A History of Korea (82 page)

The first major turning point of the war took place while the “Pusan Perimeter,” the roughly forty-mile radius around the southeastern port city, held off the North Korean siege long enough for the United Nations to organize an American-led recapturing of the South. In September of 1950, through the famous “Inchon Landing,” just to the west of Seoul, the American forces, led by General Douglas MacArthur, attacked the North Koreans on the backside as UN reinforcements were sent into the south. This in effect squeezed the Northern forces through a pincer movement. The retreat of the Northern army up the peninsula thereafter was almost as swift as its sweep down the peninsula a few months earlier. The combined US-ROK forces recaptured Seoul and within a few weeks had chased the People’s Army out of Pyongyang as well. In its flight northward, the North Koreans made sure to destroy both the property and persons that might assist the Southern forces. These horrific sights failed to deter the American military commanders’ push up the peninsula, all the way to the border area with China, in their determination to take a complete and quick victory, which, by late 1950, seemed well in hand.

CHINESE INTERVENTION AND THE STALEMATE

It was not as if the American army failed to foresee the potential intervention by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army on behalf of the North Koreans, as reconnaissance flights showed columns of Chinese troops assembling close to the border. Apparently, however, the American commander, General MacArthur, believed the Chinese would never engage American might. (There remains speculation that MacArthur might actually have sought to provoke a
wider confrontation as a way of overturning the communist victory in China. If so, he badly miscalculated both the formidable military challenge presented by China as well as the degree of support he would enjoy back in Washington.) When the Chinese did enter the war beginning in early November 1950, the sheer scale and suddenness of the invasion delivered nothing less than a stunning blow, as hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops chased the joint US–ROK forces back down the peninsula. Only after the joint Chinese–North Korean forces recaptured Pyongyang, then briefly even “re-liberated” Seoul, did the UN forces put a halt to the southward advance and press the front just to the north of Seoul, where it would remain for the next two-and-a-half years.

The stalemate of the rest of the war from early 1951 to mid-1953 refers to the lack of movement of the battlefront itself, which shifted little until the Armistice of July 1953 and ultimately left the country divided along the same thirty-eighth parallel where the war had started. This was the Korean War of the American film and TV series
M*A*S*H
. But the notion of a stalemate should not lead us to consider these two-and-a-half years a respite, for the relentless destruction of this period led ultimately to the greatest tragedy of all in the Korean War: the decimation of the population and landscape, with ultimately little to nothing accomplished other than millions of deaths and a bitterness and distrust singed into the memory of all actors. To North Koreans, the stalemate brought constant siege in the form of American bombs, napalm, and other carriers of devastation that left the North, by the summer of 1953, with few major buildings remaining standing. This is also the memory of the war that the North Korean leadership has sustained and incited as a reminder of American brutality, and thereby also as a reinforcement of its own legitimacy. To the Chinese, the Korean War is remembered as the conflict in which Chinese “volunteers” bravely kept American imperialism at bay. Today, the sacrifice of thousands of these Chinese soldiers prompts the grief of Chinese tourists who visit the site of a major battle of the war in the border town of Ch’
rw
n, just south of the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas. Ch’
rw
n in fact remains an open-air museum, with artifacts from the Korean War battles displayed in plain view as a reminder of South Koreans’ own sacrifices and need for vigilance (see Image 21).

Image 21
   The shelled-out headquarters of the South Korean Communist Party from the Korean War, left intact in Ch’
rw
n, South Korea, near the border with North Korea. (Author’s photo.)

As it had done throughout the course of Korean history, China once again played a key role in determining the character and fate of the Korean nation. The hyper-nationalist historical narrative in North Korea has deleted China’s contributions toward preserving the country during the Korean War, just as Chinese assistance in fending off the Japanese invasion of the sixteenth century has been officially forgotten. But the replay of historical motifs is striking. Chinese intervention in the Korean War arose first and foremost from its own interests, this time to maintain a buffer against American domination of East Asia. As was often the case in the long history of Chinese–Korean relations, Chinese influence framed the place of Korea in the larger East Asian regional order—politically, economically, and culturally. China’s participation in the Korean War also symbolized the peninsula’s distinctively modern entanglements as well. Indeed, Korea remains one of the few places on the globe where the Cold War still has powerful remnants. In fact, while the stage has changed dramatically, the primary geopolitical actors in the early twenty-first century affecting the peninsula are
the same as those during the Korean War: the US and China. And given the increasing ties today between China and South Korea as well, Chinese actions likely will affect significantly the ultimate fate of Korea in the near future, just as they did in 1950, and just as they have done throughout much of Korean history.

22

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Early North Korea

CHRONOLOGY

1945 August	First Soviet incursions into northern Korea; liberation from Japanese colonial rule
1945 September	Soviet Central Administration established; Cho Mansik asked to head a coalitional governing body
1945 October	Kim Il Sung introduced by Soviet occupation to cheering crowds in Pyongyang
1945 November	Massacre of Christian nationalists in Sin iju
1946 Spring	Initiation of comprehensive land reform in the northern occupation zone
1946 November	Elections for the interim northern legislature
1947	Establishment of the People’s Army
1948 September	Formal establishment of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
1950–53	Korean War
1955 December	Kim Il Sung’s speech introducing the concept of Juche to party propagandists
1956	Failed attempt to oust Kim by Soviet-backed Korean communists
1957	Beginning of the Ch’ llima heavy industrialization campaign
1962	Purge of novelist Han S rya, the leading propagandist for Kim Il Sung’s personality cult
1968	North Korean seizure of the USS Pueblo