Key Takeaways From the Korean War Itself
The Korean War was an important Cold War watershed for a number of reasons. It
massively increased tension, provided a new regional focus in Asia, which became
the new danger area in Western eyes, and ensured that armaments and preparing for
hot war began to figure more prominently in plans to deal with the Soviets. Its origins
and development are still surrounded in controversy despite the recent revelations
from communist sources about the actions and thoughts of Stalin and Mao Zedong.
The war provides a remarkable example of how internal confl icts can interact with the
broader international situation to determine the nature and development of a military
struggle. In particular, Korea provided an example of how a Cold War, which raged as
a civil war from June 1950 until October of that year, developed into a regional hot
one once the US, acting on behalf of the UN, then became engaged in a major war
with China.
When the Second World War ended, Korea, as a territory under former Japanese
control, was divided at the 38th parallel for occupation purposes between the
Americans and the Soviets. Although a Joint Commission was set up at the Moscow
Council of Foreign Ministers, leaders in both zones were not happy with the division
and the drive for unification was to figure strongly in the political programmes of
Korean political parties who were split ideologically as well as geographically.
In the North the Soviets, whose zone comprised only one-third of the population,
initially permitted all political groupings but restricted movement across the border
which would make the imposition of tighter controls easier if it was deemed
necessary.
In the South the American commander refused to cooperate with the self-proclaimed
Korean People’s Republic and maintained the Japanese bureaucratic structure.
By early 1946 when Allied relations began to deteriorate, non-communist elements in
the North were purged. The Soviets supported Korea being placed under trusteeship
but the Americans campaigned against it with non-communists in the South, and the
Joint Commission, having failed to produce proposals for the unification of Korea,
was suspended in May 1946.
Political turmoil and Soviet–American disagreement was accompanied in 1946 by bad
economic conditions that produced riots and strikes in rural and urban areas in the
South. There was support in Washington for building a non-communist coalition of
moderates in the South but the man on the spot, General John Hodge, favoured the
forces of the Right.
Polarization accompanied factionalism on the Korean peninsula with the communists
in the North attempt-ing to build support in the South. Their leader, Kim Il Sung, was
keen not only to reunite the peninsula but to end the splits in the North. An invasion
was one way of doing this but its success proved to be more difficult than expected
because of American intervention
The invasion was only launched because of Stalin’s change of mind in early 1950 and
the expectation that the US would not fight for Korea. Despite Soviet support in terms
