Search results
- The Korean War began on June 25, 1950, when 75,000 North Korean soldiers poured over the 38th parallel into South Korea to impose communism on its neighbor.
- The Korean War began at 4:30 a.m. on June 25, 1950, and ended on July 27, 1953. There are still more than 7,000 U.S. soldiers missing in action from the war.
- The North Korean film Unsung Heroes (1978) glorifies members of the North Korean military while depicting war crimes by South Korea and the U.S. In its cast were several U.S. soldiers who had defected to North Korea.
- The Korean War took a heavy toll—up to a total of 5 million dead, wounded, or missing, and half of them civilians.
- Overview
- Revolution, division, and partisan warfare, 1945–50
After defeating Japan in World War II, Soviet forces occupied the Korean Peninsula north of the 38th parallel and U.S. forces occupied the south. Korea was intended to be reunited eventually, but the Soviets established a communist regime in their zone, while in 1947 the United Nations assumed control of the U.S. zone and sought to foster a democratic pan-Korean state. Amid partisan warfare in the south, the Republic of Korea was established in 1948. By 1950 the violence had convinced North Korean leader Kim Il-Sung that a war under Soviet auspices was necessary for reunification.
How was the United States involved in the Korean War?
Prior to Kim Il-Sung’s Soviet-backed invasion in 1950, the United States military was involved in rebuilding Korea south of the 38th parallel and training a standing South Korean army. When the United Nations Security Council called for member nations to defend South Korea, U.S. General Douglas MacArthur took charge of the United Nations Command. Thereafter, U.S. troops constituted the bulk of the UN’s expeditionary force in Korea.
How were China and the Soviet Union involved in the Korean War?
After the partition of the Korean Peninsula in 1945, the Soviet Union was instrumental in purging its zone of political dissidents and supporting the ruling communist party. The U.S.S.R. backed communist leader Kim Il-Sung’s 1950 invasion of South Korea. When the invasion was beaten back, China sent a formidable expeditionary force into Korea, first to drive the United Nations Command out of the north and then to unify the peninsula under communist control.
Was the Korean War technically a war?
The Korean War had its immediate origins in the collapse of the Japanese empire at the end of World War II in September 1945. Unlike China, Manchuria, and the former Western colonies seized by Japan in 1941–42, Korea, annexed to Japan since 1910, did not have a native government or a colonial regime waiting to return after hostilities ceased. Most claimants to power were harried exiles in China, Manchuria, Japan, the U.S.S.R., and the United States. They fell into two broad categories. The first was made up of committed Marxist revolutionaries who had fought the Japanese as part of the Chinese-dominated guerrilla armies in Manchuria and China. One of these exiles was a minor but successful guerrilla leader named Kim Il-sung, who had received some training in Russia and had been made a major in the Soviet army. The other Korean nationalist movement, no less revolutionary, drew its inspiration from the best of science, education, and industrialism in Europe, Japan, and America. These “ultranationalists” were split into rival factions, one of which centred on Syngman Rhee, educated in the United States and at one time the president of a dissident Korean Provisional Government in exile.
In their hurried effort to disarm the Japanese army and repatriate the Japanese population in Korea (estimated at 700,000), the United States and the Soviet Union agreed in August 1945 to divide the country for administrative purposes at the 38th parallel (latitude 38° N). At least from the American perspective, this geographic division was a temporary expedient; however, the Soviets began a short-lived reign of terror in northern Korea that quickly politicized the division by driving thousands of refugees south. The two sides could not agree on a formula that would produce a unified Korea, and in 1947 U.S. President Harry S. Truman persuaded the United Nations (UN) to assume responsibility for the country, though the U.S. military remained nominally in control of the South until 1948. Both the South Korean national police and the constabulary doubled in size, providing a southern security force of about 80,000 by 1947. In the meantime, Kim Il-sung strengthened his control over the Communist Party as well as the northern administrative structure and military forces. In 1948 the North Korean military and police numbered about 100,000, reinforced by a group of southern Korean guerrillas based at Haeju in western Korea.
The creation of an independent South Korea became UN policy in early 1948. Southern communists opposed this, and by autumn partisan warfare had engulfed parts of every Korean province below the 38th parallel. The fighting expanded into a limited border war between the South’s newly formed Republic of Korea Army (ROKA) and the North Korean border constabulary as well as the North’s Korean People’s Army (KPA). The North launched 10 cross-border guerrilla incursions in order to draw ROKA units away from their guerrilla-suppression campaign in the South.
Britannica Quiz
A History of War
In its larger purpose the partisan uprising failed: the Republic of Korea (ROK) was formed in August 1948, with Syngman Rhee as president. Nevertheless, almost 8,000 members of the South Korean security forces and at least 30,000 other Koreans lost their lives. Many of the victims were not security forces or armed guerrillas at all but simply people identified as “rightists” or “reds” by the belligerents. Small-scale atrocities became a way of life.
- Allan R. Millett
Nov 9, 2009 · The Korean war began on June 25, 1950, when some 75,000 soldiers from the North Korean People’s Army poured across the 38th parallel, the boundary between the Soviet-backed Democratic...
Korean War. The Korean War was fought between North Korea and South Korea from 1950 to 1953. It began on 25 June 1950 when North Korea invaded South Korea and ceased after an armistice on 27 July 1953.
- Inconclusive
Aug 11, 2020 · The Korean War was the first time the United States military engaged in a shooting conflict after the end of World War II; it was also the first of many sparks that really turned the Cold War...
The Korean War was a conflict (1950–53) between North Korea, aided by China, and South Korea, aided by the UN with the U.S. as the principal participant. At least 2.5 million people lost their lives in the fighting, which ended in July 1953 with Korea still divided into two hostile states separated by the 38th parallel.
May 7, 2021 · On June 25, 1950, the Korean War (1950-1953) began when 75,000 members of the North Korean People’s Army crossed the 38th parallel and invaded South Korea. It would be the first military...
