Land of the Morning Storm

by Barry L. Briggs

Imagine the world a half century ago.

Perhaps you are American, in which case the greatest war in human history, World War II, having just ended in 1945, is still very fresh in your mind. You can name places that a decade ago no American knew: Tarawa, Gauadalcanal, Anzio, Bastogne, Saipan, Iwo Jima. You have friends who fought -- and died-- in these faraway places.

The war is over now; the armies have disbanded, the bombers and destroyers and tanks have been scrapped. It is time for peace, time to raise families, time to live.

Perhaps you are Korean. Five years ago with the defeat of the Japanese your land was liberated from thirty-five years of brutal oppression. For the first time in your life you can openly speak your own language, as during the occupation only Japanese was allowed. You can use your own Korean name and not the Japanese one given you at the local police station. No longer are you required to worship the Emperor. No longer are Korean sons whisked off to fight and die for the Rising Sun, nor are Korean daughters abducted and forced to pleasure Japanese troops at the front.

Here too, it is time to live, to breathe the air and feel free and rejuvenated, to rebuild.

But it is not to be. The dark, immutable currents of history are rushing again toward the pit of war.

Josef Stalin. Courtesy Corbis.

Look at your world. After World War II, Americans saw the Soviet Union as an ally who helped defeat Nazi Germany. But then in 1946, Josef Stalin, Premier of the Soviet Union, declared capitalism and communism to be fundamentally incompatible; only through armed conflict could their differences be resolved. Thereafter all of Eastern Europe -- Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia -- fell under Soviet domination. Greece, Italy and France are threatened as well.

In the following year, 1947, a peasant from the Hunan countryside named Mao Tse-tung unified and liberated the most populous country in the world, and declared the establishment of the People's Republic of China. Suddenly the majority of the world's population lives under Communist rule.

Mirroring the events in Europe, Korea after the war was split in two, the North becoming the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, a Soviet client state, and the South, the Republic of Korea, allied with the United States. Now, in 1950, the 38th line of latitude, the now-infamous 38th Parallel, separates the Soviet sphere from the American, communism from democracy, and countless families from one another. Flags of the Republic of Korea (left) and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (right) courtesy Corbis

Korea in 1950. The town of Taebak in the south is fictional. Map by the author.

 

In the North, Kim Il-sung, a dedicated and charismatic young revolutionary, has built a strong and powerful army, comprised of seasoned, battle-hardened professionals just back from the civil war in China, where they fought on Mao's side. His goal: to reunify his homeland, and bring all of Korea into the Communist fold.

In the South the aged and autocratic leader Yee Sung-man, known in the US as Synghman Rhee, has been less successful in building a powerful army. The Americans fear Rhee will attack the North on his own and bring the US into conflict with China and perhaps even Russia. American military aid is therefore limited; and Rhee has no experienced native cadre of soldiers to draw upon.

In January of 1950, US Secretary of State Dean Acheson, in an important policy address, outlines US interests in Asia and conspicuously places Korea outside of America's line of defense. For Kim Il-sung, and for Stalin and Mao, the door is open; South Korea, with its great capital city of Seoul, its vast rice fields, its great ports at Pusan and Inchon, is ripe for the taking.

Early in the morning of June 25, 1950 the North Korean People's Army streams southward past the 38th Parallel. In days they obliterate South Korean resistance, capture Seoul, are poised to push Rhee's forces, and a tiny contingent of American advisors, into the sea.

But victory for the Communist forces does not come. The United States, in a reversal of its declared policy, pours troops into Korea. In September, in a risky but tactically brilliant move, General Douglas MacArthur lands thousands of US Marines far behind enemy lines. The invasion at Inchon forces the People's Army into a disorganized and chaotic retreat.

President Harry Truman and General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, meeting at Wake Island in October 1950 to discuss the Korean Conflict whose end seems at hand. Courtesy Corbis.

Now, victory the US and South Korean forces seems imminent; but in November, Mao Tse-tung directs nearly three hundred thousand Chinese "volunteers" under the gruff, brilliant General Peng Dehuai into Korea.

The Korean War is no longer about Korea; it has become the field upon which the Great Powers will settle their differences.