The Korean War — A War of the Same People

In the previous episode, we saw how, after the jubilation of liberation, the peninsula was divided into north and south, and how in 1948 two governments came to stand side by side. The Republic of Korea and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, each claiming to be the legitimate one. The 38th parallel had changed from an expedient line on the map into a boundary separating two states.

But the boundary was charged with tension. Both governments held up the goal of unifying the whole peninsula, and skirmishes are said to have been unceasing around the 38th parallel. As the Cold War split the world in two, the peninsula became one of its front lines.

And in June 1950, that tension at last burst forth into all-out war. Three years began in which people who spoke the same language and shared the same history turned their guns on one another.

The Tanks That Crossed the 38th Parallel

In the early hours of June 25, 1950, the army of the north crossed the 38th parallel and advanced south. According to multiple sources, this southward advance is said to have been a decision made by Kim Il-sung against the backdrop of the consent and support of the Soviet leader Stalin and China’s Mao Zedong. One senses how deeply the calculations of the great powers under the Cold War were entangled in the flames of war on the peninsula.

The army of the south, poorly prepared, was pushed back in place after place, and Seoul fell just days after the war began. The army of the north continued to press south, and the southern side was finally driven back to the area around Busan at the southern tip of the peninsula. This defensive line was called the ‘Busan Perimeter,’ and whether or not it could be held determined the outcome of the war.

In response, the United Nations Security Council recognized the action of the north as aggression and adopted a resolution calling on member states to aid the Republic of Korea. The fact that the Soviet Union was absent from the Security Council at the time is said to have helped this resolution pass. Many countries, led by the United States, sent troops, and a United Nations force was organized. Here, the war on the peninsula took on the character of an international war.

The origins of the war and the question of responsibility have been recounted in various ways depending on one’s standpoint. The northern side claimed it was a counterstrike against provocation from the south, while the south and the UN side positioned it as a planned invasion by the north. Yet on the basis of materials made public after the collapse of the Soviet Union and others, the view that the north took the lead in planning the southward advance is said to be widely shared today. Here too, research continues to accumulate over the facts, and what is required is to trace the historical record while avoiding firm assertion.

The Incheon Landing and the Back-and-Forth of the Front

The course of the war reversed dramatically through a single operation.

On September 15, 1950, MacArthur, leading the United Nations force, carried out a landing operation at Incheon, a port city in the west-central part of the peninsula, in order to strike at the rear of the northern army. It was a place where the difference between high and low tides was great and a landing was considered difficult, but the surprise attack succeeded. With its rear cut off, the northern army rapidly collapsed, and on September 28 the UN force retook Seoul. The front, which had been driven back to the southern tip of the peninsula, was pushed back all at once.

Carried by the momentum, the UN force and the South Korean army crossed the 38th parallel and advanced north, seizing Pyongyang and then pressing toward the Yalu River, which flows along the border with China. But China received the seizure of the northern territory by the UN force as a threat to its own security.

In October 1950, China dispatched a great army under the name of the ‘People’s Volunteer Army’ and entered the war by crossing the Yalu River. It has also been pointed out that calling it a volunteer army was a formality to avoid the situation of an all-out war between the United States and China. Pushed by overwhelming numbers, the UN force retreated once more, abandoned Pyongyang, and Seoul too was lost again for a time. The front went back and forth across the peninsula, south and north, and an immense number of people and towns were swallowed by the flames of war. Before long, the two armies pushed against each other near the 38th parallel, and the war entered a state of deadlock.

During this back-and-forth, the people of the peninsula fled the flames of war again and again. Each time the armies of north and south changed places, the inhabitants of that land are said to have been placed in harsh circumstances, and countless people left their homes — from north to south, or from south to north. The movement of the front line was not an arrow on a map, but the moving column of people driven from their homes. Beyond the question of victory or defeat, the prolongation of the war deeply exhausted the very society of the peninsula.

The Line, Still Drawn

Amid the deadlock, armistice negotiations began alongside the fighting. But the negotiations ran into difficulty over matters such as the treatment of prisoners of war, and during that time casualties continued to mount along the front.

On July 27, 1953, an armistice agreement was signed at Panmunjom. This was not a peace treaty to end the war, but an agreement merely to halt the fighting. A military demarcation line was set along the line where the two armies faced each other, and around it a demilitarized zone, where neither side would station troops, was established. Ironically, the line was redrawn near the 38th parallel, almost the same as before the war began. Three years of war had barely moved the peninsula’s boundary.

The toll this war brought was enormous. The number of dead and missing, soldiers and civilians combined, is said to reach into the millions. The soldiers of north and south, the civilians caught up in it, the troops of the UN force and the Chinese army who took part — as for the total, there is a range depending on the source, no fixed figure, and it should be noted that differing accounts exist. Whichever estimate one takes, all share in common that it was an exceedingly great loss in proportion to the peninsula’s population.

Three years in which people who spoke the same language turned their guns on one another on the same land. That wound was carved deep into the peninsula — as a line on the map, and as the memory of torn-apart families. The flames of war, drawn in by the logic of the great powers, ended without leaving clear victors or vanquished, fixing only the division.

And after this armistice, south and north, across the military demarcation line, would begin to walk opposite roads under entirely different systems. The south aiming for prosperity, the north building a system of its own. In the next chapter, let us look upon those two contrasting journeys.