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It has become fashionable for wags and quasi-historians to proclaim that the US somehow lost the Korean conflict of 1950-53, doing so smugly expecting an argument. Failing to get one from serious thinkers, they move on to other, more important topics. More than one scrivener has subtitled their books with “A/The (First) War America Lost.”
Lost the Korean conflict…how?
This latest Korean conflict wasn’t the first war in the Land of the Morning Calm. Historical conflicts with Chinese empires are beyond number, but the first documented invasion by non-Chinese is Japan’s Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s invasion of Korea—a Chinese satrap for most of its known history—under the Joseon Dynasty in 1592 in what was called the Imjin War, and again in 1597 in the Chongyu War. Despite initial success in both conflicts, the Koreans turned to irregular warfare, hampering Japanese logistics, while their Chinese masters/allies fought the Japanese to a standstill. That war ended in 1598 when the Japanese withdrew.
That didn’t mean Korea was peaceful. Everyone wanted her geographic position and unlimited access to the sea, including Japan. But faulty communications, relative poverty, and corruption at the highest levels always hampered Korea’s administration. Her coastlines were notorious pirate nests, prompting the US Marines to land in Korea in 1871 to punish pirates that attacked American ships. Two decades later, Japan used unrest in Korea (which they orchestrated) to justify sending troops to the peninsula to protect their interests and citizens, prompting the first Sino-Japanese War in 1894.
After China’s defeat in 1895, Japanese forces stayed in Korea, displaced the Joseon Dynasty in 1897 and established their own satrapy, used the peninsula as a base for the first Russo-Japanese War in 1904, and finally annexed the country outright in 1910. When the Soviets invaded the peninsula in 1945, pushing the remnants of the Japanese out, the Americans hastened to establish a government south of the 38th parallel. Why there? There had long been a cultural distinction between northern and southern Korea, and the US/Soviet agreement about occupation zones in the wake of WWII merely reinforced what centuries of history sort of established. Like any country, there were parts of Korea that didn’t like other parts.
Then came the Cold War in (let’s say for the sake of argument) 1948, and the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949. Everywhere, it seemed, there was this north/south-east/west confrontation with the Americans and their friends on one side and the Soviets and theirs on the other; Korea was just one more theater, albeit one that had seen this kind of nonsense twice in the previous hundred years and countless times before that. Only this time there was this outfit called the United Nations that took up the mantle of the failed League of Nations, which had the dignity to dissolve itself in 1946. The leader of the Republic of (South) Korea pled his case to the UN after the Democratic People’s Republic of (North) Korea marched south to “liberate” their southern cousins on 25 June 1950, murdering a few thousand people on the way. The UN membership responded by sending troops to reinforce the already-there and outgunned American and South Korean forces, placing American General Douglas MacArthur in overall UN command to repel this liberation-at-gunpoint.
Joseph Stalin over in Moscow had given his blessing for this liberation and a quantity of military equipment and supplies to the North Koreans. Mao Zedong up in Peking had given his nod, but he was busy trying to hunt down the last of the incorrect thinkers in his country, pledging what support he could afford. He, like Stalin, believed the time was ripe for the correct—their—way of thinking to express itself and take hold all over the world, as Eastern Europe and Vietnam were learning, and Greece was trying to learn, and the Philippines would try soon.
This was the first armed conflict of several that would mark the Cold War’s long and sordid history. This conflict, unlike most of the others, would test the resolve of the United Nations, its members, and of the growing “blocs” that leaned either east or west, north or south. It had nothing to do with Korea per se and everything to do with willpower, and in Robert S. McNamara’s famous (later) phrase, who would blink first. Korea was just the first test.
Regrettably, MacArthur had a tendency to believe he had the last say in all things military in Asia, and openly suggested using Nationalist troops and atomic weapons in Korea. This alarmed the Chinese, who were already concerned about her southern frontiers and hydroelectric power from the Chosin/Chonchon River dams in the northern provinces. Through proxies, China warned she would enter the conflict if UN forces moved into what had been North Korea.
Ignoring these warnings, UN forces—mostly Americans—swept north of the 38th parallel towards the Yalu River and the frontier with China in October. Having destroyed nearly all the North Korean forces, there was little to stop them. As she stated she would, China eased into the conflict in September 1950 and jumped in with both feet in November, sending the UN forces reeling southward again. This started a back-and-forth test of wills fought on hills and valleys and ridgelines that ran for scores of miles, up then down then up the peninsula again, chewing up Korea and making casualties from many lands.
In April 1951, MacArthur was relieved of his command for shooting off his mouth once too often for Harry Truman’s tastes, but the shooting didn’t stop. That July, truce talks began in Kaesong, then moved to Panmunjom along the much-contested front line while the fighting raged on. These talks continued for another two years. The major bone of contention had to do with returning prisoners of war: China wanted all hers back and the UN only wanted to send back those who wanted to go. The casualty lists grew, though at a slower pace than before.
On 5 March 1953, Stalin died. While some have called the death of Dear Leader Stalin and the end of the Korean War a coincidence, Georgy Malenkov, who succeeded Stalin as premier of the Soviet Union, had not been in favor of continuing the Korean conflict after 1950 as the military stalemate was costing far too much in Soviet treasure, agreeing with Omar Bradley’s “wrong war in the wrong place” admonition. But Stalin’s tyrannical hold on power and raving paranoia had kept any rational discussion of such issues from taking place—Stalin refused to think “his” revolution could lose anything anywhere; the “loss” of “his” slate of Reds in Vienna in ‘46 still stung.
Five days after Stalin’s demise, Mao’s advisors told him that the Chinese in Korea had run out of steam, morale-wise, and wouldn’t endure more bullying/indoctrination without executions to encourage recalcitrants, and even they may not have worked. Ten days after Stalin’s death, the Chinese negotiators agreed to discuss a format for exchanging prisoners of war who wanted to be repatriated, which began on 20 April 1953. After the exchange began, negotiations for a demilitarized zone roughly along the fighting lines—that to this day runs both north and south of the 38th parallel—began in earnest.
The armistice signed on 27 July 1953 ended the shooting after over a million military and three million civilian casualties (numbers, as ever, are sketchy). The United Nations fulfilled its mandate to free South Korea from aggression, showing it had the will and capacity to do what the League of Nations never had. Since the overwhelming majority of the troops fighting under UN Command were Americans, it might be safe to say that the US fulfilled the mission. So, how did the US “lose” in Korea?
One could say that MacArthur’s vain and hubristic ideal of “liberating” the entire peninsula failed, but that was not the UN mandate. While MacArthur pushed north of the 38th parallel, the UN didn’t tell him to do so; unfortunately, Truman didn’t tell him not to, either. Is this the “loss” that the wags refer to? Sometimes, yes, but usually the wag’s definition of “loss” begins and ends with victory parades and/or regime change. “Winners” have them and “losers” don’t. As many would later about Vietnam, and some still do and might with Iran (face it: we won’t know for a while), the “loss” in Korea left the “enemy’s” polity in place: there was still a communist regime in America’s opponent’s country/s. But that doesn’t answer the crucial question…
Lost what?
If someone “wins” and someone “loses,” there has to be some kind of tangible evidence for either claim (win-win is a slogan, not a reality). When the UN mandate had been fulfilled, what else could the US claim to “win” in the Korean conflict to keep the wags happy? A united Korea? Unlikely as long as China had bodies to throw into the fray, but they were running out by ‘53, and American political will flagged after ‘51, and the election of Dwight Eisenhower in ‘52 spelled its doom since Ike wasn’t hot on that war either. What did the US lose in Korea that it didn’t have before, other than a few thousand men and women?
But what did the UN’s opponents lose? Well, they didn’t unite the peninsula under one polity from Pyongyang—or Moscow, if you wish. Between North Korea, China and the Soviet Union, they suffered at least three times the casualties the UN did. The revolution they wanted to extend didn’t make it either. So if all this is true, who lost the Korean conflict?
Who won what?
Just what was there for the US to “win” in Korea? If anything, bases and allies on mainland Asia as counters to the Moscow/Beijing axis, like NATO in Europe. Yeah, got that. How about the UN? They won a great deal more credibility that their predecessor lacked: the League never fought a war or sent any peacekeepers anywhere. The UN only had to fight the one, and now sends “peacekeepers” everywhere, if of dubious worth these days.
I would argue that, like all the other Cold War conflicts and events, the Korean War helped to define the limits of Soviet/communist power in the aftermath of WWII. Yes, while Moscow-backed movements and countries achieved some successes, these often came with costs they could neither sustain nor duplicate elsewhere. Korea was the only conventional military invasion of a non-communist country by a communist state; Vietnam a decade later had a very large indigenous element and lacked Korea’s overt battle lines. If anyone “lost” the Korean War in any conventional sense, it was North Korea.
Sergeant’s Business and Other Stories
My short story collection contains two Korean War-based stories: “Hold The Line” and “To Rest With Long Ears.” The first takes place entirely in Korea; the second, only partly.
And Finally...
On 29 August:
1862: The second day of the Second Battle of Bull Run near Manassas Creek, Virginia, on the same field as the first battle there in 1861, sees James Longstreet’s corps join the fray after coming through the Thoroughfare Gap. The Confederates held off John Pope’s attacks, setting up their destruction the next day.
1958: The US Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs, Colorado, accepted its first wing of 1,100 cadets, who had been training at Lowry AFB near Denver since 1955. The class of 1959 matriculated on 3 June 1959, and was the first class to fight in Vietnam.
And today is NATIONAL CHOP SUEY DAY, celebrating this day in 1896 when a San Francisco restaurant prepared a special dish for the Chinese premier’s visit. Like many such observances, the “invention” of chop suey (which means “leftovers” or “odds and ends” in Mandarin) is a matter of much speculation, but all sources agree it comes from the US.