Do you know how the Korean War started?

2015-06-25T19:13:05-04:00

Though the Korean War started on this day 65 years ago—June 25, 1950—when North Korean tanks crossed the 38th parallel, the boundary with South Korea, TIME's reporting from the following week reveals it took several days for the United States to realize the scope of what had happened.

It was early Sunday morning in Korea, the middle of Saturday afternoon in Independence, Mo. In the former, TIME reported, "North Korean radio broadcast war whoops" as "past terraced hills, green with newly transplanted rice, rumbled tanks." In the latter, U.S. President Harry Truman was visiting with friends and supporters in his home state when he received a telephone call from Secretary of State Dean Acheson.

About a day passed. In Korea, American civilians were evacuated as the Southern army rallied to try to hold the line. The 38th parallel was, one State Department official admitted, an entirely arbitrary line, chosen by the World War II victors in Potsdam with no consideration for the geographical, economic or political realities of the country—but it was the border, nonetheless, and it had been crossed. In the U.S., Truman returned to the capital to meet with advisers. The nation had already taken a side and promised help, but the question of how to help was unresolved. "As the tense White House conferences stretched through Sunday night and Monday," TIME reported, "that question merged with another: Would the rapidly retreating South Koreans be able to hold out long enough for the U.S. to act?"

South Korean President Syngman Rhee said publicly that he was disappointed with the American response: "Our soldiers are very brave. They sacrifice themselves against the tanks . . . Korea is very hard up because aid was so slow. It is too little and too late." Via North Korean radio, the South was urged to surrender.

Then, on Tuesday, June 27, President Truman and his advisers came to a decision. "Shortly after 11 a.m., the U.S.'s political and military policymakers began to arrive at the White House from the State Department, the Pentagon and Capitol Hill," TIME reported. "By 11:30 they had closed the high doors of the Cabinet Room behind them. Outside 100 reporters thronged the executive lobby or stood by telephones in the adjacent press room. Exactly at noon, Presidential Secretary Charles Ross stirred them into a whirlwind as he passed out the text of the gravest, hardest-hitting answer to aggression that the U.S. has ever made in its peacetime history."

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/how-the-korean-war-started/ar-AAc6ZIa

How the Korean War Started

Response by SFC Jeff Gurchinoff made Jun 25 at 2015 7:17 PM

2015-06-25T19:17:39-04:00

Well obviously it was Bush's fault

(I'm being sarcastic)

- that was my public service announcement for any idiots that may be perusing RP and stumble across my comment

Response by CWO3 Private RallyPoint Member made Jun 25 at 2015 7:43 PM

2015-06-25T19:43:31-04:00

Yes, and my dad who is 85 years old was in knee deep when this all happened while defending Pusan area. I was lucky that he wasn't captured during the early phases of the war. Because three years later I was born after the so-called Truce. I've been on the DMZ so many times during my services in the Marine Corps. S/F, JK.

Response by LTC Bink Romanick made Jun 25 at 2015 8:23 PM

2015-06-25T20:23:05-04:00

Remember Task Force Smith.

Response by COL Ted Mc made Jun 26 at 2015 3:23 AM

2015-06-26T03:23:53-04:00

You should also remember that (to the Koreans) there were NOT "two" Koreas - there was only one. This means that (to the people of the Northern half of Korea) they were NOT invading anyone, they were uniting their country.

Mind you, once the bullets started to fly, the US really had no option but to support Syngman Rhee (whose election the US government had carefully stage managed) despite the fact that he was a crass, venal, thieving, murderous thug whose government had reduced the number of people who didn't support him by around 50,000 people per year through the simple expedient of having the Army shoot them.

BTW - Did you know that Syngman Rhee had been the president of the Korean Provisional Government (a government in exile) from 1919 to 1925, only leaving office due to the minor technicality that he had been impeached and tossed out on his butt?

Response by Cpl Jeff N. made Jun 26 at 2015 6:32 AM

2015-06-26T06:32:09-04:00

The United States was caught woefully unprepared for this. We had scaled back forces post WWII and the North Koreans saw an opportunity to force their will upon the south. We had to throw together a provisional Marine Division to even make a real response.

Response by COL Jon Thompson made Jun 26 at 2015 10:21 AM

2015-06-26T10:21:27-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, I started re-reading the book, THE FORGOTTEN WAR, by Clay Blair. Korea truly is the forgotten war because on the 65th anniversary of it breaking out, there was hardly any mention of it in news or even on social media.

Response by COL Ted Mc made Jun 26 at 2015 11:45 AM

2015-06-26T11:45:47-04:00

Gunny; You might also find "The China Mirage" [Publisher: New York : Little, Brown and Company, c2015 - ISBN: [login to see] 673] of interest. This study goes back just a shade further into history than most of the evaluations of the Orient (such as Anne Carrol's "How America Lost China [2014]) and why the US is in trouble there now.

http://www.realclearhistory.com/2014/10/01/how_america_lost_china_3458.html

I'd like to point out one aspect of the Carrol article before you read it and that aspect is epitomized by the statement "Most historians agree that Chiang Kai-shek himself was not personally corrupt, but no one denies that Kuomintang officials in the government and the military were inefficient, greedy, dishonest and selfish." which seems pretty straight-forward until you realize that those "Kuomintang officials" included General Chiang's wife and almost every member of both their families. We can always overlook the fact that General Chiang was personally responsible for "relocating" between 113.6 tons and 115.2 tons of gold that was the property of the Chinese government and that his successors have made no move to return a single dime of it (mostly because it has all been spent buying American real estate and companies which are owned by the descendants of General Chiang and his "China Lobby" [albeit through chains of "numbered" companies and "off shore" banks]).

Response by GySgt Wayne A. Ekblad made Jul 27 at 2015 3:38 PM

2015-07-27T15:38:46-04:00

With warning to U.S., North Korea marks end of Korean War ...

http://www.militarytimes.com/story/military/2015/07/27/with-warning-to-us-north-korea-marks-end-of-korean-war/30738685/

With warning to U.S., North Korea marks end of Korean War

North Korean officials warned the United States that another war on the Korean Peninsula would leave no Americans alive to sign a surrender document as the country marked Monday's anniversary of the armistice that ended fighting in the Korean War more than six decades ago.

Response by CPT Jack Durish made Jul 27 at 2015 4:40 PM

2015-07-27T16:40:39-04:00

Let me begin by saying that I admire President Truman. I wish the current occupant of the White House would dust off the sign that HST kept on his desk - "The Buck Stops Here" - and live by it. However, the Korean War is the direct result of one of his diplomatic missteps: He let it be known that the US was not inclined to become engaged in another war, especially not over Korea. Pyongyang hastened to their comrades in China who conferred with their comrades in Moscow and permission was granted for North Korea to invade the South. Keep in mind that North Koreans had spent a couple of decades fighting alongside the Chinese in their revolution and they were confident that they could prevail in the South if the US wasn't involved. Hindsight shows the correctness of their thinking as well as the error in Truman's statement.

Response by SPC Jan Allbright, M.Sc., R.S. made Aug 21 at 2015 9:56 AM

2015-08-21T09:56:38-04:00

I was going to vote for 1945.

"Japan capitulated in August 1945. An effort to construct an independent government for the entire Korea was made in September 1945 by the statesman Lyuh Woon-Hyung. However, he had to step down under pressure from the United States Military Government. An initiative to hold general and free elections in the entire Korea came up in the United Nations in the fall of 1947. However this initiative did not materialize because of disagreement between the United States and the Soviet Union: During this period of two years between the fall of 1945 and the fall of 1947, in the absence of the opportunity to set up a unified government, two separate governments began evolving and consolidating in the south and in the north."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Division_of_Korea

Division of Korea - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The division of Korea into South Korea and North Korea was the result of the 1945 Allied victory in World WarII, ending the Empire of Japan's 35-year colonial rule of Korea by General Order No. 1. The United States and the Soviet Union agreed to temporarily occupy the country as a trusteeship with the zone of control along the 38th parallel. The purpose of this trusteeship was to establish a Korean provisional government which would become...

Response by SPC Sheila Lewis made Aug 21 at 2015 11:47 AM

2015-08-21T11:47:43-04:00

I knew some of the details that I learned in school.

Response by Sgt Tom Cunnally made Jun 24 at 2016 5:01 PM

2016-06-24T17:01:43-04:00

I sure do Gunny

I had just finished my freshman year in High School and heard about the war in Korea on the radio & it started on Sunday 25 June 1950 A few days later some of my friends in the Reserves were called to active duty and landed in August with the 1st Provisional Brigade. So I was glued to the news on TV every night to learn about how the fighting was going along the Pusan Peninsula, Seoul and Inchon I tried to enlist at 17 but didn't have my Mom's signature so I had to wait until I was 18 on 10 November 1953 but the war in Korea was over by then for a few months.