Quick questions on Korean War 1950-1953: HSC Modern History Cold War in Asia

Korea had been a Japanese colony since 1910. Soviet forces accepted Japanese surrender north of the 38th parallel from August 1945; American forces accepted surrender south of the line. The division, proposed by two American colonels (Dean Rusk and Charles Bonesteel) on the night of 10 to 11 August 1945, was supposed to be administrative.

The Korean People's Army crossed the 38th parallel at 4 am on 25 June 1950 with seven divisions, 150 T-34 tanks, and air support. Seoul fell on 28 June.

MacArthur's amphibious landing at Inchon (Operation Chromite) on 15 September 1950, 240 kilometres behind North Korean lines, was tactically brilliant. Seoul was recaptured on 28 September. The North Korean army collapsed.

The first Chinese offensive (25 October to 5 November) was a probe. The second offensive (25 November to 24 December 1950) routed UN forces. The Eighth Army retreated 480 kilometres; the X Corps was evacuated from Hungnam (15 to 24 December). Seoul fell again on 4 January 1951.

MacArthur publicly advocated bombing Manchuria, blockading the Chinese coast, and using Nationalist Chinese troops. His 20 March 1951 letter to Republican leader Joseph Martin was read in Congress on 5 April. Truman dismissed MacArthur on 11 April 1951 for insubordination. Ridgway replaced him.

Armistice talks opened at Kaesong on 10 July 1951 and moved to Panmunjom on 25 October. The line of contact was settled by November 1951. Prisoner repatriation deadlocked the talks for 18 months: about 22,000 Chinese and Korean prisoners refused repatriation. The war continued at the front (Heartbreak Ridge, Pork Chop Hill).

Casualties: approximately 36,000 American, 600 Australian, 217,000 South Korean, 400,000 to 600,000 Chinese, 215,000 North Korean military dead. Civilian dead exceeded 2 million.

Orthodox accounts (Stueck, The Korean War, 1995) treat the war as Stalin-authorised aggression contained by UN collective security. Revisionist accounts (Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War, 1981) place the war within Korean civil conflict origins. Post-archive scholarship (Weathersby, Goncharov-Lewis-Xue, Uncertain Partners, 1993) confirms Stalin's authorisation and Mao's acceptance but shows Kim's initiative.

The United States supplied 88 per cent of UN combat forces and overall command. UN authorisation was decisive politically; American power was decisive militarily.

Without the Soviet boycott of June 1950, no UN resolution.

5 March 1953 unlocked the armistice; before then no settlement.