The Front Line of the Cold War — A Divided Asia

When the Second World War ended, Asia broke the chains of colonial rule one by one. As we saw in the previous episode, India gained independence, the People’s Republic of China was founded, and in places like Indonesia and Vietnam the struggles for independence began to bear fruit. The peoples of Asia believed that the age had finally come in which they would build their own nations with their own hands.

Yet the joy of that independence was soon swallowed up by another vast set of forces. The world had split into two camps: a Western bloc centered on the United States, and an Eastern bloc centered on the Soviet Union. This confrontation, which never broke into direct war between them, came to be called the Cold War. And, ironically, the stage on which that Cold War burned hottest was the very Asia that had only just won its freedom. Why did a continent that was supposed to have been liberated become, once again, a place of war and division?

A Single Line and the Tragedy of the Korean Peninsula

The first place where the Cold War turned into full-scale fighting in Asia was the Korean Peninsula. Freed from Japanese colonial rule, the peninsula was, after the war, divided and occupied by the Soviet Union and the United States along the 38th parallel. In time a socialist state arose in the north and a capitalist state in the south. A single people had been split in two by outside forces.

On June 25, 1950, the North Korean army crossed the 38th parallel and invaded the south, and the Korean War began. A United Nations force led mainly by the United States supported the south, and when the front line was pushed northward, China in turn sent volunteer armies to support the north. The result was a configuration in which two great powers, the United States and China, clashed directly on the Korean Peninsula. The front line swept violently back and forth, north and south, and an enormous number of soldiers and civilians are said to have fallen.

From around 1951 the front line stalled near the 38th parallel, and long armistice negotiations dragged on. Then, on July 27, 1953, an armistice agreement was signed at Panmunjom. It is worth noting that this was not a peace treaty, but merely an ‘armistice’ to halt the fighting. A military demarcation line and a demilitarized zone roughly two kilometers wide were established, and the division of the Korean Peninsula was locked in place.

Vietnam’s Long War, Sinking into a Quagmire

Another place where the pain of the Cold War in Asia was carved deep was Vietnam. After winning its fight for independence from France, Vietnam too split into a socialist force in the north and a pro-American force in the south. Not a peninsula this time, but here as well a country was torn into north and south.

In 1965, in order to prop up the South Vietnamese government, the United States launched large-scale bombing of North Vietnam, the so-called air war over the north, and committed ground troops as well. The North Vietnamese side received support from the Soviet Union and China, and the war dragged on. A great power that poured in the latest weapons and overwhelming material strength found it hard to subdue a force that kept up a guerrilla war. The Vietnam War took on just such a quagmire-like character. The fighting spread to neighboring Laos and Cambodia, drawing the whole of the Indochina Peninsula into the vortex of the Cold War.

The war called forth fierce antiwar voices, both within the United States and around the world. On January 27, 1973, a peace agreement was signed in Paris, and American forces withdrew. Yet the fighting did not stop, and on April 30, 1975, the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon fell, and the war came to an end. The following year, 1976, north and south were unified and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam was established. Independence and unification were achieved, but they stood upon enormous sacrifice and long-lasting wounds.

The Sino-Soviet Rift That Split the Socialist Camp

The Cold War is often thought of as a confrontation between the Western and Eastern blocs. In reality, however, a deep fissure also ran through the interior of the Eastern bloc. This was the rivalry between two great socialist powers, China and the Soviet Union, the so-called Sino-Soviet split.

The Soviet Union and China, which had once supported the founding of the People’s Republic of China, gradually drifted apart from the late 1950s, set off by differences over the path of socialism, by questions of leadership among nations, and by border disputes. Countries that flew the same ideological banner came to denounce one another bitterly. And in the end the rivalry escalated into armed clash. In March 1969, on Zhenbao Island, an islet in the Ussuri River (called Damansky Island on the Russian side), the forces of the two countries collided.

After this clash tensions rose sharply all at once, and it is said that enormous numbers of troops came to face one another along the vast border. Ironically, this Sino-Soviet rift in time gave rise to an unexpected development, the rapprochement between China and the United States, and set the very structure of the Cold War in motion. Asia was not simply divided in two between the United States and the Soviet Union; it was placed in the midst of a more complex triangle of power.

Nations in a Hurry to Grow, and Developmental Dictatorship

The Cold War brought not only the shadows of war and division. In many countries of Southeast Asia, the West’s desire to halt the spread of communism joined with the people’s wish to escape poverty as soon as possible, and a distinctive form of governance was born. This was the system known as ‘developmental dictatorship.’

Developmental dictatorship refers to a form of rule in which a strong leader, while suppressing political freedom to a certain degree, advances economic growth as the highest priority. In Indonesia, Suharto, who became president in 1968, took an anti-communist, pro-American stance and built a long-lasting regime, and it is said that figures such as Marcos in the Philippines walked a similar road. Holding up development as their banner, such countries drew in foreign investment and achieved a certain measure of economic growth. In 1967, the non-communist countries of Southeast Asia formed the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) for the sake of regional cooperation.

The Asia that had won its independence thus experienced division, war, and confining governance in the very midst of the vast dynamics of the Cold War. A boundary line still remains on the Korean Peninsula; Vietnam achieved unification atop great sacrifice; and a deep fissure ran even through the interior of the socialist camp. Asia’s postwar years were by no means a smooth and level road.

And yet, in the very midst of this harsh era, another story was quietly unfolding. As though hidden in the shadow of war and division, certain countries and regions had begun to race upward toward prosperity at a startling speed. Upon the cruel stage of the Cold War’s front line, out of that division, a growth that would come to be called a miracle was about to begin.