the past. And, if eitherof the Koreas were ever to acquire nuclear weapons, one might not still
be able to count on Japanese aversions to nuclear proliferation.

Today's Assessment
In light of the experience of the Korean War some fifty years ago,
how do Americans see Korea today? Those of us who still worry about
the intentions of the Pyongyang regime, or who wish that this regime
could be eliminated as soon as possible, are typically accused of "Cold
War thinking"; and one might indeed accept this label, as acompliment, as a sign that the Cold War indeed was about the mostbasic of human values.
Anyone comparing the two Koreas will sense that we have here themost perfect scientific test of two ideologies, of two approaches to thesolving of human problems, as we have the same basic culture and thesame basic distribution of natural resources on the two sides of thedemarcation line, but such a vastly different degree of success. In othercomparisons of the social systems, for example between the UnitedStates and the Soviet Union, one could blame the Soviet shortfall on thehistoric poverty of Russia, the weakness of the educational system
under the Czar, etc. The same would hold for a comparison between
democratic Belgium and Communist Romania, and for many othercomparisons, where one could not "control for" the cultural andhistorical differences, when one was trying to test the two social
approaches.
A more persuasively "fair test", "controlling for" other factors,
might compare Cuba and Puerto Rico, or Taiwan and mainland China(although the sheer magnitude of the mainland's population andunderdeveloped western provinces again skews the comparison). Like
Puerto Rico vs. Cuba, the comparison of the two Koreas seems like amuch more direct test of the impact of Communism.
The Republic of Korea is today amazingly more prosperous than it
was in 1950, and it is genuinely democratic, demonstrating thatpolitically and economically-free approaches can indeed work well inInternational Journal of Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 20015

a traditionally Asian context. Americans have reason to see South
Korea as proving the value of the political and economic systems thatwork within the United States as well. The American model is available
for adoption by anyone in the world, and a great number of countries
are indeed adopting it, not because the United States governmentpresses them to, but because it is so obvious that the model works.
Americans thus have more reason today than in 1950 to identify with
South Korea, because so much that was merely potentially possible
then has now been realized.
But Americans, upon reflection, would have another more special
reason to identify with South Korea, for there has been a great deal ofmuch more direct American influence in the progress that South Korea
has made, for a longer time through the work of American missionaries,
since 1950 by the presence of the American servicemen stationed in
Korea. By the example of their lifestyle, and by the radio and television
signals that have leaked out over the airwaves, the nearness of theAmerican soldiers (while often irritating, as is always the way withsoldiers deployed abroad from any country) has worked to spreadknowledge of the English language, and to spread an understanding of
the processes of political democracy.
One index of this comes in the number of Koreans who havemigrated to the United States. Related to this, another index is in thenumber of Koreans who have converted to one variety or another ofChristianity, with South Korea by some measures being counted now
as having a Christian majority, with the Republic of Korea now having
a larger number of Presbyterians than the United States.
By comparison, North Korea, with its horrific Stalinist style ofCommunist rule, made even more bizarre by a practice of passing
leadership from father to son by inheritance, and with its past record oflaunching terrorist attacks and submarine landings, strikes mostAmericans as every bit as bad as the enemy that had been fought in
1950, and perhaps all the worse because any moderating Russian
influence of 1945 to 1990 is no longer in place. The comparison is thenmade all the more tragic by the news that famine continually threatens
North Korea, with most people told to make do on two meals a day,when South Korea, just across the DMZ, has no problem in feeding its
population.
When one considers the direct and indirect influences of thepresence of American troops since 1950, it is interesting to think backto the news in 1958 that the Chinese Communist troops which hadcome to Kim Il-sung's rescue in 1950 were being withdrawn back to
China. At the time, this seemed like good news, as perhaps a step
toward ending the hostility that set the two sides against each other.
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International Journal of Korean Studies • Volume V, Number 1

Today, one almost wishes that the Chinese PLA troops had remained
there, because this might have made it easier for the Chinese topersuade the North Koreans to move away from doctrinaire Marxist
models, because this might have served to restrain some of the moreirresposible ventures and initiatives taken by Kim Il-sung's regime.
Communist China today is the only friend that North Korea has.
But Communist China is much more interested in cultivating its
linkages with South Korea, for it is from the Republic of Korea that
Beijing expects to be able to learn, and not from the Pyongyang regime.
Beijing can learn from Seoul on how to make money, how to makeeconomic progress. It can also learn, just as it can learn from Taiwan,
how an Asian society culturally governed by the Confucian ethic canhandle the processes of free elections. When one sees how eager young
Chinese in Beijing are to visit Seoul, and how reluctant they would be
to have to visit Pyongyang instead, one sees how attractive a model the
Republic of Korea has become. *Lee Kwan Yew, the former Prime Minister of Singapore, has beeneloquent and articulate in arguing that Asian societies are so different
from those of the west that "American-style democracy" could notwork in the Far East. Very articulate in arguing the other side, arguingthat human beings everywhere have the same desire to have a choice in
who governs them, and a desire to be free from arbitrary arrest andtorture, has been the man elected President in the Republic of Korea,
Kim Dae-jung.
One should never under-rate the importance of culture, and thepower of the Confucian ethic in particular. But one can easily over-ratethe "clash of civilizations" forecast by Samuel Huntington. Historically,
the Americans driven by the "Protestant ethic" have found a great deal
to admire in the "Confucian ethic". Like the Republic of China on
Taiwan, the Republic of Korea has offered a nice demonstration that
economic progress and hard work can go hand in hand with afunctioning democracy.

The Continuing Question of Reunification
Ever since the Berlin Wall came down and West Germany absorbed
East Germany, we have seen an interesting debate about whether the
Koreans in the south have been increased or decreased in their desire to
reunite with the North. The high economic costs encountered by theGerman Federal Republic, in undoing the damage of decades ofCommunist rule in the East, are argued to have made South Koreanswary of the similar burdens they would encounter if they had to undo
the damage inflicted by all the years of Communist rule north of the
38th parallel. South Korea does not dominate North Korea inInternational Journal of Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 2001

7

population size or geographic area in the way that West Germany
dominated East Germany. On a per-capita basis, it dominates North
Korea much more, which of course would mean tremendous sacrificesof material wealth, if and when South Korea had to pull its Northern
cousins up to some joint national average.
Since North Korea has been a far more totalitarian Communist statethan was East Germany, the chances of winning freedom for the north
have looked more remote. And, before the pleasantly surprising eventsof 1989, with the sudden collapse of the Berlin Wall, the chances ofEast Germany being freed of Communist rule had also looked remote.
Yet, in the years before 1989, one often also saw analyses of West
German opinion suggesting that the hope had been given up of a
German reunification, that West Germans were no longer interested inwinning freedom for their East German cousins. All this turned out tobe very misleading, of course, after the Berlin Wall came down. And
this should suggest that we be cautious now about assuming that South
Koreans would be so uninterested in winning a reunification with theNorth, if the opportunity should arise.
When something very desirable is out of reach, one avoids
frustration by turning one's thoughts elsewhere, and this may hold fortoday's South Koreans just as it held for West Germans in the 1980s.
To be sure, the price that West Germany had to pay for unification is a
cautionary note for Koreans, but this is not by itself any decisive
indication that they would want to avoid a freeing up of North Korea
if this could be attained.
How a liberation of the north is to be achieved remains a mostdifficult question, with Americans being well-advised to take thejudgments and advice of South Koreans into account, on how best to
move ahead with this. But there should be much less doubt or
uncertainty that such a unification of Korea, on the Seoul pattern rather
than that of Pyongyang, remains very much to be desired.

One Final Overall Perspective
When weighing the overall significance of the Korean War, wemight turn at the end to another kind of argument sometimes heard
since 1990, by which the entire Cold War was a mistake and a waste ofeffort, by which all the risks of war and nuclear escalation that were runin the preparations for the defense of NATO, and in the generalworldwide effort of containment, were unnecessary.
Communist China is now rapidly moving away from all the
economic aspects of Communism. The unified Communist Vietnam has
seen a similar move to abandon the teachings of Marx; instead ofmaking Saigon resemble Hanoi, we now see Hanoi coming to resemble
8International Journal of Korean Studies • Volume V, Number J

Saigon, as market methods are introduced, as small independent shops
spring up everywhere.
Wouldn't a unified Communist Korea under Kim Il-sung thus havemade the same accommodation to reality, after an interim, saving
everyone the price of the Korean War? Wouldn't a unified Communist
Europe under Stalin also have given up on the Marxist-Leninist
approach to economic decision-making?
There are at least two answers to this kind of false optimism, bywhich it was never necessary to contain Communism, by which it
would not have been necessary to resist the North Korean invasion of1950, and to mount a NATO defense/deterrence line for the next forty
years.
First, there is no guarantee that Communist rulers, if they could
keep expanding their domain, keep harvesting the economic
accomplishments of others, would have seen the error of their Marxist
assumptions about how an economy works; there is no guarantee that
the Soviet economy would have collapsed as it did in the 1980s, if it
had in the meantime been able to absorb the economy of West Germany
and Japan, etc.
Second, the sheer magnitude of the South Korean post-1953
accomplishment, in economic, political and social terms, shows that a
failure to resist would have been a tremendous waste of humanopportunity, even if Kim Il-sung and his successors would have sooner
or later seen the light.
The Republic of Korea, by its accomplishments after 1953, has
showed the world that the Korean War was worth fighting, and that it
was worth the risks and effort to contain the spread of Communism
elsewhere around the world. The North Korean regime has since 1953
instead showed what needed so much to be avoided, showed what
ideologically doctrinaire Communist tyranny could impose on a people.
The achievement of successfully defending the South may not havebeen so immediately clear to Americans and the world in 1953, or evenin 1975. But it certainly should be clear today.

International Journal of Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 2001

9

The North Korean War Plan
and theOpening Phase of the Korean War
A Documentary Study
Kwang-Soo

Kim

Associate Professor of Military History
Korea Military A c a d e m yIntroduction
No war in modern history is so obscure about its beginning as the
Korean War. From the very first day of the war, both the North Korean
and the South Korean governments accused the opponent of being
guilty of an invasion. In the early morning of June 25, 1950, the North
Korean government charged that the South Korean Army had made asurprise attack into its territory by 1-2 km across the 38th parallel atfour points, the west of Haeju (Ongjin), the direction of Kumchon(Kaesong), the direction of Chorwon (Yonchon and Pochon), andYangyang, and announced a counterattack to repulse the attack. The
South Korean government announced on that day that the North Korean
Army had invaded all along the 38th parallel at dawn. Based on theSouth Korean Army's reports, Ambassador Muccio reported to the U.
S. government that the North Korean Army invaded the South bybombarding Ongjin around 4 o'clock in the morning and began to crossthe 38th parallel at Ongjin, Kaesung, Chunchon, and the East Coast. In
the United Nations, the U. S. government condemned the North Korean
government for unlawfully invading South Korea and made a move toadmonish North Korea to take back its army.
Since then, the issue of discerning who was responsible for thecalamitous internecine war has been a focal point among manyscholars. In the West, it has been generally accepted that the North
Korean government initiated the war and was to blame for that matter.
But scholars like Gupta and Cumings suspected that the South Korean
1International Journal of Korean Studies• Spring/Summer 2001

11

Army might have provoked the North Korean Army in the Ongjin
peninsula. President Rhee Syngman, Gen. Kim Paekil, Kim Sukwon
and Col. Paek Inyup were put under suspicion by Cumings as persons
who probably had ordered an attack on the Ongjin peninsula after
Cumings had scrutinized various documents and interviews on thesituation in Ongjin in particular and in other places along the 38th
parallel on the eve of the war. The North Korean government eversince has maintained the version of the beginning of the war that itprovided to the public 51 years ago.
With former Soviet archival documents on the Korean War releasedin the middle of the 1990s, it became widely known that Stalin, Kim II
Sung, and Mao were deeply involved in the scheme of unifying Korea
by the North Korean military force in the spring of 1950. At meetings
in Moscow in April 1950, a final agreement on the war issue was madebetween Stalin and Kim. Mao gave consent to Kim's war plan in
Peking in May 1950. Through secret telegrams between Moscow andPyongyang, Stalin and Kim had discussed and adjusted the war plan indetail and prepared for the war up to the beginning of the war.
Being short of documentary materials concerning the outbreak of
the war, however, on lower levels rather than on the top political one,
we do not know what actually happened on both sides of the parallel forseveral days up to the outbreak of the war. What was the North Korean
operation plan if the North attacked first? Was there any provocationfrom the South while the North Korean Army was getting fully readyfor a counterattack as Cumings inferred? Was the North Korean
military action on June 25,1950, really begun as a counterattack as theNorth Korean government proclaimed? Now one may have someplausible explanations to deny the last two questions, but with only alittle concrete evidence which one can hardly doubt. We have never
examined the outbreak of the war all along the 38th parallel in asystematic way with sufficient undeniable evidence.
Owing to this circumstance, some scholars are not certain how
events actually developed on the parallel line in the early morning ofJune 25, 1950, and the following several days. Even after the openingof former Soviet archives, William Stueck had a reserved view on theissue of who started the war. A scholar in Korea formulated ahypothesis that the North Korean government did not have further
intention of occupying the whole territory of South Korea except Seoul,
and instead it planned to have a negotiated peace with moderate South
Korean politicians excluding Syngman Rhee and his followers. Others
are suspicious that Rhee's government and the United States
government must have known the North Korean move and even theexact timing of its attack on the South before the war but allowed the
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International Journal of Korean Studies • Volume V, Number I

8North to invade purposefully. The influence of skepticism on "thetraditional version of the war's beginning" and the explanatory powerof plausible evidences in Cumings' second mosaic are still alive,
although Cumings toned down his original inference after Sovietmaterials on the Korean War poured out.
The purpose of this paper is to conduct factual research on the
North Korean Army's actions on the eve and at the beginning of thewar. The focus will be on the northern side of the 38th parallel, about
which we do have many unclear points. Questions to answer are: first,
what was the North Korean Army's operational plan for the war, andwhat relations did it have with discussion of a war plan between Stalin
and Kim II Sung in April 1950 in Moscow? Second, how did things
actually develop on the 3 8th parallel on the first day of the war? Third,
why could not (or did not) the North Korean Army advance across theHan River after occupying Seoul for three days? Was it because North
Korean leaders were planning to stay there, expecting the South Korean
people to make mass uprisings as Park Hon Yong assured hiscolleagues before the war, or was it because there were other factorsthat hindered the North Korean Army from continuing the advance?
In conducting research on these questions, fortunately I could
obtain several important but hitherto unknown sources. The first is areport of Gen. Razuvaev, the Soviet ambassador and chief of themilitary advisory corps to the North Korean government after January
1951, to Gen. Shtemenko, who was then the Chief of the General Staffof the Soviet Armed Forces. This report contains the military plansupon which the North Korean People's Army launched assaults in June
1950, as well as a narrative account of the conduct of operations fromthe beginning of the war to the end of May 1951. The latter is a file ofdaily situation reports of the Soviet General Staff on the Korean War,which had been maintained by the Far Eastern Bureau from the
beginning of the war to the end of 1951. The value of these sources isenormous. We can look into the North Korean Army's real situationand the progress of the war from the viewpoint of the North. Above all,these are the first sources known to us that describe in an unstudied
manner the North Korean Army's actual conduct of the war.
In addition, I could use a group of captured North Korean
documents that were investigated and partially introduced in Korea by
Prof. Sun Joo Pang but not yet fully used in doing research on the North
Korean Army's actions at the outbreak of the war. These materials
often provide us with real views and experiences of North Korean
officers and soldiers and untainted records on actual deeds of North
Korean units.
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International Journal of Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 2001

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The North Korean War Plan for Invasion of South Korea in June1950
Now it is widely known that the overall North Korean War Plan
was discussed and agreed upon first between Stalin and Kim II Sung in
Moscow in April 1950. What attracts our attention in conversations in
the Moscow meeting is that the overall strategy of the war was not
Kim's but Stalin's, although Kim was eager for the war. According tosummarized proceedings of the conversations among Stalin, Kim II
Sung and Park Hon Young on the issue of war, it is clear that Stalinsuggested a war plan and Kim accepted it. Stalin advised Kim that it
was important to make a thorough preparation for war and to form elite
attack divisions as well as to create additional units. He promised that
Kim's request of any material support for equipping weapons andmechanized means of movement and combat would be fully satisfied.
Stalin then proposed a three-stage war plan, which was vicious aswell as cunning. The three stages were:
1. Troops are concentrated in the designated areas, close to the 38th
parallel.
2. The highest bodies of power in North Korea make fresh
proposals for peaceful unification. They'll be certainly rejected by theother side.
3. Then, after they are rejected, a counterattack must take place.
12

Stalin continued, "I agree with your idea to engage the adversary
in the Ongjin peninsula as it will help to disguise who initiated thecombat activities. After you attack and the South counterattacks it
would give you a chance to enlarge the front."
As we shall see later, the contour of the North Korean War Plan
was set here in Moscow in April. Stalin's war plan would be carried out
faithfully by Kim II Sung, who considered it almost as a bible. In
addition, it is important to keep in mind Stalin's view on provoking an
attack on the Ongjin peninsula and his using the term "counterattack"when we interpret North Korean operational plans that would be
prepared by Soviet advisers, as well as the North Korean description of
actual fighting that occurred on the front on June 25, 1950.
No less important is Stalin's advice to Kim II Sung on waging awar. Stalin told Kim, "The War should be quick and speedy,
Southerners and Americans should not have time to come to theirsenses. They won't have time to put up a strong resistance and tomobilize international support." It was a lesson he learned fromplentiful experiences during the Second World War. With noexperience in any large-scale war except for some guerrilla operations,and being buoyed by the hope of unifying Korea by his move, Kim
13

14

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International Journal of Korean Studies • Volume V, Number 1

expressed to Stalin his optimistic evaluation that there was least
probability of American intervention in the war and his assurance that
he would achieve victory within three days after launching the war.
Kim expected that the victory would be quick, all of the Korean people
would enthusiastically support him, and Americans would not havetime to intervene. Park Hon Yong intervened in the conversation toelaborate on Kim's evaluation, saying "200,000 party members will
participate as leaders of the mass uprising." Stalin, however, did nothave such an optimistic evaluation of the improbability of U. S.
intervention and was astute enough to prepare a worst-case scenario. He
gave Kim II Sung his consent to the war on the condition that Mao
agreed to the plan and Soviet troops would not participate directly inthe war in any situation.
15

Returning to North Korea at the end of April, Kim II Sung hurried
preparation for the war following Stalin's advice exactly. He visited
Mao in Peking with Park Hon Yong on May 13 and received Mao's
consent to his war plan. Before leaving for Peking, Kim II Sung ordered
Kang Kon to draw an operation plan for the war. The North Korean
Army relocated and renamed the newly arrived Chinese Independent
15th Division composed of Koreans to the 12th Infantry Division of the
Korean People's Army and finished the training of recruits who were
earmarked for three new divisions to be created in early June. The 10th,
13th and 15th Divisions were created out of these soldiers just before
the war.
The North Korean government and organs affiliated with it
presented peace proposals thrice on June 7, 11, and 16 in order toconceal relocation of attack divisions near the 3 8th parallel in June andto give South Koreans false hope for a peaceful unification. While
Syngman Rhee and his government suspected the North peace
proposals and dubbed them as mere propaganda, the North succeededin relocating units in war footing 10-15 km north of the 38th parallel
between June 12 and June 23, disguising the movement of units to theirsoldiers as a grand field maneuver.
As for the process of drawing the invasion operation plan, former
North Korean General Sung-Chol Yu made atestimony, which appears
as genuine in the general context but dubious in some particular points.
According to Yu, a chosen group of North Korean generals and highranking officers who were mostly Soviet-born Koreans drew up an
operation plan under the direction of the Chief of General Staff, Kang
Kon. However, Soviet advisers took the responsibility of making a newplan in Russian, saying that the North Korean plan was too simplistic.
The plan was composed of four components: combat orders, movement
plans of the Army, the Navy and the Air Force, supply plans, and plans
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15

disguising the various units' preparation for war as military exercises.
These were translated into Korean. Yu recalled that the title of the planwas "Preemptive Strike Plan." He said that the invasion plan ended
with the occupation of Seoul, and there was no other plan to occupy therest of South Korea. According to him, occupation of Seoul meant theend of war among the North Korean leaders and generals, for they
expected that there would be extensive general uprisings once the army
entered Seoul.
Authenticity of some features in Yu's testimony is now partly
corroborated by some captured North Korean documents. Soviet
military advisers did draw the operation plan up to the level of division
combat orders under the supervision of the chief Soviet adviser General
Postnikov. The well-known combat order No. 1 of the North Korean
4th Division, which was translated into Korean, dated June 22 andcaptured near Taejon in July 1950, must have been drawn by Russians.
Now we can verify the captured documents, a set of reconnaissancedirectives distributed to the 3rd Border Security Brigade, the 6th, 1st,
4th, 3rd, 2nd, 12th Divisions and the 12th Motorcycle Regiment, which
was written in Russian and, because of the fact, suspected by Cumings
in its authenticity as genuine. There is no reason to doubt authenticityof the reconnaissance directive issued on June 20 in Russian in which
the Information Chief of the North Korean General Staff set missions
for reconnaissance troops to fulfill in each stage of the operation plan.
The stages in the operation plan described in the document were three,
and the content was almost identical with the three-stage operation planthat will be discussed later. Existence of plans disguising the
preparation for war in forward units as a training exercise in Yu's
testimony can be verified by an order in a set of captured orders of theNorth Korean 2nd Division. The order was issued on June 19 and it
directed units to carry out an exercise program that would last from
June 20 to June 30.
17

18

19

20

The fact that the overall operation plan of the North Korean Armyfor invasion of South Korea at first was a three-stage one wasdiscovered in a form of operation map and made public by Prof.
Korotkov in 1992. and now can be corroborated by an archival
document. Bajanov and Bajanova recently made public the contents ofthe plan after discovering it in a Russian archive. This plan in a finishedform was presented to and signed by Kim II Sung on June 15, 1950. It
was reported by Shtykov to Stalin on the following day and received
his consent. According to Shtykov's telegram to Stalin on June 16, thetiming of the attack was set as the early morning of June 25,1950, andthe stages of the plan were as follows:
The First Stage: formations and units of the KPA start at the Ongjin
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16International Journal of Korean Studies• Volume V, Number 1

peninsula like a local operation and then deliver the main strike along
the western coast of Korea to the South.
The Second Stage: Seoul must be taken and the Han River put
under control. At the same time, on the eastern front, North Korean
troops will liberate the cities of Chunchon and Kangneung. As a result,themain forces of the South Korean Army have to be encircled around
Seoul and eliminated.
The Third Stage: the final one, will be devoted to the liberation of
the rest of Korea by destroying the remaining enemy forces and seizing
major population centers and ports.
As shown in the quotation, the plan set the Ongjin operation as thefirst stage. The most important and main stage was the second one, inwhich encirclement of the South Korean main force as well as
occupation of Seoul and other cities would be accomplished. It isnotable that the plan contained the third stage, which is contrary to Yu' stestimony.
However, this operation plan underwent a revision at the last
moment before the outbreak of the war. It was because Kim II Sungwanted to change the plan on June 20 when he received reports that theSouth Korean troops in Ongjin seemed to perceive a threat from theNorth and made a reinforcement by putting more troops in positions.
He suggested to Stalin through Shtykov that it seemed better to launch
all-out attacks on the whole front along the 38th parallel rather than toattack Ongjin first. Finding Kim's idea sound, Stalin gave consent to
the idea of revising the original plan on June 2 1 ,Although the Soviet archival documents released so far do notcontain detailed contents of the final plan, the Razuvaev report contains
a four-stage operation plan for the war. It does not tell us exactly when
the plan was redrawn; it must have been the final plan revised as aresult of the above-mentioned agreement between Stalin and Kim II
Sung on June 21. It is worth quoting in length.
22

23Planning of the Counterattack of the Korean Peoples' Army
After the South Korean Army's attack on the territory of North
Korea, the Headquarters of the Korean Peoples' Army made, based on
the governmental directive of DPRK, following decision. "As our
Army is always prepared for a counterattack we begin actions from thepresent state of deployment." For this, an operational plan wasestablished, which ordered units of the Korean Peoples' Army to switch
simultaneously to a counterattack all along the 38th parallel.
Considering characteristics of the relief of the terrain and relative
importance of operational fronts, the main attack was planned on theInternational Journal of Korean Studies• Spring/Summer 2001

17

Yesung River Area, Siniuri[i.e. Pochon]-Uijongbu road, toward thegeneral direction of Syananri ( ? ) - Seoul - Suwon - Ansung.
The depth of the operation is 350 km.
Operation for the liberation of South Korea is divided into
following four stages.
The First Stage: The army is to destroy the main force of the enemy
in the northern and the southern area not far from of the 38th parallel;
to occupy Seoul and advance to the line of Suwon - Wonju; at the sametime, to liberate the Yonan and the Ongjin peninsulas from the enemy
in the west of River Yesung, and to occupy Samchok on the east coast.
This stage lasts five days and the operational depth is 90 km.
The Second Stage: The army is to destroy enemy reserve troops
that will be put from the rear, and the main attacking force of the army
is to advance to the line of Chonan - Chechon. It lasts four days and theoperational depth is 40-90 km.
The Third Stage: The army is to make a pursuit after retreating
enemy and to advance to the line of Taejon - Sunsan. The operational
depth is 90 km and it lasts 10 days.
The Fourth Stage: While continuing pursuit of the enemy, the army
is to destroy remaining resistance centers and the main attacking forceof the army is to advance to the line of Imsil - Kochang - Waegwan Pohangdong. At the same time, Units maneuvering along the western
coast are to advance toward the northwestern area of Pusan, to cut
retreating routes of remaining units of the South Korean Army and todestroy them completely. The operational depth is 40-80 km.
24

As shown in the quotation, the idea of initial attack on the Ongjin
peninsula in the previous plan was incorporated as a part into the firststage of the newly revised plan, i.e. simultaneous attacks all along the38th parallel. What attracts our attention is the time assigned toaccomplish each stage. Although the time needed to finish the last, thefourth stage, was not specified in the plan, it can be presumed that it
was 8-13 days since we have another Soviet document which informs
us that the plan envisaged the North Korean Army to need 22-27 days
to occupy the whole territory of South Korea. The Razuvaev report
also contains detailed missions and operation plans for frontline
divisions and brigades. Summaries of the operation plans were
presented in detail up to the regimental level in the report, which wewill discuss briefly in following pages.
One point that attracts our attention in the Razuvaev report is thatit described the title of the plan as well as the war's beginning as a"counterattack" to a South Korean initial attack. It is interesting to notethat the Razuvaev report said that the North Korean Army had a
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18International Journal of Korean Studies• Volume V, Number 1

prepared operational plan, but at the same time it was still called"counterattack" in the internal report. It was probably intended todeceive future readers who were not well versed in the discussion of thewar plan amongst top level leaders. Or it was written so to allude that
there were South Korean attacks before the North Korean Armylaunched the planned "counterattack." Be that as it may, the North
Korean government announced clearly on the morning of June 25, "On
the early daybreak of today, the so called Defence Army units of theSouth Korean puppet regime began sudden attacks into the north of the
3 8th parrallel all along the 3 8th parallel... ," The term "counterattack"was only a forgery to conceal the real nature of the invasion in light of
the fact that it was already discussed between Stalin and Kim II Sung
in April 1950. The cause of the war presented in the Razuvaev report
is not compatible with what the North Korean government explained onJune 25, 1950.
26

The Outbreak of the Korean War
Ongjin

Early on the morning of June 25, 1950, on the far west side of the
38th parallel, roaring sounds of gunfire signaled the start of the Korean
War. For more than 50 years, there has been a continuous debate on
who started the war in Ongjin. For a time, although Gupta, Cumings
and others have insisted that the South Korean 17th Regiment in Ongjin
must have started an attack, their inference was no more than ahypothesis based on some dubious testimonies and circumstantial facts
without concrete evidence. But now in addition to the discussion
between Stalin and Kim II Sung in Moscow in April 1950, there areplentiful direct and indirect evidences that the North Koreans provoked
the war in the area.
As we have seen above, the plan for an attack on the Ongjin
peninsula was contemplated in the North Korean Army well before
June 25. Although the idea of preliminary attack in Ongjin was
discarded in a revised operation plan on June 21, the attack in the front
started at 4 o'clock on June 25, about 40 minutes earlier than those inother fronts. The daily operational journal of the Soviet General Staff
on the Korean War, mentioning Ongjin, Kaesung, Syniuri, Chunchun
and Kangneung as places where battles occurred, recorded "The North
Korean Army's assault was switched to counterattack at 4:40 after
preparatory artillery fire for 20 to 40 minutes, and other units anddivisions advanced 3 to 5 km during the first 3 hours after the start of
the war." Although the report mentions "counterattack," we haveevidence that it could not be considered as such.
The North Korean attack on that day was meticulously planned
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International Journal of Korean Studies• Spring/Summer 2001

19

beforehand. In the Razuvaev report, we can find a detailed operation
plan on the Ongjin peninsula: 7 battalions of the 3rd Border Security
Brigade and the 1st Regiment of the North Korean 6th Division had
concrete missions and directions of attack. The plan demanded theseunits to occupy the peninsula within two days. A captured North
Korean document clearly shows that the plan was drawn well ahead oftime. The title of the document was "Reconnaissance Directive No. 8,"
and it was issued on June 21 by the 3rd Brigade in Jukchon. It gave
each battalion concrete reconnaissance missions to be accomplished ineach projected stage of the attack. For this, it presented in the form ofa table directions of attack for seven battalions of the 3rd Brigade, apolice battalion and the 1st Regiment. If we compare this with the
Ongj in operation plan in the Razuvaev report, one cannot but recognizethat both contain the identical operational concept. Thus there is no
doubt that the North Korean units north of the 38th parallel on the
Ongjin peninsula already had an established operation plan at least fourdays ahead of the war and prepared for it. Another captured North
Korean document has a title "Rear Order No. 1," and it was issued onJune 24 by the Rear Section commander of the 1 st Regiment, Han TaeSook. It instructed units how to collect "war trophies" and provided
them with a form to record captured items. Units had been preparing
the battle, which was to occur according to the above-mentioned plan.
28

29

30

Even after mentioning the established operation plan, the Razuvaev
report described the initial battle on the Ongj in peninsula as if the North
Korean troops switched to a counterattack responding to a South
Korean attack. It reads "On June 25, units of the 3rd Border Security
Brigade in the Ongjin peninsula stopped enemy attacks on the north of
the 38th parallel by previously organized fires and, after executing
preparatory artillery fires for 30 minutes, began to attack the enemy
which had switched to defense. The Brigade advanced 2-2.5 km on theaxis of the main attack at around 6 o'clock."
However, it isunbelievable that the South Korean units in the Ongjin peninsula began
to attack to meet exactly the timing of the early morning of June 25 that
Kim II Sung set as D day H hour of the war already on June 15.
The official formula, "the South Korean attack and the North
Korean counterattack," was well abided by war reporters. I identified
four articles dealing with stories of initial engagements on the Ongjin
peninsula in North Korean newspapers issued in July and August 1950
and found that the articles written by war reporters all followed theformula when they described the start of the war in Ongjin. At the
beginning of those articles, reporters all condemned briefly the vicious
nature of Rhee's regime and the South Korean attack on the North on
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International Journal of Korean Studies• Volume V, Number 1that morning. However, contents of the battle stories in the articles were
all contrary to the formula. North Korean soldiers infiltrated in darkness
into areas behind South Korean positions, trying not to be detected by
the South Korean soldiers. They succeeded in this and accomplishedmissions like lifting mines and laying communication cables. Afteraccomplishing their secret missions, they heard that their artillery
opened fire and their infantry comrades began to attack and smashedthe South Korean positions without meeting any serious obstacles. In
the articles we do not have any inkling of when the North Korean
soldiers encountered the advancing South Korean soldiers, where they
fired against them to stop the attack, or how the southerners retreatedthen. If South Korean units attacked first, it must have been impossible
for the war reporters to miss such stories in their accounts. North
Korean war reporters followed the official formula but they could notdescribe what North Korean soldiers had not seen and therefore had had
nothing to tell them about.
32

There is no doubt that the attack was launched by the North Korean
units following the well-prepared plan on the Ongjin peninsula.
Achieving superiority in numbers of soldiers by three times, as well as
in artillery firepower, the North Korean troops on the Ongjin peninsula
could occupy Ongjin city by 8 o'clock p.m. on the first day of the war
and swept the whole area on June 26. The officers and soldiers of theSouth Korean 17th Regiment could not stand the assault and evacuatedthemselves to Inchon and Kunsan using requisitioned civilian boats anda Navy LST.
33

Kaesong

In Kaesong, which the North Korean government referred to as oneof the points the South Korean Army attacked across the 38th parallelin early morning of June 25, the first attack began somewhat later thanon the Ongjin peninsula. In this area, the North Korean units thatlaunched attacks were the 13th and the 15th Regiments of the 6th
Division. According to the Razuvaev report, these units were given
mission "to be prepared for battle, to stop the enemy attack directed
toward Kumchon and smash the enemy main force on the 3 8th parallel,
and then to switch to a counterattack according to a special order."According to the report, the 13th Regiment was to occupy Kaesung, toreach the southern end of the Kaepung peninsula on the first day, andto land on the Kimpo peninsula on the early morning of the second day
in order to attack Yongdongpo. The 15th Regiment was to advancetoward Kangwha, and an element of the division was given mission totake Inchon.
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There are an ample number of captured North Korean documentsthat show concrete actions after the movement of the two regimentsfrom Sariwon to Jaeryong to assembling points, 8 km north of Kaesong
between June 13 and June 18. After arriving at Bingodong just north of
Kaesung, the commander of the 13th Regiment gave an oral order at
18:35 on June 23, which is the only known North Korean combat orderat the regimental level. The mission of the 13th Regiment was tocapture Kaesong and to advance southward to force a river-crossing
operation on the Han River. It mentions that the preparation for attack
should be finished by 24:00 on June 2 3 . The contents of the orderwritten down in an officer's notebook can be checked against themission given to the regiment in the operation plan of the North Korean
6th Division in the Razuvaev report. Both coincide with each other incontents except in detail.
35

36

Although the Razuvaev report mentioned "counterattack" indescribing the initial battles of the North Korean units in Kaesong, acaptured memo of a North Korean officer serving in a battalion of the
13th Regiment shows a vividly real situation of units from the eve up
to the outbreak of the war. His unit arrived at Bingodong just north of
Kaesung at 21:30, June 24, and began to prepare for the attack. Soldiers
were distributed rations for the next day's breakfast beforehand at
24:00. During the night, his battalion commander returned to the unit
after having had confirmed with the regimental commander the timingof the attack set by the order, according to which the artillery was tostart bombardment at 4:40 and the infantry to launch the assault at 5.00.
The timetable was as follows: to occupy starting positions at 2:30 ofJune 25, to begin the attack at 4:40 and to begin assault at 5:00. Upon
receiving orders, company commanders led their men to starting
positions and had the latter concealed. It was raining and soldiers
underwent many hardships. However, when the time for action arrived,
the expected artillery fire did not begin. In reality, the artillery
bombardment was postponed by the higher command, as the latter
considered that the effect of gunfire would be not so good because of
mist. At 5:15, the artillery opened fire and the infantry sprang into
attack at 5:25. His unit rushed into the enemy positions and easily
occupied them. In this fairly detailed account of battle scenes, we do
not find any hint that his unit encountered advancing South Korean
soldiers whatsoever.
Another captured notebook of an officer serving in the 13th
Regiment illustrates the fact that North Koreans in this sector did
prepare the attack very carefully. It records the following scribbles:
37

On June 16: assembly of the unit.

22International Journal of Korean Studies • Volume V, Number 1

On June 18: investigation of the depth of the Han River between Inchon
and Seoul
On June 23: high-ranking advisors gave following instructions
Operation for Unification
Signals and [need of] uniformity in using them
Need to continue advance under any circumstances
On June 25: at 4:40 a.m. preparation for the artillery bombardment;
at 5:25 began attack; at 6:40 assaulted on Kaesung.
38

Having received sudden blows accompanied with tank fire from theNorth, the 12th Regiment of the South Korean 1st Division lost
Kaesung within two hours after the war began. The regiment, which
was filled with only one half of its personnel because of overnight
parlor given to soldiers on the previous day, could not sustain theassault and dispersed quickly. The North Korean Regiments quickly
drove South Korean soldiers out of the Yonan peninsula on the firstday, and reached the southern end of the peninsula and preparedtomorrow's landing. On the morning of June 26, an advance party of
the 13th Regiment, the North Korean 6th Division, could cross the Han
River using civilian boats. However, advance of the landed party
toward Kimpo airfield was delayed because the North Korean 6th
Division failed to make sufficient artillery pieces and tanks cross theHan River until June 28 owing to strafing and bombing of Americanfighters actively participating in the war from June 27 and hard fighting
by a growing number of South Korean soldiers in the area.
39

Seoul Area:

Yonchonand Pochon

Seoul was the main objective of the North Korean operation plan.
The plan assigned four infantry divisions and one tank brigade to thisarea. The North Korean 1 st Division with a tank regiment attached wasto break the 38th parallel first and then cross the Imjin River toapproach Seoul from the direction of northwest. Since the division wasto cross the Imjin River and to take an important part in occupying
Seoul, the only pontoon battalion the army had was assigned to thisdivision. The 4th Division was to advance from Yonchon throughTongduchon to Uijongbu and the 3rd Division from Yongpyong
through Pochon to Uijongbu with two regiments of the 105th Tank
Brigade attached to these two divisions. These divisions were given
mission to attack Seoul on the second day of the war. The 13th Division
kept in reserve in Tosong was to follow them.
As for North Korean activities in this area, a number of captured
documents have long been examined and scrutinized by historians. A
reconnaissance order issued to the North Korean 4th Division on June
18,1950, and the Combat Order No. 1 issued by the commander of the
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International Journal of Korean Studies •Spring/Summer

2001

23

division on June 22, 1950, have long been considered as apparent
evidences of the preplanned attack of the North Korean Army on theSouth. However, Cumings, who had tried to find the original
documents written in Korean but found that they were not kept in the
National Archives, suspected the authenticity of the documents. Since
he doubted the fact that Russians were involved in the planning of thewar, the existence of captured Russian materials embarrassed him andhe suspected the authenticity of photostatic copies of the Russianoriginal. Now with the Razuvaev report in hand as well as with theknowledge that Russian advisers gave a hand in drawing the divisional
operation orders, there is no ground to doubt the authenticity of those
captured documents.
41

Apart from the operation documents on the division level alreadyknown, a number of captured documents of lesser units in the North
Korean 3rd and 4th Division illustrate that North Korean troops carriedout preparation for the war carefully in this area. Captured documentsof the artillery regiment of the 4th Division, as well as those of abattalion under the regiment, show that units of the 4th Division
Artillery Regiment carried out a reconnaissance mission, planning
artillery fire systematically. The artillery regiment produced on June 22
and 23 "Fire Plan," "Reconnaissance Directive No. 1,""Reconnaissance Map," "Maneuver Plan of Units," and otherdocuments. Some of the documents were signed by the commander, Ro
Shuk Sung, of the 16th Regiment, to which the 3rd Battalion of theartillery regiment was attached. A political officer of a self-propelled
gun battalion of the North Korean 3rd Division made a report on thepolitical mood and high morale of soldiers expecting "Unification War"on June 21. Soldiers were informed by political officers of the South
Korean government's objection to the North Korean proposal ofpeaceful unification as a means of encouraging soldiers' hostility
toward the South.
Some captured North Korean documents record detailed actions ofunits in this area on the eve and on the morning of June 25. The 1st
Battalion of the 4th North Korean Division Artillery Regiment began
to write a [Daily] War Diary, which had been written up to the date ofAugust 15. On activities of the unit on June 24, the record is written,"All preparations for battle have been completed by 24:00." In thediary entry of June 25, the writer wrote, "Received the order to begin
attack at 4:40 of the 25th from the regimental artillery commander."This diary on the same date recorded that the artillery opened fire at
4:40 and the infantry troops [of the 18th Regiment of the 4th Divisionthat it supported] began to attack at 4:50 under the support of theartillery fire and successfully crossed the [Hantan] river and took the
42

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45

first and the second lines of enemy positions.
In the battle reports three battalion commanders of the 7th
Regiment of 3rd North Korean Division reported to their regimental
commander on June 29,1950, it is shown most vividly how the North
Korean soldiers on the 38th parallel acted on the very morning of June
25. These units were to attack on the Chorwon-Seoul main road.
Soldiers moved into starting positions just north of the 3 8th parallel on
the night of June 24/25 and awaited a signal to attack in the rainy
weather. The 1st Battalion occupied the starting positions at 2 o'clock,June 25, awaited an order for attack, and sprang out of trenches toattack at 5 o'clock following the regimental commander's sign of go.
The 2nd Battalion departed the assembly area at 8 o'clock on June 24
and arrived in starting positions at 3:30 on June 25. It began to attack
20 minutes later than the artillery, which began to fire at 4:40. The
commander of the 3rd Battalion reported that his companies occupied
starting positions at 3:30 and began attack at 5 o'clock. Although thebattle reports describe fairly minute events in the morning, one cannot
find any statement of South Korean soldiers' advance to the north
before the beginning of the North Korean artillery's bombardment at
4:40. A commader in charge of the most advanced North Korean tankcompany in this sector wrote his experience in a military journal issuedin August 1950. The tank company began to advance at 7:15 andarrived at Pochon around noon.
46

47

It is obvious that the North Korean units attacked the South Korean
Army first in this area as well. The attack in the direction of Seoul
began at 4:40,40 minutes later than that on the Ongjin peninsula. Thereis no need to repeat the process of the battle for Seoul in detail, about
which many books have been written. The South Korean 7th Division
was caught by surprise and retreated in dismay on that morning.
Although it recovered from the initial disorder in the afternoon of June
25 around Uijongbu and launched a counterattack with the help of asegment of the 5th Division on the next morning, it failed. Frequently,
soldiers with no effective weapon to destroy North Korean tanks began
to retreat upon seeing the appearance of the T-34 tanks. However, someunits put up with the attack heroically, trying suicidal attack on thetanks by using a bunch of explosives usually made of grenades and an
81mm mortar shell. The North Korean 3rd and 4th Divisions supported
by tank units could enter Seoul in the early morning of June 28.
Accomplishment of the mission to occupy Seoul by these two divisions
was delayed by two days against the operational plan. Still, the 1st
North Korean Division could not enter Seoul on June 28, encountering
the stiff resistance of the 1st South Korean Division around Munsan
and Bongilchon.

International Journal of Korean Studies• Spring/Summer 2001

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The performance of the two North Korean divisions in this area washighly praised by the North Korean government for capturing Seoul,
and the occupation of Seoul within four days was indeed an achivement
for the recently created army. However, the Soviet advisers were
somewhat critical of the army's performance, especially of theleadership of high-ranking generals and officers. They lacked initiativeand boldness to achieve more than those objectives assigned in theoperation plan. Especially, the Soviet advisors accused North Korean
commanders of neglecting the importance of speed and successive
pressure on the enemy in the offensive. The commanders in the 105
Tank Brigade were criticized for losing time to capture a bridge on the
Han River in advancing toward Seoul.
48

Chunchonand Hongchon

Although Seoul was the most important objective for the North
Korean Army, Soviet military advisers put great importance on
operations of the 2nd and 12th Divisions and the 12th Motorcycle
Regiment, which were to occupy Chunchon on June 25 and Hongchon
on June 26 and then to advance quickly to the southwest direction to cut
the rear of the main force of the South Korean Army in Suwon. The
newly created 15th Division was to be kept in reserve in Kimhwa. It
depended on successful operations of the 2nd and 12th Divisions
whether the North Korean Army could succeed in encircling the mainSouth Korean force around Seoul.
The 2nd Division arrived in Hwachon north of the 38th parallel on
June 17 and prepared the attack. According to a captured document of
the 2nd Division, commanders and staff officers carried out a commandreconnaissance on June 2 1 . The engineer units attached to theDivision carried out the mission of lifting South Korean mines laid justsouth of the parallel from 7 o'clock p. m. June 24 to 4 o'clock a.m. June
25 in order to guarantee a smooth advance of the attacking 4th
Regiment of the division toward Chunchon.
The 12th Division, which was to advance to Hongchon, arrived in
Inje (north of Hongchon) somewhat late for unknown reasons on June
2 3 . Although the division was composed of mostly battle-experienced
Korean-Chinese soldiers, the late arrival of the division must have had
a harmful effect on preparatory work for the impending operation.
On this front, the two divisions achieved a surprise to the enemy
and advanced successfully on the morning of June 25, but they soon
encountered a number of difficulties and could not continue theadvance as expected. The problems for these divisions were mixed.
Generally the high mountains and narrow roads running through stiff
valleys in this area deprived the North Korean units of freedom of
49

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International Journal of Korean Studies • Volume V, Number 1

action; the South Korean 6th Division was quite well prepared for battle
by exploiting this advantage of the terrain. Especially, the South Korean
6th Division was keeping an eye on the front because it knew fromreconnaissance activities that a significant number of North Korean
troops and pieces of mechanized equipment were concentrated on thenorth of the 3 8th parallel, although it did not consider the concentration
as a preparation for an all-out attack on the South and failed to predict
exactly when the enemy would attack or whether they would reallylaunch an attack or not.
Retarded advance of the two divisions was caused by thestereotyped method of maneuver as well. The North Korean 2nd
Division repeated frontal attacks along the road from Hwachon to
Chunchon with self-propelled guns on June 25 and 26. The 7th
Regiment of the South Korean 6th Division made an ambush attack on
the advance party of self-propelled guns and succeeded in destroying
two guns on the afternoon of June 25. Having retreated from thesetback and reorganized disheartened troops, the 2nd Division reopened
frontal attacks repeatedly along the narrow road and nearby flat grounds
north of Chunchon, but South Korean soldiers and artillerymen played
havoc with the 4th and 17th Regiments of the North Korean 2nd
Division and could defend Chunchon until noon June 28. The progressof operations of the North Korean 12th Division was retarded by theskillful delaying actions of the 2nd Regiment of the South Korean 6th
Division using successive mountain ridges and making an ambush
antitank attack on an S-curve in a defile north of Hongchon on June 28.
The North Koreans lost six or eight tanks in the engagement by theSouth Korean storm troops attacking with Molotov cocktails.
Frightened by the casualties, the 12th North Korean Division became
cautious in advancing and could reach Hongchon only on the night ofJune 30. The two divisions eventually occupied Chunchon andHongchon, but the possibility of encircling the South Korean main
force diminished. Delay of operations in this sector disrupted the hopeof the North Korean Army to cut early the rear of the enemy anddestroy them, which was the bold scheme of Russian planners of theinvasion.
East Sea

Coast

Although the East Sea Coast was considered a secondary andisolated battle area in the North Korean operation plan, the operational
planners sought a small-scale encirclement under the cover of the Navy.
They put the 1st Border Security Brigade, the 5th Division, as troops
for the frontal attack along Sokcho-Kangneung road and had infiltration
troops composed of one guerrilla-type regiment (the 766 Unit) and two

International Journal of Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 2001

27

marine battalions (the 945 Unit) supported by the Navy land on several
points along the sea coast south of the 38th parallel in order to cut therear of the South Korean 8th Division in Kangneung.
As the plan demanded the North Korean Navy to ship the 766 Unit
and the 945 Unit and to protect them in landing operations, the navy
had torpedo boats and marine units in Wonsan base prepared forlanding battle from the middle of June 1950. A captured file of"Morning Reports" of the Wonsan naval base is an interesting source
to look into the navy's participation in the war. It seems that
preparation for the war in the navy was ordered around June 13-14.
From that date on, the nature of training in the Navy began to switchfrom base training to fire exercises on the sea. It must have been that
the Navy received a combat order around June 20. The entry of"Morning Report" of June 21 said, "We made each unit prepare a battle
following the order from above." On June 23, the "Morning Report"
recorded, "[Torpedo boats] Nos. 21,24,25,42,43 are docked in the 7th
dockyard and other fighting boats are all mobilized to the sea. The 945
Unit, the 588 Unit are fully prepared for a battle." The report on June
24 said, "One anti-tank gun platoon was assigned to the generalmobilization." It was reported in the "Morning Report" on June 25,"[Torpedo boats Nos.] 11, 12, 13, 14, 21, 23, 31, 32, 33, 34 departed
Sokcho and crossed the 38th parallel."On June 25, seven battalions of the 1 st Border Security Brigade andthe 10th Regiment of the North Korean 5th Division lunged across the
38th parallel at 5:40 under the artillery support of the 5th Division. The
first wave of the landing troops, composed of two marine battalions and
1,000 partisan troops, landed on Aninjin south of Kangneung at 5
o'clock. The second wave, composed of600 partisan troops (766 Unit),
landed on Urchin south of Samchok.
Although the South Korean 8th Division, composed of only two
regiments, the 10th and the 21st,- was divided in Kangneung andSamchok, the division commander could succeed in delaying the North
Korean attack by consolidating the troops in Kangneung and thendelivering a defense battle on the north of Kangneung until June 28.
After entering Kangneung, the 5th North Korean Division, replacing
the advancing 1st Brigade as the spearhead attacking troops, pursued
the South Korean 8th Division retreating from Kangneung toward
Wonju but failed to catch up with it. The North Korean troops in this
sector could occupy Kangneung on June 28 and Samchuk on July 3, butthey failed to encircle and destroy the South Korean 8th Division,
which was the expectation of operation planners.
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International Journal of Korean Studies• Volume V, Number 1

Conclusion
In studying the Korean War, clarification of the war's actual
beginning is not sufficient but necessary work for a proper
understanding of the political nature as well as the origins of the war.
In this paper, I tried to show the interconnection between the North
Korean plans and preparations for the war and the military actions on
the front at the outbreak of the war. As a result, we find that there is no
doubt that the North was well prepared for the war and they were thefirst to break the 3 8th parallel on June 25,1950, following a systematic
operation plan.
In the light of this study, Cumings' scrupulous endeavor to show
the possibility that the South Korean Army provoked the first attack on
the Ongjin peninsula turns out to be a groundless hypothesis. Theremight have been exchanges of fire between the North and the South inseveral days before the outbreak of war, but they cannot be considered
as a cause of the war. Kim II Sung knew far ahead in January 1950 that
the South would not attack first, and he decided to choose a military
solution from his side. Stalin, with Kim II Sung, concocted a
provoking attack on the Ongjin peninsula to evoke a South Korean
response and to make it a pretext for an all-out attack of the North
Korean Army. It was the event at early dawn on June 25 that Kim II
Sung announced as a South Korean invasion. But it is clear now that theSouth Korean attack on that early morning of June 25, 1950, did notexist in reality except in propaganda of the North Korean government.
As for the North Korean Army's staying in Seoul for three days, thereason for it was not from a deliberate political consideration but
mainly from military impediments. We can concede that there
prevailed euphoria among the North Korean leaders on June 28 and 29,
1950, and they stopped the military action in the Seoul area for a day.
However, the euphoria did not last long. They tried to make the wholearmy cross the Han River from the evening of June 29, and a part of theinfantry troops with light artillery pieces succeeded in crossing theriver, but they failed to make tanks and heavy artillery troops cross theriver until July 3. Causes for the failure are many: they hopelessly
lacked river-crossing vessels and equipment; the 105 Tank Brigade
advanced too slowly to capture a bridge on Han River in time; South
Korean soldiers fought desperately, devoting their lives in order torepulse North Korean attempts to cross the Han River; the 2nd and 12th
Divisions and the 12th Motorcycle Regiment could not approach
Suwon early enough to cut or to threaten retreating South Korean units;
and an early participation in the war of fighters of the U. S. Fifth Air
Force in Japan caused serious damages on the North Korean units that
had been trying to cross the river since June 27. The casualties of the
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International Journal of Korean Studies• Spring/Summer 200129

North Korean Army between June 25 and July 5 were 7,396 with 1,593
men killed and 5,803 men wounded, which was no slight sacrifice.
The hypothesis that the North Korean leaders voluntarily stopped
military action and were planning to make a negotiated peace withmoderate South Korean politicians is simply against facts. The North
Korean Army had a plan to occupy the whole area of South Korea.
They continued fighting since the beginning of the war and resumed
actions to cross the Han River in the Seoul area on June 29. In addition,
there is no evidence that the North Korean leaders suggested a political
proposal to discuss with South Korean politicians. In North Korean
wartime newspapers, we only find the fact that the North Koreanauthority admonished South Korean politicians to give "voluntary
surrender," rather than inviting them to a negotiation table or to apolitical meeting for peaceful unification of the country.
If there remains an agenda for studying the issue of the war's
beginning, it would be whether Mac Arthur was aware of the timing of
the North Korean invasion before the war. We need scrupulous
documentary research on the issue. However, we have found so far, ina top secret G-3 report of the Far East Command, only the fact that the
Korean problem had had a lower profile in comparison with the
Formosa issue in MacArthur's headquarters in Tokyo before the war,and it had no emergency operation plan except for a plan for evacuationof American diplomatic personnel and civilians in Korea to Japan incase of an all-out North Korean attack on South Korea.

59

60

61

Notes
1 Rodong Sinmun, June 26, 1950; ChosUn Central New Agency, Chosun Central
Yearbook 1951-1952 (in Korean) (Pyongyang, 1952), pp. 9 0 - 9 1 .
2 Karunakar Gupta, "How did the Korean War Begin?" The China Quarterly, No. 52(October-December 1972), pp. 699-716; Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean
War: Vol. II The Roaring of the Cataract 1947-1950 (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton
University Press, 1990), pp. 568-576.
3 DPRK, History, of the Just Fatherland Liberation War of the Korean People (inKorean) (Pyongyang, 1959); DPRK, History of the Fatherland Liberation War (inKorean) Vol. 1 (Pyongyang, 1981), pp. 5-78.
4 Kathryn Weathersby, "New Findings on the Korean War," Bulletin of the Cold War
International History Project 3 (Fall 1993), pp. 15-18; Kathryn Warthersby, "To
Attack, or Not to Attack? Stalin, Kim Il-sung, and the Prelude to W a r , " Bulletin of theCold War International History Project 5 (Spring 1995); "New Russian Documents on
the Korean War," Bulletin of the Cold War International History Project 6-7 (Winter1995/1996), pp. 36-39; Evgeniy P. Bajanov & Natalia Bajanova, "The Korean
Conflict, 1950-1953: The Most Mysterious War of the 20th Century - Based on Secret

30

International Journal of Korean Studies • Volume V, Number 1

Soviet Archives," (unpublished manuscript, 1997) pp. 36-42.
5 Cumings, op. cit, pp. 615-18.
6 William Stueck, The Korean War: An International History (Princeton, New Jersey:
Princeton University Press, 1995), p. 10.
7 Bok-Ryong Sin, "Origins of the Korean War - Focusing on Kim II Sung's Decision
to Make the War," (in Korean) Korean Journal of Political Science, V o l . 30, No. 3(Autumn 1996), pp. 163-82. Another scholar seems to accept the plausibility of thisview. See Sang-ln Chun, "Social History of the Korean War," presented to the 4thInternational Conference of the Institute for Modern Korean Studies: Korea and the
Korean War (The Graduate School of International Studies, Yonsei University, Oct.
6, 2000), p. 122.
8 It is a widely shared view of a group of scholars although they are not able to give
concrete evidence. See Dong-Choon Kim, War and Society (in Korean)(Seoul:
Tolbaegae, 2000), pp. 65-76.
9 V. N. Razuvaev, "NachaPniku General'nogo Shtaba SA Generalu Armii Tovarishchu
Shtemenko S. M.: Deistviia voisk KNA; Deistviia artillerii KNA; Deistviia
Bronetankovykh I Mekhnizirovannykh voisk KNA," Arkhiv TsAMO, Fond 16, Opis'
3139, Delo 128,11. 23-239.
10 General'nyi Shtab, Dal'nevostochnoe napravlenie [Geneal Staff, Far Eastern
Bureau], "Zhurnal boevykh deistvii v Koree (c 25 iiunia 1950 g. po 31 dekavria 1951g.)," Arkhiv TsAMO, Fond 16, Opis' 3139, Delo 133,11. 1-327.
11 National Archives [ will be abbreviated hereafter as NA ], RG 242 Captured Enemy
Documents (North Korea); Sun-Joo Bang, "Introduction to Captured North Korean
Documents, Part 1" [in Korean], Asian Culture, Vol. 1 (1986), pp. 41-156.
12 Bajanov & Bajanova, "The Korean Conflict, 1950-1953," p. 41.
13 Ibid., p. 42.
14 Ibid.
15Ibid.
16 Telegram Shtykov to Zakharov, July 26, 1950, in Weathersby, "New RussianDocuments on the Korean War," p. 39. For detailed information of the movement of
the North Korean divisions during the period, see Razuvaev, "Nachal'niku
General'nogo Shtaba SA Generalu Armii Tovarishchu Shtemenko S. M.: Deistviia
voisk KNA", pp. 14-15.
17 Gen. Yu, Sung-Chol, "My Testimony," [in Korean] Hangook Ilbo, November 9,
1990.
18 Telegram Shtykov to Zakharov, July 26, 1950, in Weathersby, "New RussianDocuments on the Korean War," p. 39; Joo, Yong-Bok, The Korean War That I
Experienced (in Korean) (Seoul: Koryowon, 1990), Vol. 1, pp. 237-40.
19 NA RG 242 Captured North Korean Documents (North Korea) ATIS, Doc. No.
200564. These documents, in a state of photostat, are kept in the archive. Cumings, op.
cit., Vol. II, pp. 589-590.
20 NA RG 242 Captured Enemy Documents (North Korea), ATIS Doc. No. 201103.
"Order - On the Special Combat Training Program and Its Mission." (in Korean)
21 "N. K. preemptive strike plan in '50 made public in Russia," Korea Herald, April
30, 1992. The original title in the copy of the operation map was "Plan pervogo udara
KNA"(Plan of the First Strike of the Korean Peoples' Army) but was wrongly
translated as "preemptive strike plan" of the Korean Peoples' Army.
22 Bajanov & Bajanova, "The Korean Conflict, 1950-1953," pp. 58-59.
23 Ibid., pp. 59-60.
24 Razuvaev, op. cit., pp. 15-16.
25 Weathersby, "New Findings on the Korean War," p. 16.
26 The Chosun Central News Agency, Chosun Central Yearbook 1951-1952(Pyongyang, 1952), p. 90.

International Journal of Korean Studies• Spring/Summer 2001

31

27 General'nyi Shtab, Dal'nevostochnoe napravlenie, "Zhurnal boevykh deistvii v
Koree," p. 3.
28 Razuvaev, "Nachal'niku General'nogo Shtaba SA Generalu Armii Tovarishchu
Shtemenko S. M.: Deistviia voisk KNA", pp. 18-20. Appleman misidentified the 1st
Regiment as the 14th in his book and it should be corrected. See Roy Appleman, Southto the Naktong, North to the Yalu (Washington, D. C, Office of the Chief of Military
History, 1961), p. 22.
29 NA RG 242 Captured Enemy Documents (North Korea), ATIS Doc. No. 200174.
"Reconnaissance Directive No. 8." (in Korean)
30 NA RG 242 Captured Enemy Documents (North Korea), ATIS Doc. No. 200177"Rear Order No. 1 - On Establishing an Organization for War Trophies Captured." (inKorean)31 Razuvaev, o p . cit., p. 2 0 .
32 Rodong Sinmun, July 2, July 8, July 19, 1950; Chosun Inminbo, August 19, 1950.
For a detailed discussion of these articles, see my "North Korean Operation Plans andthe Opening Battle of the Korean War on the Ongjin Peninsula,"[in Korean] Military
History, V o l . 41. (December 2000), pp. 333-39.
33 Razuvaev, op. cit., pp. 18-22. It is notable that the report does not mention"occupation of Haeju by a South Korean unit," which Cummings believed had
occurred.
34 Ibid., p. 2 3 .
35 Sun-Joo Bang, op. cit., pp. 65 and 95.
36 Razuvaev, op. cit., p. 22.
37 NA RG 242 Captured Enemy Documents (North Korea) ATIS Doc. No. 200492 [anofficer's memo] [in Korean].
38 "Diary of an officer named Han Sin Ho," quoted from Sun-Joo Bang, op. cit., p. 76.
39 Razuvaev, op. cit., pp. 22-24.
40 Ibid., pp. 2 6 - 2 8 .
41 Cumings, o p . cit., pp. 5 8 8 - 9 2 .
42 NA RG 242 Captured Enemy Documents (North Korea) ATIS Doc. No. 200522"A File on Combat Documents in a Artillery Battalion in Attack." (in Korean)
43 Sun-Joo Bang, op. cit., pp. 107-111.
44 NA RG 242 Captured Enemy Documents(North Korea) ATIS Doc. No. 200446"War Diary"
45 Ibid.
46 NA RG 242 Captured Enemy Documents (North Korea) ATIS Doc. No. 200261"Battle Report." (in Korean)
47 Kim, Jae-Bok, "On an Independent Tank Company As an Advance Guard," (inKorean) Military Knowledge (August 1950), pp. 19-20. NA RG 242 Captured Enemy
Documents (North Korea), ATIS Doc. No. 200858.
48 Razuvaev, op. cit., p. 43.
49 Ibid., pp. 15, 17, 28-29.
50 NA RG 242 Captured Enemy Documents (North Korea) ATIS Doc. No. 201103"Preliminary Order." (in Korean)
51 Sun-Joo Bang, op. cit., pp. 61-62.
52 Razuvaev, op. cit., p. 15.
53 Razuvaev, op. cit., pp. 18,37. Roy Appleman misidentified the 1 st Border Security
Brigade, which attacked first, as a vanguard toward Kangneung on June 25 as the 5th
Division. It must be corrected. The 10th Regiment of the 5th Division was to follow
the 1 st Brigade as a reserve. The name of the marine regiment that landed on the east
coast was the 945 Unit, not the 549 Unit as Roy Appleman identified based on POW

32

International Journal of Korean Studies• Volume V, Number 1

interrogation results. It must be corrected as well. See General'nyi Shtab,
Dal'nevostochnoe napravlenie, "Zhurnal boevykh deistvii v Koree," p. 1.
54 [The North Korean Wonsan Naval Base], "Morning Reports (May 1 to September
28, 1950)." (in Korean)
55 General'nyi Shtab, Dal'nevostochnoe napravlenie, "Zhurnal boevykh deistvii v
Koree," pp. 3-4.
56 Bajanov & Bajanova, op. cit, p. 34.
57 For a good discussion on this issue, see Yong-Ho Kim, The Origins andDevelopment of the Korean War [in Korean](Seoul: Doore Publishing Co., 1998), pp.
60-79.
58 Razuvaev, op. cit, pp. 18-41, passim.
59 General'nyi Shtab, Dal'nevostochnoe napravlenie, "Zhurnal boevykh deistvii v
Koree," p. 16.
60 Haebangllbo, July 3, 1950.
61 GHQ SCAP/FEC/UNC, "Command Report of the G-3 Section (1 January - 3 1
October 1950)", pp. 6 - 1 3 . Although Cumings and Shaller scrutinized MacArthur
documents extensively, they had not found evidence that MacArthur put a significant
consideration on the Korean situation except he ordered his intelligence chief to carryout intelligence works in Korea before the war erupted. See Michael Schaller, Douglas
MacArthur: The Far Eastern General (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989),
chap. 11 and pp. 181-191; Cumings, op. cit, chapter 16.

International Journal of Korean Studies• Spring/Summer 2001

33

The South Korean Military
and the Korean War
Chang-Il Ohn
Professor of Military History
Korea Military Academy

The Weakness of the South Korean Forces and the Outbreak of the
Korean War
Immediately before the Japanese surrender in the Pacific War(1941-5), there was one Korea, though it had been under Japanesecolonial rule for 36 years. The 38th parallel, which the American
policymakers hastily picked out as the operational boundary between
U.S. and Soviet troops in the Far East at the last stage of the PacificWar, divided one Korea into the two, North and South. Soviet troops
occupied North Korea, Americans entered the South, and the two sides
began military occupation in the two Koreas. The latitude, which
Washington policymakers conceived to be a temporary line to halt thefurther southward advance of Soviet troops and thereby physicallyeliminate the possibility of Soviet participation in the Japanese
occupation, and to facilitate the process of establishing a Korean
government "in due course," however, began to embrace new politicaland military connotations. The two Koreas, even on a temporary basis,thus appeared. The status of and situations in the two Koreas were
almost the same at the beginning of the military occupations. In bothparts of Korea, people were very poor mainly because of the harsh
Japanese mobilization for conducting the Pacific War. There wereneither major factories, nor organized indigenous troops, nor influential
political groups except the strong popular desire to establish a Korean
government right away. Almost every well-informed Korean had adistinctive idea about the future of Korea and the nature of its
government. As a result, "too many" political organizations and parties
were formed, and, especially, the American military government judgedthat the Koreans were "too much" politicized. All in all, the situationsin the two parts of Korea were almost identical as much as the status ofbeing the occupied. The policies and strategies of the two
1

International Journal of Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 2001

35

occupiers—the United States and the Soviet Union—toward Korea,
however, were different. Despite the wartime agreement with theUnited States that Korea should be independent "in due course," whichmeant that a Korean government should be established after the periodof multinational trusteeship, the Soviet Union was not enthusiastic
about the idea of multi-tutorship for Korea. Instead, the Soviet
authority was busy in communizing the northern half of Korea, trying
to make it a stronghold for securing the entire Korean peninsula. The
Chief Soviet Delegate, Colonel General T. F. Shtykov, made it clear,at the Joint Commission convened in Seoul on March 20, 1946, that
Korea should be "loyal to the Soviet Union, so that it will not becomea base for an attack on the Soviet Union" in the future. This Soviet
position was directly contrary to the primary objective of the UnitedStates in Korea, that is, "to prevent Russian domination of Korea."
Unable to find a compromised solution on Korea through the Joint
Commission, the United States internationalized the Korean issue by
turning it over to the United Nations. The Soviet Union, however, did
not accept the U.N. resolution that a Korean government would beestablished through holding a general election throughout Korea, andthe Soviet authority in North Korea rejected the entry of U.N.
representatives. As a result, the two Korean governments were created,
one in the South blessed by the United Nations and the other in the
North brewed by the Soviet Union, in August and September 1948
respectively.
2

3

After the North Korean government was established, the Soviet
Union was quick and eager to help North Korea. It readily accepted theNorth Korean appeal that the occupation forces should be withdrawn
as soon as possible, and informed the United States that it would pullout its troops from Korea by the end of 1948 and advised the UnitedStates to do likewise. When the Soviet occupation forces withdrew,
they turned over heavy weapons and equipment to the North Korean
forces, and the Soviet government provided more. Stalin, the Soviet
premier, received the North Korean delegation headed by Kim II Sung,
the North Korean premier. Kim II Sung asked Stalin for Soviet
assistance to defend the seashore at the meeting in Moscow on March
5,1949; Stalin indicated his willingness to supply North Korea not only
naval ships but also military aircraft. On March 7, 1949, when Kim
asked for Stalin's permission to "liberate the whole country throughmilitary means," however, Stalin did not accept the idea by reasoningthat "First of all, the Korean People's Army does not have an
overwhelming superiority over the troops of the South. Second, in theSouth there are still American troops, which will interfere in case of
hostilities. Third, one should not forget that the agreement is in effect4

36International Journal of Korean Studies • Volume V, Number Ithbetween the USSR and the United States on the 38 parallel. If theagreement is broken by our side, it is more of a reason to believe that
Americans will interfere." In September 1949, K i m once again
asked Stalin for military action against the South by saying that
North Korean forces "are capable of occupying South Korea in two
weeks, at the maximum, it will take two months." Stalin ordered theSoviet Embassy in Pyongyang to review the situation in Korea. After
receiving the report from the Embassy in Pyongyang that the "North
Korean Army was not strong enough to secure quick success, and,
therefore, an extended fighting would provide Americans a good excuse
to interfere in Korea and to agitate the Soviet Union elsewhere," Stalin"ordered" Kim not to attack South Korea, except when the Southstarted an offensive against the North. Likewise, the Soviet Union
under Stalin was very eager to have North Korea prepared, but very
cautious in permitting it to act.
5

6

In January 1950, however, the North Korean leadership was buoyedby several developments. The Soviet Union successfully conducted anuclear test in August 1949, nullifying the American monopoly of theatomic bomb. Mao and the Chinese Communists established acommunist government on October 1,1949, and drove out the Chinese
Nationalists to Taiwan by the end of the year. The United Statesremained indifferent and acquiesced in the newly formed status of
China. Furthermore, the then-U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson
made public that Korea and Taiwan were excluded from the exclusive
U.S. defense perimeter in the Far East in his National Press Club speechon January 12, 1950. Having been encouraged, Kim II Sung and his
associates invited the Soviet Ambassador Shtykov to the dinner party
hosted by North Korea's Foreign Minister Park Hon-young on January
17,1950, stressing that "now when China is finishing its obligation, thenext order of things is liberation of the Korean people in the South,"and that Kim was eager to have "the advice of comrade Stalin
concerning the situation in South Korea." On January 30,1950, Stalin,through Shtykov, informed Kim II Sung that he was ready to help andmeet Kim. At last, Kim II Sung secured "the green light" for his
military adventure against South Korea, and Stalin was fully prepared
to secure a "red" Korea.
Stalin's support and direction for military action in Korea was swift
and decisive. Stalin approved to strengthen the North Korean Army to
10 divisions and invited Kim to Moscow for in-depth discussion of thematter. Kim II Sung and Park Hon-young arrived in Moscow on
March 30, 1950, and stayed there until April 25, 1950, during whichtime Kim met Stalin three times. Stalin emphasized that a thoroughpreparation for war be a "must," and that a detailed plan of offensive
789International Journal of Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 2001

37

must be drawn. He urged Kim to consult with Mao Zedong about thepossible American intervention and acquire the Chinese support in caseof American interference, because "the USSR was not ready to get
involved in Korean affairs directly, especially, if Americans did venture
to send troops to Korea." Stalin promised to provide more weaponsand mechanized means of movement and combat and emphasized theimportance of having the North Korean forces fully mobilized by thesummer of 1950. In the course of discussion about a detailed plan forthe offensive, Stalin directed that "the highest bodies of power in North
Korea make fresh proposals for peaceful unification. They'll becertainly rejected by the other side. Then, after they are rejected, acounterattack must take place." Thus, Stalin's support and guidance
for the offensive in Korea was total, and the North Korean forces were
fully reinforced to obtain "an overwhelming superiority" over those ofSouth Korea.
10

11

Unlike the Soviet Union under Stalin, the United States, the sole"could-be" sponsor of South Korea, was not enthusiastic about arming
the South Korean forces. In March 1949, when Stalin assured Kim II
Sung of providing heavy weapons and equipment, the U.S. National
Security Council recommended President Truman to postpone thewithdrawal date from the end of 1948 to June 30,1949, because of theinternal unrest in Korea. When the South Korean president asked forthe answer about what the United States would do "in case of acommunist attack across the 38 parallel," US Secretary of State Dean
Acheson suggested, "ask the United Nations for help." When Kim II
Sung requested from Stalin the permission to launch a military
offensive against South Korea, South Korean President Syngman Rhee
"begged" President Truman for military aid, informing him that "wehave ammunition available only for two days
we will not attack theterritory north of the 38 parallel." Instead of military assistance,
President Rhee received "an admonitory advice" from President
Truman that the development of a sound economy was far more
important than amassing an "insupportable," large military force. The
U.S. Congress was not enthusiastic about providing aid to South Korea.
President Truman was able to allocate only $10.97 million for South
Korea for the fiscal year 1950, from which only a few hundred dollars'
worth of signal wire reached Korea before the outbreak of the Korean
War. U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson's remarks about the U.S.
Defense Perimeter in the Far East on January 12, 1950, were astraightforward expression of the military and civilian policymakers inWashington at that time. Indeed, Korea was considered a burden rather
than a responsibility and certainly not an asset to the American strategic
vision.
12

th

13

th

14

15

16

38

International Journal of Korean Studies • Volume V, Number 1

The difference of the policies and strategies of the United States
and the Soviet Union, in fact, created two different Koreas, especiallyin the military arena. Under Stalin's full support, the North Korean
forces were armed with such heavy weapons and equipment as tanks,
self-propelled and field artillery guns, and even military bombers andfighters. The North Korean army had 10 fully-armed divisions, threeof which were "elite" and well-trained combat divisions to lead theoffensive. Mao supplied North Korea with the Korean soldiers who
had fought in the Chinese Civil War. Furthermore, the Soviet militaryadvisers educated and trained the North Korean troops and weresatisfied with their performance in the combined military exercises.
Quite contrary, the South Korean forces were armed with mainly rifles,
mortars, and a few light liaison aircraft. The South Korean army had
only 8 undermanned divisions, four of which were forced to deploy inthe southern part of South Korea in order to cope with the guerrillas in
the mountainous areas. Most of them could complete only companylevel training before the war broke out. One American military adviser
even commented that "the South Korean forces were similar to those
Americans in 1775 except enhanced patriotism." The Deputy Chief of
KMAG (Col. John E. Baird) mentioned that "the South Korean forceswere short of all weapons and equipments except rifles." After 5
years' sponsorship of the Soviet Union and the United States, the two
Koreas became totally different, especially in their military muscles.
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The comparative weakness of the South Korean forces was a clear
fact from which North Korea and its sponsors judged that a quick
victory in Korea could easily be secured and, therefore, constituted the
major cause of the Korean War. Especially for Kim II Sung it appearedcertain that the far superior North Korean forces could easily deprive
the weaker South Korean forces of not only their capability but also
their will to fight on, and obtain a complete victory before any effective
American intervention materialized. The outcome of the battles at thefirst stage of the Korean War seemed to prove that these judgments andconvictions were correct.

South Korean Molotov Cocktails against North Korean Tanks
The North Korean and border constabulary invaded South Korea
at four o'clock on the morning of June 25, 1950. The scale and tacticsof the attack indicated that the invasion had been thoroughly preplanned and prepared. Massed artillery fire, coordinated columns ofSoviet-made tanks (T-34s), and well-trained infantry overwhelmed theSouth Korean forces. The powerful, swift-moving tanks stunned thedefenders and nearly enervated their will to fight, since they had nomeans to halt these iron-clad "monsters," and most South Korean
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39

soldiers were seeing these tanks, self-propelled artillery pieces, andarmored vehicles for the first time.
The South Korean forces did not match those of North Korea in
number, training, weapons and equipments, and combat experience.
They had been created, equipped, and trained for maintaining internal
security and border stability. Coping with sabotage, subversion, andguerrilla activities instigated by North Korean infiltrators and local
sympathizers, South Korean forces were forced to scatter throughout
the country. Actually, four of the eight divisions were busy fighting
guerrillas in the southern section of South Korea. Notably, the South
Korean army had been on the alert for possible North Korean attacks
for several weeks. But, on June 24,1950, just one day before the actual
North Korean invasion, the Army chief cancelled an emergent alertnessorder. Because of this "untimely" measure, only one-third of each of
the four divisions deployed along the 38 parallel were in position
along the border at the time the war broke out, which meant that one
South Korean battalion had to fight against one North Korean division
reinforced with tanks and self-propelled artillery guns. The South
Korean forces had no weapons, not one tank, but six obsolete liaison
aircraft.
Furthermore, South Korean officers lacked combat
experience.
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Facing the formidable North Korean attack, South Korean troops
had to fight almost barehanded. Upon knowing that 2.36-inchbazookas were not effective against the Soviet-made T-34s, they
organized "a suicidal group," approached the tanks, and threw a bundleof hand grenades with Molotov cocktails into the turrets of the North
Korean tanks. Moreover, after fighting for three days, South Korean
forces were out of ammunition. Seoul fell into the hands of North
Korean troops on June 28, 1950. South Korean forces were in no
position to fight on. Without the outside help, it was impossible forthem not only to recover the antebellum status quo but also to maintainthe front itself.
Despite desperate but "heroic" actions and some success, the resultof the initial battles was nearly a debacle. The 17 Regiment gave up
the Ongjin peninsula, 1 Division in the Kaesung area retreatedindividually, the 7 Division in the Uijongboo sector was nearly
disintegrated, the 6 Division in the Choonchun and Hongchun region,
though it had inflicted heavy damages upon the North Korean 2 and
12 divisions, could not hold on, and the 8 division of the East Coast,
after the coastal road of retreat was cut off, was forced to withdraw
through the inland road, leaving the coastal area undefended. Although
the South Korean army committed 2 , 3 , and 5 divisions, academy
cadets, and untrained soldiers to the battle, it could not halt the North
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Korean forces. In fact, it was inconceivable for the South Korean
forces alone to recover the 38 parallel, much less to continue any
defensive operations.
Fortunately, the actions of the United States and the United Nations
were swift and decisive. It was quickly decided to have American
ground troops committed to the battle for a U.N. "police action" in
Korea. In order to make American intervention practically meaningful,however, the South Korean forces should hold the Han River Line for"at least" a week, the period necessary for the deployment of American
troops then stationed in Japan. The South Korean army hastily created
the Combat Command in Seeheung, just below the Han River,assembled the retreating soldiers, organized them in "X mixed
battalion," and deployed those mixed battalions along the Han River
under the control of the "mixed Capital Division" and so on. On theother hand, the North Korean forces named the 3, 4, and 105 tankdivisions as the "Seoul" division to commemorate the capture of Seoul.
It was a queer contrast between the two prefixes, the "mixed" that was
hastily attached to the South Korean battalions and divisions and the"Seoul" that was commemoratively affixed on the North Koreandivisions. Anyway, the South Korean forces could hold the Han RiverLine until July 3,1950, making American ground troops' engagementtactically meaningful.
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South Korean Forces together with U.S. and U.N. Forces
Major civilian and military leaders in Washington, New York, andTokyo acted swiftly. They considered the North Korean attack on
South Korea as a direct challenge against the prestige of the UnitedStates and the United Nations that had helped the creation of South
Korea, and, especially, U.S. President Truman judged that "Thefoundations and the principles of the United Nations were at stake
unless this unprovoked attack on Korea could be stopped." At theurgent request of the American government, the U.N. Security Council
held a special session on the Sunday afternoon of June 25, 1950 (NewYork local time), and adopted a resolution determining the North
Korean attack was "a breach of peace" and calling upon North Korea
to cease hostilities and upon the members of the United Nations for"every assistance" to restore peace in Korea. On the same day, at theBlair House Meeting, President Truman ordered support for South
Korea with additional supplies, a complete survey of the situation, and,notably, the preparation of "plans to wipe out all Soviet air bases in the
Far East," and emphasized that the United States was working for theUnited Nations. At the request of the South Korean government, theU.N. Security Council adopted another resolution on June 27, 1950,
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calling upon all U.N. members for "every assistance" to repel
aggression in Korea. The U.S. Congress and the American public
supported President Truman for his measures taken in dealing with the
Korean incident. General MacArthur, the then-commander of the Far
East Command, flew to Korea and was welcomed by the North Koreanmortar fires fired from Seoul at the southern bank of the Han River. On
the way back to Tokyo, MacArthur urgently requested President
Truman to send U.S. ground troops to Korea. President Truman
approved the request at the dawn of June 30, 1950. Once again, theU.N. Security Council adopted another resolution and empowered theUnited States to coordinate U.N. assistance and direct U.N. operations
in Korea on July 7, 1950. The next day, President Truman designatedthe Joint Chiefs of Staff as his agents for the U.N. operations in Korea,
and named General MacArthur as the commander of all U.N. forces in
Korea. On July 14,1950, South Korean President Syngman Rhee also
put the South Korean forces under the operational control of the U.N.
commander. By these measures, the United States and the United
Nations fully intervened in Korea to save, as the U.N. Secretary
General Trygve Lie termed, "one of the children of the United
Nations," and all the forces fighting in Korea were operationallycontrolled by the U.N. commander.
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However, the initial performances of the defending forces were notsatisfactory. "Task Force Smith," the first contingent of U.S. troops,
which MacArthur named "an arrogant display of American military
muscle," lost more than half of its men and equipment after a single
encounter with the North Koreans. U.S. 24 , the first division deployed,
was outnumbered and the Division Commander. Major General
William Dean, himself became a prisoner of war. South Korean forcesthat defended the middle and eastern front under the operational controlof the U.S. 8 Army Commander Walton H. Walker, who was in chargeof the actual military operations in Korea, were forced to withdraw
despite the several tactical successes. On July 22, the 1 U.S. Cavalryand 2 5 Infantry Divisions were put into the battle area, but did no
better. Furthermore, the North Korean 4 and 6 Divisions advanced
through the southwestern part of South Korea in order to capture Pusan
via Masan. Facing this formidable advance, General Walker decided
to form a connected defensive line along the Nakdong River and, on
July 29,1950, ordered an orderly withdrawal across the Nakdong Riverfor a final stand. The defending forces were trapped in the so-called"Pusan Perimeter," though, ironically, for the first time since theoutbreak of the war, they formed a coordinated defensive line and zone
as dictated by the field manual.
The battles along the Nakdong defense line were no less bitter than
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the previous ones. Despite the heavy casualties suffered by thecontinuous gunfire and air bombardments, the North Korean forces
launched two formidable attacks across the Nakdong River, one inAugust and the other in September 1950. General MacArthur, whojudged that securing the Pusan Perimeter was mandatory for the bold
amphibious operations, deployed even the 1 Marines, designated as themain body for the landing, for the defense of the Perimeter. The South
Korean forces fought fiercely for the defense of the north andnortheastern part of the Perimeter, and the British ground troops joined
the battle in the Perimeter's west and southwestern sector that theAmerican forces defended. General Walker always formed ad hoc
mobile reserve task forces and threw those into the counteroffensive
wherever and whenever the front was being broken through by theNorth Korean troops. As a result, by September 12, 1950, the North
Korean offensive was largely spent. North Korean "all-court-pressing"attacks were overridden by Walker's "all-court-filling" defense. The
South Korean and U.N. forces won a defensive battle along the
Nakdong River and prevented a Dunkirk in Korea, securing the base fora bold amphibious envelopment.
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The dazzling success of the Inchon landing and the subsequent
breakthrough across the Nakdong defensive line marked thecounteroffensive phase of the fighting. After Inchon the North Korean
forces collapsed. By connecting the landing and chasing forces, theNorth Korean troops were divided, and the main retreating road of theNorth Korean 1 Corps was cut off. Seoul was reclaimed on September
28, 1950. The South Korean and U.N. forces reached the 38 parallelby the end of September 1950. At the urgent order from President
Syngman Rhee, the South Korean troops on the eastern coast crossed
the 3 8 parallel on October 1, 1950, and entered Wonsan on October
10, 1950, making another amphibious operation on that city into an
administrative landing practice. From this time on, especially, theSouth Korean and U.N. forces advanced to the North as if they had arace among the friendly units, disregarding the coordination with theadjacent units. In fact, the South Korean troops won the race. The 1
Division entered Pyongyang first. The 6 Division reached the Yalu
River first. However, the front was not connected, and the units were
scattered. The 8 Army in the western front and the 10 Corps in theeast were not linked, leaving the mountainous area in the middle
undefended. Furthermore, the advancing troops were not prepared forthe severe winter in the North. Despite these pitfalls, however, it
seemed that Korean unification, which had not been realized by thenegotiations either in Seoul or New York, could be realized by military
operations.
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At this juncture of optimism, China entered the scene with its"volunteer forces," and the Korean War entered what MacArthur
termed "an entirely new war." The Chinese forces crossed the Yalu
River from October 19, 1950, on. At first, they tried to wipe out the
spearheads of the South Korean 1 and 6 Divisions, advance to therear of U.S. and U.N. troops and attack them simultaneously in the front
and rear, and secure the territorial base for the further offensive. After
securing the base above the Chongchun River, the Chinese troops
retreated to the mountainous area and examined the strength andweakness of the U.S. forces for the next moves. By MacArthur's order,
however, the 8 Army and the South Korean forces launched an "endof-war offensive" on November 24,1950, only to find that the Chinese
forces intervened at full strength. MacArthur ordered the commandersof the 8 Army and 10 Corps to withdraw. The 8 Army and theSouth Korean troops in the western front retreated until they formed adefense line along the 38 parallel, whereas the 10 Corps and theSouth Koreans in the east were evacuated from Heungnam throughships by December 24,1950. Making the situation worse, the 8 Armycommander, General Walton H. Walker, who had defended the Pusan
Perimeter by the order of "stand or die," was killed in a car accident
near Uijongbu on December 23, 1950: In name and fact, the South
Korean and U.N. forces were in chaos.
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The Chinese offensive continued. Despite the Commander of theChinese forces Peng Teh-huai's desire for the Chinese troops torecuperate for a while and to launch an offensive in the spring of 1951,
Mao urged Peng to push back U.N. forces without a pause. The
Chinese troops launched the third offensive on December 31, 1950,
known as the "New Year's Offensive." Also, the Chinese forces
launched their large-scale offensives in February, April, and May.
General Matthew B. Ridgway, the new 8 Army commander, whothen commanded all U.N. forces including 10 Corps and the South
Korean forces, tried to block the Chinese offensives through inflicting
maximum damage upon the Chinese with superior firepower, while
minimizing the casualties of the friendly forces by employing theflexible tactics of withdrawal and counterattacks. Understanding that
the Chinese offensive would usually be spent within a week, Ridgway
ordered to attack the Chinese immediately after their offensive so thatthey could not have time to reorganize and recuperate. Also, Ridgway
stressed the close coordination with the adjacent units and themaintenance of the connected front in order not be infiltrated andencircled by the Chinese. In this judgment, Ridgway could easily giveup Seoul again without enduring the heavy casualties for holding thecity. But he emphasized the importance of offensive spirit based on the
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traditional army slogan: "Find them! Fix them! Fight them! Finish
them!"
Through conducting a series of sensible counterattacks,
Ridgway blocked the Chinese offensives and recovered the 3 8 parallelby the end of March 1951. The South Korean troops fought fiercely
along with U.S. and U.N. soldiers. The battlefront was being stabilized.
While the South Korean and U.N. forces were fighting with the
Chinese and North Koreans in the battlefield, General MacArthur wasquarreling with Washington policymakers. Defining the Korean War
as "an entirely new war" after the Chinese intervention, MacArthur had
urged taking such bold measures as bombing Manchuria and a naval
blockade of China. But Washington policymakers were annoyed by thefact that the United States was fighting with "enemy No. 2" in Korea,
while "enemy No. 1" was enjoying the fighting. In other words,
Washington was dismayed to learn that the United States was playing"a Soviet game." At this frustrating moment, MacArthur, who hadcomplained that Washington imposed a strange strategy of "die for tie"
upon him, disclosed his conviction that "there is no substitute forvictory" in his letter to the then-minority leader of the House, Joseph
W. Martin. This was a direct contradiction to the President Truman'sview that "there is right kind and a wrong kind victory." MacArthur
was removed on April 11, 1951. Ridgway was appointed as the new
U.N. commander. Lt. General James A. Van Fleet was also named as
the new 8 Army commander.
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The dismissal of MacArthur typified a direct clash between the twoconcepts of war and victory. MacArthur, who had been trained toespouse the traditional concept, "In war, there is no substitute forvictory," and had fought the Pacific War (1941 -5) in that concept, could
not and did not accept the notion of "limited war." President Trumanand his advisers, however, could not tolerate the fighting with thesecond t e a m — C h i n a — w h i l e the first one—the Soviet
Union—remained untouched, and judged that even winning the war
with China in Korea would not contribute to American prestige. The
concept that "In war, there is a substitute for victory" was about to bematerialized.
At last, the United States secured stability on the three fronts: thebattlefront through conducting a series of determined counterattacks by
the South Korean and U.N. forces; the diplomatic front in the United
Nations by castigating communist China as an aggressor on January 31,
1951; and the Tokyo front by appointing a new military commander
who was amenable to Washington's direction. Now Washington was
prepared to find an "honorable" compromise in Korea by imposing the
maximum military and political pressures upon the communists.
The South Korean and U.N. forces repulsed the Chinese offensives,
International Journal of Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 200145

one in the west in April and the other in the east in May 1951, andsecured the Kansas-Wyoming Line that had been designed to hold forthe truce as a contact line. Recognizing that the major Chinese
offensives had not been successful in dividing and encircling thedefending units, Mao ordered Peng to conduct "a number of small
operations against Anglo-American troops" based on the "hit and run"tactics in order to demoralize their combat spirit and self-confidence.
Stalin was opposed to Mao's tactics, saying that
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This tactic is a risky one; it can be applied
successfully only once or twice. The British andAmericans will easily understand the plan; ... they
will not allow you each time to withdraw to the northwithout damage to the forces
there is no reason tobelieve that the Anglo-Americans are as stupid as
Chang Kai-shek. . . .
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Despite this Soviet advice, the Chinese troops were in no position
to launch a major offensive because of the heavy casualties and theextreme shortage of supplies. Also, the 8 Army commander was notallowed to launch a large-scale offensive, and, instead, he waspermitted to conduct a limited operation in order to push up the contactline or secure the high ground for defensive purposes. As a result, thebattlefront was stalemated.
thArmistice under Heavy Arms and some Frustrations
After the fierce fighting for almost one year, both sides, having
acknowledged that the Korean issue was too complex to be settled bymilitary means only, were obliged to find "a substitute for victory" inorder to end the war.
Washington moved first. The American government made several
fruitless attempts to obtain a signal from the communists in Paris, Hong
Kong, and Moscow in early May 1951. After these futile efforts,
Secretary of State Dean Acheson undertook the matter directly. In midMay 1951, Acheson summoned George F. Kennan, who was then on
leave from the State Department studying at Princeton, to Washington.
Acheson asked Kennan to contact Jacob Malik, the Soviet delegate to
the United Nations, and clarify American intentions in Korea and probe
those of the Soviet Union. On June 1, 1951, the two diplomats met at
Malik's residence on Long Island, where Kennan delivered to Malik
American intention to settle the Korean War by negotiations and asked
the Soviet position on the issue. Unable to give an outright answer tothe question, Malik arranged another meeting on June 5,1951, at which
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Malik told Kennan that the Soviet Union desired a peaceful settlement
in Korea as soon as possible. Malik also advised that the United Statesshould approach the North Koreans and the Chinese directly, since theSoviet Union would not participate in the discussion of a cease-fire.
By this, the United States and the Soviet Union were willing to end thefighting by negotiations.
Moscow moved next. While the American government was
fumbling around for a face-saving procedure for the initiation of thetruce talks, Malik, in his U.N. radio speech on June 23,1951, suggested
an initial step for the talks by saying that "As a first step discussions
should be started between the belligerents for a cease-fire and an
armistice providing for the mutual withdrawal of forces from the 38
parallel." The Soviet government confirmed that Malik's view was
its position, clarifying that the Soviet government desired to conclude
an armistice without touching any political or territorial matters.
Washington policymakers discussed the matter of how to initiate
the truce talks. State officials wanted to have the negotiations at the
military level as the Soviet government had suggested. Military leaders
were reluctant to assume the burden for initiating the talks, especially
Air Force Chief General Vandenberg, who argued that "the burden of
initiating talks should be imposed on the enemy by penalizing him
more severely." However, policymakers in Washington decided toinitiate and hold the talks through the military channel in the field,
because by doing so it would be possible to exclude such thorny
political issues as the status of Formosa and the Chinese representationin the United Nations.
By Washington's direction, the U.N. Commander General Ridgway
delivered a radio message on June 30, 1951, announcing that"... I am
informed that you may wish a meeting to discuss an armistice. ... I
propose that such a meeting could take place aboard a Danish hospital
ship in Wonsan harbor." The response of the communists was quick.
On July 1,1951, Peking radio broadcast a joint message from the North
Korean and Chinese Commanders in Korea that
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We are authorized to inform you that we agree to meet yourrepresentative for conducting the talks concerning cessationof military action and establishment of peace. We proposethat the place of meeting be in the area of Kaesong on the
38 parallel; if you agree, our representatives are prepared
to meet your representatives between July 10 and 15,
1951.
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After several preparatory meetings, both sides agreed to meet in
Kaesong on July 10, 1951. At last, the two sides in Korea wereInternational Journal of Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 200J

47

prepared to open the talks in order to search for "a substitute forvictory."
However, it was extremely difficult for both parties to reach an
agreement on the contents of "a substitute for victory." Despite bothsides agreeing to the agenda on July 26,1951, the communists insisted
that the 38 parallel be the demarcation line, whereas the U.N. side
asserted that the demarcation line be the contact line. Unable to findcommon ground on the demarcation line, the communists unilaterally
called off the meeting on August 23, 1951. Ridgway immediately
intensified military actions, including bombing of Najin that had been
intentionally excluded from the target list. The U.S. Joint Chiefs ofStaff, being determined to use the atomic bomb if American troops
faced "a military disaster," obtained President Truman's approval andordered the U.S. Air Force to conduct a "simulated atomic strike" in
Korea to demonstrate American determination and capability of using
the bombs if necessary. The U.S. Air Force carried out several mockatomic strikes in Korea under the code name "Hudson Harbor" in
October 1951, Perhaps thanks to an intensified U.N. military pressure
and a U.N. apology on the accidental strafing of Kaesong on September
10,1951, the communists agreed to hold the talks at Panmunjom, southof Kaesong, the place on the then-contact line. The meetings at
Panmunjom, however, showed how tortuous the road to an armistice
could be.
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After the tangled back-and-forth arguments on the demarcationline, both sides agreed to the contact line fixed by the staff officers on
November 27, 1951. Furthermore, the two sides agreed that the fixedline with a demilitarized zone of 4 km would become the demarcationline if the two belligerents signed the armistice within 30 days, nomatter what changes were made during this period. Although theagreement on a provisional demarcation line did not constitute a defacto cease-fire, it itself actually eliminated the possibility of either
moving up the Yalu River or being pushed down to the Nakdong Riverin the battlefield. There appeared "a substitute for victory."
The next thorny issue was the prisoner of war problem on theprinciple of "voluntary" or "forced" repatriation, without which thefighting in Korea could have ended sooner.
After the initialvacillations, the U.N. side upheld the principle of "voluntary"
repatriation of the POWs, whereas the communist side strongly asserted
the "forced" repatriation of all war prisoners. The very fact that there
were many communist POWs who did not want to be repatriated wasa vital blow to the communist propaganda that a communist world
would be a "paradise" for all people. By the same token, the fact would
be a good propaganda resource for the free world, especially the United
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States. President Truman was determined to uphold the principle offree exchange of POWs in February 1951 by declaring that "the UnitedStates would not and could not accept an agreement demanding theforced repatriation of those prisoners-of-war whose lives would beendangered, ... so I refused to agree to any solution that provided forthe return against their will of prisoners-of-war to communist
domination."On the issue of principle in dealing with the war
prisoners, Stalin was no less determined than Truman. Stalin cabled
Mao that "your firm position has already given positive results andmust make the adversary agree to further concessions." There was noroom for compromise for the two leaders of the ideologically divided
East-West blocs on the issue of ideological principle.
As the talks stalled, the military actions in the battlefield wereintensified. Mao had asked Stalin to provide weapons and equipment
necessary for arming 60 divisions. Stalin, promising Mao to supply
weapons and equipment for 10 divisions in 1951 and for other the 50
divisions in 1952, 1953, and the first half of 1954, insisted that
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The Americans in general are not capable of conducting a
big war, especially, after the Korean War. All their strength
is in air raids, in the atomic bomb. America cannot defeat
a small Korea. Firmness is required in dealing with
America. Chinese comrades must know that if America
doesn't lose this war, then the Chinese will never get
Taiwan.
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The battles continued all along the contact line to secure the highground, impose heavy casualties on each other, and demoralize the willof the opposing troops. The U.N. Command bombed North Korean
power plants, railroads, and communication lines to demoralize theNorth Korean fighting will and block the flow of supplies to the front.
The fighting at the stalemated front was no less severe than before.
The death of Stalin became a breakthrough in the deadlocked talks
for the truce. On March 19, 1953, the Council of Ministers of theSoviet Union made a decision to end the war in Korea, and informed
Mao and Kim II Sung of the decision. On the morning of March 29,
1953, the Soviet special envoys, Kuznetzov and Fedorenko, personallyinformed Kim II Sung that the Soviet government had decided tochange "the strategy in Korea: from war to peace," and delivered theSoviet document of the Council's decision to Kim. They reported
Kim's reaction by saying that "Kim II Sung heard our comments andbecame very agitated."
By the Soviet decision and action, thecommunist side abandoned its insistence on the ideological principle indealing with the POWs and hastened the process of the armistice talks.
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The long battle for the principle of voluntary repatriation was over, andthe U.N. Command won an ideological battle in Korea.
Both sides began to work on the demarcation line, reflecting thechanges that had resulted from the battles fought since November 27,
1951, and finally agreed to a modified demarcation line on June 17,
1953. Despite the signing procedure yet to be agreed, the armistice inthe Korean War was about to be realized. In fact, there was "asubstitute for victory."
In order to secure "a substitute for victory" in Korea, the UnitedStates tried to implement the two kinds of measures: one military andthe other political.
Recognizing that the very weakness of theSouth Korean forces had provoked the "unprovoked" North Korean
invasion, and that strong South Korean fighting capability was requiredfor conducting the fighting, the United States tried to strengthen theSouth Korean forces step by step. The United States military approved
the ceilings of the South Korean Army: 250,000 (10 infantry divisions
and supporting units) on April 18,1951; 357,000 (3 Corps, 10 infantry
divisions and 10 division artillery, and supporting units) on June 25,
1952. Finally, on May 15, 1953, the United States approved 655,000(1 Army, 4 Corps, 20 infantry divisions, and supporting units) as theceiling in the after-truce period. By these measures, the South Korean
Army became a strong one, far different from the one of 90,000 men
armed with rifles before the war. The South Korean Navy was also
strengthened from the one with 28 patrol boats and 6,000 men before
the war to the larger one armed with 59 battleships and patrol boats and12,000 men. The South Korean Marines was enlarged from 1,200 to
22,200. Also, the South Korean Air Force became strengthened fromthe one with 22 light liaison aircraft and 1,800 men before the war tothe strengthened one armed with 110 aircraft, including 80 F-51
fighters, and 11,000 men. After the three years of fighting, in quantityand quality of the combat power the strength of the South Korean
forces was far superior to that from before the war. Military measures
to guarantee the armistice in Korea materialized.
Politically, in order to deter another communist adventure andensure the armistice in Korea, the United States and U.N. members
planned to issue a "greater sanctions" declaration, warning of the graveconsequence of any renewed aggression in Korea. However, President
Syngman Rhee of South Korea, having experienced that a U.N. security
guarantee could not deter the North Korean invasion, demanded abilateral security pact with the United States, the one like NATO.
Rhee, who had mobilized almost all South Koreans against a truce,
acted for his cause. On the night of June 17-18,1953, by Rhee's order,
more than 25,000 anti-communist Korean POWs escaped from the four
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major prison camps with the full connivance of the South Korean
security guards. President Rhee readily accepted his responsibility,
by saying that "...the anti-communist Korean War prisoners shouldhave been released long before this..." "Communism is still our
principal enemy in Korea" was President Eisenhower's response to
Rhee's "presumptuous" action. But Washington accepted the optionthat the United States would enter into a mutual defense treaty with
South Korea, similar to the one with the Philippines and the ANZUS,
provided that the South Korean government would agree to an armisticeand the UNC control of its forces.
In this way, the United States swallowed "a substitute for a greater
sanctions declaration" to save "a substitute for victory," that is, amutual defense pact to secure an armistice. The armistice in Korea, aviable compromise between "no more blood" for the United States and"no more aggression" for South Korea, was about to be implemented
under heavy arms and some frustrations.
55

56

57

ROK-US Security Alliance and the Deterrence of another Korean
War
The mutual defense treaty between the Republic of Korea and theUnited States, "a substitute for actual fighting," opened a new era in
relations between the two countries. By this treaty—which was
initialed in Seoul on August 8,1953, signed in Washington on October
1,1953, and finally ratified by the South Korean Assembly on January
14, 1954, and by the United States Senate on January 26, 1954—theUnited States became the sole protector of South Korea against thecommunists and assumed unilateral responsibility for the security ofSouth Korea, an obligation which it had tried to avoid since its
temporary occupation. Also, by this treaty, the South Korean
government was prohibited from taking any "unlawful means" tochange the status quo in Korea. In this sense, the treaty strongly urged
both Koreas not to use any "violent means" for the sake of changing thestatus quo that had been established as a result of fighting in the KoreanWar.
After nearly fifty years, the security alliance between South Korea
and the United States, which was formalized by the mutual defense
treaty and has been visualized by the presence of American forces andthe combined command structure of the two nations' forces, still
remains in force as the backbone of an allied relationship between the
Republic of Korea and the United States of America, deterring another
Korean war and, therefore, in a practical sense, promoting
rapprochement in Korea. In this sense, the strong South Korean
military, which had been mandatory for the actual fighting in theInternational Journal of Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 2001

51

Korean War, has become an imperative element for making the ROKU.S. security alliance meaningful, another military adventure in Korea
impossible, and any political rapprochement on Korea viable in the
future.

Notes
1 SWNCC Meeting Minutes, August 12, 1945, Foreign Relations of the United States(FRUS), 1945, VI, p. 645; Memo by Dean Rusk, July 12, 1950, Ibid., p. 1039; JamesF. Schnabel, Policy and Direction: The First Fear (Washington, D. C: G. P. O., 1972),
pp. 8-9. Stalin accepted the 38th parallel by not making any comment on the American
proposal, see Stalin to Truman, telegram, August 16,1945, enclosed in Memo, From
Admiral Leahy to General Marshall, April 29,1947, Record Group (RG) 59,740.00119
Control (Japan) /4-2947, National Archives (NA), Washington, D. C, USA.
2 The New York Times, March 21, 1946.
3 U.S. Document No. 3, Joint Commission Files, sub.: Observations on Methods of
Negotiating Formation of A Korean Government, undated and unsigned, History Files,
USAFIK, NA.
4 The Special Representative in Korea (John J. Muccio) to the Secretary of State,
September 18, 1948, FRUS, 1948, VI, pp. 1305-6; The Charge in the Soviet Union(Kohler) to the Secretary of State, September 19, 1948, Ibid., p. 1306.
5 Soviet Secret Documents on the Korean War, vol. 3 (delivered by the Russian
President Boris Yeltsin to the Korean President Kim Young Sam, trans, by Korean
Foreign Ministry), pp. 6-11; Stalin's conversation with the DPRK's delegation headed
by Kim II Sung, March 5, 1949, Archives of the President of Russia, pp. 1-11, quoted
in Evgeniy P. Bajanov and Natalia Bajanova, The Korean Conflict, 1950-1953: The
Most Mysterious War of the 2ff Century—Based on Soviet Secret Archives(unpublished), pp. 1-6; Conversation between Stalin and the governmental delegationof the DPRK headed by the Chairman of Cabinet of Ministers of the DPRK Kim II
Sung, March 7,1949, Archives of the President of Russia, pp. 3-4, quoted in Bajanov
and Bajanova, The Korean Conflict, 1950-1953, pp. 17-8.
6 Soviet Secret Documents on the Korean War, vol. 3, pp. 27-53; Stalin's cable toTunkin, September 11, 1949, Tunkin's cable to the Kremlin, September 14, 1949,
Shtykov's cable to Stalin, October 4, 1949, Archives of the President of Russia, pp.
1-21, quoted in The Korean Conflict, 1950-1953, pp. 19-35.
7 Soviet Secret Documents on the Korean War, vol. 3, pp. 60-2; Shtykov to Stalin,January 19, 1950, Archives of the President of Russia, pp. 1-5, quoted in The Korean
Conflict, 1950-1953, pp. 34-5.
8 Soviet Secret Documents on the Korean War, vol. 3, pp. 63-6; Stalin's cable to
Shtykov, January 30,1950; Shtykov's cable to Stalin, January 31,1950; Stalin'scableto Shtykov, February 2, 1950, Archives of the President of Russia, quoted in The
Korean Conflict, 1950-1953, pp. 36-7.
9 Soviet Secret Documents on the Korean War, vol. 3, pp. 65-6; Shtykov to Stalin,
February 4, 1950; Stalin to Shtykov, February 9, 1950; Shtykov to Stalin, February
10, 1950; Shtykov to Stalin, March 21, 1950, Archives of the President of Russia,
quoted in The Korean Conflict, 1950-1953, pp. 38-9.
10 Report on Kim II Sung's visit to the USSR, March 30-April 25, 1950, Prepared by
the International Department of the CC of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik),
Archives of the President of Russia, quoted in The Korean Conflict, 1950-1953, pp. 4 0 2.
11 Ibid.
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12 Memo for the President, sub.: A Summary of Discussion at the 38th Meeting of the
NSC, March 23, 1949; NSC-8/2, March 22, 1949, NSC File, NA; FRUS, 1949, VII,
pp. 969-78.
13. Muccio to Secretary of State, May 7, 16, 17, June 6, 1949, FRUS, 1949, VII, pp.
1 0 1 1 - 2 , 1023^1, 1030-1, 1035-6, 1039.
14 President of the Republic of Korea (Syngman Rhee) to President Truman, August
20, 1949, FRUS, 1949, VII, pp. 1075-6; Ordnance Inventory attached to the letter, RG
319, P&O 091 Korea, s e c , 1-E, case 16, book 1, sub. Nos. 1-4, NA.
15 President Truman to President Rhee, September 26, 1949, FRUS, 1949, VII, pp.
1084-5; Harry S. Truman, Memoirs, II: Years of Trial and Hope (Garden City, NY:
Doubleday, 1963), p. 330.
16 Editorial Note, FRUS, 1949, VII, p. 1086.
17 Robert K. Sawyer, Military Advisors in Korea: KMAG in Peace and War (Officeof the Chief Military History, Department of the Army, Washington, D. C: GPO,
1962), pp. 96-104.
18 The Training Schedule for the Artillery Units of North Korean Forces, June 1950,
the Artillery Command, North Korean Forces, Pyongyang, Records Seized by U.S.
Forces in Korea, 1921-1952, General Archives Division, NA. This training schedule
set the dates as follows: Command Exercise: June 11-13, 1950; Repair andMaintenance Exercise: June 15-24,1950; Communication Exercise: June 2 0 - 2 4 , 1 9 5 0(this exercise is usually conducted during the maneuvering phase for the actual
engagement).
19 ROK Army G-2, Analysis of the Korean W,ar (1970), pp. 44-5; Transcript, John J.
Muccio, Oral History Interview, February 10, 18, 1971, p. 54, Truman Library,
Independence, Missouri, USA.
20 Military History Department, Korea Military Academy, History of the Korean War(1987), pp. 216-49.
21 Ibid.
22 Truman, Memoirs, II, pp. 332-3.
23 U.S. Department of State, Bulletin, XXIII, pp. 4-5; The New York Times, June 26,
1950.
24 Memo of Conversation, by Jessup, June 25, 1950, FRUS, 1950, VII, pp. 157-61.
25 The New York Times, June 28, 1950.
26 The JCS to MacArthur, June 30, 1950, FRUS, 1950, VII, pp. 250-3; Truman,
Memoirs, II, pp. 342-3.
27 The New York Times, July 8, 1950.
28 U.N. Document S/1927, quoted in FRUS, 1950, VII, p. 388.
29 The New York Times, July 27, 1950.
30 T. R. Fehrenbach, This Kind of War (New York: The McMillan Co., 1963), p. 98;
William F. Dean, General Dean's Story, as told to William L. Wordon, (New York:The Viking Press, 1954).
31 This Kind of War, p. 157; Roy E. Appleman, South to the Nakdong, North to the
Yalu (Washington, D. C, GPO, 1961), p. 206.
32 Billy C. Mossman, Ebb and Flow, November 1950-July 1951 (Washington, D. C:
GPO, 1990), pp. 160, 180, 198-202.
33 Matthew B. Ridgway, The Korean War (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1967),
p. 89.
34 Ebb and Flow, pp. 335-343.
35 Truman, Memoirs, II, p. 446.
36 Coded message N 20147, May 27, 1951, Mao to Stalin, quoted in Bajanov's The
Korean Conflict, 1950-1953, pp. 127-8.

International Journal of Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 2001

53

37 Coded message N 3282, May 29, 1951, the 8th Directorate of the General Staff,
Armed Forces of the Soviet Union, Archives of the President of Russia, p. 1, quoted
in Ibid.
38 George F. Kennan, Memoirs, II, 1950-1963 (Boston: Little, Brown and Co.,
1972), pp. 36-7; Dean Acheson, The Korean War (New York: W. W. Norton & Co.,
1969), pp. 120-1.

39 U.S. Department of State, Bulletin, XXV, p. 45.
40 Kirk to Secretary of State, FRUS, 1951, VII, pp. 553-4, 560-1.
41 Acheson, The Korean War, p. 121; The JCS and National Policy, III, p. 566, RG
218: Records of the JCS, NA.
42 Ibid.

43 FRUS, 1951, VII, pp. 586-7, 598-600; Truman, Memoirs, II, p. 458.
44 Ridgway to the JCS, July 2, 1951, FRUS, 1951, VII, p. 609.
45 Memo for the Secretary of Defense, sub.: The Military Effectiveness andDesirability of Employing Atomic Weapons Tactically in Korea, August 14, 1951;
Messages to Commander-in-Chief, the Far East Command, and Commanding General,
Strategic Air Command, Commander-in-Chief, the Pacific Command, undated,
Selected Records Relating to the Korean War, DoD., Truman Papers, Truman Library;
The JCS and National Policy, III, p. 614.
46 Ridgway to JCS, November 27, 1951, FRUS, 1951, VII, pp. 1186-8; The JCS andNational Policy, III, pp. 621-2.
47 Truman, Memoirs, II, p. 460; Acheson, The Korean War, p. 131.
48 Coded message N 709, February 3, 1952, Stalin to Mao, quoted in Bajanov's The
Korean Conflict, 1950-1953, p. 170.
49 The Memorandum of Stalin-Chou conversation on August 20, 1952, written by A.
Vyshinsky andN. Fedorenko, pp. 54-72, Russian State Archives, quoted in The Korean
Conflict, 1950-1953, pp. 178-81.
50 Cable N 8265, March 29,1953, From Pyongyang to Moscow, quoted in The Korean
Conflict, 1950-1953, p. 192.
51 Clark to JCS, June 8, 1953 RG 218, CCS 383.21 Korea (3-19-45), s e c , 130, NA;
U.S. Department of State, Bulletin, XXVIII, pp. 866-8; The New York Times, June 8,
1953.
52 Military Advisors in Korea, pp. 164-70; Kenneth W. Myers, United States Military
Advisory Group to the Republic of Korea, part IV, KMAG 's Wartime Experiences, 11
July 1951 to 27 July 1953 (Office of the Military History Officer, Headquarters U. S.
Army, Japan, 1958), pp. 35-8, 54, 62-77.
53 ROK Navy, History of ROK Naval Forces: Operations, vol. 1, pp. 90-8; ROK
Marines, Combat History of ROK Marines, vol. 1, pp. 56-8, 172-206.
54 ROK Air Force, Air War History: the Korean War, pp. 210—20.
55 The New York Times, June 18, 19, 1953.
56 Ibid., June 28, 1953.
57 Minutes of the Cabinet Meeting, June 19, 1953, Cabinet Meetings, Ann Whitman
File, Dwight D. Eisenhower Papers, Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas, U. S. A.

54

International Journal of Korean Studies • Volume V, Number 1

American Strategy and the
Korean Peninsula, 1945-1953
William Stueck
University of Georgia"By strategy," John Lewis Gaddis wrote in his seminal book
Strategies of Containment, "I mean quite simply the process by which
ends are related to means, intentions to capabilities, objectives toresources."
My intention here is to employ this definition in
examining the American course in Korea from the origin of the war
there in the country's division in 1945 to the aftermath of fighting in
1953. My approach is to analyze a series of key US decisions, from theone to divide the peninsula at the 38th parallel in August 1945 to theones to conclude a military pact with the Republic of Korea and to issue
a "greater sanctions" statement immediately following an armistice inJuly 1953. My argument is that it took a destructive war before US
policymakers successfully matched ends and means in Korea in amanner that ensured future stability. Unfortunately, though, thatcongruence also ensured indefinite division.
1

I
The United States intervened in Korea in 1945 to contain Soviet
expansion. A State Department paper of October 1943 concluded that,
Korea may appear to offer a tempting opportunity [for Soviet
Premier Joseph Stalin]... to strengthen enormously the
economic resources of the Soviet Far East, to acquire icefree ports, and to occupy a dominating strategic position
in relation both to China and Japan.... A Soviet occupationof Korea would create an entirely new strategic situation in
the Far East, and its repercussions within China and Japanmight be far reaching.
2Time reinforced such fears, as China's weakness became
increasingly apparent as the war progressed. US President Franklin D.
Roosevelt had hoped that China would become one of the world's "fourInternational Journal of Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 2001

55

policemen," replacing Japan as the major power in East Asia to balance
the Soviet Union. Yet China remained divided between the Nationalists
and the Communists. The former, who made up the only recognized
government in the country, were highly corrupt and inefficient. They
appeared less and less likely to be able to unite and rule China once
Japan was defeated. Furthermore, to defeat Japan at the lowest costpossible to the United States, Roosevelt hoped to lure the Soviet Union
into the fray once Germany had surrendered. To achieve this objective,
he conceded to Stalin at Yalta in February 1945 the Kurile Islands, thesouthern half of Sakhalin, and special privileges in Manchuria. In July
1945 Stalin attempted to gain additional concessions on Manchuria in
negotiations with the Nationalists. Meanwhile, no firm agreements had
been made on Korea, although at Yalta it appears that Stalin accepted
Roosevelt's proposal for a multipower trusteeship there. With Soviet
forces approaching readiness to enter the war against Japan, theprospect loomed that they would overrun all of Manchuria and Korea,
thus putting Moscow in a position to dictate future conditions in thosestrategic areas.
3

Combined with new projections of military events in the western
Pacific, this context led Harry S Truman, the new president, to entertain
alternative possibilities regarding Korea. When the United States
successfully tested an atomic device in mid-July 1945, the prospect
emerged more strongly than ever before that Japan would collapse
without a ground invasion of its home islands, which was not scheduled
to commence until the following November. The Soviet Union, it had
been thought, would enter the war well before that and thus would
probably control Korea when the fighting stopped. If the war ended
sooner, however, say in August, the United States might get troops toKorea to accept the Japanese surrender there before Soviet forces
arrived. This scenario became all the more plausible as negotiations
proceeded at the Potsdam summit from July 16 to 26, where Stalin
mentioned that Soviet forces would not be ready to move against Japanin Manchuria before the middle of the next month.
On August 8, however, the Soviet Union, perhaps anticipating an
early surrender by Tokyo in the aftermath of the American use of theatomic bomb against Hiroshima two days before, declared war on
Japan. Although the major Soviet military thrust was into Manchuria,
by August 11 small Soviet units had entered Korea in the extreme
northeast. General Douglas MacArthur, the commander of US forcesin the western Pacific, insisted on continuing to mobilize his forces fora massive occupation of Japan rather than diverting major units for arush to Manchuria or Korea. In any event, Washington believed that
the Soviets possessed a sizable head start in occupying the peninsula.
4

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International Journal of Korean Studies • Volume V, Number 1

The combination of MacArthur's views and the perception of conditions
in Korea led top planners in Washington to reject the possibility ofrushing US forces there to occupy the entire country. Rather, theysuggested that Truman wire Stalin with a proposal that the 3 8th parallel
serve as a dividing line between Soviet and American occupation
forces. Truman agreed and the message was sent on August 15, only
hours after Japan surrendered. Stalin accepted the proposal the nextday.
The US decision here is subject to criticism on numerous grounds.
For one thing, it grossly overestimated the lead of Soviet forces in
Korea, which included only two divisions to Japan's nine and werebottled up along the coast in the extreme northeast. Washington was
surprised that Stalin readily accepted the 38th parallel, but he might
have accepted one still further north so long as it left him a buffer toSoviet territory. To have refused to do so under US pressure would
have risked an early airlift of American troops to the peninsula andperhaps even Japanese cooperation with the United States against theSoviets. A second American miscalculation was of the difficulty ofoccupying Japan, to the accomplishment of which MacArthur insistedon concentrating nearly all of his forces. As it turned out, the Japanese
were quite submissive and some US ground units could easily havebeen spared for a rapid movement into Korea. Although at the timesome planners in Washington wanted to pursue this course, its
feasibility is much more clear in retrospect.
For our purposes here, the most important point is that the US
decision to move into Korea took place without any analysis of an
occupation's sustainability over a substantial period of time.
Washington assumed that Koreans were initially unprepared to govern
themselves and that they were willing to submit, at least temporarily,
to outsidetutelage in the form of a multipower trusteeship. Washington
apparently assumed as well that either political conditions within the
United States were such as to enable American forces to stay in Korea
indefinitely, or that such a stay was not necessary. The Americans, insum, wanted to contain Soviet influence in Korea, but they failed togive close attention to the means required to accomplish that end
beyond the short term.
5

6II
By September 1947 this oversight had been rectified. American
planners now recognized, first, that many Koreans would actively resist
trusteeship or anything else short of independence and, second, that theUnited States was in a weak position to compete with the Soviet Union
for continued influence on the peninsula. The American zone was in
7

International Journal of Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 2001

57

considerable turmoil, for both political and economic reasons, and the
US Congress seemed unwilling to provide adequate funds to sustain the
military occupation much longer or to tackle the worsening conditions
below the 38th parallel. With US-Soviet relations at an impasse in
Korea and worldwide and American commitments to Europe and theMediterranean rapidly expanding, the Joint Chiefs of Staff concluded
that the United States had "little strategic interest" in maintaining troops
in Korea. In offensive operations in war, they believed, the UnitedStates would bypass the peninsula. Defensively, its control by theSoviet Union would complicate American "communications andoperations in East China, Manchuria, the Yellow Sea, Sea of Japan andadjacent islands," but this problem was best neutralized through air
action from Japan and Okinawa rather than with ground operations on
the continent of Asia.
8

If this assessment produced strong pressure for a US withdrawal
from Korea, it did not generate a consensus within the Truman
administration that the peninsula could easily be written off. The State
Department believed that the United States now had a substantial
political stake in Korea as a result of its direct confrontation there with
the Soviet Union. Because the two great powers had divided thecountry into occupation zones in 1945, had been unsuccessful inagreeing on terms for unification, and had pursued sharply divergent
paths in their zones, the United States could not simply "'scuttle' andrun." To do so would convey the message to allies and enemies alike
that, when severe difficulties arose in an area for the United States, it
was more likely to give up rather than to hang tough. State Department
planners conceded that "ultimately the U.S. position in Korea isuntenable even with expenditure of considerable... money and effort,"
but an attempt at graceful withdrawal was necessary to avert a blow to
American credibility worldwide. This thinking led to a rejection of a
Soviet proposal of late September'1947 for a joint withdrawal from
Korea by the end of the year, as this course surely would lead to civil
war and an early victory for the better organized leftist forces
dominated by the Communists.
The alternative chosen was to take the Korean issue to the United
Nations General Assembly, which the United States dominated, in thehope of achieving approval for U.N. sponsored and supervised national
elections to create an independent Korea. The Communists might comeout on top through such a process, but at least it would be orderly andpossess broad international sanction. A possible, even likely,
alternative was that the Soviets would refuse to cooperate with theUnited Nations in their zone, in which case the United States would
push for U.N. action in the South alone. This action would lead to
9

10

11

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International Journal of Korean Studies • Volume V, Number 1

creation of an independent South Korea, which would be highly
vulnerable to both internal subversion and outside attack. Hopefully
independence and U.S. economic and military assistance would foster
internal stability in the South and U.N. sponsorship would deter theSoviet Union from taking decisive action against it.
This last scenario was played out during 1948. Early in the year theSoviets refused to permit the U.N. Temporary Commission on Korea(UNTCOK), created by a November 1947 resolution of the General
Assembly, to operate in their zone. The United States then pushed theFirst Committee of the General Assembly to approve UNTCOK's
operation in the South alone. Elections occurred below the 3 8 parallelon May 10, 1948, and because all leftists and many of their rightist
counterparts boycotted the process, rightist forces led by Syngman
Rhee emerged victorious. With UNTCOK approval, they proceeded toform a government, the Republic of Korea (ROK), which came into
existence on August 15 with the inaugural of Rhee as its president. Latein the year, the U.N. General Assembly recognized the ROK as the only
legitimate government in the territory under its control (meaning below
the 3 8 parallel). Meanwhile, the Soviet Union had created an
indigenous Communist government in the North, the Democratic
People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). Both governments claimed
authority over the entire peninsula. In terms of both internal stability
and military capability, the DPRK was considerably stronger than the
ROK, so much so that Moscow was willing to withdraw its militaryforces at the end of 1948. The United States had refused to scuttle andrun, but its ability to coordinate ends and means remained very muchin doubt.
th

th

12

Had the State Department alone constructed, funded, and executedAmerican Korea policy, this coordination probably would haveoccurred. As it was, the diplomats had to work with a White House anda Congress stingy with funds for defense and a Pentagon faced withexpanding commitments in Europe, the key region in the Cold War.
Still, with highly unstable conditions prevailing in the ROK in late1948, the State Department succeeded in delaying the withdrawal of thelast 7500 U.S. combat troops from the peninsula. Already it had
managed to steer through Congress a bill for economic aid that, unlike
legislation the previous year, provided substantial funding for economic
rehabilitation in Korea. The diplomats argued that, for the UnitedStates to simply leave the ROK to its fate after having taken the lead inits creation through the United Nations, would have a major
psychological impact throughout East Asia and within the internationalorganization.
13

14

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59

Ill
Yet in the spring of 1949 the U.S. government finally resolved toremove its remaining troops from Korea. A variety of domestic andinternational conditions produced this result.
U.S. military leaders were deeply concerned about evolving
conditions both at home and abroad. In East Asia, the Communists
were marching to victory in China with the assistance of tens of
thousands of North Korean soldiers. The return of those soldiers to the
DPRK would give it a huge advantage over the ROK, one which 7500
American soldiers in the South could not override. Thus those soldiers
were likely to find themselves in an increasingly vulnerable position.
Equally important, Washington remained glued to a Europe-firststrategy and was on the verge of committing the United States, throughthe North Atlantic Treaty, to the defense of the western half of thecontinent. With tensions high in Europe over the Soviet blockade of thewestern sectors of Berlin, military planners were anxious to strengthen
American reserves at home so as to prepare for an emergency across the
Atlantic. The U.S. war plan at the time envisioned a conflict breaking
out in Europe, with the initial American effort concentrating on an
atomic air offensive against Soviet territory and on maintaining afoothold on the continent, perhaps at the Pyrenees, and in the Middle
East. In Asia operations would be restricted to a "strategic defensive"
based on offshore islands.
This outlook grew partly out of the military's natural inclination tothink in terms of preparing for a total war like World War II, but it
gained reinforcement from the strict spending limits set by the president
and Congress. This was an age in which people took balanced budgets
and low taxes most seriously, and President Truman had domestic
priorities to advance, which cost money. Moreover, atomic weapons
appeared to provide for defense of America's foreign interests on thecheap. The State Department reluctantly went along with the desire ofmilitary leaders to withdraw from Korea. Economic and politicalconditions had improved somewhat in South Korea and, by someestimates, DPRK and ROK military forces were relatively balanced.
The last American combat troops withdrew in June.
The diplomats did exact a price. The U.S. military advisory groupin Korea was expanded and made permanent. Arms aid to the ROK
continued, and now for an army of 65,000 rather than 50,000. In early
June the Truman administration presented to Congress an economic
assistance bill calling for $ 150 million to the ROK for the approachingfiscal year and its accompanying message from the president likened
the aid program to that for western Europe. Finally, the State
Department prepared a resolution for the fall session of the U.N.
15

60International Journal of Korean Studies • Volume V, Number I

General Assembly that would extend the life of the U.N. commission
on Korea created the previous year. Hopefully the presence of thisobserver group would help to discourage the North Koreans fromlaunching a major attack.
Despite his and his department's ongoing concern about Korea,
Secretary of State Dean Acheson failed to develop a course that
deterred the Soviets from giving North Korea the green light or enabled
the ROK to resist the enemy once it struck. The explanation rests in parton inattentiveness in the face of higher priorities in Europe and thelimitations on intelligence, which viewed military attacks from theCommunists as more likely against Taiwan and in Indochina thanagainst South Korea. In the former cases, the United Nations was not
involved and there was no Soviet-American agreement dividing theterritory. In addition, American ground forces were stationed in Japan,
nearby Korea but hundreds of miles from Taiwan or Indochina. In any
event, the balance of conventional military power on the peninsula
itself was not altogether clear and the North Koreans still were thought
to have a chance of subverting the ROK through infiltration andguerrilla warfare. What information did come in of more aggressive
North Korean intentions and military superiority tended to be from
ROK officials who, it was feared, merely wanted more military aid sothey themselves could take the offensive.
16

Domestic and bureaucratic politics also contributed to American
unpreparedness in Korea. Despite the administration action of June
1949, new economic assistance was not passed by Congress until
February 1950, and then only after the House of Representatives had
rejected the legislation the previous month. Outside the State
Department, the ROK had virtually no constituency in the United Statesand some members of the legislative branch were perfectly willing tohold aid to Korea hostage to the same for Taiwan. Acheson preferred
no aid to Taiwan because he thought it would not save the island fromthe Communists while throwing them further into the hands of theSoviets. He remained willing to provide limited assistance, however, if
it would help secure his Korean program. The Pentagon, in contrast,
wanted more aid for Taiwan and, with the partial exception of theArmy, could not have cared less about Korea.
Under the circumstances, it is understandable that Acheson did not
do more on Korea than he did. He devoted considerable space to thepeninsula in his National Press Club speech of January 12, 1950,
hedging on the critical issue of U.S. aid to the ROK in the event it was
attacked. Areas outside the American island defense perimeter in thewestern Pacific could not be guaranteed. In fact, "initial reliance must
be on the people attacked to resist it;" but then they could look to "the17International Journal of Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 2001

61

commitments of the entire civilized world under the Charter of theUnited Nations, which so far has not proved a weak reed to lean on bypeople who are determined to protect their independence against
outside aggression.". Given the low level of defense spending and themilitary view that Korea was relatively unimportant, the most he could
was attempt ambiguity.
Ambiguity was not enough in the face of developments in northeast
Asia. Unknown to Acheson, North Korean Premier Kim Il-sung had
been pressing Stalin to approve an attack on the ROK since theprevious March. Stalin had demurred, only to begin to rethink thematter early in the new year. By this time, the Americans had
withdrawn combat troops from the ROK, the Communists had emerged
victorious on mainland China, and they had returned two divisions of
Korean soldiers to the DPRK and established the People's Republic in
Beijing. Communist leader Mao Zedong was now in Moscow
negotiating a political-military alliance with the Soviets. With signals
emanating from Washington that the United States would not commit
troops to South Korea's defense, Stalin wired Kim Il-sung on January
30 that he was now willing to give favorable consideration to his desire
to unite the peninsula by force. Early the next month, the Soviet leader
approved Kim's request for modern arms to equip three new North
Korean army divisions. At the end of March, he welcomed Kim to
Moscow for lengthy discussions of the project. Stalin dwelled on the
improved "international environment" created by the Communist
victory in China and the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance,and Mutual Assistance concluded in February. With Mao's approval
and assurances of aid, the arrival of heavy equipment from the Soviet
Union in the spring, and Soviet assistance in developing plans for aconventional attack, the DPRK was ready by late June to launch what
it hoped would be its final campaign against the ROK.
18

19

20

21

22

Given what we now know of Stalin's deliberations regarding a
North Korean attack on the ROK, it was a tragic mistake for the UnitedStates to remove its last combat troops from Korea in 1949. Their
maintenance there, along with the presence of US troops and air powerin Japan and Okinawa, probably would have deterred the Soviet leader
from giving Kim Il-sung the green light to attack south. And it is hard
to believe that the presence of 7500 more troops in the United States
would have tipped the scales in favor of NATO in defending western
Europe against a determined Soviet attack.
Yet even without US combat troops in Korea, it remains possiblethat Stalin could have been deterred, as we know that he refused to give
Kim the go-ahead until he thought a major American militaryintervention unlikely. Well publicized military exercises by American
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forces in Japan and Okinawa for deployment to Korea, combined withinspection tours of the peninsula by top military brass from
Washington, might well have conveyed a message of US commitmentthat would have led Stalin to shy away from supporting Kim's designs.
That no such activities occurred reflects the poor coordination of policy
both in Washington between the State Department and the Pentagon
and within the Pentagon itself, and between Washington and Tokyo,
where General MacArthur reigned as in many ways a virtuallyindependent sovereign.

IV
Why, in the face of the North Korean attack, did the United Statessuddenly return ground forces to the peninsula? The first point to bemade is that the action did not represent a reversal of policy, but rather
the end of one of ambiguity. The option of sending troops back into
Korea had been considered in an army paper in June 1949. Then it was
concluded that such action would be "unsound militarily" but possibly"necessary on the basis of political considerations...." No decision
emerged on the paper at the time, probably in part because there
appeared to be no pressing need for one and in part because divisions
existed on the matter within the executive branch. Acheson's ambiguity
in his National Press Club speech six months later grew out of the same
circumstances.
At the end of June 1950, ambiguity was no longer possible. For
the first time in American policy circles, Korea was at center stage. By
early on June 30, it was clear that, unless the United States committed
troops, the North Koreans would overrun the South within weeks.
Several other things also were clear. First, the ROK was threatened not
because it was falling apart from within or it had launched an attack
northward and was now suffering the consequences, but because DPRK
forces had initiated an all-out attack southward, one which could nothave been executed without Soviet help. This action represented
aggression, a flagrant violation of the Soviet-American agreement ofAugust 1945 and of UN resolutions recognizing the legitimacy of the
ROK. Second, General MacArthur, the commander in the field,
believed that two US combat divisions from Japan, joined by American
air and naval forces in the area, could repulse the attack—and they
could do so without compromising the defense of Japan. Third, there
was no indication of direct Soviet or Chinese Communist intervention
in Korea or of impending Soviet or Soviet proxy moves in other, more
important areas. The conflict in Korea appeared to be an isolated event,thus justifying action outside the old category of total war. Fourth,broad support existed among allies abroad for strong American
23International Journal of Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 2001

63

measures, and if anything such support was even stronger at home.
Under these conditions—which could not have been anticipated inadvance— decisive action was warranted, Acheson thought, "as [a]symbol [of the] strength and determination of [the] west." To do lesswould encourage "new aggressive action elsewhere" and demoralize"countries adjacent to [the] Soviet orbit."
The commitment of troops to Korea represented more of adeparture from past thinking to the Joint Chiefs than to the State
Department. Why, then, did military leaders go along? First, they did
so for the reasons stated above, but in their case the fourth was perhaps
the most important of all. Not only did President Truman convey fromthe start the sentiment that whatever needed to be done to save South
Korea must be done; he chose the hawkish Secretary of State Acheson
to lead deliberations through the crisis. And for the first time Congressappeared to be solidly behind a major commitment to Korea. Leftentirely alone to deliberate, the Joint Chiefs might have chosedifferently. Certainly they did not lead the tide for intervention. With
that tide so strong, however, they were unwilling to demur.
24

25

The Americans took on a risky venture at the end of June 1950, but
it did not represent an unreasonable coordination of ends and means. To
be sure, it took some eight divisions to repulse the North Koreans rather
than the two originally estimated by MacArthur, and this meant dipping
into reserves at home. The key considerations in justifying the initialcommitment, in addition to those outlined above, are, first, that theUnited States maintained a strong superiority in nuclear weapons anddelivery capabilities over the Soviet Union and, second, it enjoyedsimilar superiority in mobilization capacity. All indications were that
Moscow was not ready to start a global war and that, if it did, theUnited States would have a better than even chance of prevailing.
The weight of judgment shifts to the negative side, however, once
we turn to the US decision in the fall of 1950 to seek unification of thepeninsula by force.

V
It did not take long after the commitment of U.S. troops to Korea
for planners in Washington to begin consideration of altering the initial
objective of restoring the 38 parallel. By mid-July ROK President
Syngman Rhee had stated publicly that North Korea's aggression "hadobliterated the thirty-eighth parallel and that no peace and order could
be maintained in Korea as long as the division [of the peninsula] ...
remained." In a private meeting in Tokyo with two members of the
U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, General MacArthur, the recently appointed
commander of U.N. forces in Korea, opined that North Korean forces
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26

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International Journal of Korean Studies • Volume V, Number J

must be destroyed and the country reunited. The United States could
prevent the Chinese or the Soviets from intervening by using atomic
weapons to create a radioactive barrier along the northern boundary of
the peninsula. Although the use of atomic weapons for such a purpose
never received serious consideration in Washington, the executive
branch soon engaged in serious debate over the merits of expanding thestated objective in Korea. Whether it was because of the need to punish
aggression in order to deter it, to reverse "the dangerous strategic trend
in the Far East," or to take the offensive in the Cold War in general,
important elements in both the Pentagon and the State Department
believed that military action to unite Korea should not be ruled out.
27

28

Still, by mid-August it was widely accepted that the Soviet Union
and/or China would probably send forces into that country to preventan attempt to unite it by hostile forces. Since for the moment thecommitment of U.S. forces to Korea had disrupted the American
capacity to execute its war plan against the Soviet Union, a consensus
existed that it was too early to reach a decision on the desirability of
any U.N. ground operations north of the 38 parallel. NSC 81,
approved by President Truman on September 11, reflected thissentiment at the same time that, in phraseology, it revealed apredisposition toward boldness. A U.N. ground offensive should be
extended into North Korea "provided that at the time of such operations
there has been no entry into [that area of]... major Soviet or Communist
Chinese forces, no announcement of an intended entry, nor a threat tocounter our operations [there] militarily."The Inchon landing of September 15 and its follow-up over the
next two weeks magnified the predisposition exponentially.
MacArthur's flanking operation at the port of Seoul and the subsequent
breakout of U.N. forces from the Pusan perimeter abruptly reversed thetide of battle, magnified psychological and domestic political pressureson the Truman administration to move forward quickly, and reduced
the time available for the Communist side to signal the enemy on therisks of expanding ground operations beyond the 38 parallel. Thus,
when the signals finally were sent, the momentum in Washington for
a U.N. advance into the North overwhelmed any lingering sense of
caution. That caution did not return to the fore until the Chinese hadlaunched a counteroffensive that sent U.N. forces reeling and eventhreatened again their expulsion from the peninsula.
The case for a U.S.-supported effort to reunite Korea was by nomeans inconsequential. For centuries, the peninsula had been united
and a denial of Rhee's determination to bring it about would havecreated serious strains in the American relationship with the ROK.
Furthermore, the elimination of division, however difficult, would have
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29

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International Journal of Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 2001

65

eradicated a tense situation within the country that indefinitely left open
the prospect of resumed fighting. The punishment of aggression in thiscase presumably would have produced some deterrent value at othertimes and in other places.
Yet the negatives outweighed the positives here, at least from a
broad strategic standpoint. To the United States, Korea was a secondary
area in a secondary theater. The primary area in that theater was Japan,
and Korea's unification was not essential for its protection. An effort
to unify Korea would stretch U.S. supply lines in the region and give
China, still the second team on the enemy side, an opportunity tointervene under circumstances that would engage large American forceson the peninsula for an indefinite period. True, a divided peninsula
would perpetuate the need for a U.S. military presence there, butestablishment of a defensible line in the general area of the 3 8 parallel,
combined with a strong effort to build up ROK forces, would haveprovided, over time, a good chance for stability at considerably less riskof overextension. With U.S. war plans against the primary enemy
already compromised because of the direct military involvement in
Korea, Washington was in a precarious position to take on an expanded
objective there. This was all the more the case because the support ofallies in the primary theater of the Cold War, namely Europe, was far
more shallow on the question of unification than on the matter of the
ROK's defense, a fact which became clear in negotiations at the United
Nations in early October and even more so a month later, when the firstsigns of large-scale Chinese intervention appeared.
th31

If Washington permitted means and ends to get seriously out ofbalance in the fall of 1950, it quickly resumed its balancing act in thewinter of 1950-1951 as the magnitude of Chinese intervention on thepeninsula and the level of perturbation of European allies became clear.
The Truman administration retreated early on to the objective of saving
the ROK and held to it through a nasty public dispute with General
MacArthur. Only with the emergence in office in early 1953 and acontinued deadlock in armistice negotiations did top people on theAmerican side seriously contemplate expanding the objective once
again. Fortunately for the prospects of avoiding a broader war, theCommunists chose to end the stalemate by accepting the U.S. positionon the POW issue.
32

33

VI
A major fear of American policymakers throughout the war was
that, once concluded, the United States would again retreat into
unpreparedness, thus leaving South Korea and other areas vulnerable.
Joining that fear, however, was a determination to avoid past
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mistakes—and that determination proved adequate for the constructionof a consistently effective deterrent against a resumption of war in
Korea. The United States, to be sure, greatly reduced its militarypresence on the peninsula, but it did so over time and, unlike in 1949,
never was there a serious question of complete withdrawal. Even in
the late 1970s, when President Jimmy Carter pushed for a total
withdrawal of ground troops, he insisted that U.S. air forces would
remain in Korea. In that case, the uproar in the United States over theprospective withdrawal of the former alone was enough to force
Carter's retreat. The United States had learned well the lesson that, as
an emerging adversary put it in 1949, "preparedness eliminatesmishaps." Never again would American defense spending become soanemic that the U.S. position in Korea seemed expendable in the faceof more critical interests elsewhere.
U.S. deterrence in Korea, however, was not solely dependent on thecontinuing presence there of American forces. In the immediate
aftermath of the war, the United States negotiated a defense pact with
the ROK, one that stands to this day. It also issued, along with other
U.N. members contributing forces to the peninsula, a "greater sanctions
statement" that threatened a war beyond Korea if the other side initiateda resumption of hostilities.
34

35

This survey of American strategy in Korea from 1945 to 1953
serves to remind us of the evolutionary nature of the U.S. rise to global
policeman in the aftermath of World War II. The demobilization ofAmerican armed forces during 1945 and 1946 and the absence of any
major rebuilding effort over the next three years left the country witha serious disjunction between its growing involvement andcommitments abroad and its military strength in being. It took the North
Korean attack of June 1950 and quite possibly the Chinese intervention
in the fall to largely eliminate that problem. That it was eliminated isindicated both by the sustained buildup of NATO forces in Europe
during and after the war and by a similar buildup of allied forces in
Korea plus a formal statement of an ongoing commitment of the UnitedStates to the defense of the ROK.

if

International Journal of Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 2001 67

Notes
1. John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar
American National Security Policy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), viii.
2. "Possible Soviet Attitudes Toward Far Eastern Questions," October 2, 1943, Box119, Records of Harley A. Notter, 1939-1945, Record Group 59, National Archives II,
College Park, Md.
3.1 use "strategic areas," as do the officials in the State Department document quoted
above, to mean ones possessing major material or human resources and/or locations
advantageous from which to project power into other territories.
In addition to pressing the Nationalists for concessions in Manchuria beyond the
Yalta accords, by the summer of 1945 the Soviets were dealing with areas theyoccupied in Eastern Europe in a manner that did not inspire confidence in Washington
regarding Moscow's willingness to uphold prior agreements.
4. Michael C. Sandusky, America's Parallel (Alexandria, Va.: Old Dominion Press,
1983), 176-78, 180-85.
5. Ibid., 248-52; Erik Van Ree, Socialism in One Zone: Stalin's Policy in Korea, 19451947 (New York: Berg, 1989), 62-64; U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of
the United States, vol. 6, The British Commonwealth, the Far East (Washington, D.C.
Government Printing Office, 1969), 657-60, 1039 (henceforth volumes in this series
will be referred to as FRUS).
6. I say "apparently" here because I have seen no documents indicating that US
planners discussed or thought through the implications of an initial occupation of Korea
by American forces.
7. This issue is treated in depth in my The Road to Confrontation: American Policy
toward China and Korea, 1947-1950 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina
Press, 1981), 75-88.
8. FRUS, 1947, 6: 817-18.
9. FRUS, 1947 6: 820-21.
10. For estimates that the process might endin Communist domination of South Korea,
see ibid., 775-76, 794-96, 803-807.
11. Based on my interviews with State Department officials W. Walton Butterworth(November 16, 1971), Dean Rusk (July 24, 1972), Philip Jessup (June 6, 1972), andNiles Bond (July 30, 1977), I conclude that no consensus existed within that agency
regarding prospects for Soviet acceptance of U.N.-sponsored elections in the North.
12. For a fuller treatment, see my Road to Confrontation, 88-105.
13. See U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Foreign Affairs Committee, KoreanAid, HearingsonS. 9 3 8 , 8 1 Congress, 1st session, June 8-23,1949 (Washington, D . C :Government Printing Office, 1949), 37, 57, 105.
st14. See NSC 8 in FRUS, 1948, 6: 1164-69.
15. For details and documentation for this and the next four paragraphs, see my Road
to Confrontation, 153-59.

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th

16. See ibid., 164-70. The border clashes along the 38 parallel of 1949 were quite
disturbing to the Americans, who recognized at least partial South Korean
responsibility.
17. Ibid., 140-43, 146, 158, 161-62.
18. Bulletin of the Department of State, 22(.Tanuary 23, 1950): 116.
19. Evgeniy P. Bajanov and Natalia Bajanov, "The Korean Conflict, 1950-1953: Most
Mysterious War of the 20 Century-Based on Secret Soviet Archives," English
translation of unpublished manuscript based on the Presidential Archives of the former
Soviet Union, 17-18. Henceforth, this document will be identified as "Korean." I wish
to thank Professor Ohn Chang-il of the Korean Military Academy, Seoul, Republic ofKorea, for providing me with a copy of this manuscript.
th

20. Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Bulletin of the Cold War
International History Project, 5(Spring 1995): 9. Henceforth, this journal will bereferred to as Bulletin.
21. "Korean," 38.
22. Kathryn Weathersby, '"Should We Fear This': Stalin and the Dimensions of the
Korean War," paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Historical
Association annual meeting, January 2000 (copy in author's possession), 13-14.
23. FRUS, 1949, 7: 1047, 1054-55.
24. Acheson to Ambassador Alan Kirk in Moscow, June 28, 1950, Record Group 84,
National Archives II, College Park, Md.
25. For fuller coverage of the US intervention, see my Road to Confrontation. 177-98.
26. FRUS, 1950, 7: 373.
27. J. Lawton Collins, War in Peacetime: The History and Lessons of Korea (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1969), 82-83.
28. See my Road to Confrontation, 202-206.
29. FRUS, 1950, 7: 716; also my The Korean War: An International History(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1995), 62-63.
30. See my Korean War, 85-162.
31. See my Korean War, 91 -96, 111-19.
32. Ibid., 127-203.
33. Ibid., 320-25.
34. The adversary was Mao Zedong. See Shu Guang Zhang, Mao's Military
Romanticism: China and the Korean War (Lawrence, Ks.: Regents Press of Kansas,
1995), 36.
35. See my Korean War, 359-61.

International Journal of Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 2001

69

China's Conflict Behavior
in Korea Revisited*
Implications for East Asian Security

Bin YuAssociate Professor of Political Science
Wittenberg University

Introduction: Orthodox, Revisionism & Beyond
In the past decade or two, China's military operation during the
Korean War (1950-1953) has been extensively documented in both
English and Chinese literatures."
There is, however, little agreement regarding the lessons, if any,that China learned from the Korean War. Part of the "non-learning"
school in English language literature is that the PRC's conflict behavior
in general and its operation in Korea in particular is determined by its
persistent communist ideology, or by a highly "romantic" and certainly
irresponsible attitude toward the threat and use of force. In a broader
perspective, to argue that China has tangible security concerns like anyother power is politically incorrect, as recent scholarship suggests, inthat it is "sympathetic" to Beijing's position.
In China, the passage of time has also led to an emerging"revisionist" school about both the decision to intervene and China's
conduct of military operations in Korea. Some question the mainstreamof China's research on the Korean War for the lack of study of the"negative cases" in the People's Liberation Army's (PLA) experiencein Korea. Others offer alternative explanations for both the decision tointervene and the operations of the war. Still some cast doubt over thedisproportionately high price China paid for certain operations in
Korea.
2

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* The author expresses his thanks to Prof. Allan R. Millett of Ohio State
University, Col. Victor A. Gavrilov of Moscow Institute of Military History,
Dr. Kim Taeho of Korea Institute for Defense Analyses and Melanie Ziarko,
research assistant of Wittenberg University's East Asian Studies for theircomments on and assistance to this article.

International Journal of Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 2001

71

The rethinking of China's conduct of the Korean War both insideand outside China has certainly shed new light on the issue. However,it has generated more questions, while still being unable to deal withquestions of interpreting China's conflict behavior: how and why did
China change its operational and strategic goals during the process of
the war, if the ideology factor is regarded as constant throughout thisperiod? The ideology argument simply tells us little about theoperational milieu of the Chinese military during the Korean War. Nordoes it provide any reliable guidance to understand PRC's policies
toward the Korean Peninsula in the new century when Washington and
Beijing seem to move toward a more complicated and perhaps more
confrontational path with consequences that may be neither anticipated
nor liked by either side.
This paper does not intend to join the debate of whether Chinalearned anything from the Korean War, nor is it interested in defining
the "right" lessons from "wrong" ones. Rather, it examines how China
adjusted itself during the process of the war at both operational andstrategic levels in an "asymmetrical" environment. The process of thisadjustment, however, was not linear. It was affected by variables
including the PLA's own historical experience, its ability to sustain
costly warfare, civil-military relations, intra-bloc politics, etc. Whatever
the case, China's experience with the world's most powerful military
has significantly affected its policies toward the Korean Peninsula andoutside powers through today.
To operationalize these variables, this paper first examines China's
conflict behavior during the Korean War, particularly the first eightmonths (October 1950 to June 1951). This period covers PLA's "fivecampaigns" which represented significant "adjusting curves" for the
PRC. PRC's initial tactics were both cautious and bold. This wasfollowed by a rather "optimistic" phase in which China's military
operations were considerably affected by allies politics, politicalconcerns and miscalculations rather than a pragmatic grasp of thebattlefield reality. A series of missteps during this period led China torevise its strategic and operational goals in mid-1951 toward anegotiated peace based on the reality and changes in the battlefield. In
the second half of this study, I will assess the impact of the war on the
PRC's foreign/defense behavior after the Korean War and its
implications for current and future East Asian security. PRC's post-war
behavior to be examined includes the PLA's post-Korean War
modernization, China's prudent and pragmatic policies toward Korea,
the PLA's covert military action in Vietnam and America's tacit
reciprocity, the impact of China's first nuclear test, the Taiwan factor,
and the crucial role of Korea in China's security calculus.
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International Journal of Korean Studies• Volume V, Number 1

Military Conservatism & "Old Wine" in a "New Bottle" (October
25-December 24 1950):
Contrary to the "revisionist" arguments in both English andChinese literature that China's conduct of the war in Korea wasromantic and reckless, China's leaders were perhaps overcautious at
the onset. They planned a defensive rather than offensive posture. They
deliberately avoided engaging the more powerful U.S. military andinstead took up the Republic of Korea (ROK) units that were perceived
weaker and inexperienced. Mao switched to mobile and tacticallyoffensive operations only after sensing the rapidly changed battlefieldsituation in which the U.N. forces advanced unexpectedly fast and at
the same time exposed themselves dangerously to the flanking
operations of the Chinese People's Volunteers (CPV).
11

12

It was not an easy decision for top Chinese leaders to decide tointervene in Korea. Nor was it clear exactly how to confront the U.S.
military, except that they were aware of a basic strategic fact that China
was to face the world's most powerful military. Moreover, the PLA's
action in Korea would not be accompanied by previously promised
Soviet air cover, at least not for the time being. Without any combat
experience in modern warfare and with limited knowledge about the
U.S. military, Mao adopted a conservative posture, taking somedefensive positions in the northernmost part of Korea while waiting forthe arrival of Soviet arms and supplies. In his October 2 telegraph to
Stalin, Mao stated,
13

14

15

Under present circumstances, we will begin to dispatch thetwelve divisions already deployed in South Manchuria into
appropriate areas in North Korea—not necessarily downalong the 38 Parallel—on October 15.... In this first phase,
these troops will mainly conduct defensive operations.
Their goals will be to fight the enemy attacking forces northof the 38 Parallel, to annihilate small [enemy] units and to
get to know various situations. Meanwhile, they [Chinese
troops] will wait for Soviet weapons so as to become better
equipped, and only after that will they coordinate with the
Korean comrades to counterattack US invading forces.
th

th

16

According to this cautious thinking, the CPV planned to construct
two to three defensive lines between the Pyongyang-Wonsan line in theSouth and Tokchon-Yongwon line in the North. Mao also instructed
the CPV to engage ROK units first in order to gain experience before
fighting large U.S. units. Any major offensive operation would have to
wait for at least six months until China obtained "overwhelming
superiority" both in the air and on the ground.
17International Journal of Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 2001

73

The unexpected rapid advance of U.N. forces quickly undid Mao's
initial conservative posture. Some U.N. units had already reached
CPV's anticipated defensive areas while the CPV units were still 80 to
130 kilometers away. Mao, therefore, decided to abandon the originalplan and to switch to mobile operations. One of the main reasons for thechange was that it was detected that the U.N. troops were unaware of
the CPV's presence. The huge gap between the two U.N. advancing
columns in the eastern and western parts of Korea provided a perfectopportunity for the CPV to launch surprise attacks against the U.N.
units.
Mobile operation, coupled with surprise effect and numericalsuperiority, were perhaps the only effective tactics to allow a relatively
weak military to engage a much stronger opponent such as the
Nationalists troops during the ChineseCivil War (1946-49). On the eveof its 1st Campaign (October 25 to November 8, 1950), the CPV wasready to replay all of these tactics. By maneuvering at night and resting
during the day, some 300,000 CPV troops deployed south of the Yalu
River remained undetected for one week, ready to engage the frontline
ROK units. Some U.S. intelligence officers did notice large-scale
military movement and deployment to North Korea. They nonethelessfailed to convince top U.S. military and civilian leaders that a majorintervention by China's military was either imminent or possible.
Between October 25 and November 1, the CPV dealt heavy blows
to the ROK's 1st, 6th, 7th, and 8th divisions by destroying many of
their scattered regiments or sending them into hasty retreat. CPV's 1
Campaign managed to stabilize the situation, providing valuable
breathing space by pushing the front line south of the Chongchon
River. The temporary halt of the U.N. advance to the north also offered
the needed time for the CPV to resupply and reinforce.
The impact of the CPV's 1st Campaign was apparently not strong
enough to alarm MacArthur, who continued to see China's intervention
as insignificant. In anticipation of the next operation, Peng suggested
to Mao that U.N. forces be lured into pre-set "traps" as far north as
possible so that individual U.N. units would be extended with longer
supply lines and thus be more easily isolated and destroyed. Maoquickly approved the plan. Peng instructed that each CPV army would
withdraw its main force farther north, but leave one division "toconduct mobile and guerrilla warfare ... to wipe out small enemy units
while engaging and luring larger enemy units to the trap." The CPV
tried to create the false perception of a disorderly retreat from theadvancing U.N. forces. Some CPV units even reduced the duration ofeach rear-protecting effort so that U.N. forces would assume that the
CPV's combat capability was diminishing. As a last effort to keep
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International Journal of Korean Studies • Volume V, Number 1

MacArthur from suspecting China's motivation and strength, the CPV
also released some 100 POWs (including 27 Americans), who weredeliberately told that they had to be released because the CPV had to go
back to China due to supply difficulties.
On November 24, MacArthur launched his "home-by-Christmas"
offensive, again leaving a huge gap between his 8 Army on thewestern front and X Corps on the eastern front. The CPV launched its
counterattack ( 2 Campaign) the following day, when all of the major
U.N. units were in the anticipated areas. While four CPV armies (39 ,
40 , 50 and 66 ) launched a frontal attack on the 8 Army, the CPV's
38 Army made a flanking move through the gap between the ROK's
7 and 8 Divisions in Tokehon, threatening to trap part of the 8 Armythrough this encirclement from the south. Although most of the IX US
Corps was able to escape the trap, it lost 3,000 POWs, the largest suchgroup ever captured by the CPV. On the whole, the 2 Campaign wasa major victory for the CPV, thanks to careful planning, deception andexecution, not just the result of "sheer good luck." In only nine days,
the CPV dealt heavy blows to U.N. forces, pushed the battle line to the
38 parallel, and retook Pyongyang.
19

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The first two campaigns, though successful, also revealed many
shortcomings of the Chinese military. On the eastern front, the 150,000strong 9 Army Group (20 , 26 and 27 Armies) was not adequately
prepared for the sub-zero Korean winter. It was hastily thrown into
combat against the 1 Marine Division and the U.S. 7 Infantry
Division. Although the 9 Army Group scored the only major victoryof the CPV in Korea when it wiped out an entire regiment of the U.S.
military (the 3 2 Regiment of the 7 Division), it suffered a terrible tollfrom the Korean winter. More than 30,000 officers and men, some 22
percent of the entire 9 Army Group, were disabled by severe frostbite,and some 1,000 died. The 9 Army Group, therefore, was incapable ofannihilating a much smaller enemy force than originally planned.
The 2 Campaign was also affected considerably by the CPV's
logistical constraints imposed by U.N. air power, as well as by the lackof transportation assets and bad road conditions. CPV units had
supplies for one week at best. Originally, CPV headquarters planned adouble-encirclement by two armies and two divisions. However, foodshortages forced the CPV to forego the extra two divisions. Otherwise,
the CPV would have been more successful.
Despite these problems, the CPV made good use of its limited
resources and fully utilized the opportunities whenever they arose. Bothpolitical and military leaders were conservative in the planning andexecution of their operations. Mao and others were more willing tocater to the battlefield need, while keeping their operational goals
th

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International Journal of Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 200175

within the realms of reality. This, however, did not prevent the CPVfrom taking bold and flexible actions when situations changed andconditions permitted. The switch from a defensive posture to mobile
operations during the first two campaigns was the single most importantfactor that ensured the CPV's operational success.
The 2 Campaign represented the peak of CPV performance. As
the CPV began to strike south, the tactics that it had successfully usedbegan to lose effectiveness. U.N. forces rapidly adjusted to CPV tactics.
And, as the CPV's supply line became extended, U.N. air power began
to cause heavier damage to CPV's primitive logistical efforts. Finally,
the CPV's operations began to be complicated by bloc politics as well
as by excessive optimism among some civilian and military officers. As
a result, the CPV began to pursue goals beyond its capabilities.
nd

Politics in Command & Military Unrealism (December 1950 toJune 1951)
The end of the CPV's first two campaigns, though successful, also
led to growing disputes between top civilian and military leaders,
between the Chinese and their Soviet/Korean allies over a range ofissues including the scope, speed, and strategies for the next phase of
the war. Around the time of the 3 Campaign (31 December 1950 to 8
January 1951), optimism among top Soviet, Korean and Chinese
leaders pressed the CPV to operate well beyond its capabilities.
Meanwhile, field commanders also became overconfident from time totime regarding the CPV's capabilities. As a result, the CPV sufferedconsiderably heavier casualties than in the initial phase of the war andhad to adjust its operational and strategic goals.
Intra-bloc Politics: PreSrd Campaign: The first two campaigns
were operated largely on the CPV's terms and terrain. Even so, theCPV was exhausted due to its primitive logistic systems. CPV units on
the western front had fewer than 300 trucks for almost 300,000 troops.
Because the U.N. air forces had destroyed much of the CPV's winterclothing supply, many men had no adequate protection for winter. The
fact that the 9 Army Group was virtually disabled due to frostbite wasa chilly reminder of the CPV's severe supply disability. For thesereasons, Peng requested on December 8,1950, a pause of a few months
until the next spring and wanted to confine the forthcoming campaign
to areas north of the 38 parallel. Peng's plan was also supported by
Nie Rongzhen, the PLA's acting Chief of Staff in Beijing. Peng's
request was based on his assessment that the CPV was not ready to deal
with a more fortified enemy along the 38 parallel. If his troops could
not deliver heavy blows to the U.N. forces, it did not make much sense
for the CPV to cross the 38 parallel and capture Seoul. Besides, an
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International Journal of Korean Studies • Volume V, Number 1thimmediate crossing of the 38 parallel would make the supply of his
troops even more difficult.
Intra-bloc politics, however, placed pressure on the CPV to launch
the next operation as soon as possible. On the same day Peng Dehuai
requested a pause for a few months, North Korean leader Kim II Sungissued a call to the Korean people for "an all-out drive for the victorious
war for national liberation." The Soviets, too, believed that the CPV
should maintain pressure on U.N. forces by resuming its offensive
operations. Recently available Russian archives show that Stalin tried
to delay China's move for a possible cease-fire after the first two
campaigns when China was approached by some U.N. members (India,
Britain and Sweden). Specifically, Stalin suggested to Zhou Enlai not
to respond to U.N. inquiries, not to cease military operation before allof China's conditions were met, and not to submit these conditions fora cease-fire before the U.S. responded to a U.N. cease-fire plan.
Between political pressures from allies and a difficult battlefieldreality, Mao seemed more concerned about the political implications ofan entire winter without any military operation by the CPV and apossible stalemate at the 3 8 parallel. For Mao, an immediate cease-fireat the 38 parallel was a "trick" to halt the CPV's advance. Moreover,
Mao was also aware of the "skepticism among friendly countries." He
therefore demanded on December 13 that the next campaign belaunched in early January (a month and half ahead of Peng's request)
in order to boost the morale of the socialist countries.
Peng, however, tried to scale down Mao's ambitious plans anddemanded greater flexibility should such an operation be executedahead of his requested schedule. In his December 19 cable to Mao,
Peng noted "a rise of unrealistic optimism for quicker victory fromvarious parts," and suggested a more prudent advance. He warned that
although the CPV would not suffer a defeat in the coming campaign,
there was a possibility that the CPV's advance would be blocked or thatsuccess would be modest. Mao eventually agreed (December 21) to
Peng's more conservative plan and granted him the tactical flexibility
to disengage and stop the operation whenever necessary. Mao evenagreed with Peng that the CPV would pull back dozens of kilometers
after crossing the 38 parallel for rest and regrouping.
On New Year's Eve in 1950, while still under-supplied, the CPV
launched its 3 Campaign across the 38 parallel against U.N. forces
entrenched across the entire peninsula. In a matter of eight days, CPV
forces crossed the 3 8 parallel, recaptured Seoul and pushed the frontline down to the 37 parallel. Though surprised by the CPV offense,
U.N. forces managed to have an orderly retreat, and most American
forces suffered few casualties. In contrast, CPV units were exhausted
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after days of continuous operation. As a result, the CPV at this point
only had 280,000 poorly supplied and very exhausted troops facing
230,000 well-equipped U.N. and ROK forces. A more cautious strategy
was therefore necessary after the 3rd Campaign.
Intra-bloc Politics: Post-3rd Campaign: Despite these problems,
intra-bloc politics once again put pressure on the CPV to strive for aquicker and bigger victory. Shortly after the CPV stopped pursuing theretreating U.N. forces, the Soviet ambassador to Pyongyang once again
urged Peng to pursue the enemy. "No commander would stop pursuing
the fleeing enemy," he said while also complaining to Stalin and North
Korean leader Kim II Sung about the CPV's decision. Peng rejected theSoviet request and reported it to Mao, who later sent Peng's cable to
Stalin. Sensing the tension between the Soviet ambassador and Peng,
Stalin ordered the ambassador to keep quiet and later transferred him
back home.
Likewise, North Korean leader Kim II Sung questioned the sudden
end of the CPV's 3 Campaign. Shortly after Peng's argument with
Soviet ambassador, Kim and his Foreign Minister Park Hon Yong cameto see Peng and insisted that the CPV resume its pursuit. They cited
opinions of the "Soviet comrades" that called for an immediate drive
south to force U.N. forces out of the peninsula. Peng disagreed,
explaining that the enemy was not really defeated, but had deliberately
evacuated Seoul in order to lure the CPV farther south and to strikeback with another amphibious attack. The CPV had sufferedconsiderable losses and was worn out after three months of almost
nonstop operations, and a pause of a few months was necessary. Indeed,
the CPV conducted its 3 Campaign with considerable difficulty andfor "political considerations" only. After some hard bargaining, Pengcompromised on a two-month pause.
With the pressure from allies and a bleaker battlefield situation,
Mao played a rather "invisible" role. On the one hand, Mao let his fieldcommanders take the heat from the Soviets and North Koreans. He
would simply forward these "unresolved" cases to Stalin who usually
made the final decisions. Meanwhile, Mao reminded Stalin that in order
to avoid the previous mistakes by the North Koreans who overexposed
themselves by rapidly striving south, the CPV needed a pause of two to
three months for rest and resupply after its takeover of Seoul. With thememories still fresh of the North Koreans' terrible defeat after
MacArthur's Inchon Landing just a few months before, Stalin this timesided with Mao and Peng not to advance too soon and too far downsouth. The CPV thus went ahead to take a two-month pause to rest
and resupply before taking on the next operation in March. The
battlefield reality, however, was changing fast. The CPV was unable to
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proceed with its planned pause due to the U.N.'s sudden counterattack.
Military Unrealism: Political leaders were not the only ones tomiscalculate. CPV commanders also contributed to their own share of
the problem. Following the first three relatively successful campaigns,
many CPV rank-and-file became more confident and questioned Peng's
decision not to pursue the retreating U.N. forces following the captureof Seoul. They believed that an early victory would bring the troops
back home faster. Peng had a hard time convincing CPV "adventurists"
that, despite initial successes, they could not ignore the U.N.'s superior
firepower. Besides, the CPV also faced mounting problems, including
poor supply, extreme fatigue, lack of a coastal defense and rear
security, and delayed reinforcements. A more cautious strategy wasnecessary after the 3 Campaign.
The sudden counteroffensive by U.N. forces in January 25, 1951,
terminated the CPV's planned two-month pause as well as the internal
debate. Although the CPV managed to organize some delaying actions,
it was forced to abandon Seoul on March 14, 1951, and withdraw its
forces north of the 3 8 parallel. The CPV managed to hold its position
south of the Han River in the first 20 days after the U.N.'s
counterattack (January 25 to February 16,1951). It nonetheless sufferedheavy losses. For 87 days (January 25 to April 21, the CPV's phaseof the 4 Campaign), the CPV was largely in a passive situation, while
the U.N. forces were able to control the pace and scope of operations.
The front line at the 37 parallel established at the end of the 3Campaign was the southernmost line the CPV ever reached during the
Korean War. As the battlefield situation continued to worsen, Penghurried back to Beijing in late February 1951 and convinced Mao thatthe war in Korea could not be won quickly.
Contrary to the revisionist argument that Mao always expected aquick win, the Chinese leader at this point was actually preparing for amuch protracted war in Korea, a major change in the operational goals
for the CPV, even if Mao's strategic goals of driving the U.N. forcesout of Korea remained unchanged. On February 7, 1951, two weeks
before Peng returned to brief him, Mao instructed the CPV to rotate its
main forces starting from March 1951. Mao explained this move as partof the plan to have a longer-than-expected war in Korea. Such a
protracted period was needed to annihilate more enemy forces in orderto force the U.N. forces out of Korea. The CPV's difficulties, as
conveyed by Peng in person in late February, reinforced Mao's belief.
In his telegraph to Stalin during the height of the CPV's 4 Campaign,
Mao explained to the Soviet leader the necessity and desirability of arather long draw in Korea with the U.N. forces.
Mao's cautious approach, however, was ironically offset by a
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number of miscalculations made by his field commanders, particularly
Peng, regarding the next move. One of Peng's main reasons forlaunching the 5 Campaign (April 21 to June 10, 1951) was his belief
that U.N. forces would attempt another amphibious landing in the rear.
Peng calculated that an earlier launch of the next campaign would
prevent U.N. forces from proceeding with the landing.
The CPV's top commanders, however, disagreed considerably
about how to execute the campaign. In fact, most disagreed with Peng's
idea of striking south. They preferred an "in-house" operation,
engaging U.N. forces after luring them into CPV occupied areas. This
would shorten the CPV's supply line and allow it to engage the enemy
by using mobile operations in terrain familiar to the unseasoned CPV
units. Peng, however, was determined to strike south and seize theinitiative after months of being pressed by the U.N. forces.
The CPV's 5 Campaign was its largest of the war. The CPV andthe North Koreans deployed some 700,000 troops against 340,000 U.N.
forces, and the two sides fought for approximately 40 days. But theresults were disappointing for the CPV. In fact, the campaign failed toachieve its goal of destroying five enemy divisions (including three
American ones). At the same time, CPV units suffered heavy losses.
The CPV's 180 Division was completely destroyed by quick U.N.
counterattacks. Additionally, U.N. forces took 17,000 POWs,
representing 80 percent of the total CPV POWs during the entire war.
More important, the front line was pushed farther north. In retrospect,
official Chinese history summarized the 5 Campaign as "executed too
hastily with too large a scope and striking too far down south." Penglater admitted that the 5 Campaign was one of only four mistakes hemade during his entire military career.
It was at this point that Mao realized the goal of driving the U.N.
forces out of Korea was unattainable. A negotiated peace was perhaps
the most achievable goal for the PRC. From the conclusion of the 5Campaign until the end of the war, the CPV adopted more cautious andrealistic strategies, including maintaining a relatively stable front line,
increasing CPV air force, artillery, and tank units, improving logistics
capabilities, and seeking a negotiated and realistic end to the war. These
revised strategic and operational goals were similar to those of the U.S.
The terms of peace China eventually obtained, however, were far lessfavorable than the ones made available briefly for Mao and China's
allies in mid-January 1950 after the 3 Campaign.
Lost Opportunity for a U.N. Cease-Fire? On January 13, 1951,
five days after the CPV's 3 Campaign, a U.N.-sponsored cease-fire
proposal was made to the belligerents. The proposal suggested an
immediate cease-fire and a phased withdrawal of foreign forces from
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Korea. Four days later, ZhouEnlai rejected the U.N. cease-fire proposal
by seeing it as a U.S.-backed means to gain "breathing time" for the
next U.N. operation. Instead, Zhou proposed that foreign troops
withdraw first before any cease-fire.
China's rejection of the bill led to several major consequences. One
was a diplomatic setback because China's suggestion was seen by manyas un-operational and insincere, and as a result, sympathy to China in
the U.N. was weakened. Second, China's rejection of the U.N. ceasefire proposal actually helped the U.S., which was considerably
constrained by the same bill. If the U.S. supported the bill, it would
anger the ROK and lose public support at home. If the U.S. rejected thebill, it would certainly lose support in the U.N. The U.S.' eventual
support of the bill was actually out of the expectation that China would
reject it, which was exactly what China did. Finally, China's diplomatic
setback was quickly translated into a U.S. gain in the U.N. on February
1, 1951, when the U.N. passed a U.S.-sponsored move to condemn
China as the aggressor.
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Years later, some CPV veterans and historians also echoed theseviews. Had the CPV tried to consolidate along this line and translate its
military gains into a political compromise instead of planning a more
ambitious operation, the war might have ended much more favorably
for China and its allies.
These arguments in hindsight may make some sense, and China's
acceptance of the U.N. cease-fire certainly would have helped China
diplomatically in the world body. These "ifs," however, have their own
limits. At the time the U.N. cease-fire bill was proposed, neither China
nor the U.S. was interested in it, though for different reasons.
Tactically, the immediate U.N. counterattacks, which surprised many
CPV officers, were almost unavoidable because the U.N. retreat to the
3 7 parallel was deliberate and organized in order to exhaust the CPV' sinitial drive. It was extremely difficult, if not impossible, to persuade
the U.N. commanders and U.S. politicians not to launch an offense
when the U.N. enjoyed every operational advantage, including
firepower, logistics, and maneuverability, as well as adaptation to the
CPV tactics. The CPV was, for its part, already in a more difficult
situation. Indeed, it was high time for the U.N. forces to regain
battlefield initiative and, if possible, retake territories between the 37
and 38 parallels.
In between the need to satisfy domestic demands (Congress and the
media) and allies (South Koreans) on one hand, and winning support in
the U.N. on the other, the Truman administration would certainly
choose the former even at the expense of losing support in the world
body. U.S. dealing with the world body in the past 50 years repeatedly
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shows that domestic concern has always been above that of theinternational community.
Finally, Mao would have to have a sense of Stalin's mood, which
was less willing to take the U.N.'s cease-fire proposal for its face value,at least for the time being. In his cable to Mao on June 6,1951, Stalin
pointed to the "need" for a "protracted war," which "first, would give
the Chinese troops an opportunity to learn modern battle tactics and,second, could shatter Truman's regime and undermine the AngloAmerican military prestige." Moreover, pursuing a unilateral ceasefire at the expense of relations with Moscow would also affect relations
with Pyongyang. In the final analysis, Mao and his colleagues were notentirely independent and alone in making policies for war and peace in
Korea.
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Implications for East Asian Security
The course of the Korean War changed forever once China
intervened. Although it paid a tremendous price economically,
diplomatically, and strategically, China fought the war into a stalemate
against the world's most powerful military. Such a stalemate, however,was by no means the fixation of major power relations but only the
beginning of a series of strategic realignments in East Asia. Although
the Korean War was followed by the most intimate relations between
Moscow and Beijing, this "honeymoon," however, was soon to be
replaced first by an unprecedented ideological polemic between
Moscow and Beijing in the 1960s and then military clashes at the
decade's end. Such a turnaround also ushered in a breakthrough in
relations with the U.S. in the early 1970s. In this respect, the war tested
the limits of China's best relationship with both Moscow andPyongyang as well as its worst relationship with Washington.
Despite these strategic realignments and "blowbacks" for Beijing,
China's war effort in Korea has yielded some significant policy
consistencies for PRC's foreign/defense policies with far-reaching
implications for East Asian security. The impact of the three-year
Korean War on China, therefore, can never be underestimated.
Military Modernization and "China Threat": At the operational
level, the CPV underwent several cycles of learning during the firsteight months of the war: from cautious pessimism and conservative
tactics ( 1 Campaign) to sweeping and surprise actions ( 2 Campaign);
from being overconfident (before and after 3 Campaign) to
overwhelmed by U.N. actions (4 Campaign); and from military"unrealism" (5 Campaign) to pragmatism (post 5 Campaign). Muchof this adjustment was made due to a harsh reality that the CPV was amuch weaker force than its counterpart (U.N./U.S. forces).
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International Journal of Korean Studies • Volume V, Number JAccordingly, the most immediate impact of the Korean War on
China was to continue the PLA's modernization, which already had
begun during the course of the Korean War. Between 1953 and 1959,
the PLA underwent the most extensive process of professionalizationand modernization under the tutelage of Peng Dehuai as defense
minister. That process was interrupted for more than 20 years with thereplacement of Peng by Ling Biao, who championed a "people's war"
instead of a professionalized "soldiers' war" within a more limited
context like Korea. In that perspective, modernization,
professionalization, and restructuring of the PLA, starting from the
1980s, were a belated recognition of the lessons of the Korean War.
The 1991 Gulf War, the rather "chilly" post-Cold War, the 1999
Kosovo bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade and thedeteriorating Taiwan Strait situation in the past few years simply added
to the urgency of the PLA's drive toward a more efficient and more
professional military.
The PLA's modernization since the 1980s was therefore largely
derived from its "unlearned" lessons from the Korean War as a resultof Mao's domestic politicization. The PLA's move has nonethelesscaused anxiety and alarm outside China and, hence, the "China threat"argument particularly in Japan and the U.S. From a historicalperspective, however, much of the ongoing "China threat" debate
misses the point. While the "threat" school points to an upcoming orpresent threat from China, more cautious assessments insist that China
will be a threat only in the future when the PLA is substantiallymodernized. China's intervention in the Korean War, however,demonstrates that a much weaker China would resort to the use of force
if it views a sharply deteriorating security environment. The key tounderstanding China's behavior, therefore, lies in its strategic calculus
regarding its underlying interest.
Strategic Prudence: At the strategic level, the Korean War was thefirst, if not the last, war "not to be won" on China's own terms.
Instead, a negotiated settlement became acceptable as the final goal for
China's military action in Korea. Such an adjustment was made,however, only after several months of intensive fighting with a muchsuperior military.
Perhaps the most important lesson that China learned from its
engagement in the Korean War is to avoid and/or prevent such a war in
the future. Accordingly, the PRC's policies in the post-Korean War
decades have always been to maintain the delicate stability in thepeninsula with political and diplomatic means at any cost. This was true
even during Mao's time.
During the reform decades, China's approach to the Korean issue
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was further adjusted to a more balanced posture by normalizing
relations with Seoul and supporting "dual entry" of the two Koreas into
the U.N. Ever since the early 1980s, China has made clear that it only
supports "peaceful" and "reasonable" means for the issue of Korean
reunification, and that it opposes disturbances to the stability of thepeninsula from any direction. Meanwhile, China cooperates with otherpowers in the resolution of the North Korean nuclear weapons issue,
participates in quadripartite talks for a peace treaty in Korea, andsupplies food to the North.
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In regard to relations with the North, China works for medium- andlong-term goals so that the North will eventually find its own way tohave normal relations with the outside world. For these purposes, North
Korean leaders have not been pressured but carefully provided with
opportunities to get acquainted with China's economic reform and otherdomestic changes.
During the height of the Korean nuclear and missile crises, Beijing
acted as a "constructive broker" between the Koreas and other major
powers. Unlike the U.S.-attempted surgical strike against North Korea's
nuclear sites in 1994 and Japan's subsequent temptation, Beijing
urged for patience and prudence, insisting that the Korean problem ismore political and less military. Major powers, therefore, should aim at
long-term goals but not short-term returns.
At the onset of the new millennium, these policies of the PRC,
together with efforts by other powers as well as the two Korean
governments, provided conditions to the historical summit between
North and South Korea in June 2000. For the first time in history, thewarring Koreans seem to embark on the path toward national
reconciliation and eventual unification.
Beijing's cautious approach toward the Korean Peninsula, however,should not be interpreted as one in which China would refrain fromtaking any actions no matter what happens on the peninsula in the
future. Although Chinese leaders later may have regretted China's hasty
entrance into the conflict, Mao's fateful decision in 1950 indicates that
the Korean Peninsula constitutes a vital part of China's security. Sucha concern goes far beyond the Cold War setting, communist ideology,
cultural traits, and certain leaders' idiosyncrasies, but rather is based on
China's concern of major power balance. This concern of China isreinforced by a historical fact that the peninsula has served as a major
springboard for the conquest of continental Asia, particularly by Japan.
Any major disturbance to the peninsula's delicate stability will
therefore lead to serious concern, regardless of the nature of China's
domestic political system.
China's Covert War and Indirect Conflict with the U.S. in
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Vietnam: Another and perhaps less known but far-reaching impact of
the Korean War was China's covert operation during the so-called " 2Vietnam War" (1965-75). China's involvement in Vietnam, thoughmassive, was measured and restrained. At the strategic level, both
China and the U.S. managed to separate themselves across the 17
parallel during the 10-year period, a remarkable contrast to the direct
Sino-U.S. confrontation during the Korean War.
There was no question that the Korean War was a constantreminder for both China and the U.S. that a similar showdown in
Vietnam, no matter how undesirable, still might be possible. To manage
the conflict in Vietnam and avoid another direct engagement quickly
became the PRC's top priority. In June 1964, two months before the
Tonkin Gulf Incident, Mao and his colleagues made clear, publicly andprivately, that the 17 parallel was the bottom line for China's militaryintervention in Vietnam and that any U.S. step to escalate the war in
Vietnam would invite a corresponding move from China. In otherwords, if the U.S. would not cross the 17 parallel, Beijing would
refrain from direct intervention.
To communicate its goals and intentions more effectively to
Washington, Beijing chose more direct and more credible channels. In
January 1965, Mao told the visiting American journalist Edger Snowthat "we won't fight outside China. We will strike only if the U.S.
comes in. ... Vietnam does not need us at all and they can handle thesituation themselves." Mao's message through Snow was followed bya series of public statements in 1965 to draw the line on the sand(February, March 12 & 20, April 10 & 27, June 8). Meanwhile, Beijing
stepped up its private effort to send to the U.S. China's clear signals to
avoid direct conflict in Vietnam. This time, China worked through U.S.
friends and allies, not through a neutral party such as India as was thecase prior to China's intervention in Korea. These "go-betweens"
included the Philippines (February 27,1965), Pakistan (April 2, 1965)
and Britain (May 31, 1965).
Meanwhile, Beijing and Washington actively and fully exploredeach other's bottom line at ambassadorial meetings in Warsaw. On
March 16, 1965, U.S. Secretary of State Rusk made clear U.S.
willingness to continue diplomatic talks with China in Warsaw. The
same day happened to be the 129 Sino-U.S. ambassadorial meeting,and the U.S. side emphasized that Washington had no intention to
expand war to China. Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai quickly made publicin early April 1965 that China would not initiate a war against the U.S.
Thus, the timely and effective communication between China andthe U.S. at the early stage of the Vietnam War enabled the two sides toavoid another direct conflict despite repeated U.S. escalations in
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Vietnam and Beijing's public denunciation of U.S. moves. Even if the
U.S. knew of China's massive involvement in the North, it chose not topublicize and politicize it. Beijing, for its part, refrained from
"officially" sending its "volunteers" to Vietnam. The tacit coordination
between China and the U.S. during this time was in sharp contrast to
the Korean War in which China failed to deter the U.S. from crossing
the 38 parallel while the U.S. failed, too, to deter China from crossing
the Yalu River a few months later.
Ultimately, the type of confrontation in which Beijing andWashington were engaged in Korea should be avoided by all necessarymeans. For both sides, one of the basic lessons from the Korean War
seems to be: if conflict cannot be avoided entirely, it should be kept
from escalating to a full-blown war, even in a limited context. The
scope, timing, and consequences of such an indirect war can, andshould, be managed for the sake of national interests of both sides.
With the Bush administration, Sino-U.S. relations seem to begetting into a more complex mode in which low-level conflicts andcrises are not entirely avoidable. To deal with, live with, and manage
such a new strategic environment requires both strategic statesmanshipand willingness to communicate, even between strategic adversaries asin the case of the Vietnam Wars.
Nukes, Johnson's "New Thinking" and China's New Confidence:
Perhaps the ultimate cause for moderation on both sides during the 2Vietnam War was China's acquisition of nuclear weapons. On October
16,1964, and just a few months after the August Tonkin Gulf Incident,
China announced the detonation of its first atomic device, which wasclosely monitored by the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. The
latter, however, pursued a very different approach to dealing with agiant communist state armed with nuclear weapons.
Up to the point of his assassination, Kennedy was convinced thata nuclear-armed Chinese communist state would be an "intolerable
menace" to the U.S. As a result, he and his top advisers remainedcommitted to depriving China of its nuclear capabilities by allnecessary means, including coordination with Nationalist Chinese
officials, seeking Soviet collaboration, making contingency plans for
attacks by "anonymous" planes, and authorizing the CIA to take covert
and paramilitary actions to raid Chinese nuclear facilities by employing
Nationalist commandos. More recent case studies indicate that the
Kennedy administration's commitment to the use of force was decided
without complete information on the Chinese nuclear plan and without
a thorough analysis of the likely impact of China's nuclear progress.
These policy intentions and actions remained alive with support fromsome top officials of the Johnson administration even after Kennedy's
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death in 1963, even after the Soviets declined to consider a joint action
with Washington against Beijing, and even after a thorough analysis by
a State Department official, Robert Johnson, concluded that a Chinese
nuclear capability would not pose a major threat to U.S. interests, muchless change the balance of power in East Asia.
Although Johnson was troubled by the implications of a nuclear
China, he nonetheless rejected unilateral actions, partially due to theupcoming presidential race. Instead of the use of force, covert or not,against China's nuclear facilities, Johnson preserved his freedom ofaction.
The Chinese nuclear test of October 1964 did not bring the worstcase scenario that President Kennedy had feared. In the months that
followed China's first nuclear test, which startled the U.S. intelligencecommunity as a more sophisticated uranium-235 device was used rather
than one based on plutonium, the PRC announced on the same day of
its first nuclear test China's three basic principles regarding nuclear
weapons: (1) China's purpose in developing nuclear weapons was tobreak the superpower monopoly; (2) China would never be the first touse nuclear weapons; and (3) China would be dedicated to theelimination of all nuclear weapons. Despite the passage of time, theseprinciples of Chinese nuclear policy have not changed, and China
remains the only major nuclear power to date with declared policies of
non-first use and non-use of nuclear weapons against countries without
nuclear weapons. If anything, a China with nuclear weapons actually
accelerated Sino-American rapprochement, and President Nixon
believed that a nuclear-capable China made a fresh approach, notpreventive action, mandatory. The nuclear factor, among others, may
have served as ultimate restraints on both sides of the Pacific during the
10-year Vietnam War during which the two militaries remained
separated by the 17 parallel.
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If the moderation of bilateral relations during the Johnson era
partially resulted from China's possession of nuclear weapons, and if
Beijing's nuclear capability actually led to a more confident andpresumably more secure China, then the proposed U.S. missile defense
systems perhaps would have the potential to alter this strategic
equation. The immediate, no matter how unintended, effect of any U.S.
missile defense system would compromise and neutralize the PRC's
minimalist-deterrent posture consisting of two dozen old-fashionedsilo-based, liquid-propelled ICBMs. Any effort of the PRC to restore
the strategic balance and confidence would have uncertain and evendire consequences for cross-strait and/or cross-Pacific relations.
Korea, Taiwan & China: For China, the fate of Korea and Taiwan
seem perpetually tied with one another in the East Asian geopolitical
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game. In the age of imperialism, the two provided the first taste of
spoils for the Empire of the Sun before it released its full energy toMother Russia (1904-5 Russo-Japanese War) and Uncle Sam (Pearl
Harbor 1941).
In 1950, Mao was genuinely disturbed and then enraged by
Truman's authorization for the 7 Fleet to patrol the Taiwan Strait
immediately after the outbreak of the Korean War and four months
before the CPV entered Korea. For Mao, this meant a de facto U.S. reentry into the Chinese civil war. It was not only a betrayal of Acheson's"hands-off policy toward China, which was pronounced 10 months
before (August 1949), but it was also an effective challenge to Mao's
historical mission of unifying China. A direct confrontation with theUnited States, therefore, might not be avoidable. If that eventuality
could not be ruled out entirely, as Mao perceived, it should be kept outof China and at a place where Chinese military might have a chance towithstand the most powerful military in the world. And the rest was
history.
th

At the outset of the new millennium, the fate of Korea, Taiwan, andChina are again bound with remarkably similar linkages, though forvery different reasons. For Beijing, the alleged "rogue state" of North
Korea is a convenient excuse, while the real target of the U.S. missile
defense systems is China. Indeed, Bush's redefining of North Korea asa "rogue state" from Clinton's "state of concern" for the U.S. missile
defense system does not seem to fit the fast-evolving situation in Korea.
While the South has so far preferred its moderate "sunshine" policy
toward the North to supporting the U.S. missile defense plan, the Northhas gone so far as to express its willingness for continuous U.S. militarypresence in the Korean Peninsula even after the unification. Atthe sametime, Washington has never stated that the U.S. missile defense systems
would not cover Taiwan. China has been the "forgotten" nuclear powerin the missile defense debate in the U.S. For Beijing, Washington's"detour" through Korea to separating Taiwan from China is quite afamiliar move, similar to that after the outbreak of the Korean War halfa century ago. The Korean "setting" this time, however, is so
unconvincing and deceptive that it seems whether the Koreans makewar or make love, the U.S. follows a predetermined course to get to
Taiwan and China.
In both 1950 and 2001, the communication pattern seems to be oneway traffic in that China's effort to reach Washington is either ignoredor subsided, unlike the willingness and actual moves by both sides tocommunicate during the height of the 2 Vietnam War. The Bushadministration—which seems to care more about "political correctness"than strategic soundness despite its pronounced "realist" foreign
67

68

nd

88

International Journal of Korean Studies • Volume V, Number 1policy—went so far as to have a largely symbolic meeting with an
impotent, outgoing Japanese Prime Minister Mori ahead of aprescheduled meeting with China's "foreign policy czar" Qian Qichen,
who represented a country that the new administration would try hard
to redefine as the real strategic adversary in the next few months. Sucha strategy of not talking to the Chinese naturally leads to the Pentagon's
policy to minimize contact with the PLA after the EP-3E incident andto rid itself of any institutional "sympathy" to Beijing. Despite thepassage of time, what China obtained from its outreach to the U.S. wasquite similar: MacArthur's crossing the 3 8 parallel in 1950 and themassive arms sales to Taiwan in 2001.
69

70

th

The Taiwan issue, however, was treated quite differently. In 1950,
the 7 Fleet's patrol of the Taiwan Strait was sold to the public as a way
to prevent both sides from escalating hostilities. The Truman
administration actually tried to minimize the impact of the move on
relations with Beijing. In 2001, the Bush administration was eager topoke the Taiwan issue even if the majority of the island's public
opinion preferred maintaining the status quo to a sliding toward
symbolic independence and confrontation with the mainland. Indeed,
Bush's "humble" realism is so obsessed with China that almost all of
his major foreign and defense policies revolve around dealing with
Beijing. This includes expanding arms sales to Taiwan, enlarging thecommitment to defend the island, elevating political relations with
Taiwan's pro-independent president, shifting defense strategy from
Europe to Asia, courting India, and promoting missile defense.
Washington's policy, coupled with the 1999 embassy bombing andthe recent EP-3E incident, has led to rising Chinese nationalism. Unlike
50 years ago, when Mao had to persuade most of his colleagues tointervene in Korea, in the new millennium most Chinese, including thepro-West, liberal-minded intellectual elite, would become staunchnationalists (or patriots) over the issues of Taiwan and/or Tibet. The
impact of such a societal-based nationalism on China's cross-strait andcross-Pacific policies should never be underestimated.
Back to the Future: Ghosts & Aspirations of Versailles: Indeed,
the situation today seems similar to that of 80 years ago when theimpact of the Treaty of Versailles inadvertently gave rise to thenationalist tide in both Korea and China. In Korea, the March 1, 1919,
demonstration for independence from Japan was brutally suppressedwith thousands killed by the Japanese occupation forces. Koreannationalism, however, never ceased its quest for unity andindependence, which was, in essence, the root cause of the North-South
conflict in Korea.
In China, the impact of Versailles is equally strong and deep. The
th

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International Journal of Korean Studies• Spring/Summer 200189

type of Chinese nationalism triggered by Versailles in May 1919 soon
gave rise to the founding of the Chinese Communist Party. In Paris, thevictorious European allies ignored both China's territorial integrity andWilsonism (self-determination and open diplomacy). Instead, theChinese province of Shandong was transferred from Germany to Japan,
even if China contributed to the victories of the allies. The triumph ofWest's realpolitik in Versailles over the West's idealism, which was
wonderfully packaged and presented by U.S. President Wilson,
abruptly ended China's quest for modernization through Westernization("Mr. Science and Mr. Democracy" in Chinese languages). And mostof the young and pro-West Chinese intellectual elite, including manyof the first generation of Chinese communist leaders such as Chen
Duxiu, Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping, eventually embraced Marxism.
Their switch to Bolshevism was largely triggered by Lenin's call for theuniversal ending of colonialism and imperialism, which was more
appealing to the young and aspiring Chinese elite for their national
salvation. The continuation of communism in China today perhaps has
more to do with Chinese nationalism than with orthodox Marxism.
For many in East Asia today, therefore, the aspiration (selfdetermination and unification) and ghosts (realpolitik) of Versailles
remain. In Korea, the pace of the historical North-South reconciliation
is finally in the hands of the Koreans. The Nobel Peace Prize winner
Kim Dae Jung, however, was told not to make peace but to rely on
missiles. The current status quo of their civil war, therefore, is allowed
to continue. Between Taiwan and the mainland, the "one-China" statusquo of the past 20 years, which has benefited all parties—Taiwan,
China and the U.S.—is disappearing in the name of democracy. The
irony is that Taiwan is perceived to be drifting away either by desire(Taiwanization) or by design (U.S. arms sales and Bush's strategic tilt
toward the island's defense). And this is despite China's contribution
to the end of the Cold War, despite Deng's peaceful unification with
Taiwan over Mao's liberation, despite the fact that the Chinese today
are more willing and ready than at any time in China's history to join
and stay with the West and U.S.-dominated world system, and despite
China's steady and historical rise as a major power in the region and theworld. The fate and future of Korea and China, which were first
dictated in Versailles last century, are still beyond their own control.
History seldom mechanically repeats itself, and historical analogies,
therefore, should be treated with caution. Nonetheless, history is also
a stream that carries with it all the burdens, glory, wisdom, andconsequences into the present and toward the future. In East Asia,
history looms much larger in the past two centuries with Korea as thecenter for the geopolitical games of great powers. In both historical and90

International Journal of Korean Studies • Volume V, Number 1strategic perspectives, Korea has been a place where the U.S. and China
reciprocate their resolves, power, and wisdom. Despite the enduring
debate between orthodox and revisionist views of China's conduct of
the war, the conflict half a century ago, though not initiated by China
and the U.S., should never be "forgotten," but should serve as ahistorical benchmark against which future statesmen and their policies
will be judged with regard to their mutual interests as well as regional
and world security.
73

References
1. English language literature includes Shu Guang Zhang, Mao's Military
Romanticism: China and the Korean War, 1950-53 (Lawrence: University Press of
Kansas, 1995); Xiaobing Li, Allan R. Millett and Bin Yu, Mao's Generals Remember
Korea (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2001); William Stueck, The Korean
War: An International History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995); Bin Yu,"What China Learned From Its 'Forgotten War' In Korea," Strategic Review (summer
1998): 4-16. For selected Chinese language literature, see Chen Yan, et al., eds.,
Zhongguo Junshi Baike Ouanshu: Zhongguo Renmin Zhiyuanjun Zhanshi Fence[Chinese military encyclopedia: battle history of the Chinese people's volunteers](Beijing: Military Science Press, 1993); Du Ping, Zai Zhiyuanjun Zongbu [At theheadquarters of the Chinese volunteers] (Beijing: PLA Press, 1989); Hong Xuezhi,
Kangmei Yuanchao Zhanzheng Huiyi [Recollection of the War to resist U.S. aggression
and aid Korea] (Beijing: PLA Art Press, 1990); Military Academy, Zhongguo Renmin
Zhiyuanjun Kangmei Yuanchao Shi (The history of the Chinese people's volunteers in
the war to resist America and aid Korea] (Beijing: Military Science Press, 1988); Nie
Rongzhen, Nie Rongzhen Huiyilu [Nie Rongzhen's memoirs] (Beijing: PLA Press,
1984); Peng Dehuai, Peng Dehuai Junshi Wenxuan [Peng Dehuai's manuscript on
military affairs] (Beijing: Central Archive Publisher, 1988); Shen Zhihuan, Chaoxian
Zhanzheng Jiemin [Korean War disclosure] (Hong Kong: Cosmos Books Ltd., 1995);
Shen Zhihua, Mao Zedong, Sidalinyue Hanzhan: Zhongsu ZuigaoJimin Dangan [MaoZedong, Stalin and the Korean War: the Chinese and Soviet top secret documents](Hong Kong: Cosmos Books Ltd., 1998); Xie Lifu, Chaoxian Zhanzheng Jishi [Truestories of the Korean war] (Beijing: World Affairs Press, 1994); Xu Yan, Diyi Ci
Jiaoliang: Kangmei Yuanchao Zhanzheng Lishi Huigu yu Fansi [The first trial ofstrength: historical retrospection and a review of the war to resist America and aid
Korea] (Beijing: China Broadcasting and Television Press, 1990); Yang Fengan andWang Tiancheng, Jiayu Chaoxian Zhanzheng de Ren [Those who commanded the
Korean war] (Beijing: Central Party Academy Press, 1993); Zhao Yi-hong, Saitshiba
jun chuanqi [The story of the 38th army] (Lanzhou: Dun Huang Arts Press, 1994).
2. Zhang dismisses the war as a useful experience for China except "the highly dubious
lessons" which "can lead in a very dangerous direction." Zhang, 259-60. Yu (1998),
however, argues that China learned a great deal, positively or negatively, from the war
and the question is how and why China learned.
3. Chen argues that PRC's communist ideology dictates an expansionist diplomacy toalter Asia's existing international system, hence the decision to intervene. Chen Jian,
China's Road to the Korean War: The Making of the Sino-American Confrontation(New York: Columbia University Press, 1994); Mao's China and the Cold War (Chapel
Hill & London: University of North Carolina Press, 2001) 6-15 and 53-61.

International Journal of Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 2001

91

4. Such a "military Romanticism" is said to be based on a "cultural" paradigm
consisting of communist ideology and Chinese traditional and political culture. As aresult, China "chose to act aggressively, regardless of the calculated high risk andcost." Zhang, 9-10.
5. Allen Whiting, China Crosses the Yalu: the Decision to Enter the Korean War(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1960).
6. For a list of those pro-Beijing scholars, see Zhang, 2-4.
7. For a critique of the "revisionist" argument, see Bao Guojun, "Tangmei Yuanchao
Zhanzheng Lishi Burong Waiqu [No distortion allowed for the history of the war ofresisting America and aiding Korea]," www.peopledaily.com.cn, October 1, 2000.
8. Wei Yuejiang and Zhang Siwang, "Dongxifang Zhanlue Siwei Youhe Chayi[Differences in strategic calculus in the East and West]," Guang Ming Daily, May 8,
2001, www.peopledaily.com.cn, May 8, 2001.
9. Shen Zhihua," Wushinian Hou dui Chaoxian Zhanzheng Lishi de Kaochao he Fansi,Part 1 & 2 [Examination and reflection of the Korean war history 50 years after],"www.chinesenewsnet.com, August 4-5, 2000.
10. Ye Yumeng,j«'ey« [Bloody rain] (Jinan: Shangdong Renmin Chubanshe [Shangdong people'spress], 1994); Zhang Zeshi, Zhanfu Shouji [Diaries of POW] (Xining: Qinghai People's Press,
1995).

11. Zhang, particularly the title, Mao's Military Romanticism.
12. Shen, 2000.
13. See Yu, in Xiaobing Li, et al., eds.
14. For PLA's debate regarding the capability of the U.S. military, see Yu, 5-6.
15. Stalin, however, quickly sent 13 Soviet air force divisions to China during theperiod of August and December 1950, once China decided to intervene without Soviet
air cover. Soviet airplanes' first entrance into Korea occurred on November 1, 1950,and soon pushed its operations area to the Taedong Gang River area. See Shen Zhihua,"Kangmei Yuanchao Zhanzheng Zhong de Sulian Kongjun [Soviet air force during the
Korean war],"part I, http://lundian.com, May 7, 2001: 2.
16. Mao's telegraph to Stalin, "On Our Decision to Dispatch Troops to Fight in Korea,"
October 2,1950, Jianguo Yilai Mao Zedong Wengao [Mao Zedong's manuscripts since
the foundation of the PRC], vol. 1 (Beijing: Central Archives and Manuscripts Press,
1987-1990)540.
17. Military Academy, 13; Mao's telegraph to Zhou Enlai, "Yuanyu Zhiyuanjun
Ruchao Zuozhan de Fangzhen he Bushu Gai Zhou Enlai de Dianbao [On the
Operational Guidelines and Deployment for the Chinese Volunteers in Korea], October
14, 1950, Mao's Manuscript, vol. 1, 560.
18. Xu, 45. While the CPV's operational guideline was to avoid U.S. troops, and some
CPV units deliberately did so, the CPV accidentally encountered a U.S. unit when the
CPV's 39* Army attacked Unsan on the night of November 1. Only after sighting amuch taller and heavier enemy did the CPV realize that it was engaging the Americans(the 8 Regiment of the 1 Cavalry Division, which was taking over the defense of
Unsan from the ROK's 15 Regiment). The 39 Army overran one battalion anddefeated another two of the 8 Cavalry Regiment. See Xie, 212 and 229-30; Du,
68-70.
th

st

th

th

th

19. Xie, 243-56; Xu, 49-52.
20. Xie, 267-82; Yang and Wang, 166-80; Military Academy, 52-67; Xu, 55-57;
Zhao, 297-319.
21. Zhang, 119.
22. Yang and Wang, 185-87; Xie, 282-92; Du, 120-26; Military Academy, 63-66; Xu,
46-60.
23. Military Academy, 71.
24. Shen, 2000.

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2 5 . Nie, 7 8 0 .
2 6 . Yang and Wang, 2 0 0 - 2 0 1 ; Du, 1 4 0 - 4 2 ; Xu, 6 1 - 6 2 .

2 7 . RMRB, 10 December 1 9 5 0 , cited from Shen, 2 0 0 0 , Part II: 2 & note 5 2 .
2 8 . Gromyko to Chinese ambassador Wang Jiaxiang in Moscow that "Under present
conditions in Korea I would like to remind an old proverb 'strike while the iron is hot'(chen re da tie)." Cited from Col. Victor A. Gavrilov's comment on this paper, June
2 0 0 1 and Gromyko's diary on his talk on December 5 , 1 9 5 0 with Wang Jiaxiang, citedfrom Shen, 2 0 0 0 , Part II: 2 & note 5 3 .
2 9 . Russian diplomatic cables, December 7, 1 9 5 0 , cited from Shen, 2 0 0 0 , Part II: 2 &notes 54 & 5 5 .
3 0 . Xie, 3 5 3 ; Xu, 6 3 and 3 3 8 .
3 1 . Peng's persistence for tactical feasibility and flexibility differs from Zhang's
account that CPV officers, including Peng, never doubted that Mao's military thought
would work in Korea. Zhang, 2 5 5 .
3 2 . Du, 1 4 3 - 5 3 ; Xu, 6 2 ; Military Academy, 7 7 - 8 and 8 8 - 9 .
3 3 . Shen, 2 0 0 0 , Part II: 2, note 5 8 .
3 4 . Xu, 6 4 ; Xie, 3 9 9 - 4 0 3 ; Military Academy, 8 8 .
3 5 . Du, 1 8 6 - 9 1 ; Xu, 7 1 ; Yang and Wang, 2 2 1 - 2 2 .
3 6 . Xie,

399-401.

3 7 . Xie,

402-3.

3 8 . Mao's cable to the Soviets on January 1 5 , 1 9 5 1 , cited from Shen, 2 0 0 0 , Part II, 2
and note 5 9 .
3 9 . Cited from Col. Victor A. Gavrilov's comment on this paper, June 2 0 0 1 .
4 0 . Military Academy, 9 2 - 9 3 ; Du, 1 9 2 .
4 1 . DM Ping Memoirs, 1 8 6 - 9 1 ; Xu, 7 1 ; Yang and Wang, 2 2 1 - 2 2 .
4 2 . Xu, 7 2 - 7 4 ; Military Academy, 1 2 0 - 2 1 ; Du, 2 0 4 .

4 3 . Mao's directive was "Neng susheiw ze susheng, buneng susheng ze huansheng"(win quickly if possible; if not, win with a delay), Xu, 8 1 .
4 4 . Military Academy, 9 4 ; See Mar's telegraph to Stalin on March 1, 1 9 5 1 , cited inXie,453-6.

4 5 . This appeared likely, when the U.N. forces increased their harassment, intelligence,and redeployment activities along the Korean coastal areas. Military Academy, 1 2 6 - 2 7 ;Du, 2 1 8 - 1 9 .
4 6 . Xie, 4 5 6 - 5 8 ; Yang and Wang, 2 5 2 - 6 1 ; Du, 2 1 8 - 2 2 .

4 7 . Military Academy, 1 5 2 - 5 4 .
4 8 . Peng's other three "mistakes" were the 1 9 3 2 attack on Nationalist forces in the
Ganzhou city, Jiangxi Province; the 1 9 4 0 "Hundred-regiment Battle" against theJapanese; and the 1 9 4 8 Xifu Campaign against the Nationalists. Xie, 4 5 6 - 5 8 ; Yang
and Wang, 2 5 2 - 6 . 1 ; Du, 2 1 8 - 2 2 .

4 9 . Shen, 2 0 0 0 , Part II: 2 - 4 .
5 0 . See Shen, 2 0 0 0 , II: 3.

5 1 . Views were obtained through author's interviews with the veterans. Also see Xu,
70.

5 2 . For U.S. position, see Sheng, 2 0 0 0 , Part II: 3 and note 6 2 . For China's calculation,
see Xie, 4 0 5 .
5 3 . Shen, 2 0 0 0 , Part II: 4 and note 6 6 .
5 4 . Cited from Col. Victor A. Gavrilov's comment on this paper, June 2 0 0 1 .
5 5 . Steven W. Mosher, Hegemon: China's Plan to Dominate Asia and the World (SanFrancisco: Encounter Books, 2 0 0 0 ) ; Bill Gertz, The China Threat: How the People's
Republic Targets America (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2 0 0 0 ) ; Edward Timperlake
and William C. Triplett, Jr., Red Dragon Rising: Communist China's Military Threat
to America (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 1 9 9 9 ) ; Richard Bernstein and RossH. Munro,"The Coming Conflict with America," Foreign Affairs (March/April 1 9 9 7 ) : 1 8 - 3 2 ;International Journal of Korean Studies• Spring/Summer 2001

93

Robert Kagan and William Kristol, "A National Humiliation," The Weekly Standard(April 16-23, 2001): 11-16. The entire issue Issues and Studies (January/February2000) is devoted to the "China threat" issue.
56. Robert Ross, "Beijing as a Conservative Power," Foreign Affairs (March/April
1997): 33^14; Andrew J. Nathan and Robert S. Ross, The Great Wall and the Empty
Fortress: China's Search for Security (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1997);
John Schulz, "China As A Strategic Threat: Myths and Verities"; Stephen Aubin,"China: Yes, Worry About the Future," in Strategic Review (winter 1998): 5-16 and17-20; Taeho Kim, "A Reality Check: The 'Rise of China' and Its Military Capability
Toward 2010," Journal of East Asian Affairs (Summer/Fall 1998): 321-63; David
Shambaugh, "Chinese Hegemony over East Asia by 2015?" Korean Journal of Defense
Analysis (Summer 1997): 7-28; Denny Roy, "The Foreign Policy of Great-Power
China," Contemporary Southeast Asia (September 1997): 121—35.
57. One recent study touches on the real issue. Thomas Christensen, "Posing Problems
without Catching Up: China's Rise and Challenges for US Security Policy,"
International Security 25.4 (Spring 2001): 5^10.
58. This was converted from Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett, A War to Be
Won: Fighting the Second War (Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press, 2000).
59. In his 1975 visit to China, Kim II Sung sounded like he was ready to use force tounify the country, like what North Vietnam had just done. In his speech at thewelcoming dinner, Kim said that "If revolution takes place in South Korea, we, as one
and the same nation, will not just look at it with folded arms but will strongly support
the South Korean people. If the enemy ignites war recklessly, we shall resolutely
answer it with war and completely destroy the aggressors. In this war we will only lose
the Military Demarcation Line and will gain the country's reunification." Maoapparently persuaded Kim not to do so. The militant rhetoric was dropped in Kim's
farewell speech, and he instead stressed "peaceful" effort to unify the country. See
Be king Review, April 25 and May 2, 1975.
60. See RMRB, July 12, 1996.
61. Liang Ming and Guo Hongjun, "Military Confrontation in the Korean Peninsula
Expected to Relax," in Liao Wang [Outlook], May 12, 2000.
62. In 1999, both Koreas adopted more pragmatic and flexible policies toward eachother and other countries. The South's "sun-shine" policy by Kim Dae-Jung and its
decision not to join the U.S.-led Theater Missile Defense (TMD) were reciprocated by
Kim Jung II, who has so far pursued an active and omnidirectional foreign policy which
has been seldom seen in its history. In his June 1999 visit to China, North Korean No.
2 leader Kim Yong-nam publicly expressed his support for China's reform and open-up
policy. Such a move to embrace China's market-oriented reform was publicly endorsed
by Kim Jung II himself during his secret visit to Beijing on May 29-31, 2000. RMRB,
1 June 2000. Also see Howard French, "North Korea Shyly Courts Capitalism," NewYork Times, April 30, 2000.
63. The 1st Vietnam War is Vietnam's war against the French in the 1950s when China
provided massive assistance to Vietnam upon the latter's request. See Qian Jiang, Zai
Shenmin de Zhanzheng Zhong: Zhongguo Junshi Guwentuan Fu Yuenan Zhengzhan Ji[The mysterious war: the experience of China's military advisors group in Vietnam](Zhengzhou: Henan People's Press], 1992). Between 1950 and 1954, China provided
Vietnam with 116,000 rifles, 420 pieces of armillary, large quantity of munition andcommunication and engineering equipment. See Wang Xiangen, Yuanyue Kangmei
Shilu [True history of assisting Vietnam and resisting America] (Chengde: International
Culture Press, 1990) 42-43.
64. At the height of the Chinese involvement in Vietnam, 170,000 PLA were in North
Vietnam for air defense, logistic and transportation maintenance. A total of 320,000
person/time was accumulated for the three-year period of 1965 and 1968, and over

94

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1,000 of them were killed there. Qiang Zhai, China and the Vietnam Wars, 1950-1975(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000) ix-x.
65. This and the following account on the Sino-U.S. communication during theVietnam War (1965-75) are based on Li Changjiu and Shi Lujia, Zhongmei Guanxi
Erbai Nian [200-year Sino-U.S. relations] (Beijing: New China Press], 1984); Li
Danhui "Sanshibaduxian yu Shiqiduxian: Chaozhan he Yuezhan Qijian Zhongmei
Xinxi Goutong Bijiao Yanjou [38 and 17 Parallels: a comparison of Sino-U.S.
communication during the Korean and Vietnam wars]," www.chinesenewsnet.com,
November 23, 2000.
66. The discussion of the case is largely based on William Burr and Jeffrey T.
Richelson, "Whether to 'Strangle the Baby in the Cradle': The United States and theChinese Nuclear Program, 1960-64," International Security 25.3 (Winter 2000/01):
54-99.
67. Brad Roberts, Robert A. Manning, and Ronald N. Montaperto, "China: The
Forgotten Nuclear Power," Foreign Affairs, 79. 4 (July/August 2000): 5 3 - 6 3 .
68. In the first two months of the Bush administration, Beijing sent three high-level
diplomatic envoys to the U.S., including a group of senior diplomats, Mr. Zhou
Mingwei, deputy director of PRC's Taiwan Affairs Council, and vice premier Qian
Qichen. Meanwhile, a new ambassador to Washington arrived.
69. Mechael R. Gordon, "Rumsfeld Limiting Military Contacts With the Chinese," NewYork Times, www.nytims.com, June 4, 2001.
70. In July 2001, a 12-member commission of outside experts concluded that CIA's
classified intelligence analyses on China were biased, flawed, and slanted toward abenign view of Beijing. Bill Gertz, "Panel finds CIA soft on China," The Washington
Times, July 6, 2001. Meanwhile, the Congress tried to cut funding for the Asia PacificCenter for Security Studies, the U.S. Pacific Command's think tank in Honolulu, for
its inviting a Chinese scholar to a seminar in May 2001. The Washington Times, June
15,2001.
thth

71. See John W. Lewis, "The contradictions of Bush's China Policy," New York Times,
June 2, 2001.
72. This view of Chinese nationalism differs from the prevalent depiction to divide theChinese into hardliners and moderates. See John Lewis, 2001. The Chinese have long
passed the phase (Mao's time) when the Americans were judged by who they wererather than what they do. Recent anti-Americanism in China should not be interpreted
as universal or permanent. The same college students who threw stones at the U.S.
embassy in Beijing following the 1999 U.S. bombing of Chinese embassy in Belgrade
would line up the following week for visas to study in America.
73. To a certain degree, the Korean War was "forgotten" by both the U.S. and China.
While the much earlier and shorter "police action" in Korea was recognized long after
the more protracted Vietnam War in the U.S., Mao's policization of the PRC politics
and the PLA's role during the 1960s and 1970s also delayed the learning effort of thereal lessons of the Korean War.

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95

The Impact of the Korean War
on the Korean Economy
Jong Won Lee
Professor of Economics
Sungkyunkwan University
Seoul, Korea

Introduction
The three-year long Korean War (June 25, 1950 - July 27, 1953)
devastated both South and North Korean economies. It broke out when
the two Koreas barely managed to maintain socio-economic stability
and restore pre-WWII industry production capability to some extent.
The distorted and exploited economy by Imperial Japan was
demolished by the brutal war. It started out as the appearance of a civil
war, but in effect was carried out as an international war. Thus, it wasa severe and hard-fought one between UN forces (including South
Korea and 16 other nations) and North Korea and its allies (China andUSSR). Although it took place in a small country in Far-Eastern Asia,
it developed into a crash between world powers, East and West, and left
treacherous and incurable wounds to both Koreas. Nearly four million
people were presumed dead, and much worse were the property andindustrial facility damages. Its impact on the Korean economy was so
immense that consequential economic systems and policies re-framed
the course of economic development in the following years. In spite ofsuch enormous impacts of the Korean war on the economy, few studies
exist. Of those that do, most are centered around describing or
estimating war-related damages, while some focus on the long-term
effects of US aid on the Korean economy.
The objective of this paper is to analyze the short-term direct
impacts of the Korean War on both Korean economies and its longterm effects on their economic structure. To do this, section II willsummarize the estimates of human casualties, non-human damages,
production losses and rampant inflation rates, and so on. In addition, it
will analyze how the war effected two major national economic reform
policies, i.e., the farmland reform and privatization policies on
1

International Journal of Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 200197

confiscated enemy properties. In the following section, the paper willdeal with consequences of US aid brought about upon the Korean
economic structure, and reevaluation of the Korean economic policy
mishaps at the same time.

Short-term Direct Economic Impacts
The immediate effects of the Korean war can be examined in threedifferent aspects; destruction of industrial facilities and resulting
disruption of productive activities, extreme over-issue of money andconsequent hyper inflation, and discontinuance or distortion of two
prime national economic reform policies.

1. Damage Estimates
Destruction ratios of major industries during the first four monthsof the war were estimated as high as 70% of textile industry, 70% of
chemical industry, 40% of agricultural machinery industry, and 10% of
rubber industry (ECA Report, October, 1950). In addition, the Korea
Transportation Ministry statistics revealed that about 600 thousandhousing units, 46.9% of railroad, 1,656 roads of a total of 500km, and1,453 bridges totaling 49km were destroyed during the war.
Furthermore, by August of 1951, 44% of factory buildings and 42% ofproduction facilities lay in ruins. Among all, damages in the mining
industry were the worst; about 51 % of the industry was destroyed andthe estimated amount of damage was as high as US$549 million,
accounting for 23.3% of all industrial damages. Damage of power
plants was even more devastating with nearly 80% destroyed. Within
two months since the start of the war, power production plummeted
down to a miserable level of 11 thousand kwh, about one-eighth of the1948 production level of 80 thousand kwh, which was equivalent to one
tenth of the power consumption level in 1945. Such massive
destruction of electric facilities brought about a drastic cutback of
productive activities. The total war damage was estimated as high as
41.23 billion won, equivalent to US$6.9 billion when the official
exchange rate was applied (US$2.3 billion with the market rate). It wasalso equivalent to 86% of the 1953 GNP, although the 1953 net
commodity production remained at 27% lower than 1940 level (the1953 per-capita net commodity production was 44% lower than the1940 level). Consequently, foreign trade deteriorated from US$208
million in 1948 (including US$188.3 million government imports) toUS$2.9 million in 1950. Even rice crops fell down to a 65% level ofthe average annual product of the 1945 - 1 9 5 0 period. All these factors
led to serious inflation.
2

3

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International Journal of Korean Studies • Volume V, Number 1

2. Hyper Inflation
What aggravated the galloping inflation was the over-issue ofcurrency. During the first three months of the war, the total money incirculation was increased by 72%. Temporary increase in taxes could
not meet the huge demand in war expenses, which accounted for about
50% of the national budget. The government filled the gap byborrowing from the BOK, i.e., issuing new money. About 90% of themoney increase during the first six months of the war was used tofinance government expenses. To exacerbate the situation, Korea had
to provide UN force with loans in Korean currency according to the
Taegue Agreement - an agreement of UN forces expenditure. Thisfactor alone contributed to 79% of the money increase during the threeyear period of war (June 1950 - July 1953). Money in circulation
increased by 24 folds between June 24, 1950 and July 31, 1953. As of
December 31, 1953, it again increased by 42 times. The magnitude ofthe loan was so huge (17,748 million hwari) that even enormous sales
revenue of aid materials only redeemed 40.6% of the loan until the endof the war (see Table 1, page 100).
4

3. Distortion of Two Major Economic Reform Policies
Two major economic reform policies, that were about to be
executed after long hardheaded disputes, were suspended due to thebreakout of the war. Although the reform projects were resumed, they
were subject to distortion during the war period. The farmland reformbill was enacted in June 1949, and its enforcement laws were
promulgated in April 1950. The enemy property privatization bill was
passed by Congress in December 1949, and implemented in June 1950,
starting with public auctions in Seoul. In spite of the sudden disruption
by the war, the two reforms were resumed soon because of theirsignificant implications for the establishment of market economy
system in Korea and because of the huge funds needed to carry out thewar. In consequence, the reforms were destined to be executed forreasons other than the original ones. No originally planned objectives
could be achieved in such a situation. The farmland reform, forexample, was executed for the wrong reason of providing war supplies.
Thus the farmers who wanted to buy distributed farmland, had to pay
150% of the average annual product, 30% each in five years with farm
products (not with money). This obviously created a tremendous
burden to new farmland owners in times of war and galloping inflation,
especially when the wartime temporary farm family income tax was
levied based on the revised land tax law in September 1951. The tax
rate was applied progressively from a 15% to a 28% level, and again
it had to be paid with farm products.
5

6

7

8

International Journal of Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 2001

99

Table 1: Money Issue by Factors during the Korean War(Unit: Million Rwan)

Fiscal FundUN Force
Expenses

BOK
CreditSales of
Aid
Materials

1203

548

37

93

1951

A4

3623

724

A1440

1952

A694

5553

2754

A2954

1953

15893

8027

6882

16398

17748

10397

1950.6.25

Total
Composition
Ratio in %

(73)

(79)

(46)

Foreign
Exchange
Sale

Others

Total
Change

-

A/46

1335

-

384

3287

A217

123

4565

A2904

A15719

811

12987

A7205

A15936

1172

22574

(A71)

(6)

(100)

(A33)

Source: Recited from Dae Keun Lee (1989), p. 149, table 2
Note: 100 old currency (won) was converted into 1 new currency (hwari) in the Feb. 17, 1953 Currency Reform.

In addition, farmers had to sell one third of their products to thegovernment at an official price set by the government, according to the
newly established law of grains management in 1950. The overallburden to new farmers was so enormous (approximately 50% of thevalue of annual product) that as of the end of 1954 about 10% of themsold their land again and became leased-land workers or left for cities.
It is necessary to note that between June 25,1950 and February 15,
1953 (currency reform), the WPI index rose 18 times, and rice pricesrose 22 times. In short, distortion of the farmland reform together withheavy land tax burden and compulsory sales to the government could
by no means encourage farming or improve production, although thereform could end semi-feudalistic land ownership.
Old landlords, on the other hand, were forced by law to sell all the
farmland that was in excess of three chongbo in size. They received akind of voucher called Farmland Price Securities in return for the soldfarmland. The value of 150% of the average annual product wasredeemed, based on the government-assessed farm product price, but
30% each in five years in the form of a voucher in times of treacherous
inflation. The only benefit accorded voucher holders was that they
could use it to purchase enemy properties at public auction, althoughinstead most of the vouchers were traded for 20-30% level of its facevalue.
One of the original objectives of the reform was to create industrial
capitalists by offering benefits for landlords to be able to purchaseconfiscated enemy factories and businesses with the land-price voucher.
This, however, could not be accomplished not only because real valueof vouchers plummeted with soaring inflation rate, but also because
government redemption was carried out by 28% up until May 1955.
Thus even landlords who received their vouchers as a redemption
simply sold them even at the 20-30% level of their face values. Only
5% of the largest 1.4% of landlords, who owned farmland of size over
20 chongbo (1 chongbo = 0.993 hectares), participated in enemy
property privatization and up until 1958 only 40% of the vouchers
issued were used to buy enemy properties. Of course there was little
incentive to buy factories, many of which were destroyed during thewar.
The government acquired needed rice for war supplies throughfarmland reform and took advantage of the difference between its sales
revenue and redemption payment. Although such government policies
contributed to the fight against inflation," both landlords and new
independent farmers were severely impoverished accordingly. Most ofall, original objectives of the reform were lost in the war's
consequences.
910International Journal of Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 2001

101

The Korean government also went ahead and resumed sales of theconfiscated enemy properties (production facilities or business firms)
through auction, but only in a limited area, Kyungsang province, southeastern part of Korea which was the only non-occupied area at thattime. What the government hoped for from these sales was to create
new industrialists, and to encourage production by new owners, andthereby to contribute to alleviate ferocious inflation. Although special
privilege was given to former landlords or voucher holders to use theirvouchers at public auction on enemy properties, most of them gave up
their benefits due to the plummeted real value of vouchers and the
difficulty of operating business in times of war. As a result, by the endof March 1953, less then 7% (20,955 cases) of the enemy properties(29,906 cases) were sold for a total of263 million hwan. Thus, anotherobjective of the reform, to make up fiscal deficits with sales revenue ofenemy properties, also could not be realized. Only 1.5% of the sales
revenue during the 1949-1955 period was transferred to government
revenue, although privatization was expedited as the war entered intoa stable phase. The average sales value remained low until 1955,
although the number of auctions increased. Major and big businessprivatization occurred beginning in 1955.
12

A preemptive-rights-based privatization method became dominant
in this process. Instead of public auctions, priorities were given to those
who had managed or leased factories and farms. Most of them wereclerical workers of firms previously under Japanese rule, or
administrative staffs during the US Military rule. Approximately 73%
of privatization was carried out based on this method, although almost
all big business sales were made this way. Although the government
was hungry for money, sales were only a bargain in times of severe
inflation. The repayment date was extended up to 15 years in such a
way that the bigger the business, the longer the repayment period. In
addition, purchasers became practical owners once they made the firstyear payment. The entire process produced a windfall gain to newowners. About 40% of big manufacturers in the 1950s (36 out of 89)
and 68% of the top 22 big businesses (15 out of 22) were created in thisprivatization process. The original objective of creating industrialists ina democratic way by offering an equal and fair chance to everybody(especially previous landlords) was lost due to more urgent needs of thegovernment during the war period. On the other hand, pro-Japanesebusinessmen could become economic leaders once again even in the
new independent republic.
The US Military government, which emphasized democratic
redistribution of farmland, did not oppose to preemptive-right-oriented
privatization. Expeditious establishment of businesses was considered
102International Journal o f Korean Studies • Volume V, Number 1

more important, no matter who became new owners. It was thought that
previous managerial staffs or workers would be helpful in swiftly
restoring production if ownership was given to them with priority.
We need to point out at this point that the MacArthur-led US
Military government in Japan forced Japan to carry out democratizationof business ownership. MacArthur dissolved zaibatsu headquarters anddispersed stock ownership to the general public. In addition,
management by zaibatsu leaders, their family members, and top
executives was forbidden. Furthermore, monopolistic firms weredivided to prevent economic concentration. The US government
initiated and carried out all this reform thoroughly in Japan, but not in
Korea. The prime concern of the US was probably to dissolve the coreof economic power that led and supported the war against the US.
There was no such motive for the US Military in Korea.

4. Impacts on the North Korean Economy
Destruction in North Korea was more severe. In addition to theterrible human casualties, 25 million death toll of North Koreans andChinese combined, the total damage was estimated as high as 420
billion won, which was a lot higher than the damage in South Korea andequivalent to roughly four times of the North Korea's 1953 GNP. To
be specific, 8,700 factories and state enterprises, 600,000 housing units,
and over 5,000 schools, disappeared in smoke. Additionally, 370,000
hectares of rice paddies and fields were put into a state of devastation.
Two major economic reforms, however, successfully were carriedout long before the Korean War and thus were not affected at all by thewar. In North Korea, the land reform was enacted on March 5, 1946
and its execution was completed in 20 days. North Korean
government confiscated all the enemy-owned farmlands, tenant-based
farmlands and the excess of five chongbo of all farmlands, anddistributed them for free to tenants or farmers with small land,
according to the "Confiscation without Redemption and Redistribution
without Payments" principle (The North Korean Land Reform Law,
Article 5). The land reform law, however, stated that distributed land
could not be sold or used for mortgage or for tenant farming (same law,
Article 10) and that distribution of land should be carried out by
decisions made by the People's Council (same law, Article 6).
Although it was declared as free redistribution, it turned out to be a
disguised nationalization of land that discouraged farming and caused
a decrease in productivity in later years.
In the case of firms and production facilities that were owned by
the Japanese or the pro-Japanese businessmen, they were all confiscatedwithout redemption. They were put temporarily under the control of
13

14

15

International Journal of Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 2001

103

USSR military government, and then officially nationalized by theNorth Korean government on August 10,1946. Following this reform,
the socialistic production system accounted for nearly 90% of all
production facilities.

The Long-term Consequences of the US Aid and Korean
Economic Policy Mishaps
1. Critiques on the Economic Developmental Role of the US Aid in
the Korean Economy and Assessment on Them
In relation to the effects of US aid on the Korean economy, there
has been a die-hard argument that has criticized US aid for destroying
the economic basis of Korean agriculture, establishing a consumer
goods oriented industrial structure and thus making the Korean
economy dependent on the US.
Criticism of the economic effects of US aid in Korea was raised
based on the following logic. First of all, critics argued that most of theinitial aid items were food, medicine and other necessary consumer
goods. Although these aid materials were indispensable, industrial
facilities were also badly needed. In contrast, most aid for North Korea
from the USSR and China was industrial machinery and facilities.
Negative aspects have been emphasized especially in relation to the
Public Law (PL) 480 Aid. Aid funds were formed through sales of US
surplus agricultural commodities and a considerable portion of thefunds was used to purchase military supplies from the US. Someeconomists argue that the inflow of massive US farm product aid
caused the fall of domestic farm product prices, discouraged the will of
farmers to produce and thereby decreased the income of farmers.
In addition, some critics argued that the US Military Government
authorities allowed pre-emptive rights to pro-Japanese farmers andmanufacturers in the process of transferring confiscated enemy
properties to private ownership. Other extremists even claimed that the
US destroyed the agricultural industry through aid, made the Korean
economy dependent on the US economy, and perpetuated its
dependency by controlling the Korean economy through aid, loans anddirect foreign investments.
In order to evaluate this argument, we need to start by clarifying theobjective facts. The US aid to Korea started in 1945 with GARIOA(1945-1949) of a total of US$502 million, which was followed by EC A
& SEC aid between 1949 and 1953 of a total of US$109 million (seeTable 2, pages 106-107). These were economic relief funds and goods
in nature. During the Korean War, however, the US aid began to be
16

104

International Journal of Korean Studies • Volume V, Number 1

used for military purposes. In May 1952, the Agreement on Economic
Coordination between the ROK and the United Command was made.
The CEB (Combined Economic Board) was established to carry out
economic aid coordination. Following the war (December 1953), the
CEB Agreement for a Program of Economic Reconstruction and
Financial Stabilization between ROK and USA was signed. As FAO
took the place of EC A after the war, the OEC (Office of the Economic
Coordinator for Korea) was also replaced by the USOM (US Operating
Mission to the ROK) in 1959 to deal with US aid in Korea. During thisperiod, US aid combined with CRIK (Civil relief in Korea) and
UNKRA began to soar from US$59 million level in 1950 to a
maximum level of US$383 million in 1957. Such a large amount ofaid consisted of 31.6% of Korean government revenue in 1954, 57.6%
in 1955, and 49.2% in 1957. This ratio was even bigger than the total
domestic tax revenue, which was slightly over the 3 0% level during themid-1950s. Besides, 35% of the defense budget (51 % in 1955, and 42%
in 1957) was supported with aid funds.
17

18

To recapitulate, foreign aid during the 1953-1961 period accounted
for about 64% of the annual gross investment. In other words, while theaverage annual investment for the period was 12.4%, the domestic
savings ratio remained as low as 4.1 %. Foreign savings, mostly foreignaid, had to fill up the remaining gap. Due to the US aid the Korean
economy achieved a 3.5% annual economic growth rate during the
1954-61 period, which is obviously higher than that of 2.8% for the
1946-53 period. More importantly, US aid was very effective instabilizing the Korean economy. The postwar average annual inflation
rate was reduced to 20% from 120% of the preceding period.
19

On the other hand, although some extreme criticisms on the role of
the US aid cannot be condoned, there is some room to reconsider someadverse effects that resulted from US aid. The so-called "counterpart
fund" financed 90% of the economic reconstruction project expenses.
The counterpart fund was designed to be spent for financing defense
expenses in part and financing or offering loans to economic
reconstruction projects, either public or private. The fund, however,
was one that was raised by selling US aid commodities, mostly US
surplus agricultural products. In addition, even among ICA aid, 23.2%
was agricultural product. Article 402 of the MSA required that any US
aid receiving country should have aid of about 25% of it in the form of
agricultural products. The problem was that all these agriculturalcommodities brought in Korea either through ICA or PL480 were so
big that they did contribute to lowering prices of Korean farm products
and decreasing the income of farmers. Some Korean agricultural
20

International Journal of Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 2001

105

Table 2: Foreign Aid(Unit: Thousand US Dollars)

USA
Year
GARIOA
1945
1946
1947
1948
1949
1950
1951
1952
1953
1954
1955
1956
1957

4934
49,496
175,371
179,593
92,703

ECA
& SEC

Total
PL480

23,80649,33031,972
3,824
232

32,95545,522AID

Sub-total

5,571
82,437
205,815
271,049
323,268

4,934
49,496
175,371
179,593
116,50949,33031,792
3,824
5,803
82,437
205,815
304,004
368,790

CRIK

9,376
74,448
155,534
158,787
50,191
8,711
331

UNKRA

122
1,969
29,58021,287
21,181
22,37014,103

4,934
49,496
175,371179„593
116,50958,706
106,542
161,327
194,170
153,929
236,707
326,705
382,893

1958
1959

47,896
11,436

265,629
208,297

313,525
219,733

7,747
2,471

321,272
222,204

1960

19,913

225,236

245,149244

245,393

15,722
329,543274,789
33,651

293,823
1293,479
599,230
22,246
26,9383,442

575,233
329,851
145,201
928,773
496,035
60,5893,442

9,376
447,671331

75,14946,935

795,705

2438,158 | 38245124

457,378

122,084

1945-50
1951-55
1956-60
1961-65
1966-70
1971-75
1976-80

502,097

73,13636,028584,609852,671
1498,467
928,773
496,035
60,5893,442

TOTALS
1945-80

502,097

Source: The Bank of Korea

109,1644424,586

products such as wheat and cotton eventually disappeared completely
due to the sharp decline of their prices.
On the other hand, major items of ICA were fertilizer, cotton,
petroleum, sugar, wheat, cowhide, etc. This contributed to bolstering
consumer industries in Korea, especially the "three white" industries,
flour, cotton and sugar. As a result, secondary industry (mining andmanufacturers) increased its share in the national economic structurefrom 9.8% in 1953 to 15.1 % in 1961. The proportion of consumer
goods industry, however, maintained its supremacy over production
goods industry, by 74.4% vs. 18.3% in 1953 and 77.3% vs. 19.3% in
1961. Such a trend contributed to the retardation of the producer goods
industry in the years to come.
Regardless, it is not logical to blame US aid in terms of surplus
agricultural commodities for all the adverse effects on the Korean
agricultural sector. Militaristic use of aid funds can be criticized, but
this was inevitable in some respects, as was the Marshall Plan inEurope. It is extremely irrational to accuse the US of trying to destroy
the basis of Korean agriculture through aid, and then to force orstrengthen its supremacy over the Korean economy, when we consider
the insignificance of the Korean economy to the US.
Although Korea was important for the US as a front base against
the communist block, the Korean economy could not be prime interest
to the US. It was just a trivial interest, not worthy of playing with or
exploiting. At best it could be only a burden.
It may be useful at this point to look at how Taiwan utilized US
agricultural commodity aid. The Taiwanese government sold it topeople for a low price so that they could alleviate hunger or famine. On
the other hand, the government sold its domestically grown farm
products overseas for a high price. That was how Taiwan could achieve
such an early success in developing rural areas and agriculture.
Development in rural areas brought not only an increase in demand for
manufactured goods, but also for some primitive capital formation.
Together with the successful farmland reform, appropriate policies on
foreign aid farm products contributed a great deal to the formation ofagricultural capital and later to the formation of industrial capital aswell. Of course, the Taiwanese success cannot be replicated in Korea,
because Korea experienced a three year long devastating war. Besides,
Korea could not produce any internationally competitive farm products
due to its inherent unfavorable natural conditions.

2. Conflicts between the US and Korean Governments
There was conflict between the Korean government and the US on
how to utilize the remaining counterpart fund (65%) except for the
108

International Journal of Korean Studies • Volume V, Number Jportion for defense expenditure ( 3 5 % ) . Korea wanted to spend it inorder to expand and reconstruct SOC's and key industries including
some heavy and chemical industries, while the US wanted to spendstabilizing the Korean economy and maintaining regional securities
through acquiring enough supplies of urgent and indispensable needs.
Instead of immediate industrialization of Korea , the US evenrecommended that Korea resume (free) trade with Japan for needed
goods and to form a kind of anti-Communist block throughcooperation. Japan was in need of raw materials from Asian countries
including Korea, and wanted to sell their manufactured goods to Asianmarkets. Such an ambitious hope by the US could not be realized,
however, since antagonism against Japan could not disappear within
only a few years. President Seungman Rliee, especially, strongly
opposed to this idea of forming an anti-Communist block with Japan asa leader. Instead, President Rhee himself wanted to play a leading roleto that end. As a result he forbade special-foreign-exchange-loanfunded imports from Japan.
Finally a compromise was made in December 1953 between thetwo governments. Both governments agreed that reconstruction
investments should be agreeable to fiscal stabilization in principle. On
other disputable issues they agreed to make further discussions andnegotiations. The first remaining issue was which government should
decide where to buy aid materials. The US hoped to purchase aid
commodities from Japan so that the Japanese economy could be
revitalized. The US intention was to build up a strong Japanese
economy to lead the overall Asian economy and to replace the US rolein the near future in providing proper economic assistance to Asian
nations. A final decision was made to indirectly allow Japan toparticipate in the open international auction, but to allow Korea to be
in charge of its operation.
The second issue was which exchange rate to apply, official ormarket rate. Korea wanted official rate applied so that it could import
capital goods and intermediate goods for lower costs, while the US
wanted market rates applied so that it could lessen the burden of
repayment for UN forces loans from Korea. The US position on thispoint was so strong that the official exchange was finally raised to arealistic market rate level in 1951 from 1 $ = 60 hwan to 1 $ = 180 hwan.
In 1955 the rate was again adjusted to 1$ = 500 hwan, reflecting pricechanges in Korea.
The third and the most controversial issue was what kind of goods
were to be delivered as aid. Again the US maintained a firm position.
Priority was thus given to consumer goods for the sake of economic
stability. About 70% of aid fell under this category. In consequence,
International Journal o f Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 2001109

textile (cotton), milling (flour) and sugar refining industries had grown
up fast and became leading industries in Korea. As noted earlier,consumer- goods producing light-industry oriented structure wasformed in Korea as a result.
The fourth and final issue was about how to allocate aid. The US
tried to maximize sales earnings of the aid materials through public
auction with general merchants participating and by applying market
foreign exchange rate in determining prices of the aid materials in termsof Korean currency. The Korean Defense Ministry, on the other hand,insisted on maintaining "real-demand principle," that allowed sales
only to those who had operational production facilities. It also
expressed its priority for the application of the official exchange rate indetermining prices. The final decision was to allow real-demandprinciple to Korea in only a few major items such as cotton, wheat andsugar.

3. Mishaps of the Korean Government Economic Policies
The serious consequence of the Korean government's "real-demandprinciple" was that it gave a windfall gain to those who could acquire
aid materials, since the WPI rose four times during the 1953-61 period.
On the other hand, even when the official exchange rate approachedmarket rate in 1955, the immediate discrepancy between sales price ofaid materials and their market price ranged from 7 to73% on the spot.
Thus, the Korean government was actually more responsible than the
US for fostering consumer goods industry and later on paving the way
for the rise of big-business oriented Chaebol structure.
In addition to the advantage given to those who had operational
production facilities, especially in relation to "three-white" industry, theKorean government provided them with special benefits such as theapplication of much lower interest rates for their loans, mostly 10% orlower, which was lower than general bank loan rate, 18.25%, and much
lower than the curb rate of 48% (4% per-month). Even the inflation rate
was higher than the nominal bank loan rate at that time. Further, various
tax credits and benefits were added. Also, loans were allocated in favorof big firms. This in turn made the owned capital ratio of big firms
lower than that of small and medium firms. The former was 28%, andthe latter, 46% in 1960. Such a practice finally contributed to theestablishment of special government-business nexus and corruption.
The usual kickback rate of bank loans was reported to be about 20%(Shin, 2000, p.277).
Such procedure helped those big businesses to form cartels such as
the Korea Textile Association, through which they could monopolize
raw material aid such as cotton (100%), molasses (100%), wheat (81 % ) ,110International Journal o f Korean Studies • Volume V, Number 1and sugar (27%). These associations also practiced sales cartelization.
For example, 19% of textile industries took 89% of the market, while
2% of sugar industries took 92% of the market. The Che-il Woolen
Textile Co. controlled 60% of the market, and three leading flour
milling companies took up 50% of the market in the 1950s.
Since such monopoly was not built up based on economic
productivity, but on special benefits from government, they could
establish neither optimum level of production scale, norcompetitiveness in international markets. In addition, the laborproductivity was estimated as low as the one third or one half level of
the Japanese counterpart in the textile industry (cotton).
What made those industries either flourish or survive was special
favor in aid material allocation, special benefits in tax and financing,monopolistic business operation, and most of all, utilization of labor oflong working hours for very low wages. People worked 11-12 hours a
day for a monthly salary of 13-26 thousand hwan, when the minimum
living expenses of laborers of 8 hours working was set at 23 thousand
hwan. This was possible because there was infinite number of an
unemployed labor force. The unemployment rate was estimated to be
45%, if 20%o level of disguised employment was included.
All these facts helped big businesses grow with high profits. The
gains only from the difference between different exchange rates were
estimated to be as big as US$1.3 billion during the 1953-1960 period.
Nine of the biggest ten Korean Chaebols established their core sectors
during this period. Unfortunately, their products were centered aroundaid raw material related products such as cotton, wool, sugar and food.
Consumer goods industries such as fertilizer, cement, flat glasses,
which could generate bigger forward and backward linkage effects,
were not yet being produced any for markets.
Another major mishap of the Korean government occurred inrelation to its policy on the agricultural sector. The Korean governmenttransferred inflationary pressure onto the agricultural sector throughlow grain price policy based on aid grains and heavy tax. Aid by grains
between 1945-1960 consisted of 3 3 % of all aid offered in Korea. The
size of inflow of aid grains was 400-500 thousand tons per year, which
was equivalent to 15% of domestic production, and which was
obviously a lot higher than grain import in the pre-war year 1949 (2%of the domestic production).
The grain price index fell by 35% during the 1956-59 period, while
prices of consumer goods rose by 72% during the 1953-54 period, andit rose by only 20% while those of other consumer goods rose by 64%
during the 1955-59 period (see table 3).

International Journal of Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 2001

111

Table 3: WPI in the 1950s (1955 =100)
WPI

WPI
For Grains

WPI
For NonGrains
142.1
174.4
131.4
1956, 1 0 - 1957, 1
143.4
1957, 1 0 - 1958, 1
143.3
142.9
133.1
1958, 1 0 - 1959, 1
140.3
142.7
120.4
1959, 1 0 - 1960, 1
152.8
163.6
Source: Sung Yoo Hong. Capital Accumulation Process m The Korean Economy. 1965.

It is true that the low price of grains was related to heavy inflow ofaid grains. But the Korean government policy was responsible for thislow grain price. During the war, the government tried to acquire grains
for war supplies through government purchasing policies within one
third of the annual product. The government tried to maintain agovernment purchasing price that was as low as possible. It wasestimated as low as 74% of the average production costs and much
lower than market prices. This policy was carried out until 1961. The
government also tried to keep grain prices low so that it could lessen
the burden of redemption for the landlords who sold their land to thegovernment. The government was supposed to pay for them based on
the monetary value of the specified quantify of grain on the voucher(farmland securities).
There was another reason for the low grain price policy. The
government needed to keep grain prices low, because they were aleading factor of the WPI. If the WPI rose more than 25% per year,
Korea had to devalue Korean currency against US dollars, which was
not what the Korean government wanted. One last additional reason forthe low grain price was that it could help poor urban dwellers.
The temporary land tax was created and levied on deprived farmers
in order to finance war expenses. Farmers had to pay this tax with real
farm products. This started in 1951 and continued even after the war
until April, 19 1960 when the tax was allowed to be paid in money.
This temporary land tax was 5.5 times higher in its money value interms of official grain price (10 times in market price). Tax revenue
from this alone accounted for 30% of the total tax revenue in terms ofofficial grain prices (70-90% in market prices) during the war, and 1224%, even after the war. Faced with such heavy burden, farmers could
depend only upon borrowing in order to continue farming. According
to Dae Keun Lee's study (1987), farm family debt rose by 4.4 times
during the 1953-56 period, and 1.7 times. Nearly 80-90% of all farm
families had some debts. Unfortunately 70-80% of them were highinterest curb loans. This situation drove many small new independent
farmers to sell their farmland. About 58% of those who bought
112International Journal o f Korean Studies • Volume V, Number Ifarmland of 0.3 chongbo or smaller, and 32% of those who bought
farmland of 0.3-0.5 chongbo sold their farmland (Jindo Park, 1994).
Consequently 26% of all farmland returned to tenant farming again in
reality. In the meantime, those who sold their land had to stay in rural
areas, working as farmers on leased land, because at that time the urban
sector could not absorb any bankrupted farmers.

Conclusion
The Korean War brought about devastating damages to both
Koreas, although damages to North Korea are estimated to be a lotlarger than those to South Korea. Financial aid to the North by thecommunist block (excluding construction assistance) was, however, alittle bit smaller than to the South - US$3 billion for the North and
US$4.4 billion for the South. The assistance for reconstruction ofdamaged industrial facilities and new construction of SOC and key
industries in the North surely made it surpass the Southern counterpart
in terms of GNP up until 1974. While for various reasons the South
Korean agricultural sector was impoverished through the farmland
reform in times of war, North Korea built up a collective farming
system through virtual nationalization of farmland, which lowered
productivity for different reasons. In the meantime. South Korea cameto foster consumer-goods oriented and big-business oriented industrial
structures while neglecting a producer-goods oriented industry. North
Korea built up a heavy-industry oriented industrial structure andneglected the production of daily necessities.
Construction-oriented assistance helped North Korea to surpass
South Korea in economic development in earlier stages, but made itvery much dependent on foreign technology and facilities. North Korea
simply used aided facilities and machinery without knowing how to
produce them. It thus soon became helpless when assistance from its
allies was cut off and its facilities were rusty since the 1970's, although
the root cause for economic failure of North Korea stemmed from othersources such as extreme collectivism, economic autarky principle, etc.
They prohibited the inflow of foreign technology and capital, which inturn lowered productivity and economic growth through its inherent
inefficient economic system, and most of all proscribed basic humanrights.
The Korean War damaged two major economic reforms andthereby made the Korean economic structure distorted and foreigndependent. Although some criticisms were raised on the role of the US
in South Korea, we find that the mishaps of the Korean economic
policy were more responsible for the adverse effects of foreign aid. The
most serious consequence of the war is the consolidation of division,
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antagonistic confrontation, and acceleration of heterogeneous societies
in a nation, making probable unification costs astronomically high.
Division of land cut off markets from each other, blocked interrelated
linkage effects between different industrial structures, and brought
about the heavy burden of high defense expenditure. More importantly,
democratization has been retarded for security reasons in both areas fora long time.

References
Chun, Hong-Tack and Jin Park, "North Korean Economy: A Historical
Assessment," Dong-Se Cha et. al. ed., The Korean Economy
1945-1995: Performance and Vision for the 21 ' Century, 1995,
pp.665-729.
s

Hong,

Sung-Yoo, Capital Accumulation Process of the Korean
Economy, Asia Research Institute, 1965 (in Korean).

KDI ed., Korean Economic Policy Data Collection: 1945-1995, 1995
(in Korean).
Kim,

Il-gon, The Korean Economic
kyungyoung-sa, 1986 (in Korean).

Development,

Mooyeok-

Kim, Kwang Suk and Michael Roemer, Growth and Structural
Transformation; Studies in the Modernization of the Republic ofKorea: 1945-1975, Harvard University, 1978.
Ko,

Seung-hyo, Understanding of the North Korean Economy,
Pyongmin-sa, 1993 (in Korean).

Kraeger, Anne O., The Developmental Role of the Foreign Sector and
Aid: Studies in the Modernization of the Republic of Korea,
1945-1975, Harvard University, 1979.
Lee, Dea-Keun, The Korean War and Capital Accumulation in the
1950s, Kkachi-sa, 1987 (in Korean).
, Development Process of the Korean Economy and its
Structure, Changjak-goa-bipyung-sa, 1989, ch. 4 (in Korean).
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Lee, Jong Won, "A Macro-econometric System Approach to
Estimation of North Korean GNP," The Journal of Northeast
Asian Economic Studies, 8, 1997, pp.209-232.
, Economics of Korean Unification, Hae-Nam, Seoul,
1997 (in Korean).
Lee, Jong Won and Byung Gyu Yu, Development Process of the
Korean Economy and its Future, Hae-Nam, Seoul, 1997 (inKorean).
Lee, Jong Won and Chang Kwon Kim, "A Privatization Policy for
North Korea When United," The Korean Journal of Public
Finance, 11, 1996, pp.131-162 (in Korean).
Lee, Jong Won and Ki Sung Han, "Policy Suggestion for Minimizing
Unification Costs in Korea," The Journal of Northeast Asian
Economic Studies, 10 (2), 1999, pp.95-137 (in Korean).
Park, Jin-do, Korean Capitalism and Agricultural Structure, Han-kilsa, 1994 (in Korean).
Shin, Yong-ok, "Aid-dependent Economic Structure and Foreigndependent Industrialization in the 1950s," in Man-gil Kang, ed.,History of Korean Capitalism, Yeoksa-bipyung-sa, 2000, pp.252292 (in Korean).

Notes
1 The Korea Defense Ministry statistics shows that 301,866 Korean soldiers, 33,629
UN forces soldiers, and 1,060,968 civilians were dead or missing, while about
2.5million North Korean and Chinese were dead.
2 North Korea cut electric power supply to South Korea starting from May 14, 1948,
making energy shortage problem more serious than before.
3 Foreign trade increased to US$26.1 million in 1951, US$54.3 million in 1952, andUS$161.4 million in 1953, though.
4 Chun and Park(1995) revealed that WPI rose by 531% in 1951 and 30% in 1956.
They also reported that money(MI) was increased tremendously from 120 million won
in 1949 to 1.4 billion won in 1952. Kim (1986, p.51) even claimed that the price levelin 1951,1952, and 1953 were 22,48, and 65 times higher than that in 1947. Estimatesand even some publicized data vary depending on the sources. The only obvious fact
is that the inflation rate was fierce, and the money was tremendously over-issued.

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5 Actually about 60% of tenant farmland had been privately sold before the farmland
reform was enacted in 1950. Thus, the farmland reform was carried out for theremaining tenant farmland and owner farmland of three chongbo or bigger in size. The
ratio of owner farmers rose from 14% in 1945 to 88% in 1957 according to thegovernment publication.
6 In the case of confiscated enemy farmland privatization, executed by the US Military
government on March 22, 1948, buying farmers were to pay 300% of the annual
average product, 20% each in 15 years, for the farmland of size two or less chongbo.
199 thousand chongbo(61.4% of the total confiscated farmland, 324 thousand chongbo)
were sold to 505 thousand farm families. The remaining 38.6% were transferred to the
Korean government for later privatization(June, 1949).
7 This tax alone accounted for about one third of government revenue during the war(38.1% in 1950,22.5% in 1951,30.4% in 1952 and 20.6% in 1953). The burden fromthis tax was big enough to discourage farming and deteriorate agricultural productivity.
8 As of March 1955, only 56.8% of the total sales were paid in, due to the heavy
burden of the new farmland owners. It took 13 more years to get all the sales get paid
(98% complete in 1968). In this process many new independent farmers returned toa tenant status in reality. They began to work on leased land.
9 We need to compare farmland reform policy of Korea with those of other countries
in the similar situation in order to make a proper evaluation. In fact the US Military
Government Authorities simultaneously enforced a farmland reform in three occupied
countries, Korea, Japan and Taiwan. For example, in Japan, General MaCarthur
ordered Japanese government to liberate farmers. Japan thus made a bill for the
farmland reform on Nov. 22, 1945. MaCarthur was not satisfied with the bill andrefused to accept it. Thus Japan came to make a revised version of the reform bill in
May 1946, which was passed in congress in Nov. 1946. It was a swift and thoroughreform. Even though Japan had to listen to MaCarthur and thus had to revise their
original bill, Japan carried out all the reform process all by themselves. Fortunately
Japan did not face opposition from big landowners whose economic power andinfluence had been weakened very much during the war. The most important featureof the Japanese reform was that former tenant farmers could pay for their new
ownership with government bonds for the period of 30 years. That obviously alleviatedthe burden of farmers.
Taiwanese government legislated Rent Decrease Law in 1949, Law of State
Property Privatization in 1951, and Law of General Ownership Transfer. 'Farmers
Only Principle' was also indoctrinated there. Again all the reform process was plannedand executed by the Taiwanese government. And they achieved quite a successful
farmland reform. Compared with farmland reforms in Japan and Taiwan, that in Korea
was neither successful nor desirable. We can, however, bestow the following meanings
upon the farmland reform in Korea. First, it put to an end to the old feudal-ownershipbased governing system. Second, it abolished a highly exploitive tenant farming
system and created many small independent farmers. Third, 'Farmers Only Principle'
paved the way for modern civil society and capitalism, and provided a momentum forproductivity improvement through privatization of farmlands.
10 If landlords wanted to exchange their land securities (or vouchers) for money, they
could receive the money value of the number of sok of rice specified on the voucher.
Evaluation was made only at an official price of rice, which was nearly 30-40% of themarket price. What was worse was that the amount of money they could get by selling
their vouchers was limited to 300 thousand won (three thousand hwan) in a month.
Besides vouchers were not allowed to be put up as security (mortgage) for bank loans
except when loans were used for operating privatized enemy factories.

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11 In order to cope with inflation, Korean government carried out currency exchange
measure three times during the war (Sep. 15, 1950 - Sep. 22, 1950; Oct. 25, 1950 Nov. 3, 1950; Nov. 11, 1950 - Nov. 18, 1950). The first exchange was made only inthe unoccupied area, Pusan and vicinities, and was intended to get rid of the illegallyissued currency which was seized and circulated by North Korea. The second and thethird exchanges were carried out after Seoul was recovered and they were intended
purely to unify the official currency, and to initiate anti-inflationary measure at thesame time. Each family was allowed to exchange currency only 20 thousand won orless, and to withdraw 50 thousand won each month thereafter. Further the government
carried out currency reform in the form of denomination (100 won = 1 hwan) and froze
3 billion hwan as compulsory savings in order to fight against inflation in Feb. 1953.
On the other hand, Korean government requested UN forces to pay back its loans,which was the major factor of inflation and balance-of-payment deficits. UN forces
borrowed 30-35 billion won from Korea every month, which accounted for about 79%
of money issued. Korea and UN forces reached an agreement in May 1953 (called
Mayer Agreement) regarding the repayment schedule. Twelve million US dollars were
repaid until the end May 1952. And an agreement was made on how to repay theremaining 80 million US dollars.
In spite of all these efforts made by the government, neither economic stability, nor
acquisition of industrial fund, nor correction of ill-distributed wealth could beaccomplished.
12 Shin (2000), p.261.
13 Since the estimate was made based on the different sources, direct comparison withthat of South Korea may not be meaningful, though. In any case, industrial productionin 1953 was estimated 64% smaller than its 1949 level, and agricultural production was
down to 24% lower than its 1949 level.
14 Ko, 1993, pp. 104-106.
15 According to the North Korean publication, 53% of the farmland wasconfiscated(equivalent to 90% of all tenant-based farmland), and was distributed forfree to 70% of farmers.
16 The Russian economic aid to North Korea in the pre-Korean War period (Jan. 1946
- Dec. 1949) was estimated as big as US$547 million. This helped North Korea torestore major industrial facilities such as coal mines, iron and steel mills, fertilizer
industries, power plants and railroads, with special assistance from Russian technicaladvisors. What differentiated the Russian aid to the South was that the Russian aid wasconcentrated on restoration of industrial facilities with aided industrial equipment andtechnical assistance, while the US aid was centered around consumer goods. It should
be remembered that the Russian aid was offered in an effort to build up strong-tie
among communist block and was used to prepare for the war, although the Russianstyle aid helped the North Korean economy surpassed the South Korean economy.
Aid the North Korea by Russia continued during and after the war Communist aid
consisted of two different types of assistance in general, financial aid and construction
assistance. The total amount of financial aid alone to North Korea approached US$3
billion, which was almost comparable to the total aid to South Korea by the US and
UN, US$4.4 billion. About 67% of financial aid was free. Approximately 52% of theaid to North Korea came from Russia, 31% from China, and 27% from the East
European Communist countries combined. The construction assistance oriented aid
surely helped North Korea restore its industrial facilities much sooner than South Korea
and thus could keep its per-capita GNP higher than that of the South until 1974.
17 Per capita GNP of South Korea in 1953 was only US$67, and her net commodity
product level was 27% lower than that in 1940. People could save only 9% of theirincomes.
Aid by CPIK and ECA(&SEC) was mostly relief goods, i.e., either consumer goods
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or raw materials. On the other hand, about 70% of UNKRA aid was project assistanceaid, through which industrial facilities for reconstruction were brought in. The size of
UNKRA aid was very small compared with US ICA aid(about one fifteenth during the
1954-61 period). And in the case of ICA aid, only 28% was industrial reconstruction
and raw materials. 31.5% of them was for railroads and trains, 10.7% for electric facilities, 8% for housing and welfare facilities, and 15% for manufacturingsector.
Per capita GNP of South Korea in 1953 was only US$67, and her net commodity
product level was 27% lower than that in 1940. People could save only 9% of theirincomes.
MSA-aid receiving countries were required to spend some proportion of the"counter fund" for the military purpose. During the 1954-60 period, 35% of the fund
was used for defense expenditure. About 40% of the Korean budget was financed bythis fund in order to maintain armed forces as big as 630-720 thousand soldiers.
18 Aid by CPIK and ECA(&SEC) was mostly relief goods, i.e., either consumer goods
or raw materials. On the other hand, about 70% of UNKRA aid was project assistanceaid, through which industrial facilities for reconstruction were brought in. The size of
UNKRA aid was very small compared with US ICA aid(about one fifteenth during the
1954-61 period). And in the case of ICA aid, only 28% was industrial reconstruction
and raw materials. 31.5% of them was for railroads and trains, 10.7% for electric facilities, 8% for housing and welfare facilities, and 15% for manufacturingsector.
19 Per capita GNP of South Korea in 1953 was only US$67, and her net commodity
product level was 27% lower than that in 1940. People could save only 9% of theirincomes.
20 MSA-aid receiving countries were required to spend some proportion of the"counter fund" for the military purpose. During the 1954-60 period, 35% of the fund
was used for defense expenditure. About 40% of the Korean budget was financed bythis fund in order to maintain armed forces as big as 630-720 thousand soldiers

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Theorizing The Untheorizable
The Korean War and Its Impact
on Korean Politics
Thong
Whan Park
Associate Professor of Political Science
Northwestern University

Like all major wars of attrition, the Korean War brought
devastation to the natural and human landscapes of the entire Korean
peninsula. Not only did the individuals suffer, but also the social fabricthat had held the nation together was irreparably damaged. Not exempt
from the ravages of the war, politics also had to undergo transition. It
hence makes sense to ask the question of what impact the war made on
Korean politics. Seen from a short-term perspective, the war forced
each side to taste the governing style of the opposite side—albeit witha strong military touch in both. During the first three months of thewar, for instance, the South was occupied by the northern forces andruled in "people's democracy." In the subsequent few months ofnorthward march after the Inchon landing, the allied forces controlled
the restored areas under "liberal democracy." In the period immediately
following the 1953 armistice, the politics of each Korea saw post-war
adjustments, the most pronounced of which was the bloody purge in the
North of potential challengers to Kim II Sung.
Of interest here is not the period of war and its immediate
aftermath. Instead, our intellectual curiosity is on whether the war
caused any long-lasting tectonic shifts in Korean politics. Limiting theinquiry to South Korea for now, we want to focus our attention on one
aspect of political change—democratization. Has the war delayed theprocess of democratization in the South? If so, how? Conversely, wasthe war irrelevant or marginal to South Korean democratization? If so,
why? Put differently, had there been no war, would the democratization
process have taken a different pace and path? These are indeed
challenging questions due to the inherent indeterminacy of historical"what ifs." The literature on the Korean War and democratizationsuggests numerous hypotheses about the potential link between the two.
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Yet no authoritative view is available that is backed by acomprehensive theory capable of withstanding the test of empirical fit.
Perhaps it is too daunting a task to theorize about what kind of lasting
impact the war left on South Korea's democratization. Trying totheorize the "untheorizable" may nevertheless afford us a glimpse of
the link between the two phenomena.
The main objective of this essay is to lay a preliminary groundworkfor research on long-term effects of the Korean War on South Korea's
democratization. It begins with some broad observations about theoutcome of war with emphasis on the types of war—civil, international,
and proxy. Then it moves to an examination of the major factors that
influenced the democratization process and whether their origins can betraced to the war itself. Finally, it will attempt to suggest a direction wemight want to take in future research.
Wars End In Win, Loss, Or Draw
While every war may be unique in and of itself, history tells us that
there are three broad categories in the way it ends—win, loss, or draw.
These are only the prototypical points on a scale marked by a total win
and a total loss at each end. Even though almost infinite variations are
possible on the scale, an examination of these three will help produce
a rough sketch of the outcome of a war.
Win: What does the winner of a war do to the loser? A prerequisite
to answering this question is the definition of winners and losers. But
the fact of the matter is that the concept of win or loss is not clearly
discernible. It could range from a complete annihilation of the
inhabitants on the losing side to the acceptance of surrender with little
physical damage inflicted on the loser. Even though a definitional rigor
would surely help inform our thinking, it might not becounterproductive to exploit such conceptual breadth, especially in theearly stage of theory building. Given the infantile state of ourknowledge about the link between the ending of a war and its outcome,an inductive approach seems appropriate to delineate the various forms
a win can take.
The wars of the 20 century have shown that there are a number offorms a win could take. First and foremost, the winner might conquer
and absorb the loser in the classic manner of a zero-sum game. The
case in point was the socialist integration of the southern part ofVietnam in 1975. Another form of managing the victory was
exemplified in what the U.S. did to Japan after World War II. The
winner would not force a merger or colonial control on the loser.
Instead, the victor would transplant its system of political economic
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military growth. The idea was to make the loser a secondary power andclient that would remain loyal and friendly to the winner. It was
tantamount to a cloning process, if such were possible in international
relations. Yet another way in which the winner might handle the loser
was seen in what the U.S.-led coalition did to Iraq's Saddam Husseinin the 1991 Gulf War. That is, the winner would execute a punitive
strike and hope the loser would remember the painful lessons longenough so that it could enjoy a relationship of deterrence, if notcompulsion.
Loss: Turning to the losing side, what are the options available toit? The answer largely depends on what the winner would wish to do.
In the case of conquest and absorption, the loser would get completely
assimilated into the victor's system—political, economic, andsocio-cultural. The loser would cease to exist as an independent entity.
Should the winner wish to make the loser a semi-permanent client, thelatter would have to surrender to the political will of the former andaccept whatever terms might be imposed on it. While healing thewounds from the war, the loser could then wait for a chance to geteven—perhaps not on the battlefield but on other playing fields. That
Japan almost won an economic war against its conqueror, the U.S.,
must be counted as a compelling example. Moving to the third modelin which the winner leaves after a punitive strike, the loser would nothave to change anything while it might even be able to turn the militarydefeat into a political victory. Today Iraq is still considered a "rogue"
state whose leader seems convinced that his hegemonic position in theregion became enhanced as a result of the war. Similarly, one should
not forget that North Vietnam needed barely two years to unify thecountry after the U.S. could not secure a win and had to pull out.
Draw: Unlike the win or its mirror image, loss, a draw most often
restores the antebellum status quo. It would force the two sides to put
utmost priority on maintaining the bilateral balance of power. Driven
by a security dilemma, the adversaries would seek parity in
war-fighting capability, which in turn is likely to ignite a costly arms
race. At the same time, means other than a full-scale war might beutilized to continue the war-like confrontation. The Korean conflict fits
the model almost perfectly. When the war ends in a draw, it would berare for the belligerents to make radical post-war changes in theirpolitical-economic system.
2

Different Wars Produce Different Outcomes
Whereas how the war ends shapes its outcome, there is anotherfactor with equally potent effects. It is the different types of war, anddiscussion is limited here to only one variable depicting the status of theInternational Journal of Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 2001

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3

players—namely, civil war versus international war. As seen in many
civil wars, they are often fought to the end until one side becomes partof the other. If not halted for some reason, including externalintervention, a civil war could drag on endlessly until a resolution isfound in one way or another. On the contrary, international wars
fought by two different nations could end without the winner absorbing
the loser. And depending on the shift in the international power
configuration, yesterday's enemy could end up becoming today's ally.
Without being Clausewitzian, war becomes an extension politics—justanother tool of foreign policy.
The Korean War began as a civil war in which the North attempted
a quick unification by force. Due to the global bipolar confrontation,
however, it became an international war between the two major blocs.
While the Korean troops, South and North, were the primary
belligerents in terms of numbers, they were relegated to a secondary
position under the leadership of their respective patrons. In the firstmajor test of the Cold War stability, they ended up fighting a proxywar. As principals, the U.S. and the former Soviet Union feared its
escalation into a global nuclear war, thus, the Korean conflict had toend in a draw.
Combine how the Korean War ended—draw—with the complexityof a civil-international-proxy war and one cannot but notice the mixed
nature of the post-war development. Simply put, it came to include
some aspects from all three types of war as shown in the list below.
International-proxy war components
Continued division along the line close to the original partition
Military presence of external powers—first two, then one (U.S.
forces under the United Nations command, after the departure ofChinese troops)
Dependence on the patrons who fought the war in military andnonmilitary areas
Armistice structure under international supervision
The system of governance on either side remaining largely intact
Civil war components
Persistence of confrontation and competition on all
fronts—military, diplomatic, political, economic, social, espionage, andterrorism (anti-terrorism)
Continued emotional cry for unification—a sacred cow despite thefact that the half century of division has made the reintegration aherculean task

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Though it is a select list, it clearly demonstrates the enormous
influence the Korean War had left on the peninsula and its occupants.
The Korean peninsula became one of the most important arenas inwhich the Cold War game of stalemate would be played out in the next
40 years.
Did the Korean War Affect South Korea's Democratization?
Despite the sweeping changes caused by the Korean War, did it
affect South Korea's politics in general and its democratization inparticular? At first blush, no direct impact was visible for two reasons.
One was that the international nature of the war and its ending in a draw
combined to restore the status quo in which the Syngman Rhee regime
could remain untouched. If anything, his hands became stronger as hefelt free to utilize anti-communism as the magic wand in legitimating
his dictatorial rule. The other reason was the dire economic straits thecountry was in after the war and its heavy dependence on external
assistance: ordinary citizens were simply too busy sustaining
themselves to get involved in politics.
From a longer-term perspective, however, one could discern two
domestic factors that grew out of war, which would later shape South
Korean politics. The three years of war and the continued militarytension necessitated a military buildup. In addition, the professional
training many Korean soldiers received in the U.S. made the militarya strong institution with Western-style organization. The military was
becoming a force to be reckoned with. Along with the rise of themilitary, there emerged a new group of entrepreneurs who began tochallenge the supremacy of the traditional ruling elite, many with roots
going back to the yangban class. The military and new capitalists
consummated a marriage of convenience after the 1961 military coupand led the modernization drive, which by the 1970s made South Korea
one of the four Asian Tigers. Through the symbiosis of military
authoritarianism and crony capitalism, they helped each other insecuring a privileged position in South Korea's political economy.
It was not until the modernization programs bore a substantial
amount of fruits and subsequently produced a large middle class corethat military authoritarianism came under siege. Now that "theirstomachs were full and backs warm," people began demanding politicalrights commensurate with their improved economic status. It was a
poetic irony that the authoritarian regimes fell victim to their success.
Even with Park Chung-hee's assassination in 1979 and the "spring of
democratization" in 1980, however, democratic transition was slow tomaterialize. It was the mass uprising in 1987 that led to the firstpeaceful transfer of power—albeit between the former classmates of theInternational Journal of Korean Studies• Spring/Summer 2001

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Korean Military Academy. In 1993 Kim Young-sam became the firstpresident with no military background since Park's 1961 military coup,and then the first-ever lateral change of power was accomplished in1998 from a government to an opposition party.
In light of the long history of military authoritarianism, it iscommonplace to claim that the Korean War had a negative impact on
the South Korean democratization. The reasoning is simple andstraightforward: the war produced a strong military; the military took
over political power from the weak, democratically elected government;
and military governments used the carrot of industrialization and the
stick of national security in extending their rule for almost 32
years—counting the Roh Tae-woo administration as the last leg.
Now the critical question we would like to pose is, "Had it not been
for the Korean War, would democratization have taken a different
process?" It is impossible to run an experimental test with war. It isalso impractical to run a quasi-experimental test treating the war as if
it were an experimenter's intervention, since democratization did not
emerge as a major issue until well past the war. Thus, one of the few
options with which to tackle this question is to take stock of both thefacilitating and inhibiting factors of South Korea's democratization
before investigating whether any of them can be traced to the Korean
War. Considering Seoul's heavy dependence on Washington in the
post-Korean War era, it is important to look at not only domestic
factors but also international influence with particular emphasis on therole of the U.S.
4

5

Domestic Factors: The Triad of Patriarchy, Military Culture, andCrony Capitalism
The most frequently identified inhibitor of South Korea's
democratization is the patriarchal tradition in all layers of social
hierarchy. In both the public and private sectors, Koreans have lived
in a vertically structured society in which the communication flowed
mostly top-down. Throughout their history, Koreans had neverexperienced Western-style democracy until after World War II. And
this should not be considered a deficiency on the part of the Koreans.
It was a rather common phenomenon not only in Korea but also
throughout Asia. Even in Western Europe, one should be reminded, themodern version of democratic governance began only in the mid-17
century.
When the First Republic was established in 1948, Syngman Rhee,its president, considered himself the inheritor of the old monarchy andbehaved like the absolute patriarch. Park Chung-hee, who took overpower through a coup, did not hesitate to become another patriarch.
th

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While Rhee founded the new state, Park thought of himself as the one
who rebuilt it through industrialization. Chun Doo-hwan, who rose as
Park's successor through a mini-coup of his own, also became apatriarch and wanted to be remembered as the leader who brought
economic stabilization to Korea. Roh Tae-woo, who took the baton
from Chun, did not leave the image of a hard-driving patriarch. But it
was mostly due to his personality rather than any idealistic commitment
to democracy. Even Kim Young-sam, who became the first civilian
president in over 30 years, practiced "civilian dictatorship" according
to his critics. At present, Kim Young-sam denounces his successor
Kim Dae-jung as a dictator. Throw Kim Jong-pil into the politicalarena and one should be able to see that patriarchy indeed dies hard.
Formerly the right arm man of Park Chung-hee, Kim Jong-pil is thethird member of the noted "Three Kim Troika" that has been
dominating the Korean political scene. To make the picture even more
bleak, the top two forerunners of the 2002 presidential election arebeing painted as authoritarian, if not dictatorial, in their personal
orientation.
The bottom line is that patriarchy is an inherent component in
Korean society. As such, it is difficult to ascertain whether the Korean
War made any distinctive impact on the patriarchal tradition. It is
plausible to argue that the military, more precisely Park Chung-hee'scharisma, might have enhanced the patriarchal tendencies.
Nevertheless, the degree of enhancement could be insignificant, as hemight have been riding the existing waves of authoritarian culture. It
is through the maturation of genuine civil society movements, not thekinds that package interest group activities as civic service, that South
Korea will see a gradual demise in patriarchy.
No less important than the tradition of patriarchy, military culture
has been blamed for hindering South Korea's democratization.
Although a pinpoint definition of military culture is difficult toformulate, a broad characterization is possible. First, it refers to thesystem of vertical control in which a superior's orders are carried out
with little questioning from below. Blind obedience is required to
conduct the affairs of war, but it becomes problematic when such isasked in areas outside strategic and tactical aspects of military
operation. Second, military culture tends to emphasize results over theprocess. An atmosphere in which results justify the means is hardly
conducive to democratic thinking, which values procedural justice.
Third, the military prizes organizational cohesiveness and, therefore,
discourages dissenting opinions. The latter are sorely needed for any
form of democratic process to grow. Fourth, the military is run by the
manuals: it has standard operating procedures for everything from theInternationa! Journal of Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 2001

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way sleeping quarters are set up to how to conduct an air-land assault.
Though a must for battlefield success, too high an emphasis on
bureaucratic efficiency tends to dampen creativity. And creativity is
another key ingredient for democracy to bloom. Lastly, the militaryculture is noted for its idolization of individual charisma. In the act of
war where the irrational rules, it is easier to push the soldiers' moraleby asking them to follow so-and-so's example than engaging them inan analytical discourse on why it is necessary to kill the enemy. It has
been shown that charismatic worship does not go well with democratic
governance, in which voices of the small people need to be heard.
Due to the system of universal conscription, young men in South
Korea have had to absorb the mi litary culture during the ages when they
are sensitive to new ways of life. Once programmed in the military wayof thinking, deprogramming is not easily achieved.
And many retired men chose to retain the military culture topromote their careers in the society controlled by the military. The civil
military relationship in South Korea can thus be categorized into what
is called the "reverse penetration model," in which the military way of
thinking pervades the civilian society. Once the military culture
saturates the entire nation, it becomes self-evident that other cultures
will find little room to take root. To worsen the situation, military
regimes have shown extremely allergic reactions to students and theiractivities. Surely the ghosts of the 1960 Student Revolution must havebeen lurking behind the heads of the military leaders who would doanything to preserve their regime. To a lesser extent, the same was true
about another class of people with the potential to challenge themilitary rule—labor unions. But the military apparently viewed thelabor sector less threatening to them than student groups due to the factthat the former enjoyed a lower social esteem than the latter.
Turning to the central inquiry, had there not been the Korean War,would it have been impossible for the military to rise as a politicalforce? While we cannot offer a clear-cut answer, we want to make acautious speculation that the political ascendancy of the military might
have been inevitable. The division of the peninsula and the constantharassment from the North must have necessitated a military buildup,
while the war might have accelerated the process. Supporting thisobservation is the fact that it was not until eight years had passed before
the military staged a coup, and even then it almost failed.
Lastly, the collusion of business conglomerates known as chaebol
and the military-cum-political leadership gave birth to crony capitalism,
which in turn is seen to have hampered the democratization process. It
all began as a rather innocuous attempt by Park Chung-hee to help
solve the national problems of hunger and poverty. That economic
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growth would serve as the legitimating device for his military regime
provided him with additional boost, of course.
Driven bymercantilistic nationalism, Park first built a base for import substitution
industries and then moved to an ambitious program of export
expansion. As the "CEO of Korea, Inc.," Park even presided over amonthly meeting of industrialists and bureaucrats in order to promote
exportation. Over time, however, corruption set in and Park's
neo-mercantilistic capitalism degenerated into a crony capitalism inwhich the political logic dictated the terms of economic redistribution.
Chaebols became bigger and bigger at the expense of medium to small
industries. Not only did the government set the industrial policy, butalso it chose which conglomerates would specialize in what industries.
And in many cases, the choices were made not on the principle ofcompetitiveness but on the criterion of political closeness at a given
time.
Undoubtedly, crony capitalism weakened the political power of thebusiness sector, which otherwise might have acted as a powerfulpressure group against the government. Korean businessmen had totune their antennae in the direction of the presidential palace. It was
unthinkable for them to demand fair play according to the rules of thegame or a change in the governmental decision-making.
Once
co-opted, many chaebol owners gladly became housemaids ofauthoritarian regimes, as they could exploit the labor class with the helpof the government's coercive force.
Thanks in large part to the success of chaebol-bastd
industrialization, however, the middle class was born, and it became theprimary force behind democratic transition. Paradoxically, businessconglomerates still hold on to the old, undemocratic, crony capitalism
and resist the winds of change. Since 1993, the two civilian presidents
have been learning at great pains that chaebols are quite resilient inwithstanding the governmental efforts at structural reform. It isdisheartening to observe that chaebols have been far removed fromdemocratic ideals, although they indirectly helped promote
democratization via the rise of the middle class. Most importantly,
their behavior makes one believe that crony capitalism must have been
an unavoidable development: chaebols would have linked up with thepowers that be, whether military or civilian.
7

International Factors: America with Two Faces
Clearly the most important development that influenced Korea afterWorld War II was the emergence of a global Cold War system alongwith the ensuing confrontation between the two superpowers over the
peninsula. The focus of our attention is Washington's foreign policy
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objectives in South Korea. Generally speaking, the U.S. pursued thetwo goals of regime stability and democratization in its two Northeast
Asian clients. On the occupied Japan, the U.S. imposed a democratic
constitution and a wholesale demilitarization. By destroying the legacyof militarism, Washington's planners sought to build a new Japan withminimal influence from the old guards. Unlike the divided Korean
peninsula, Japan faced no immediate threat from the former Soviet
Union, which allowed the U.S. to pursue simultaneously the two goalsof stability and democracy. On the other hand, South Korea posed a
different challenge to the U.S. The utmost priority had to be placed on
the stabilization of the political military situation, given the precarious
confrontation across the 38 parallel and later the DMZ.
th

It might be argued that the U.S. did intervene for democracy as
shown in the 1960 Student Revolution when it persuaded the dictator
Syngman Rhee to step down. But was that act motivated by a genuine
intent to democratize South Korea?
Or was it more due to
Washington's apprehension that a prolonged crisis could lead to
instability and might tip the balance in favor of the North? If the U.S.
had truly been interested in democratizing South Korea, why did it not
do much for its promotion until 1960,12 years after installing Rhee atthe helm? Similarly, America's delay in endorsing Park Chung-hee
after the 1961 coup could be traced to its concern about his shady leftist
background rather than an attempt to pressure him to go back to thebarracks. The pattern continued with successive military governments
in Korea, and one must note that it was part of the global policy the
U.S. had maintained in the Cold War era.
At the same time, the U.S. did make gestures of support for
democracy in South Korea—albeit at a scale not threatening theviability of the authoritarian regimes it supported. For instance, theAmerican government saved the life of Kim Dae-jung in 1973 when he
was kidnapped in Japan and was about to be dumped into the East Sea.
And when Kim was implicated in the Kwangju crisis and sentenced todeath, Ronald Reagan bargained the commutation of Kim's sentence inexchange for the invitation to Chun Doo-hwan to a summit meeting.
While such duality may seem abominable, it served the U.S. quite wellduring the Cold War period. It helped showcase America's idealism
and commitment to democracy, while at the same time helped solidify
its perimeter of defense around the communist bloc.
Consequently, the answer becomes clear to the question of whether
the U.S. might have pushed South Korea's democratization vigorously
had there not been the war. The U.S. must have propped up the regime
in the South, regardless of its character, as long as it remained afriendly and dependable client. Unlike in Japan, democratization was
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not on the top of Washington's agenda in the post-World War II
reconstruction program.
Conclusion
In our discussion, we have tried to focus on the question of"Without the Korean War, would the process of political development
have changed in South Korea?" To answer the question, we haveexamined several factors considered to have affected South Korea's
democratization and attempted to trace their origins to the Korean War.
Our preliminary analysis suggests that it is difficult to make aconclusive case for the conventional wisdom—one which states thatthe
Korean War allowed the military to rise; the military usurped politicalpower, pushed industrialization, and suppressed democratization; andthen the military authoritarianism fell victim to its own success ineconomic growth when the middle class it helped create caused its
downfall. The weakest link is between the war and the rise of military
authoritarianism; even without the war, the military could have becomea source of political power. In addition, the model does not address thepossibility of any government, regardless of its type, pursuingeconomic growth for the survival of regime and state.
Where do we go from here? Definitely more theorizing andresearch are required. We need to address a host of questions. If we
accept the proposition that economic growth led to democratization,then what was the impact of the Korean War on economic growth?
Discounting the short-term devastation, did the war help fuel thegrowth in the long run? Given the inefficiency and lack of strong
leadership in the civilian sector, the military was perhaps better
equipped to spearhead the economic development. Or was the miracleof the Han River made possible thanks to America's doctrine ofhegemonic stability?
If we suppose thatthe economic growth-democratization link is but
one plausible route, what are the alternatives? And what is theirapplicability to the South Korean case? For example, under what
conditions might the U.S. have imposed the Japanese model of
democratization on South Korea? In addition, the possibility ofalternative explanations leads to an observation that economic
development could be just a necessary condition for democratization.
If so, what would be the sufficient conditions and did South Korea haveany? And one may go one step further to speculate that, with a strong
civic consensus, democratization might be realized even without
extensive economic development.
By casting doubt on the conventionally accepted hypothesis, we are
not trying to defend any particular ideology or political stance. There
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is no hidden agenda in our research. We are simply making plea for amore open-minded approach to the study of the relationship between
the Korean War and South Korea's democratization. As South Korea
has yet to go a long way toward democratic consolidation, the proposedline of research will hopefully help reveal what paths to follow andwhat pitfalls to avoid.

Notes
1 For a detailed discussion of the politics in the occupied areas and the power struggle
in North Korea following the end of the Korean War, see Bruce Cummings, "WhenSparta Is Sparta but Athens Isn't Athens: Democracy and the Korean War," in David
R. McCann and Barry S. Strauss (eds.). War and Democracy: A Comparative Study ofthe Korean War and the Peloponnesian War (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2001), pp.
57-84, and Dae-Sook Suh, "The Korean War and North Korean Politics," in McCannand Strauss, 2001, pp. 161-5.
2 Technically, the Korean War has not ended as no peace treaty has been signed. Since
1953 an armistice is in force with the inspection mechanism in Panmunjom. For the
purpose of our discussion, however, we will view the war as ended in 1953.
3 The types of war could include a whole array of variables ranging from the nature of
the war (colonial versus independence war), who started first (preemptive attack versus
defense), the weaponry used (conventional versus unconventional warfare), theduration (prolonged war versus blitzkrieg), and to the sanctions of an international body(collective security action). As research progresses, some of these variables will be
included as the determinants of post-war political changes.
4 The literature on South Korea's democratization is replete with the themes along thisline of argument. For an excellent review of the issue, see Hyug-Baeg Im, Democracyin the Era of Globalization: Realities, Theories, and Reflections (in Korean), (Seoul:
Nanam, 2000). In a similar vein, a longer historical view can be found in Kongdan Oh,"The Korean War and South Korean Politics," in David R. McCann and Barry S.
Strauss (eds). War and Democracy: A Comparative Study of the Korean War and the
Peloponnesian War (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2001), pp. 176-190
5 For a detailed discussion on the method of quasi-experimental design, see Donald
Thomas Campbell and Julian C. Stanley, Experimental and Quasi-experimental
Designs for Research (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1963).
6 The author coined the term in his review of civil military relationship. The"penetration model" describes the communist regimes in which the party uses politicalcommissars to brainwash and control the military force. The "reverse penetration
model" describes the many cases of military authoritarian regimes in which themilitary, as rulers, impose their way of doing business on the civilian sector. For acomprehensive survey of civil military relations, see Tong Whan Park, "A Study ofSocial Change and Military Leadership (in Korean)," in KookbangHaksoolNonchong,No. 5, (Seoul: Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, 1991), pp. 161-202; Morris

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Janowitz, The Professional Soldier (New York: Free Press, 1971); and E. A. Nordlinger,
Soldiers in Politics: Military Coups and Governments. Englewood Cliffs, N.T:
Prentice-Hall, 1977.
7 For a more detailed discussion of the state-society relations and their impact on
democratization, see Tong Whan Park,, Dae-Won Ko, and Kyu-Ryoon Kim,
"Democratization and Foreign Policy Change in the East Asian NICs," in Jerel Rosati,
Joe D. Hagen, and Martin W. Sampson III (eds). Foreign Policy Restructuring: How
Governments Respond to Global Change. (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina
Press, 1994), pp. 164-184.

International Journal of Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 2001131

Effects of the Korean War
on Social Structuresof the Republic of Korea
Eui Hang Shin
Professor of Sociology
University of South Carolina
Effects of the Korean War on Demographic Structures of the
Population
The Korean War was among the world's most destructive wars, in
proportion to the population. During the war, the population of South
Korea declined by nearly two million, excluding an influx of nearly
650,000 North Korean refugees. During the same period, about 290,000
South Koreans migrated to North Korea, either by force or by choice.
Redistribution of the South Korean population continued on a large
scale even into the immediate post-war years.
Mortality. Changes in demographic processes serve as important
indicators of the impact of the Korean War on the population of South
Korea. Mortality is the most obvious demographic footprint left by awar, but its effects may also be observed in patterns of fertility andmigration for the period of the actual conflict and the period
immediately following the war. Between 1910 and 1945, the crude
death rate in South Korea declined from 34 to 22 per 1,000 people.
Following the period of liberation, mortality continued to decline to a
low of 19 per 1,000 in 1950.
Mortality figures for the war years (1950-1953) are extremely
incomplete. Indirect estimation procedures were heavily influenced byinaccuracies plaguing the censuses of 1949 and 1955, including serious
undercounting and age misreporting. Nonetheless, according to death
statistics compiled by the Office of Information, Republic of Korea(ROK) and the United Nations Forces, South Korean war deaths
included 373,599 civilians and 29,294 ROK military personnel. An
additional 150,133 South Koreans were reported "kidnapped or
captured," and 408,884 were listed as "missing or prisoner of war."
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The quality of the data in these reports is suspect, owing to unspecifiedcompilation procedures. As noted by Kwon, assuming the category of"missing" to be comprised equally of South Koreans who had died,those who had migrated to North Korea, and those still living in South
Korea, the number of war deaths increased to 540,000 and the numberof migrants to North Korea increased to 290,000, bringing the total
war-related decrease to 830,000. Underreporting of war deaths andinadequate death-registration systems following the war render thisestimate less than half of reported war-related losses, which are likely
to have been between 1.5 and 2 million.
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7

Kwon estimates the crude death rate for the war years to be
between 36 and 47 per 1,000 population - a rate that only slightly
exceeds the crude birth rate of the same period. The population ofSouth Korea, then, had no appreciable natural growth, and may haveactually experienced natural decrease between 1950 and 1953. If
Kwon's estimates are accurate, the death rate during the Korean War
was nearly twice that of the five years immediately preceding the war.
The rise in mortality during the war strongly affected both the age
and sex composition of the South Korean population, because war
casualties included disproportionately high numbers of males between
the ages of 20 and 34. In 1949, the sex ratio of the 20-34 age groupwas 101.1. The reported sex ratio of the same cohort had dropped to80.5 by 1955. The ratio would have been much lower had North
Korean refugee migrants - who were disproportionately male - notbeen included in the 1955 census.
The marital status composition of the South Korean population was
also affected by the rise in mortality during the war. Immediately prior
to the war, the proportion of ever-married women between the ages of
15 and 49 listed as "currently widowed" was less than six percent. In
1955, the proportion for the corresponding age group had risen to 9.5
percent. Because remarriage historically has not been common among
Korean women, particularly before 1960, the war had long-lasting
effects on marital status composition and family structures in South
Korea."
Migration. The migration of North Korean refugees to ROK wasamong the major migration streams caused by the war, as were theforced and voluntary migrations of South Koreans to North Korea, themovement of South Korean refugees from combat zones to southern
provinces, and the subsequent return migration after the war.
During the war, an estimated 646,000 North Korean refugees
moved to South Korea, mostly during the two-month period between
December 1950 and January 1951, immediately preceding the Chineseintervention and the retreat of United Nations forces from North Korean
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territory. The estimated gender ratio of North Korean refugee
migrants was about 121, suggesting considerable migration of entire
refugee families.
As reported in the census of 1955, about half of the North Korean
refugees resided in the provinces of Kyonggi and Kangwon, while
about 21 percent inhabited Kyongnam province. Thirteen percent of the
refugees lived in Seoul, with the remaining refugees dispersed among
all other provinces. The concentration of refugees in Kyonggi andKangwon was largely due to the inmigration of North Korean residents
from the northern parts of those provinces and in the Whanghae
province, which became part of North Korea at the end of the war.
Additionally, the initial settlement of North Korean refugees washeavily concentrated in urban areas. In the 1955 census, about 47.9
percent of North Korean refugees lived in urban areas, compared with
24.4 percent of the total population. Combined with their residential
concentration in large metropolitan areas, their occupational
concentration in business and trade sectors led the North Korean
refugees to become highly visible during the post-war period.
Internal migration within South Korea occurred on a large scale
during the war in addition to migration streams between North andSouth Korea. According to Kwon, Korean wartime migration entailed:
1) an exodus from Seoul, Kangwon, and other front areas, 2) heavy
migration from North to South, concentrated in southern cities, 3)
movement in the northern provinces from urban to rural areas, 4) heavy
refugee migration into Kyongnam, and 5) urban concentration of
refugees in the South. Most internal migrants who fled to rural areas
during the war returned to their urban places of origin at the close of theconflict, with the exception of migrants to Pusan, Taegu, and othersouthern cities, who took longer to return and resettle.
In both scale and effect, the Korean War refugee movement was
perhaps the most significant redistribution of population in Korean
history. First, wartime migration consisted mainly of either "impelledflight" or "forced displacement," nearly destroying the economic,
social, and psychological bases of refugee families. A substantial
proportion of these losses was unrecoverable, and had profound effects
on the life course of Korean families. Second, interactions among the
refugees themselves and with the residents of their host cities weremade difficult by the massive and sudden influx of war refugees into alimited number of cities that had not experienced North Korean militaryinvasion. Strained living arrangements combined with economic
hardship and uneasy inter-group relations produced strongly
antagonistic in-group/out-group attitudes.
The widespread
redistribution of population exacerbated regional prejudice,
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stereotyping, and regionalism in general. The actions and behavioral
styles of the North Korean Army and refugees led to negative regional
sentiments manifested in such epithets as "pyungando chidul" commoners from Pyungan - and "hamkyungdo abai" - guys fromHamkyung province. Additionally, the devastating effects of the war on
economic, social, and industrial infrastructures served to heighten
existing regional disparities in socioeconomic development. I will
discuss these effects further in a latter section.
A third effect of refugee migration during the war was that thelarge-scale settlement of North Korean refugees in urban areas and theintraprovincial rural-urban migration streams that developed in thesouthern provinces were turning points in the urbanization andmodernization of South Korea. The wartime population movement led
to extreme disjunctures in network interactions, due to massive
displacement, settlement and resettlement. The movement of migrantsof rural origin into large cities required a fundamental shift fromtraditional life orientations and interpersonal behavior. Interpersonal
relationships in rural Korea had traditionally been based on the direct,
face-to-face interactions of primary groups, while urban environments
encouraged differentiation and individuation based on membership inimpersonal and casual "secondary groups." The modernization ofSouth Korea would most likely have accelerated in the 1950s, even in
the absence of the war, but the process was intensified by the
population redistribution during and after the war.
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Fourth, the flight of the rural poor into urban areas represented
more than a pattern of spatial movement; it had profound effects on the
Korean system of stratification, traditionally based on Confucian orderand agrarian economic models. Displaced war refugees and poor
migrants of rural origin initially settling, for the most part, inshantytowns or the slums of large cities gave rise to an urban
underclass, which eventually became institutionalized into thestratification structure. Although a "petty bourgeoisie" had existed even
before the war, its emergence as a bona fide social class category
coincided with the rapid expansion of urban centers following thewar. The war distorted the relationship of individuals and families tothe economic system because of the breakdown of economic
establishments and the consequent softening of prewar social classstructures. The rapid urbanization process created new dimensions insocial stratification systems in post-war Korea.
Fertility. In addition to its impact on mortality and migration, theKorean War substantially affected fertility levels between 1950 and
1953. During this time, the number of live births declined by about 15
percent from the preceding five years. The lowest wartime fertility was
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government bureaucracy and its attendant network of police, security,and tax agencies.
According to Koo, Japanese colonialism simultaneously produced
a strong state and a contentious society. The dismantling of the
yangban status system by the colonial government represented afundamental shift in state-society relations; a complex bureaucratic
state now took precedence over rigid social order. The oppressive
colonial regime further separated state and society by giving rise topowerful anti-Japanese sentiment among the people of Korea. The
coercive power exercised by the colonial governments, and theirintroduction of institutions designed to maintain a strong state,produced a restless and reactive society poised to redress the injusticesof the past. Colonial rule also galvanized Korean nationalism into a
powerful and articulate ideology.
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The 1945 liberation from Japanese colonial rule saw the advent ofa wide array of organizations oriented to political activities as well as
concerns of labor, peasants, students, youth, women, religion, andculture. These organizations actively promoted agendas and policies
designed to shape the emerging state. According to Choi, regardless ofcommunist or conservative orientation, the nationalist leaders of the
post-liberation period were united in their quest to establish Korea asan independent nation-state purged of all traces of colonial rule.
The unified political environment was soon to be polarized,
ironically, due to the interventions of the United States and the Soviet
Union and their subsequent rivalry. In its support of the Syngman Rheeregime, the United States Army Military Government in Korea(USAMGIK) effectively undercut the effects of liberation by restoring
to power those who had collaborated with the colonial forces. Relief
from colonial coercion was brief, alienating civil society from the state,
which itself lost legitimacy. A strong state quickly emerged in the
North with the establishment of communist systems of politics andadministration, aided by the Soviet Union. By September of 1948, theDemocratic People's Republic of Korea had been established as astrong satellite communist state, under the leadership of Kim II Sung.
The post-liberation activities of citizens' organizations motivated
USAMGIK to develop strategies to cultivate conservative, reactionary,
and anticommunist orientations. Due to the lack of popular ideologicalconsensus, the weak Syngman Rhee regime was plagued bybureaucratic inefficiency, corruption, and factional strife. Vestiges ofconflict between the conservatively oriented state and progressively
oriented elements of society were evident in the Cheju Island Rebellionof April 3,1948, and in the Yosu-Sunchon Rebellion of October 19-27,
1948. These rebellions also brought to light many problems associated
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50name of national security and anticommunist sentiment. The
experience of the war, division of the country, and the constant
exploitation of military threats and ideological confrontations by thestate had enduring effects on the daily lives of individual South
Koreans. This sociopolitical environment fostered the re-emergence ofa strong state-weak society relationship.
Following Rhee, successive authoritarian military regimes
effectively utilized their coercive power, thus maintaining a strong
state-weak society relationship throughout the 1980s. As noted by Koo,
Park Chung Hee viewed economic growth as a means of establishing
the political legitimacy of his regime. The developmental state
mobilized all available resources to promote economic development:
state initiative, free trade, state-business nexus, human capitalformation, international product cycle, the abundant labor supply, andthe Confucian work ethic. The successive military regimes exhausted
their public budgets on industrial development programs, and they
therefore had to minimize "state programs for protecting and improving
the everyday lives of ordinary citizens." Furthermore, theauthoritarian administrations consistently supported the chaebol groups
in disputes with the labor unions. The military regimes sought tocontrol labor in the interest of international competitiveness and — up
until the end of the Chun Doo Hwan regime — the military-c/we&o/alliance was politically invincible. The leaders of the developmental
state openly advocated such an ideology as "growth first, distribution
later," and the South Korean government allocated its government
expenditure to social security and welfare far less than those of otherdeveloping nations at similar levels of development. Hence, a strong
state-weak society relationship was an important cause ofunderdevelopment in Korean social security programs.
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Militarization of Society
As indicated earlier, at the time of the outbreak of the Korean War
on June 25, 1950, the total size of the Republic of Korea (ROK)
military forces was 120,000. These forces were neither well-equipped
nor well-trained. The conflict itself led to important changes in theirsize, organizational structure, and capabilities. One major source of thedrastic increase in the size of the Korean military was the institution ofa draft applicable to all males. The consistent flow of draftees allowed
for the maintenance of approximately 650,000 active duty personnel.
Extensive support from the United States also undergirded the ROK
military, eventually making it the most well-supported, Americanizedinstitution in Korean society following the Korean War.
Rapid military expansion both during and following the war
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International Journal of Korean Studies • Volume V, Number 1strategically adopted a policy of recruiting retired generals for highpositions in government and in government-subsidized corporations,thus accelerating the militarization of the public sector. At the sametime, high-ranking military personnel came to expect opportunities topursue second careers after their terms of service. Many highgovernment officials of the Park regime were retired generals. Becauseof their greater debt to the military and their extreme need to maintainfavorable ties with the military, Chun Doo Hwan and Roh Tae Woo
relied even more heavily on the military and retired generals to fill highpositions. The militarization of society therefore became
institutionalized, and the continued recruitment of former military
officers into influential positions allowed the trend to persist.
The division of the Korean peninsula following liberation fromJapanese colonial rule preordained a role for the military, particularly
in South Korean politics. Because of the relatively low status of themilitary in traditional Korean social structures, the coalescence of themilitary elite into a formidable power group would have been much lesslikely had the Korean War not occurred. The Korean War andsubsequent cold war politics of the Rhee and Park regimes allowed themilitary elite to emerge as bona fide members of the upper class. Thischange essentially reconfigured the composition of the ruling class inthe traditional Korean system of stratification. According to one
popular joke, a master's degree is better than a bachelor's degree, adoctorate is better than master's degree, and a KMA degree is evenbetter than a doctorate ("Haksa wie seoksa, seoksa wie baksa, baksa wie
yuksa!").
The wartime military expansion combined with the sustained
military strength and presence in the post-war era had many significant
effects on the social structure. First, despite its less attractive features,
military service offered those with little education the opportunity toobtain basic skills needed to compete in a rapidly changing social
environment. The draft system instituted at the outset of the war
required all young men to serve at least two years in the military. The
years of service came to be regarded as a period of orientation before
entering the "real world," particularly for young men of rural origin.
Military service exposed young men to organizational life and provided
useful vocational training that could later be used in civilian
occupations.
Second, mandatory military service indoctrinated young men intoa "military culture." Because it occurred during the time of life whenworldviews are still in formation, this influence extended into civilian
life well after military service was completed. For example, many
military concepts, jargon, and expressions have found their way into
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65strategies as personal networking and bribery. The "rush-to-growth"orientation of the successive military regimes therefore resulted incorruption and created a "risk society."
66

American Images and Influences
Substantial anti-USAMGIK and anti-American sentiment wasevident even before the eruption of the Korean War. Many Koreannationalists opposed the occupation of the Korean peninsula by Soviet
and United States military forces following World War II. They wereadamantly against USAMGIK policies, particularly with regard to therecruitment of former collaborators of the Japanese colonial regime intohigh administrative, judicial, and police positions. Preferring socialistor neutral political orientations, Korean nationalists particularly
resented the United States support of Syngman Rhee in his quest for thepresidency and control of political power. The American image
deteriorated further as citizens came to blame the United States for
installing an unpopular and increasingly authoritarian president.
Had the Korean War not occurred, and had the United States not
involved its troops in the conflict, the extent of the American influence
on Korea would have been much less than it has been. The direct
participation of the American forces in the war, its continued military
assistance and presence after the war, and substantial economic aid
dispelled concerns over the necessity and desirability of close UnitedStates-Korea relations. The Korean War was, in fact, a watershed in
Korean history that saw the emergence of considerable American
influence on political, economic, social, and cultural structures. First,
due to extensive military assistance, the armed forces of South Korea
came to reflect the United States military system. The military also
became an important vehicle through which American influences
permeated Korean society. Since the war, many Korean military
officers have taken training in various American institutions of militaryeducation. The organizational and administrative structures of the
Korean military have been nearly identical to those in the United States,
and most Korean military equipment and weapon systems have been
made in the United States. The emergence of the military elite aspolitical and corporate leaders contributed to the persistence ofAmerican influence, because the United States had a much more
profound effect on the military than on civilian sectors. The American
influence on the military created a dualism, in that the ethos of the
Korean military leadership remained very much Korean or Japanese,while new organizational structures and weapon systems were
decidedly American.
A second major source of United States influence on Korean social
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International Journal of Korean Studies • Volume V, Number 1were stationed in Korea - more than in any other country, with the
exception of Germany and Japan. The war and the persistent U.S.
military presence have created favorable economic and social
conditions for intermarriage between Korean women and American
soldiers. As discussed earlier, many young Korean males lost theirlives during the war, and the economy was severely disrupted. As aresult of the war, many young women were forced to assume
responsibility for supporting their families, as traditional sources ofincome had virtually disappeared. In many locales, military installations
were the only source of employment for local residents. Jobs catering
to military personnel - both on and off bases - brought young Korean
females into contact with American soldiers to an extent that would
have been unthinkable under traditional Korean norms. Many young
Korean women met their future spouses either through their own work
experiences or through introductions by friends working with or for
American soldiers.
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Many of the women employed on or near military bases came frompoor farm families or from low-income urban families, and many had
lost their parents to the war. Following the war, few options existed for
women who had neither wealth nor family support. Most of the jobs
available to these women paid extremely low wages. Althoughinvolving no social stigma, employment as a servant, sweat-shoplaborer, or service worker in such places as a bar, restaurant, andboarding house were regarded as little better than slavery. One
alternative to such unattractive employment was to work in "GI towns."
Under other circumstances, this option would have been likely toarouse the contempt and suspicion of family and community members,
but this did not pose a serious problem to impoverished or poorly
educated young women in need of income.
Compared with other employment opportunities, jobs in GI towns
offered a number of advantages. In particular, they brought women into
contact with American currency, products, and tax-free merchandisefrom Post Exchanges - as well as soldiers who were more than willingto provide such treasures. These soldiers were quite attractive to young,unmarried Korean women as potential mates, particularly because they
asked few questions about their family backgrounds. Because they werealready subject to the suspicion and stigma attached to working aroundGI towns, women who chose to date American servicemen had little
chance of returning to normal and accepted status in the community.
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While the young Korean women viewed American soldiers as
potential marriage partners, the soldiers tended to view the women insexual terms. Because most troops were stationed in "combat zones,"
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their families could not accompany them. Unmarried soldiers, or thosein strained marriages, soon found the polite, compliant, young, andexotic Korean women to be quite attractive, and the marriage andsubsequent emigration of such women became quite common. Between
1941 and 1980, a total of 45,551 Korean women were admitted to theUnited States as the wives of U.S. citizens. An additional 8,178
Koreans were admitted between 1971 and 1980 as "spouse-to-be"
under the Act of April 7, 1970.
As discussed above, the United States military presence in Korea
during and following the war had far-reaching effects on the social,political, and cultural landscape of Korea. Intermarriage between
American soldiers and Korean women has also made unique andimportant contributions to the Korean-American community. At least
one fourth of all Korean immigrants to the United States since 1950
have been relatives invited by interracially married Korean women.
Because educational opportunities for Korean women have improved
over time, younger cohorts of these interracially married women tend
to be more highly educated than older cohorts. The changes in race andethnic composition of the U.S. military personnel since the 1970s also
impacted the race and ethnicity of the spouses of the interraciallymarried Korean women. The proportion of the women married to
African and Hispanic Americans among younger cohorts issubstantially greater than that among older cohorts.
76

The Separation of Families
On June 14, 2000, during the South-North Summit Meeting in
Pyongyang, the leaders of the two Koreas signed a five-point
agreement. According the The Korea Herald'of"June 15,2000, includedin the accord is: "The South and the North have agreed to exchange
visits of separated families and relatives around August 15 andpromptly tackle humanitarian issues, including the issue involving
long-term Communist prisoners (in the South) who refuse to renounce
their ideology." It has been pointed out in The Washington Post of June
14,2000, that the five-point agreement "appeared to be mostly generaland vague." However, the agreement on the exchange visits of divided
families is most definitive in that it even stipulates the starting date.
The reunification of families separated by war was the mostimportant justification for the unification of the two Koreas according
to 42.2 percent of respondents to one survey conducted in May of2000
by a daily newspaper. Family reunification was considered more
important than mitigating the possibility of another war, theestablishment of Korea as an economic power, improvements in thequality of life, or even the opportunity to extend freedom and human77

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147

78

rights to the citizens of North Korea.
"Separated families" are family members whose kin are lost or
dispersed due to the war: in this context, family members include
parents, children, brothers, sisters, grandparents, grandchildren, andfirst cousins. Estimates on the number of divided families vary
substantially. According to the Korean Red Cross, nearly 10 million
Korean families experienced separation. Data compiled by the
Ministry of Unification show that about 7,667,000 families weredivided. In 1977, Kwon estimated about 650,000 divided families,
while the Association of North Korean Provinces estimated 1,643,000
in 1981. The variance in the estimates is primarily due to differencesin the treatment of South Korean-born children and grandchildren of
North Korean refugees. In any case, during the Korean War, more than
one million North Koreans sought refuge in the South, and many had
left their spouses, children, parents, siblings, or other close relatives
behind. Most of these refugees had migrated with the hope of
returning to their homes immediately after the war. Their separation
would ultimately last over 50 years and continues to the present day; itis so complete that family members are forbidden to write, call, or visit
one other. The problem of separated families in the Korean peninsula
is perhaps the most tragic family situation in the history of the world,both in terms of the number of families and the duration of theseparation.
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The Ministry of Unification handles requests from citizens to locate
separated family members in North Korea. Its statistics show a sharp
increase in the number of requests over the last two years. Morespecifically, 801 requests were filed for the month of May 2000, while
there were only 54 applications for May 1999. Since 1990,
information on the whereabouts of2,068 separated fam ily members has
been obtained; 5,650 cases involved exchanges of letters with family
members and 525 reunions with family members in a third country ~primarily China. Only seven cases were actual reunions with family
members in North Korea.
It should be noted that the dialogue between the two Koreas
concerning the reunion of separated families began in 1971. In
September of 1985, the two countries arranged for an exchange visit of
151 "hometown visitors and performing artist groups" between Seoul
and Pyongyang. North Korea proposed a second exchange visit in
May of 1989, but it did not materialize, due to North Korean insistence
on a program that included showing South Korean visitors an operawith a revolutionary theme. At a government-level meeting between
the South and North held in Beijing in April of 1998, South Korea
proposed to establish a reunion center for separated families and
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International Journal of Korean Studies• Volume V, Number 1

simultaneously to supply fertilizer to North Korea. Once again, North
Korea insisted that the shipment of fertilizer precede the establishmentof the reunion center, and thus no progress was made on the issue. On
December 14, 1998, the National Assembly of South Korea passed a
resolution calling for the confirmation of status and reunion of living
members of divided families. In view of the history of the negotiations
on the issue, the June 14,2000, agreement to allow exchange visits ofdivided families is a long-awaited and much welcomed outcome. It is
not clear at this time how many divided families will be allowed to visit
North Korea for reunions under the program, or whether it will be a
one-time or continuing arrangement.
The war-related separation of families had significant effects on
several different dimensions of the family life. First, the involuntary
separation left deep psychological scars on millions of Koreans.
Longing for family members left behind in North Korea and anxiety
about their whereabouts and well-being produced han among many
affected families. In the context of the war, han refers to suppressed
emotional suffering due to sorrow, grief, anxiety, guilt, fear, anddeprivation caused by the separation of immediate family members andloved ones. The psychological and emotional wounds with which
separated families have had to cope over the past 50 years serve as
constant reminders of the tragedies of war.
Secondly, the involuntary separation of husbands and wives and the
war-related deaths of spouses led to serious adjustments in traditional
norms concerning marriage, remarriage, and chastity. As the macrolevel separation of the two Koreas and the micro-level separation offamilies became permanent, those with interrupted marital relationships
were forced to make decisions about remarriage, which up until thenhad been regarded as unacceptable. Changes in marriage andremarriage norms occurred through the realities of separated families
and those widowed by war. Men and women remarried at different
rates. Males whose wives were left behind in North Korea were more
likely to remarry than were females whose husbands were kidnappedby the North Korean military, and this pattern of sex differentials had
important economic and financial implications for surviving spouses.
Wives who lost their husbands to death or involuntary separation wereforced to enter the labor market in order to provide financial support for
their families. Many war widows opened small restaurants, "tearooms" and coffee shops, and retail fabric and clothing stores; many
worked as hostesses of bars and restaurants, peddlers, money changers,
and maids. The financial distress left by the war served to remove someof the barriers that had traditionally discouraged women from entering
the labor force.
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Thirdly, the traumatic experience of the Korean War in general andthe emotional distress of separation increased the importance of religion
among the Korean people to its highest level since the beginning of the
20 century. Although Koreans had traditionally been a religious
people, the Korean War was a turning point at which Christianity
gained wider acceptance, and the churches emerged as a bona fide
institution. Humanitarian aid programs organized and spearheaded byAmerican churches and other charity groups during and following the
war gave Christianity a favorable overall reputation among Koreans.
Furthermore, many North Korean refugees already professed theProtestant faith before their migration, and their numbers included
many ordained ministers. The chaotic expansion of the reformed
churches following the war saw the emergence of various Protestantsects and schisms, along with political and regional factions with thedenominations.
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94

Introduction of American Culture Through U.S. Military Bases
and Troops
As indicated earlier, the United States has maintained aconsiderable military presence in Korea over the past 50 years. Many
troops have been stationed near the demilitarized zone around the
Uijongbu, Tongduchon, and Moonsan areas, with support units locatedin Seoul (Youngsan), Chunchon, Osan, Koonsan, Wonju, Taegu, Pusan,and other areas. Various types of businesses, including shops, bars,
saloons, and restaurants were established around each of the U.S.
military installations. U.S. military bases provided employment for
local residents, and the money spent by U.S. soldiers contributed ahealthy proportion of the local economy. Kijichon (military base towns)
manifested a unique subculture, with their Western-style buildings,
English signs, shops with American names and services, entertainment,
and sex-oriented business establishments catering primarily to U.S.
military personnel. Due to necessity and to the nature of theiremployment and businesses, Koreans working in and around kijichon
tend to have a better command of the English language than do other
Koreans with comparable educational attainments. They are also more
attuned to fashion styles of American soldiers and tend to emulate themmore readily than the rest of Korean society. Because of theproliferation of bars, saloons, and brothels in GI towns, illegal drugs are
more readily available there than in other places. The black market for
PX goods and the exchange of U.S. dollars into Korean currencies havebecome essential parts of the business lives of military towns.
In addition to the influence of American troops and businesses
surrounding military bases, U.S. military radio and television, the150International Journal of Korean Studies• Volume V, Number 1

Armed Forces KoreaNetwork (AFKN), became an important source ofAmerican influence on Korean society. Although intended to serve U.S.
troops stationed in Korea, many college students and young adults
listen and watch the programs of the AFKN radio and television
stations. During the 1950s and 1960s, as Korean radio and television
broadcasting systems were still in their developmental stages, thepopular programs produced by major U.S. television networks andbroadcast via AFKN stations attracted large numbers of collegeeducated listeners. Ironically, sensitive information about domestic
political and military developments - which might have been censoredby the authoritarian military regimes - was contained in news
broadcasts aired over AFKN channels. AFKN radio and television
channels were instrumental in disseminating American popular culture- especially music - to Koreans. Had AFKN radio and television
stations not been available, Koreans would likely have received muchless exposure to the American popular music of the 1950s and 1960s.
Entertainment programs designed for American troops wereanother source of the infusion of U.S. popular culture in Korea. The
administration of the Eighth U.S. Army contracted with several Korean
entertainment companies to stage variety shows on U.S. military bases.
The programs, later dubbed the "Eighth Army Show," included
American popular songs sung by Korean singers, music by Korean
bands, dancing by "show girls," and stand-up comedy routines.
Talented but hungry Korean musicians would learn American popularsongs and would then entertain U.S. military personnel stationed atvarious camps in Korea. Many popular singers and instrumentalists of
the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s began their careers in the "Eighth ArmyShow.". The show's effects spilled over into mainstream Koreansociety, as its singers and entertainers began to perform for larger
audiences through radio, television, and live stage shows. Because theexperience they had gained by entertaining American soldiers left themfairly well trained, and their repertoires were very current, thesemusicians emerged as stars in the Korean popular music industry,
starting early in the 1960s. Thus, AFKN, the "Eighth Army Show," andits musicians were key players in introducing American popular music
to Korean audiences and infusing American flavor and traditions into
the development of Korean popular music later on.
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The War and Regional Inequality
The North Korean troops had occupied Seoul within three days ofthe outbreak of the Korean War, and they had captured all but the Pusan
Perimeter - the small southeastern tip of the peninsula extending fromthe Naktong River to the city of Pusan. United States troops joined
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International Journal of Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 2001151

with the military forces of other countries to eject the North Korean
troops from South Korea and then advanced to the Yalu River bySeptember 1950. In October 1950, the People's Republic of China
intervened and Seoul fell once again into communist hands on January
4, 1951. United Nations forces reclaimed Seoul on March 12, 1951,
and reached a stalemate roughly along the 38 parallel. The armisticetruce agreement was reached on July 27, 1951.
As indicated earlier, the economic structures of both North andSouth Korea had been devastated by the three years of the Korean War.
Property losses in South Korea amounted to approximately $2 billion- the equivalent of its gross national product for 1949 — to nearly halfof its industrial capacity, and a third of its housing was destroyed.
About 41 percent of South Korean power plants sustained damage, as
did about 61 percent of railway locomotives, 69 percent of passenger
coaches, and 57 percent of freight cars. Nearly half of all train stations
and workshop facilities were destroyed. Moreover, more than 70
percent of elementary school classrooms were damaged or destroyed
during the war.
The extent of damage was substantially greater in the Seoul,Kyonggi, and Kangwon areas than in other regions. Because most of
the Youngnam region avoided the invasion of DPRK troops, theindustrial establishments of the Kyoungbuk and Kyongnam provinces
survived the war without damage. In fact, by the end of the Korean War
the industrial and economic establishments in the Youngnam area were
the only ones intact. These facilities had a considerable advantage in the
post-war recovery efforts, because investments in these concerns
yielded faster returns than did investments pouring into war-ravaged
facilities. In particular, the "three white industries" (sugar, flour, andcotton), which expanded rapidly during the immediate post-war period,
flourished initially by using the existing facilities of the Youngnam
area.
Concentrated post-war investment in the surviving facilities of theYoungnam region exacerbated existing regional inequality within
economic structures. Regional disparities have historically been
apparent, particularly between the Youngnam and Honam regions,throughout the colonial period due to the Japanese policy of developing
the Honam as a primary supplier of agricultural products, while theYoungnam was designated for industrial development.
At least temporarily, the "haves" sustained greater losses from the
Korean War than did the "have nots," thus reducing interclassinequality in terms of economic wealth. While on one hand, the Korean
War reduced the extent of economic inequality by destroying the
economic bases of all people, on the other hand, regional variations in
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war damage intensified the potential for increasing inequality between
Youngnam and Honam. Historical incidents and developments were notfavorable to the Honam region. General Park Chung Hee, who became
an authoritarian president, spearheaded state-led economic development
and industrialization initiatives that concentrated investment into theheavy and petrochemical industrial sites in his home province,
Kyoungbuk region. Arguably, the Honam region suffered double
jeopardy: the invasion of the DPRK troops and war-related destruction
combined with the regional ly biased econom ic development policies ofPark Chung Hee.
Discussion
This paper has examined the various effects of the Korean War on
the social structures of the Korean society. The demographic
consequences of the war were analyzed from the perspective of each of
the major demographic processes: fertility, mortality, and migration.
The Korean War was indeed the most destructive in the history of wars
in terms of the proportion of the total population involved and theextent of war-related mortality and displacement of the population. The
division of the Korean peninsula and separation of families caused by
the war and division have had irreversible effects on the Korean psyche
and family life over the past 50 years. The South-North Korean summit
meeting in Pyongyang on June 13-15, 2000, and the subsequentexchanges of visits by separated families (albeit only about 100 families
on each side were involved each time) were truly welcome
developments in inter-Korean relations. In view of the urgency ofreunions of the families, due to old age of those members of separated
families, it is essential for the two governments to develop a much more
expanded program in the future.
With regard to the political consequences of the Korean War, thewar was an important turning point in the Korean political development
especially in terms of state-society relations. The Syngman Rheeadministration and subsequent authoritarian regimes maximized thedivision and concomitant ideological confrontations in solidifying theirpolitical power structures by mobilizing legislative, judicial,administrative, security, intelligence, and military organizations andtheir programs. The military became one of the most powerful
institutions as a byproduct of the war and division of the country, andthe military elite possessed the necessary organizational leadershipexperience and network structures, more so than any other institution
or group, including the political parties, which made it possible forthem to emerge as power elite during the period 1962-1992. The
military ethos and subcultures have had profound effects on the norms

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153

and values of the larger society through the continuing draft system andthe mandatory military service of all young adult males.
The war and subsequent division of the peninsula have enabled theauthoritarian regimes to utilize the National Security Laws and AntiCommunist Laws as effective vehicles in controlling any movements
against the regimes. It is interesting to note that the civilian
governments of Kim Young Sam and Kim Dae Jung have not yet
shown any serious interests in modifying any aspects of the existing
National Security Laws and Anti-Communist Laws. Some liberal
members of the government party have expressed a desire to amendsome portions of the security and assembly related laws in recent years.
Furthermore, the North Koreans have addressed their concerns about
the National Security Laws as possible stumbling blocks for the
improvement of inter-Korean relations. Nevertheless, the political moodof South Korea is not at the point where such abolishment of the
National Security Laws would likely be supported by the general
population. It would be reasonable to argue that the Korean War was
also an important historical juncture where Korea and the United States
started a close and long-standing bilateral relationship in terms of
military, political, and trade relations. Obviously, the war did not give
Korea much choice with regard to the establishment of closeinternational relations with other superpowers. Furthermore, in view ofthe history of relations between Korea and Japan and ties between
China and North Korea, the development of Korean-United States
relations was a rather natural outcome. In any case, close ties with theUnited States and the continuing presence of the American military
troops in Korea have influenced the cultural, educational, and social
characteristics of Korean society over the past 50 years. The Kim Dae
Jung administration has shown some new and balanced directions interms of developing closer ties with China and Japan than the previous
regimes. Furthermore, some younger cohorts have demanded that termsof the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) be amended to the extent
that the Korean courts would have the same extent of judicial
jurisdiction as the Japanese and German courts in handling the legal
cases of American troops in Korea. On the whole, Korean-U.S.
relations are solid, as the two countries have developed a partnership ina true sense over the years, and the American influence on Korean
affairs will remain substantial in the years to come.

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Notes1 Tai Hwan Kwon, Demography of Korea: Population Change and Its Components,
1925-1966 (Seoul, Korea: Seoul National University Press, 1977), pp. 203-205.
2 Robert R. Simmons, "The Korean Civil War," in Without Parallel: The AmericanKorean Relationship since 1945, edited by F. Baldwin, (New York: Pantheon, 1974),
pp. 170-189.
3 Eui Hang Shin, "Effects of the Korean War on Social Structures of the Republic ofKorea: A Socio-demographic Analysis," California Sociologist, (1992), p. 24.
4 ibid.
5 Kwon. op. cit., p. 204.
6 ibid.
7 ibid., pp. 203-204.
8 ibid., p. 205.
9 Shin. op. cit., p. 26.
10 ibid., p. 26.
11 ibid., p. 27.
12 ibid., p. 28.
13 ibid., p. 29.; Kwon. op. cit., p. 200.
14 Kwon., ibid., p. 205.
15 Korea Bureau of Statistics. Report of the Simplified General Population Census,
Republic of Korea. 1955 (Seoul, Korea: Ministry of Home Affairs, 1959).
16 Shin., op. cit, p. 29.
17 Kwon., op. cit, p. 224.
18 Shin., op. cit, p. 31.
19 William Petersen, Population. (New York: MacMillan, 1969).
20 Shin, loc. cit.
21 ibid.
22 Kyong Dong Kim. "The Korean War and Its Social Impacts," Shindonga, (1986),
pp. 534-543, (In Korean).
23 Shin., op. cit, p. 32.
24 ibid.
25 Kap-Hwan Oh and Hae Young Lee, "Urbanism in Korea: A New Way of Life?", inKorea: A Decade of Development, edited by Yunshik Chang (Seoul, Korea; Seoul
National University Press, 1980), pp. 219-240; Kim, op. cit., p. 542.
26 Shin. op. cit, p. 33.
27 ibid., pp. 33-34.
28 ibid.
29 Kwon., op. cit., p. 145.
30 ibid.
31 Eui Hang Shin, "Interracially Married Korean Women in the United States: An
Analysis Based on Hypergamy Exchange Theory," in Korean Women in Transition at
Home and Abroad, edited by E. Yu and E. Phillips. (Los Angeles: California State
University at Los Angeles, 1987), pp. 249-274.
32 Shin, 1992. op. cit, p. 35.
33 ibid.
34 Kwon., op. cit, pp. 152-153.
35 ibid., p. 144; Richard A. Easterlin, "What Will 1984 Be Like? Socioeconomic
Implications of Recent Twists in Age Structure," Demography 15(1978), pp. 3 9 7 - 4 3 1 ;William Strauss and Neil Howe. Generations: The History of America's Future,
1584-2069 (New York: William Morrow, 1991), pp. 299-334; S.P. Morgan,"Characteristic Features of Modern American Fertility," Fertility in the United States:

International Journal of Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 2001

155

New Patterns, New Theories, edited by J.B. Casterline. R.D. Lee, and K.A. Foote(New York: The Population Council, 1996).
36 Shin. op. cit., p. 36.
37 James Palais, Politics and Policy in Traditional Korea, 1864-1876 (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), p. 10; Hagen Koo, "Strong State andContentious Society," pp. 231-249, State and Society in Contemporary Korea, editedby Hagen Koo. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993). pp. 232-233; David I.
Steinberg, "Civil Society and Human Rights in Korea: on Contemporary and ClassicalOrthodoxy and Ideology," Korea Journal, (1997), pp, 145-165.
38 Koo. ibid. p. 233; Bruce Cummings, The Origins of the Korean War, vol.1:
Liberation and the Emergence of"Separate Regimes, 1945-1947. (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1981), p. 10.
39 Koo., ibid. p. 237.
40 ibid.
41 Jang Jip Choi, "Political Cleavages in South Korea," pp. 15-50, in State and Society
in Contemporary Korea, edited by Hagen Koo. (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1993), pp. 16-17; Koo. ibid., pp. 238-239.
42 Choi, ibid., pp. 17-18; Koo. ibid., p. 240.
43 Gregory Henderson, Korea; The Politics of the Vortex (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1968), p. 126; Koo. ibid.; Steinberg, loc. cit.
44 Henderson, ibid. pp. 162-163; Steinberg, ibid.
45 Choi. op. cit, p. 20; Henderson, ibid.; John Kie-Chiang Oh, Korean Politics: The
Quest for Democratization and Economic Development. (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1999), pp. 34-40.
46 Choi, ibid., p. 22.
47 Koo. loc. cit.
48 Choi. loc. cit.; Korea Office of Statistics. Statistics of Economic and Social Changes
in Fifty Years of the Republic of Korea. (Seoul. Korea: Korea Office of Statistics,
1998), p. 497.
49 Choi. ibid.
50 Choi, ibid., p. 23.
51 Koo. loc. cit.
52 Koo. op. cit, p. 243.
53 Kyung-Sup Chang, "Social Ramifications of South Korea's Economic Fall: NeoLiberal Antidote Compressed Capitalist Industrialization?" Development and Society,(1999a), p. 52.
54 ibid., p. 54.
55 ibid., p. 85
56 ibid., p. 66.
57 Shin. op. cit., p. 37.
58 Korea Office of Statistics, loc. cit.
59 Sung Chul Yang, The North and South Korean Political System: A Comparative
Analysis. (Seoul: Seoul Press, 1994), p. 520; Bruce Cummings. "Korea's Place in the
Sun: A Modern History," (New York: Norton, 1997), pp. 299-336; Doo Seung Hong,
Sociology of the Korean Military. (Seoul: Nanam, 1993), pp. 46-48 (In Korean); Sung
.Too Han, The Failure of Democracy in South Korea. (Berkeley, CA: University ofCalifornia Press, 1974), pp. 46-54.
60 Sang-Jin Han, "The Korean Path to Modernization and Risk Society," Korea
Journal 38: 5-27 (1998), p. 9; Martin Hart-Lansberg, The Rush to Development:
Economic Change and Political Struggle in South Korea. (New York: Monthly Review
Press, 1993); Byong-Sebb Kim, "Corruption and Anti-Corruption Policies in Korea."
Korea Journal. 38: 46-69 (1998), pp. 28-30.
61 Han. ibid., p. 9.

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62 Kyung-Sup Chang, "Compressed Modernity and Its Discontents: South Korean
Society in Transition," Economy and Society. 28: 30-55 (1999b.); Han, ibid., p. 11.
63 Jaeyol Yee, "Risk Society As a System Failure: Sociological Analysis of Accidents
in Korea," Korea Journal. 38: 83-101(1998), p. 94.
64 ibid.
65 ibid., p. 96.
66 Yee, ibid.
67 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States (Washington,
D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1999), Table 59; U.S. Bureau of the Census,
1996, Table 557; U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1992, Table 543.
68, "Koreas Reach Accord Seeking Reconciliation After 50 Years." New York Times,
June 15, 2000
69 ibid.
70 Bok-Lim Kim, "Asian Wives of U.S. Servicemen: Women in Shadow." Amerasia
Journal A: 91-116 (1977); Shin. 1987. loc. cit.
71 Shin, ibid., p. 249.
72 Kim. op. cit.; Shin, ibid., p. 250.
73 Shin. ibid.
74 ibid.
75 ibid.
76 ibid., p. 251.
77 www.hani.co.kr, May 14, 2000.
ibid.
79 Daniel B. Lee, "Divided Korean Families: Why Does It Take So Long To Remedy
the Unhealed Wounds?" pp. 87-111, Toward A Unified Korea, edited by Y.Kim and
E.H. Shin. (Columbia, SC: Center for Asian Studies, University of South Carolina,1995), p. 98; Myung K. Kim and Bong D. Chi, "A Study of reunification of Divided
South-North Korean Families," The Korean Journal of Humanitarian Law: 4 and 5(1983), pp. 3 - 3 1 .
80 Korean Red Cross. White Paper on the Dispersed Korean Families. (Seoul: Korean
Red Cross, 1976).
81 Chosun Ilbo, June 15, 2000.
82 Kwon., loc. cit.
83 Korean Red Cross. White Paper on the Dispersed Korean Families. (Seoul: Korean
Red Cross, 1976), p. 85; Lee. ibid., p. 90.
84 Donald K. Chung, The Three Day Promise. (Seoul, Korea: Chung Ahm, 1990), (InKorean).
85
www.unikorea.go.hr/6n/2000.
86 ibid.
87 Korea Central Daily, June 7, 2000, B-5.
88 ibid.
89 Lee. op. cit., p. 101.
90 Hyojae Lee, "National Division and Family Problems," Korea Journal 25 (1985):
4-5.
91 ibid.; Lee. 1995. op. cit, p. 107.
92 Lee. 1995. op. cit, p. 109.
93 A.D. Clark. A History of the Church in Korea. Fifth Printing. (Seoul: Christian
Literature Society of Korea, 1992).
94 Kim. 1997. ibid., pp. 624-625.
95 Sung Won Seon, From the Eighth Army Show To Rap. (Seoul, Korea: Arum, 1993),(In Korean); Eui Hang Shin, "Changing Patterns of Social Network Structure in
Composer-Singer Relationships: A Case Study of the Korean Popular Music Industry,
1927-1997," paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological78

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157

Association, Chicago, Illinois, August 5-10, 1999.
96 Seon., op.cit.
97 Carter J. Eckert, Ki-baik Lee, Young Ick Lew, Michael Robinson, and Edward W.
Wagner. Korea Old and New: A History (Seoul. Korea: Ilchokak. 1990), p. 344; Korea
Overseas Information Service, A Handbook of Korea (Seoul, Korea: Korea Overseas
Information Service, 1978), p. 162.
98 ibid., p. 160.
99 Don Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History (Reading, MA:
Addison-Wesley, 1997), p. 10; Eckert et. al., op. cit., p. 345.
100 Korea Overseas Information Service, loc. cit.
101 ibid., p. 65.
102 Shin. 1992. op. cit, p. 4 1 .
103 ibid

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The Impact of the Korean War
on the Korean Military
Choong Nam Kim
POSCO Fellowship Coordinator
East-West Center (Hawaii)

Introduction
The South Korean military was a victim as well as a beneficiary of
the Korean War. By the time of the outbreak of the war, the military
was a fledgling force, dreadfully inferior in equipment and training. The
military was almost crushed within a few days of the war. Ironically,
the war transformed and strengthened the military; the infantile andimmature Korean military became trained, equipped, and combatexperienced. Quantitatively, the military grew to be one of the largest
militaries in the world; qualitatively, the third-rate "police reserve"
became a modern professional military. Within the society, the military
became the most Westernized and influential institution. In otherwords, the Korean War was a painful catalyst for the development ofa strong Korean military.
Despite the profound changes and development of the Korean
military during the war, the impact of the war on the military has notbeen carefully examined. As Chae-Jin Lee wrote, "in South Korea anumber of myths and taboos about the war have long been perpetuated,which in turn tend to prevent an objective, rational assessment of the
war's impact." The Korean War is the most serious national tragedy
in Korean history. Koreans are reluctant to refocus on this-horrible war.
Therefore, limited attention has been paid to the impact of the war.
Moreover, probably because of traditional Korean denigration of themilitary and the fact that military elite dominated Korean politics forthree decades since 1961, study of the military has tended to beneglected.
This paper is a modest initial attempt at describing the generalimpact of the Korean War on the Korean military. For this purpose theauthor reviewed materials on the Korean War and tried to understandwhat happened in the Korean military before and during the war: how
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the Korean military was established and how it was transformed. Thus,
the first section describes the state of the Korean military before thewar—the process of establishment and the quality of the military,especially its weakness. The second section examines what happened
to the military during the war. The third section attempts toconceptualize some salient effects of the war on the military, and thefinal section discusses the implications of a strong military for Korea,
particularly civil-military relations.
Prewar State of the Military
The Korean military is a completely new institution. An enduring
military tradition was lacking in Korea. During the Yi Dynasty(1392-1910), the military was very weak under the influence ofConfucianism, which stresses civilian supremacy over the military.
When the traditional Korean military was formally disbanded in 1907,
it consisted of only 6,000 men. Colonial Korea had no military of its
own. During World War II, Japan drafted Korean youths. There weresome Korean independence fighters in Manchuria and China, but noorganized Korean military. When Korea was liberated from Japan in
1945, there was no Korean military.
The embryo of a modern Korean military was formed during theAmerican military occupation. After liberation, South Korea was beset
by post-colonial restlessness and disturbances, and the 25,000-man
police force was not able to handle the social unrest without assistancefrom U.S. troops. To supplement the police, the American Military
Government in Korea established a Korean Constabulary as a "police
reserve."
However, the United States was reluctant to build a modern andlarge military in South Korea. The United States was preoccupied with
Europe. It had no will and military capability to engage in a war on the
Asian continent. Thus, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff declared that
Korea was not of strategic importance, and should war break out with
Russia, Korea might become a liability. General MacArthur also
believed that the U.S. "did not have the capability to train and equip
Korean troops ... to cope with a full-scale invasion. If a serious threat
developed, the United States would have to give up active military
support of the ROK forces."
Therefore, U.S. military assistance to South Korea was firmly basedon the policy that the South Korean military was basically an internal
security force. Specifically, Washington aimed to provide equipment
only to enable South Koreans to: 1) preserve internal security, 2)prevent border raids and incursions from the North, and 3) as a byproduct, deter armed attack from North Korea. The United States thus
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equipped and trained the Constabulary for internal defense and security
and rigorously refused to permit its aid to fund the modern armamentof the Constabulary.
As the U.S. had no concrete policy for the future of South Korea,
the establishment of the Constabulary was not carried out in a planned
manner. The inception of the Constabulary had been a "grab-bag
affair," in which former officers of the Japanese, Japanese-Manchurian,
Chinese Nationalist, Korean Liberation Army, former Japanese-trained
police and constabulary personnel, and a hodgepodge of newcomers allcame together without a mutually acceptable purpose and with aminimum of cohesion. This heterogeneous, opportunistic origin
resulted in serious factionalism and disunity. There were distrust andhatred between the factions of former Japanese officers and others.
Officers tended to look askance at each other, having recently servedon opposing sides; for example, many members of the former Korean
Liberation Army rejected the idea of participating in the new Korean
armed forces with former Japanese officers. The Americans favored themore trained ex-Japanese officers over the less standardized fightersfrom the Liberation Army. Consequently, the dominance of the exJapanese officers in the military diminished its credibility andlegitimacy in the eyes of the Korean people.
Due to the lack of adequate training and education, the factions
preserved many traditional characteristics. Confucian values andmilitary ideals combined to produce a strong tendency toward therecruitment of officers based on seniority. Each faction had its own top
leader, and decisions were made by group consultation. In short, theConstabulary failed to generate an overall esprit de corps, code of
discipline, or pattern of defense goals.
During the recruitment, the Korean adviser to the Director of
National Defense of the U.S. Military Government, Ung-joon Lee,
insisted that all new recruits had to undergo qualification and identity
checks in order to prevent subversion from leftists. Lee requested thatnew recruits should submit to an ideological examination. The
Americans rejected the idea and directed that men should be selectedfrom all groups, including communists, on the principle that the
military must not be "political." Furthermore, no American officer
concerned had any concept of the complex background of the men andgroups with which he was dealing. "Recruitment standards remained
low, and reasonably healthy applicants had little difficulty inenlisting." Before long, military barracks became places for ideologicalfeuding, and terrorism between the leftists and rightists became
commonplace. Communists thus infiltrated almost all units of themilitary.
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The First Regiment of the Constabulary was established on theoutskirts of Seoul in January 1946. Seven additional regiments wereorganized in March: one regiment in each province. The size of eachregiment was small, not exceeding a battalion or a company. The
Constabulary took form so slowly that a year later it numbered only
5,000 men, with 143 officers. By April 1947, however, it had doubled
in strength, and in July of that year it had reached 15,000. In March
1948, just two months after North Korea announced the establishmentof the North Korean People's Army, the U.S. announced support for a
50,000-man South Korean Constabulary. Then, American efforts tostrengthen the Constabulary took place in a hurry: regimentheadquarters were activated, technical services started, equipment
increased, and American military advisers increased. The Constabulary
became South Korea's military when the Republic of Korea wasestablished in August 1948 and grew so rapidly in the next few months
that by January 1949, it numbered more than 65,000 men.
8

After his inauguration, President Syngman Rhee emphasized thebuildup ofthe armed forces. His accomplishment was, however, greatly
limited by the lack of resources, the urgent welfare needs of the
populace, and the refusal of the United States to support or to allow thedevelopment of a Korean military that might threaten North Korea.
Even so, the number of men in service was promptly increased. The
Republic, striving for the rapid expansion of the army in the face ofgrowing communist aggression, established six new regiments and twobrigades during the first five months after the ROK Army was created.
By May 12, 1949, each brigade in existence was transformed into adivision.
The United States had only authorized the transfer of infantry
weapons for 50,000 troops with standard infantry-type weapons,
including Ml rifles and 60-mm and 81-mm mortars, and, therefore,
about half of the ROK armed forces had to be issued ex-Japanese army
weapons. Fearful that the South might attack the North and embroil the
U.S. in a war, the United States restricted the armament of the newarmy, depriving its divisions of adequate antitank and antiaircraft
weapons and heavy artillery, and denying it any armor at all. After thewithdrawal of the U.S. forces in June 1949, the ROK army also lost its
best source of supplies. There remained a group of 482 U.S. Army
officers and enlisted men working as military advisers for the ROK
military.
From early 1949, training, for the first time, began to emerge fromthe primitive and makeshift. The training was limited to the use ofsmall arms, basic drills, and methods of internal security. Lack ofofficer and noncommissioned officer training was one of the most9162

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serious problems of the military. Japanese-trained senior officers were
unwilling to abandon their Japanese-taught stereotyped procedures andattitudes. They refused to master the staff work essential for the conductof sustained operations. Such drudgery they considered far beneath
their dignity. The idea of coordinating the maneuvers of more than abattalion at a time was beyond their comprehension. Staff training was
virtually nonexistent. Junior officers in headquarters at all levels were
not much more than yes-men with little idea of their roles. Seniorcommanders, most of them trained by the Japanese, seemed to havelittle notion of how to train their staffs.
By the end of 1949, 13 military schools were providing specialist
instruction in such areas as artillery, field engineering, signals,
quartermaster and ordnance, supply and transportation. This
represented the beginning of in-depth training which would give anarmy the flexibility needed to fight a serious war. Officer training wasstarted; by June 1950, just three weeks before the invasion, the firstclass of Korea's two-year Military Academy started training. Despite
these efforts, the capability of the ROK Army was highly questionable;
the army had not advanced in its training beyond platoon- and a few
battalion-level exercises. In early 1950 the U.S. Military Advisory
Group observed that "only a third of the army's battalions could beconsidered battle-worthy.""
Proliferating factional rivalries, intensifying ideological confusion,and deteriorating social and political unrest all exerted a baneful
influence on the morale and purposes of the military. Many of theofficers and men in the military did not understand why Korea wasdivided and who was their enemy. For some, former Japanese officers
and collaborators were regarded as enemy. Due to the American
principle of "neutral" recruitment, a large number of communists could
infiltrate the military. Thus, the loyalty of some of the soldiers wasquestionable. Quite unsurprisingly, less than 10 weeks after theestablishment of the Republic, the 14 - Regiment, which was ordered tosuppress the communist insurrection in Cheju Island, rebelled. The
mutiny was plotted by some communist-sympathizing members of theregiment. The 4 Regiment, dispatched to regain control, also joined
the rebellion. But the rebels went into hiding in remote mountain areas
and launched guerrilla warfare with manpower and supplies directly
supported by North Korea. There were further mutinies in the military,
including two by the 6 Regiment in Taegu in November andDecember 1948. In addition, there were mass defections. In May 1949
two battalions of the 8 Regiment crossed the 38 parallel into North
Korea and surrendered. During May 1948 to May 1949 three naval
vessels and their crews defected to the North.
10

th

th

th

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th

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Prompted by military rebellions and multiple defections, themilitary undertook a massive purge until the outbreak of the Korean
War, liquidating some 4,750 officers and noncommissioned officers(NCOs). Affected by this purge was more than 10 percent of the entire
army office corps and NCOs. It was estimated that more than one thirdof the original officer-NCO corps was executed, jailed, or discharged.
In short, the establishment of the Korean armed forces sufferedfrom some deficiencies—lack of political commitment and consequent
limit of logistical support, low recruitment standards, rapid expansion,and poor equipment and training.
Just before the outbreak of the Korean War the ROK Army
consisted of eight divisions, but it was very weak—with approximately
95,000 men and equipment for only 50,000 men, much of it
unserviceable or lacking spare parts, and grievously deficient in heavyequipment. The ROK Army supply of artillery and motor ammunitionon hand was small and would be exhausted by a few days of combat.
An estimated 15 percent of the weapons and 35 percent of the vehicles
were unserviceable. Furthermore, due to the subversive and guerrilla
activities of the communists, the ROK Army divided its forces, halfalong the 38 parallel and half in reserve, stationed in major cities. By
the end of 1949 the ROK Army had to mount an average of three antiguerrilla operations a day. In June 1950 the ROK had a Navy of 6,000
men with 30 medium and small vessels and an Air Force of about 2,000
men with only 22 training aircraft.
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Reorganization, Expansion, and Training During the War
On June 25,1950, the North Korean Army crossed the 3 8 parallel
into the South with the objective of conquering all of South Korea. The
North Koreans came not as guerrillas but in a frontal assault. Their 10
divisions were spread across the peninsula from east to west in a broad
front using tanks, artillery, and airplanes—exactly how the Russians
might have attacked the Germans. The ROK forces were no match forthe invading enemy.
The ROK military was long on courage but short on everything else
needed to fight a war successfully. It was fought by South Korean
troops without warplanes or tanks and cannons, armed at best with
2.36' bazookas so light that their projectiles bounced off the sides ofadvancing tanks. Many ROK units stood and fought courageously
against overwhelming odds. With no antitank weapons, the ROK
infantry adopted suicidal tactics in their efforts to stop the rampaging
T-34 tanks that threatened to overrun them, climbing onto their turrets
with explosive charges or hurling themselves as human bombs onto thetanks to detonate satchels of explosives tied to their bodies. The war
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streets of Taegu and Pusan and were dispatched to the battlefront. They
were grossly under-trained: they received only 10 days of quick
instruction. None of them had fired more than 10 rounds of ammunition
during their individual weapons training. The ROK soldiers in the firstpart of the war did not have the technical knowledge to use much of thecommunication equipment, the artillery, the tanks, and other weapons
the American divisions possessed. Nor did they have as much transport
as the American division. Usually every ROK division had an
American battalion of 105-mm howitzers attached to it for fire support,
and some had tank battalions attached to them.
Somehow, the ROK Army could maintain its strength at 85,000
men in August. In order to reverse the tide of war, however, the ROK
forces had to be strengthened. A plan to create an additional fivedivisions was implemented, activating one division a month starting in
September 1950. Although the plan made slow progress, a year later thearmy had grown to 10 divisions filled by new recruits.
The U.N. troops experienced extreme difficulties in the campaigns
in the mountainous Korean terrain. Thus, the inexperienced and underequipped ROK units were defending the entire central and eastern partsof Korea, where rugged mountains and deep valleys made theoperations very difficult. They were fighting against not only North
Korean troops but also the Chinese soldiers. The Chinese were the samearmy that had won the Chinese civil war. It was essentially a guerrillaarmy trained to endure the "Long March." It represented the world's
mightiest unconventional warfare force. The Korean soldiers weretotally unprepared to deal with the Chinese. The prowess of the Chinese
soldiers as fast-moving light infantry, their numbers, and their use ofclassic tactics of combining frontal attack to fix the enemy and thensending equal or stronger forces in enveloping moves to attack theenemy flanks and to cut off retreat routes were formidable.
The enemy was waging its offensive against the weak ROK units.
The ROK Army was badly mauled in the bitter fighting against the
Chinese. It was a fledging outfit. Before the war, the ROK Army had
never conducted a maneuver exercise higher than the regimental level,
yet it fought the war at division, corps, and even army level. Given thelack of training and the poor equipment, its performance could only beshabby, especially in comparison with two of the world's premierfighting forces—the armies of the United States and communist
China.
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23

Intensive Wartime Training
After the fatal defeat of the ROK III Corps in the spring of 1951,
American generals had strong reservations about the fighting

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24capabilities of the Korean units, leadership and training in particular.
For example, General Van Fleet, Commander of the U.S. Eighth Army,reported to General Ridgway, Commanding General of the U.N. Forces,
on April 28, 1951:
The basic problems with ROKA are leadership and training; notmanpower or equip[ment]. Lack of leadership extends
throughout except in rare instances. If excess trained officers andnon-commissioned officers are available they are needed in units
presently constituted. Until such time as above deficiencies arecorrected it would be a waste of vitally needed equip[ment] andsupplies to permit organization and supply of additional units.
25

With proper training and good leadership, the South Korean was agood soldier. But after the near destruction of the army just after the
beginning of the war, just about all experienced noncommissioned
officers and junior officers of platoon and company level had been lost.
There were no adequate replacements for them on short notice. The
training of such leadership required establishment of the proper schools
and several months of training by competent supervisors. Until thesummer of 1951, young officers with inadequate training were filling
the ranks of the Korean divisions. Major Eldon B. Anderson, who had
been the Korean Military Advisor in artillery to the ROK 9 Division,summarized the qualities of the ROK soldier in the first year of the war
and the limitations under which he fought.
Given the fire support, the training, and the leadership, the Korean
soldier can't be beat. ... He is a wonderful soldier. He is obedient,intelligent ... and they have a good fighting spirit. They lacked
leadership and still do to quite an extent, and they lacked training. A
year ago, the infantry soldier got only 7 to 10 days training before being
assigned to an outfit. They lacked fire support. ... Until recently they
had no recoilless 57s or 75s; they don't have the 4.2" motor company
in the regiment that we have; they don't have any tank; they don't haveany antiaircraft. As a consequence, the Korean division should beconsidered as no more than an American combat team [regiment
reinforced]. ... Many times, Korean divisions were given mission
similar to those given American divisions and naturally they could notaccomplish them.
th26

The Americans could provide weapons and equipment. But lack oftraining, especially the integrative effect of training on military units,
was a serious defect of the army. Production of battle-tested anddependable leaders, from noncommissioned officers on up, could not
keep up with the exploding demand from the ever-growing army. The
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Korean government and the U.S. Army officials agreed that increasing
the combat capabilities of the ROK Army units was a priority. KoreanAmerican efforts to build an effective Korean Army began as soon as
negotiations at Panmunjom started in July 1951. The U.S. Armydeveloped a program called Concentrated Training for the ROK Army.
General Van Fleet established the Field Training Command in July
1951 and a training center was constructed and a cadre of 150 U.S.
officers and NCOs with experience in training was assigned to thecenter. Beginning with the 3 Division, each Korean division took its
turn in the training cycle of nine weeks. Training consisted of basic
individual, squad, platoon, and company training. Every man in adivision, except the commander, was required to undergo the training,
and when the training was over, a unit had to pass a test before being
assigned to the front. By the end of 1952, all 10 ROK Army divisions
had completed the training. This training of virtually the entire force
provided a firm foundation for today's ROK Army.
In May 1951, each branch school also began an officers' basic
course and an advanced course with the assistance of American militaryadvisers. American military advisers were consistently increased fromfewer than 500 at the beginning of the war to about 2,000 in early 1952.
By the fall of 1951, the ROK military service schools were enlarged tohandle more than 10,000 soldiers for armor, arti I lery, engineering, andcommunications. Specialist training was expanded, and tanks and heavy
artilleries were provided to the ROK units for the first time on any
significant scale. On January 1,1952, the Korea Military Academy was
reorganized with the first four-year curriculum, and a Command andGeneral Staff College for higher-ranking officers was also established.
rd

27

28

In late 1951 ROK officers were sent to attend short-term, foreign
officer training courses in the United States. Of these, 250 went to the
U.S. Army Infantry School, and 100 went to the U.S. Army Artillery
School. The command skills of these officers improved so dramaticallythat the program was repeated yearly thereafter. In short, the emphasison training sparked the rapid maturation of the ROK Army, progressthat appeared in numerous concrete ways on the battlefield. The Korean
units revealed an elan and confidence and lost fewer men andequipment in combat. There was also a steady increase in the
proportion of the front line under direct control of the ROK Army. By
the time the armistice was signed, the ROK Army controlled two thirdsof the front.
Buildup of a 700,000-Strong Military
Before the truce, the need for the development of ROK forces
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International Journal of Korean Studies • Volume V, Number Icapable of taking over the role of U.N. forces became a priority. With
U.S. President-elect Eisenhower's support during his visit to Korea inlate 1952, an ambitious plan to double the 350,000 men force wasvigorously implemeted.
The First ROK Field Army was also
activated in December 1953 to rearrange the chain of command. The
First Field Army, with its operational and training control of five corps
and 19 infantry divisions, was guarding the front line, and more than 60
percent of the 650,000 men were assigned to this army. The Second
ROK Army, which was responsible for the support and control of
district commands, reserve divisions, and service and technical schools,
was activated in September 1954. On February 14, 1954, President
Rhee appointed General Hyung Kuen Lee as the chairman of the newly
established Joint Chiefs of Staff, which was responsible to develop
national defense strategy. Thus, the institution-building of the modern
Korean military was finally finished.
29

After the armistice, the Mutual Defense Treaty between the ROK
and the United States was signed. The treaty provided the basis for thepresence of U.S. forces in Korea; consultation on security; military aid
for strengthening Korean military power; and support should an attack
occur. Since the treaty, the U.S. has provided massive military
assistance to strengthen the ROK armed forces.
As the U.S. decided to withdraw six divisions from Korea between
1954-55, the ROK and the United States jointly sped up the buildup of
the ROK military and discussed defense strategy in postwar Korea. In
March 1954, as the United States began to withdraw two divisions from
Korea, the gap was filled by the buildup of the ROK military. In May
1954 an agreement between the ROK and the U.S. arranged for thetransfer of equipment from the American withdrawal units, and it was
decided to expedite the improvement of the Korean armed forces. On
May 22,1954, the ROK 6 Corps was activated, and with this corps the
Army had 20 active divisions and five corps headquarters. After
President Rhee's visit to Washington, the ROK Army organized 10
reserve divisions.
All this reorganization and expansion took place a mere 18 months
after the 1953 cease-fire. The far-reaching changes made in that brief
period put the army of 1954 well on its way to being a modern force at
the front and in the rear areas.
In short, despite all the handicaps, intensive training andreorganization pushed by Korean-American joint efforts resulted in atremendous buildup that made the ROK m i 1 itary not only very effective
troops but also the world's second largest anti-communist force. Thus,
the ROK army won the commendation of General Van Fleet as "thelargest, most royal, most modern military ... of any Asian nation," and
30

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International Journal of Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 2001169

of President Eisenhower as "splendid troops—real fighting men".
Effect of the

War on the Military

A Strong Partner of the U.S. Forces
The Korean War changed the foreign and security policies of theUnited States. After the war U.S. foreign policy postulated a strongly
enhanced militancy and willingness to risk war on the part of the Soviet
Union and its proxies, and called for a massive conventional andnuclear buildup to hold the Western position everywhere.
The United States was terribly unprepared for a war in 1950. In
1945 the U.S. had spent $50 billion on its army; in 1950 it spent only
$5 billion. In 1945 there were 8.25 million men on active service; in1950 there were fewer than 600,000, and no one had been drafted since
March 1947. During the height of the Berlin Blockade in 1948 there
was only one American division in Europe. The Korean War broke
the mold of nearly complete military demobilization in the U.S. afterWorld War II. After the Korean War, the United States gave greaterpriority to military security and maintained large standing armed forcesin peacetime for the first time in American history. In the course of thewar, the U.S. Army's strength nearly trebled, from 591,000 to 1.5
million, the Marine Corps' strength also trebled, and the Air Force andNavy doubled.
In addition, the U.S. made worldwide commitments to contain
Communist expansion. The priority of U.S. foreign aid thus rapidly
shifted from economic development to military security. In 1949, theratio of economic to military aid was about four to one; by the end of1950, that ratio had been reversed. The Americans began to build up
the armies of virtually the entire free world. In September 1950, theU.S. decided to send from four to six American divisions to Europe,
under an American commander. General Eisenhower was named as thefirst Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, and from 1951 to 1953 theUnited States distributed $20 billion worth of military funds, supplies,
arms, and equipment to its allies.
Without question, the Korean War transformed the American
perception of security in Korea. No sooner had North Korea invaded
than the United States directly participated in the war to defend South
Korea. Thus, the U.S. policy toward South Korea changed from a low
to the highest priority. Since then, the United States has undertaken
great efforts to build a modern Korean military. The transfer of
weapons, equipment, logistic support, and financial aid for thedevelopment of a strong Korean military became a primary U.S. goalin Korea.
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The U.S. security commitment to South Korea, which grew out ofAmerican involvement in the war, was formalized in a mutual security
treaty in 1953 and manifested in the continued deployment of
substantial numbers of American forces in South Korea. The enduringcommitment to the Republic of Korea and the continuous presence ofa considerable number of the U.S. troops in Korea had the mostsignificant impact on the development of the Korean military. As aresult, the Korean military acquired modern military tactics and strategy
through its participation in the joint command system with the U.S.
forces in Korea.
Before the war and during the early months of the war, the Koreans
were suspicious of the Americans. So were the American soldiers of the
Koreans. More American soldiers held an unfavorable opinion of the
Korean people. Korean civilians were viewed with suspicion as being
possible enemy infiltrators, spies or saboteurs. During the war, ROK
and U.S. soldiers fought shoulder to shoulder, supporting each other,under the same command. They could overcome cultural barriers andbecame more trustful of each other. The wartime presence of up to350,000 American troops in South Korea provided a mass impulse
toward linguistic and cultural Americanization for the military.
In short, the ROK military became one of the most reliable partnersof the American forces in East Asia and "a necessary arm of the worldwide system of free forces opposing the Communist drive for power."
36

37

Military as the Most Modernized Institution
The prewar Korean military, in contrast to the police or othercivilian groups, remained a relatively unskilled and insignificant
institution in South Korea. Despite President Rhee's rhetoricalemphasis on national defense, there were limited resources to provide
for a military buildup. The United States was also reluctant to support
the development of a strong military in South Korea. As reviewed
earlier, however, the Korean War dramatically expanded andmodernized the Korean military.
During and after the war, strengthening the Korean military was amatter not only of national survival for South Korea, but also of grave
strategic importance for the United States. Enormous human sufferingand physical destruction reminded the country of its previous military
weakness. The military was regarded as the savior from war anddestruction. A strong military was not a means of national glory but anecessity for survival and insurance against another brutal war. Thus,
national security became the primary goal of the nation, and the buildup
of its military became the top priority of the Rhee government.
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171

upon them, the people were prepared to sacrifice themselves materiallyand physically.
The United States also provided almost everything needed for the
expansion and training of the Korean military: weapons, equipment,
logistics, doctrines, and manpower. At the time the U.S. military was
regarded as one of the most advanced institutions in the United States,
and the U.S. government and civilian organizations had tried to apply
military technology and managerial know-how to their institutions. The
Korean military imported not only advanced American equipment andtechnology but also modern techniques of planning, management,
training, and education. In other words, the combined effect of the war
and the American support made the Korean military an unrivaled holder
of modern skills, managerial techniques, specialization, and newly
acquired ways of building and maintaining institutions in South Korea.
The sudden emergence of a huge and modern military had profound
implications for Korean society. Among Korean institutions, themilitary was unique at the time. No other institution approached its sizeof some 650,000 men. The military had been subjected to consistentdiscipline and a modem educational process for a considerable periodof time. No civilian institution came close to the military. The military
was the only Korean institution in which the Americans had succeededin concentrating sufficient funds, training, advice, and attention over along period to transplant the American system in Korea. The Korean
military, with its comprehensive and specialized infrastructure, becamea microcosm of the state; it possessed its own separate and selfcontained systems of supply, transportation, communication,engineering, and education. The modernization of the military sharply
contrasted with the miserable states of civilian institutions. The
underdeveloped civilian sector had been almost completely destroyed,
and it received no adequate support to revitalize and modernize its
infrastructure and train its manpower.
In this regard, the relative importance of the military and the police
needs to be noted. The police inherited the effective, but brutal,
institution of the Japanese police. Before the war the police numbered
30,000 and were almost as well armed as the army; it was believed thatvarious paramilitary forces such as the Youth Corps would provide areserve in case of need. Moreover, the Korean Constabulary wasestablished as a "police reserve." Thus, the prewar police were regarded
as the most well-organized and powerful institution in South Korea, andconsequently the police were more influential than the military.
Because of the emergence of the powerful military, however, the status
and power of the police significantly declined. Because of the rapid
expansion of the military and its abundant resources, the military far
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exceeded the police in prestige and influence.
In a pre-modern and war-devastated nation like South Korea, theemergence of a modern military was revolutionary in nature. Comparedto other civilian institutions, the Korean military was the most modern,the most powerful, and the best-organized group in Korea. In the late
1950s the military was regarded as the only social and governmental
institution capable of unified, effective, and disciplined action.
39

Emergence of Professionalism
During the war, and soon thereafter, the size of the Korean military
was increased several-fold to some 650,000 men. Its rapid expansion
inevitably resulted in some serious problems. After the truce, the threatof renewed invasion became less the focus of military concern than thecorruption, ineffectiveness, and abuses of power in the military. The
war aggravated corruption in the military. Floods of supplies andequipment were given to the Korean military. Strict control andaccountability broke down due to the language barrier of the American
supplier. The Korean military did not yet have central procurement anddistribution systems due to poor market and transport conditions. Thus,
cash allowance was given to commanding officers to buy vegetables,
fish, and meat at local markets. This procurement practice madecorruption easy.
Salaries in the military could not meet the necessary needs ofmilitary families. Spiraling war inflation made this worse. Prices rose
750 percent in Seoul in the first year of the war. Low pay was not only
a morale factor but also forced whole ROK units to take time forextracurricular activities to make a living for the families of their
troops. The American supply service was also defective; there wereinsufficient spare parts and repair facilities for equipment, and a lack offunds for the maintenance of military facilities. Illegal cutting of forestsand operation of small factories or fishing fleets went on to supply suchneeds. Corruption became rampant throughout the military.
On the other hand, the war forced the belated application of enoughtraining and discipline to overcome factional divisions. The rapid
expansion of the military made influential the 7 and 8 classes of the
Korean Military Academy, who were recruited outside factional
channels and comprised the majority of mid-ranking officers. By
overcoming its deficiencies, the military became the first Korean
organization that eliminated most of the sources of fluidity anddisunity. The elimination of factions in the military had important
implications for the country, where factions dominated most areas ofsociety. Thus, national interests came before personal happiness for thesoldiers. They were ready to sacrifice themselves for the safety and
40

41

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International Journal of Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 2001173

welfare of the nation. Decisions were made by the formal proceduresof the military; traditional personal relations were less relevant, andformal channels of military institutions were important. This kind ofmilitary ethos could be contrasted with the attitudes and behavior ofpoliticians and other civilian elites, whose lives were often preoccupied
with personal connections and factional interests.
Unlike most militaries of developing countries, the Korean militaryalso had become relatively well professionalized. The military as amodern institution, according to Morris Janowitz, possesses modern
skills, weapons, and equipment.
Therefore, it was organized,
managed, and commanded on modern organizational principles. The
United States had provided almost everything needed for thedevelopment of a professional Korean military. The American militaryadvisers assisted the Korean troops with training, setting up new
military institutions and supply service, and procuring and dispensing
U.S. military equipment and supplies. Korean officers were trained byAmerican military officers in Korea and were also sent to militaryschools in the United States. All the senior instructors and most of thejunior instructors had been through American service schools. After
returning to South Korea, they taught by American methods, with
American weapons and equipment, and from translated versions ofAmerican military texts and manuals.
42

43

44

The officer corps not only needed to be thoroughly trained inpurely military matters but also in managerial and administrative skills.
The Korean military lacked officers trained to command large numbersof soldiers and to maneuver in open warfare. There was no unbroken
military tradition, such as other countries have, to develop regularclasses of officers trained to command. After it became a four-year
institution modeled afterthe U.S. Military Academy, the KoreaMilitary
Academy, as well as the Korea Naval and Air Force Academies,
attracted the country's top high school students, who graduated as firstrate professionals with solid undergraduate educations.
At the time, education was expensive, and the military provided
free educational opportunities for those poor and rural. As noted earlier,the U.S. also allocated vast resources to the training and education of
Korean officers and NCOs. More than 2,000 officers and NCOs weresent to American military schools during the war. After the armistice,
more than 1,000 South Korean soldiers were sent to the U.S. fortraining and education every year until the mid-1960s. By 1959
approximately 10 percent of all South Korean officers had some U.S.
training. Through these systemic education programs, the South
Korean officers learned and internalized the Western code of military
professionalism.
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Training is important in any military. But in the case of Korea,
military training and education were much more important because at
the time Korea's general level of education and technical skills wasvery low. To operate the modern military equipment and to make thegoal-oriented military function effectively, it was absolutely essential
for the soldiers to be trained in basic literacy, to acquire essential
military skills, and to operate modern equipment. When they were
mobilized, the mostly uneducated young people were forced to acquire
their skills quickly so that they could perform their military duties.
They learned the importance of discipline, loyalty, and cooperation, andwere given opportunities to learn techniques for using modern
equipment for transportation, communication, construction, sanitation,
hygiene, etc. A farm boy, from a remote corner of the country, could
learn to drive a truck or bulldozer, maintain a vehicle, repair an engine,
operate a military radio, and construct a bridge or building. Therefore,technical training became much more important.
It needs to be emphasized that the introduction and application of
the American military system to the Korean military was relatively
successful because there was no Korean military institution. It was likea tabula rasa: there was almost no resistance against the import of theAmerican military system. As a result, the Korean military was
relatively well professionalized within a short period of time.
Ideological Cohesion as the Bulwark of Anti-Communism
In a developing country like South Korea, the mental aspect of themilitary experience is as important, or more important, as thetechnological one. Through the war, the military became the bulwarkof anti-communism. Anti-communism was the ideological principle not
only of the Korean military but also of the South Korean people. The
people and soldiers could rally around the government and sacrificethemselves under the banner of anti-communism. The Korean military
was successful in the indoctrination of anti-communism among young
soldiers. The discharged youth have had a lot of influence on deterring
the infiltration of communism into every aspect of South Koreansociety.
In the early years after the establishment of the military, the loyalty
of some officers and NCOs was questionable. There were many people
who strongly supported unification and therefore objected to theestablishment of the ROK. Due to their diverse backgrounds,
ideological confusion, and rapid recruitment without a backgroundcheck, soldiers to the Rhee government and the ROK were not so solidin their loyalty. Most of the South Korean people, including military
officers, lacked any understanding of democracy and communism.
International Journal of Korean Studies• Spring/Summer 2001

175

They had a strong aspiration for national independence. However, thedivision of the country meant only half independence. Unification was
regarded asfull independence. Moreover, radical communist
propaganda was partly succeeding; communists claimed that
communism was the only "genuine democracy." Under circumstancesof ideological confusion, many officers and NCOs lacked strong loyalty
to defend the government of the Republ ic. They were not sure why they
had to fight against their North Korean brethren.
During the war, however, the military developed a strong sense ofidentity and loyalty. As a result, communist-tainted officers andenlisted men were eliminated. By the end of the war, anti-communism
was almost blindly accepted. Before the war, a considerable number ofsoldiers and people questioned President Rhee's anti-communist
slogans, and some people were deceived by the honeyed words ofcommunist propaganda. However, during the war, virtually all South
Korean families became victims of communist aggression in one way
or another. Therefore, the people strongly supported the military as thecentral force to fight against the communists. Unlike the questionable
loyalty of some in the military that was manifested in the Yosu mutiny,during the war the loyalty of the military became clear and the missionof the military was to defend the ROK government and its people
against the enemy: North Korean communists and their allies.
Anti-communism is only one of the military's characteristics in the
Korean context. Military service also fostered a strong sense of duty
and honor. The military sees its role as the defender of nationalsovereignty. Therefore, professional soldiers generally possess a strong
sense of nationalism—a unifying sense of purpose, vision, and national
pride—that is one of the essential requirements of nation building. The
military developed discipline, a strong sense of mission, and an espritde corps. The military is also highly goal-oriented: specialization,scientific planning, and efficiency and effectiveness are valued. This
military orientation was sharply contrasted with the traditional valuesof most of the civilian groups.
Enhanced Social Status of the Military Officers
Due to the war, the social status of the military improved to a great
extent. For the first time since the 13 century, the military became themost dominant organization in Korea and also the most trusted
institution in South Korea.
Long influenced by Buddhism and Confucianism, the Korean
people encouraged mental and spiritual development rather thanphysical prowess. The man of arms, the symbol of physical violence,
was considered inferior to the man of letters. Thus, the relegation of theth176International Journal of Korean Studies • Volume V, Number 1man of arms to a lower social stratum persisted throughout the historyof Korea, especially during the Yi Dynasty, even in the face of repeatedforeign invasions. In the early years of the Korean military, mostofficers came from poor, rural families. Their social status was notmuch different from that of the traditional Korea.
During the war, however, many bright young men found in the
rapidly expanding military a sense of pride, accomplishment, and abroadened vision. On the other hand, many civilian elite enjoyed thestatus of wealth. Many of them avoided military service by attending
college or studying abroad. National efforts to defend the country also
led to the mobilization of national resources—personnel, finances,materials, etc.—into the military sector. As a result, the military became
an actual center of national life; the civilian side became merely
residual. In the history of Korea there had never existed such anorganization that was so huge in size, so abundant in resources, so welltrained in manpower, and so well organized in structure. This enlarged
force was partially supplied by grants of over $400 million annuallyfrom the United States, which amounted to almost half of the Koreanbudget.
46

47

Unlike in traditional Korea, it was the new Korean military that had
the power, the supplies, the finances, and the men trained in modern
administration, accounting, procurement, supply, transportation,
logistics, medicine, construction, and communications technology. The
officers and NCOs enjoyed not only modern equipment but also
relatively abundant supplies, while most people were barely surviving.
Most of the higher-ranking officers learned English, a symbol of amodernized Korean. The wartime military was a ladder of extremely
rapid fulfillment for the ambitious. The rapid expansion of the military
prompted the incredibly fast promotion of officers; among 100 second
lieutenants commissioned in 1949, 65 became generals in 1960, andmost of them were in their 30s and 40s. The emergence of a large
group of well-trained officers was of particular importance. The officers
usually included a higher proportion of able, energetic, nationalistic,
and upwardly mobile individuals from low-middle class backgrounds.
They tended to distrust the civilian elite, who came from relatively
well-to-do families but mostly maintained the traditional problems ofcorruption, factionalism, inefficiency, and flunkeyism.
48

Conclusion: A Modern Military in a Pre-modern Society
As discussed so far, during the Korean War the Korean military
underwent modernization and became the most advanced andprofessional institution in Korea. After the war, the military, with its
modern equipment and abundanttechnical manpower, played a leading
International Journal of Korean Studies• Spring/Summer 2001177

role in the reconstruction of Korea. The military built buildings,
schools, roads, bridges, dams, etc. At that time the civilian construction
sector lacked trucks and construction equipment, and it did not haveexperienced technicians. Without the contribution of the military, therehabilitation and reconstruction of the country likely would have beenmuch more difficult and delayed. After the reconstruction, the militarycontinued to support the construction of national infrastructure,including the Seoul-Pusan Expressway. The military also promoted avariety of civic action programs, which included medical services,
social education, relief activities for natural disaster, and other socialand economic services. In short, the military played a significant rolein the reconstruction and development of the nation.
49

The vast number of youth who served in the military during and theafter the war constituted a significant reservoir of technologicallycompetent, organizationally experienced, and managerially skilled
manpower in South Korea. Each year, the military was returning some
200,000 young men to the civilian sector after their service. The
economic and social development of Korea benefited greatly from the
manpower trained in modern skills and techniques.
However, the civilian sector had changed little in the 1950s, and as
a result the civilian elite failed to recognize the strength of themodernized military. Consequently, the emergence of the new militarychanged the traditional civil-military relationship. As SamuelHuntington points out, the enlargement and strengthening of the Korean
military helped to aggravate the imbalance between the "input andoutput" institutions of Korean society.
Military training, geared to the use of scientific rationale to produce
the most efficient group actions, resulted in a major change in problemsolving techniques in Korea. Military training also provided a kind offaith, a sense of purpose and destiny that was often in sharp contrast to
the depressing attitudes of the civilian elite. This functional outlook wasin conflict with the civilian mentality of the old order, which wasshackled by "inertia, inefficiency and skepticism." The civilian elite
failed to recognize the fact that the military had rectified much of its
past inadequacies by undergoing new and advanced education andtraining at home and abroad.
Officers tended to believe that the military had been the "guardianof the nation's security." One consequence of this attitude is that someofficers, even today, tend to disdain and distrust the civilian sector,
especially politicians, as self-serving, sometimes corrupt, and unwillingto sacrifice for the greater good of the nation. As a bulwark of anticommunism, the military tended to distrust those who advocatedcompromised unification with the North. On the other hand, the
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civilian sector, especially students and intellectuals, maintained theirtraditional belief that they were the "conscience of the nation," and theytended to look down at the military as less educated and intelligent.
The enhanced status and influence of the military had a profound
impact on civil-military relations in the coming decade. After the 1961
military coup, a struggle for legitimacy began between the civilian andmilitary sectors. During the Yi Dynasty, the sole profession of thecivilian yangban (literati) was the holding of public office. Thus, while
the civilian yangban enjoyed the special privilege of governing,
military officials were barred from high rank.
Park Chung Hee and his military associates, who were proud of thesense of nationalism, efficiency, advanced knowledge, and disciplineof the military, despised the inefficiency, corruption, factionalism, andflunkeyism of the civilian sector. On the other hand, the intellectuals(scholars, journalists, students, and religious leaders) and opposition
politicians maintained the traditional belief that the civilian elite issuperior to the military: more intelligent, more knowledgeable andcompetent. Therefore, military rule was not only considered illegitimate
but also inappropriate.
The sudden rise of the military in Korean society inevitably brought
reactions from the civilian sector—the posterity of the yangban who
had almost monopolized the privilege of governance. Although the antigovernment demonstrations during the 1960s-1980s reflected their
aspirations for democracy, the deep-rooted cultural bias against the
military also influenced their tenacious protests.
As Korean society rapidly modernized, the superiority of themilitary was eroded and some of the civilian sectors, such as business,caught up and then, probably, surpassed the military. Since the late1980s, the civilian elite has led the government, and the Korean
military changed its perceived role from a "new professionalism" to an"old professionalism." But most of the civilian sectors are still not as
trusted as the military; this is due to the underdevelopment of their
institutions and their frequent lack of professionalism.
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179

Notes1 Chae-Jin Lee, "The Effect of the War on South Korea," in Chae-Jin Lee (ed.), The
Korean War: 40-Year Perspectives (Claremont, Calif.: The Keck Center forInternational and Strategic Studies, Claremont McKenna College, 1991), pp. 114-5.
2 Young-Woo Lee, "Birth of the Korean Army, 1945-1950," Korea and World Affairs,
v o l . 4 no.4(1980), pp. 639-56.
3 Robert K. Sawyer, Military Advisors in Korea: KMAG in War and Peace(Washington, D.C. Office of the Chief of Military History, 1962), p. 37.
4 U.S. House of Representatives, Background Information on Korea, House Report no.
2495 (Washington, D . C , 1950), p. 34.
5 Gregory Henderson, Korea: The Politics of the Vortex (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1968), pp. 338-39.
6 Korean Ministry of National Defense, History of the Korean War (Seoul: Donga
Publishing Co., 1967), p. 259.
7 Sawyer, op. cit., p. 26.
8 R o y E . Appleman, South to the Naktong, North to the Yalu, vol. 1 (Washington, D . C :Office of the Chief of Military History, 1961), pp. 13ff.
9 With a limited amount of military supply from the Americans, a great number ofofficers in the Constabulary still commanded their soldiers in Japanese uniforms andwith Japanese long sabers. (Sawyer, op. cit., p. 16.)
10 Michael Hickey, The Korean War (London: John Murray, 1999), pp. 27-30.
11 Ibid., p. 28.
12 Chum-kon Kim, The Korean War 1950-53 (Seoul: Kwangmyong Publishing Co.,
1980), pp. 147-52.
13 Henderson, op. cit., p. 163.
14 Sawyer, op. cit., pp. 76-78. In June 1950 the Navy consisted of four patrol crafts,
1 LST, 15 former U.S. mine sweepers, 10 former Japanese mine layers, and various
small craft. The Air Force consisted of a single flight group of 12 liaison-type aircraft
and 10 advance trainers. On the other hand, North Korea had a strong fighting force ofabout 200,000 men with 100 tanks and heavy artillery. North Korea air force had 100
Yak fighter planes, 70 attack bombers, and 10 reconnaissance aircrafts.
15 Hickey, op. cit., p. 35.
16 The defense plan aimed to counter a North Korean invasion at the 38th parallel but
it said nothing about operations south of the Han River. (Sun Yup Paik, From Pusan
to Panmunjom (Washington, D . C : Brassey"s, 1992), p. 20.
17 Paik, op. cit., p. 21.
18 Matthew B. Ridgway, The Korean War (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1967), p.
21.
19Appleman, op. cit., p. 35.
20 Out of all the divisions engaged in the initial fighting, only the 6th and 8th divisions
escaped with their organization, weapons, equipment, and transport relatively intact.
Except for them, the ROK Army came out of the initial disaster with little more than
30 percent of its individual weapons. One estimate of effective ROK Army ranges from
General MacArthur's 25,000 made on June 29, to a Korean figure of40,000, made July
1. (Appleman, op. cit., p. 35)
21 James L. Stokesbury, A Short History of the Korean War (New York: William
Morrow & Co., 1988), p. 60.
22 Roy E. Appleman, Disaster in Korea (College Station: Texas A & M University
Press, 1989), p. 17.
23 Paik, op. cit., p. 139.

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24 During the early phase of the war, the U.S. troops had some deficiencies. The first
American troops committed to battle in Korea were poorly trained, inexperienced, shortof officers, and, perhaps most important, had gravely defective or inappropriate
weapons and equipment. In the first action of "Task Force Smith" against the invading
communist forces one bazooka team fired 22 rocket rounds at a tank without
penetrating its armor. Clay Blair, The Forgotten War: America in Korea, 1950-1953(New York: Times Books, 1987), pp. 91-93.)
25 Roy E. Appleman, Ridgway Duels for Korea (College Station: Texas A & M.
University Press, 1990), p. 498.
26 Appleman, Disaster in Korea, pp. 369-70.
27 Paik, op. cit., p. 162, and Sawyer, op. cit., pp. 170-71.
28 J. Lawton Collins, War in Peacetime: The History and Lessons of Korea (Boston:
Houghton, 1969), pp. 314-16.
29 "Here's South Korea's New Army,*' U.S. News and World Report, January 9, 1953,
p. 44.
30 Phil Williams, "The United States Commitment to South Korea," Phil Williams,
Donald M. Goldstein, and Henry L. Andrews. Jr. (eds.), Security In Korea: War,
Stalemate, and Negotiation (^Boulder: Westview, 1994), p. 195.
31 In Korea, the US Army spent much of the first year rebuilding, training, andreequipping its forces, weeding out ineffective leaders and restoring morale. As one
American general observed: "We went into Korea with a very poor army and came out
with a pretty good one. We went into Vietnamwith a pretty good army and came out
with a terrible one." See Max Hastings, The Korean War (New York: Simon &Schuster, 1987), p. 33.
32 P. Edward Haley, "The Korean War and United States Strategy," Chae-.Tin Lee(ed.), The Korean War: 40-year Perspectives (Claremont, Calif: The Keck Center forInternational and Strategic Studies, 1991), pp. 25-45.
33 Stokesbury, op. cit., p. 40.
34 Ibid, pp. 164-65.
35 Phil Williams, Henry L. Andrews, Jr.. and Peter D. Duerst, "Reaping What Was
Sowed: Effects of the Korean War," Phil Williams et al. (eds.). Security in Korea, p.
138.
36 John Halliday and Bruce Cumings, Korea: The Unknown War (London: Viking,1988), p. 88.
37 Mark W. Clark, From the Danube to the Yalu (London: Harrap, 1954), p. 165.
38 Henderson, op. cit., p. 357.
39 C. I. Eugene Kim, "The Military and National Development in South Korea," Korea
Military Academy (ed.), Armed Forces and National Development (Seoul, 1981), pp.
260-61 and Se-jin Kim, The Politics of Military Revolution in Korea (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina University Press. 1971), p. 66.
40 Mark W. Clark, op. cit., pp. 175-77.
41 Henderson, op. cit., pp. 345-50.
42 Ibid, p. 336.
43 The Professional Soldier (Glencoe: Free Press, 1960).
44 Mark W. Clark, op. cit., pp. 165-71.
45 Jong-Chun Baek, "Military Education System and National Development: The Caseof the Republic of Korea Army," Korea Military Academy (ed.), Armed Forces andNational Development (Seoul, 1980), p. 134.
46 Henderson, op. cit., p. 334-38 and Se-jin Kim, op. cit., Chapter IV.
47 Paul S. Crane, Korean Patterns (Seoul: Hollym, 1967), pp. 154-57.
48 The most spectacular case was Major General II Kwon Chung, who at the age of 33
became the Army Chief of Staff and the Commander of the ROK Armed Forces during
the war. Accordingly, the social status of the military improved remarkably. See II
International Journal of Korean Studies • Spring/Summer 2001

181

Kwon Chung, Chonjaeng kwa hyuchon [War and Cease-fire] (Seoul: Donga Ilbo Sa,
1986.
49 Jong-Chun Baek, Man Geum Ohn, and Young Ho Kim, Hankookui Kundaewa
Sahoe [Korean Military and Society] (Seoul: Nanam, 1994), pp. 75-122.
50 Ibid, pp. 123-183.
51 Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1968), pp. 192-93.
52 Henderson, op. cit., pp. 334-38 and Carter J. Eckert et al., Korea: Old and New(Seoul: Ilchokak Publishers, 1990), pp. 107-09.

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INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF KOREAN STUDIES(A BI-ANNUAL JOURNAL)The International Journal of Korean Studies (ISSN 1091-2932) is publishedtwice a year by the International Council on Korean Studies (ICKS), a nonprofit organization in Washington, D.C. For additional information about theInternational Council on Korean Studies, visit the internet home page,
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Chairman: Ung-Soo Kim, Catholic University of America
Vice Chairman: Ilpyong Kim, University of Connecticut
Saeho David Chang, Dream ID
Corporation
Pilju Kim Joo, University of
Minnesota
Young Whan Kihl, Iowa State
University
Hong Nack Kim, West Virginia
University
Hyung-Kook Kim, American
University
Ki-Hyon Kim, North Carolina
University
Se Ung Kim, Cosmopolitan, Inc.
Hugo Wheegook Kim, East-West
Research InstituteYoun-Suk Kim, Kean State
University

Woong B. Lee, Backus Hospital ofConnecticut
Gill-Chin Lim, Michigan State
University
Soon Paik, U.S. Department of
Labor
Yoon Shik Park, George
Washington University
Hang Yul Rhee, Shepherd
University
Steve Y. Rhee, Armstrong Atlantic
State Univ.
Jai P. Ryu, Loyola University at
Baltimore
Eui Hang Shin, University of South
Carolina

EXECUTIVE BOARD
President: Hang Yul Rhee, Shepherd University
Vice Presidents: Eui Hang Shin, University of South Carolina
Hugo Wheegook Kim, East-West Research Institute