What happened during the first battle of the Korean War in June of 1950?

Race for the Superbomb | Article

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The Korean War provided the first confrontation between two nuclear powers. And as the war progressed the conflict demonstrated how difficult it would be for either side to use atomic bombs decisively in battle.

With her brother on her back a war weary Korean girl tiredly trudges by a stalled M-26 tank, at Haengju, Korea. 6/9/1951, Library of Congress

The war broke out on June 25, 1950 when North Korean troops crossed the 38th parallel, invading South Korea. North Korean leader Kim Il-sung launched the attack once he had received a promise of support from Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. In January 1950, U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson haddelivered a speech in which he said South Korea and Taiwan were not part of the American "defensive perimeter," which seemed to indicate the U.S. would keep out of a Korean conflict. And it's clear that Stalin only agreed to support the invasion after being convinced the U.S. would not get involved.

However, Acheson's comments were misleading. The United States reacted to the news of the invasion by immediately taking steps to convene the United Nations Security Council. On June 27th the Security Council asked UN members to provide military assistance to help South Korea repel the invasion. U.S. forces went in on June 30th, by which time the North Koreans had taken the South Korean capital of Seoul. On September 15th, a UN force landed at Inchon and by September 29th, the UN troops had returned Seoul to the South Korean President. But by the end of the year the Chinese had intervened on behalf of the North Koreans halting the UN advance.

While the U.S. Strategic Air Command was well prepared to launch an all-out attack against the Soviet Union, it was less clear how it could use atomic weapons in a limited conflict like Korea. On August 1, 1950, the "decision was made to send the 9th Bomb Wing to Guam as an atomic task force immediately." Ten B-29s, loaded with unarmed atomic bombs, set out for the Pacific. On August 5, one of the planes crashed during take off from Fairfield-Suisun Air Force base near San Francisco, killing a dozen people and scattering the mildly radioactive uranium of the bomb's tamper around the airfield. The other planes reached Guam where they went on standby duty.

At a press conference on November 30, President Truman confirmed that he had been actively considering using atomic bombs in Korea since the beginning of the war. The comments provoked worldwide reaction and British Prime Minister Clement Attlee rushed to Washington to express his concern. Truman reluctantly reassured him that the U.S. had "no intention" of using atomic weapons in Korea except to prevent a "major military disaster."

So while President Truman tried to use his atomic superiority to the United States' advantage in North Korea he was never able to. Ultimately, it was not even clear that atomic bombing in a war against peasant armies would produce decisive results. If the Americans used the bomb and the Chinese forces kept on coming, it would demonstrate the bomb's ineffectiveness and reduce its deterrent effect in other arenas.

The war ended up being a see-saw affair that saw the UN forces retreat from North Korea to the Pusan perimeter in southeastern Korean and then forge forward again across the 38th parallel only to be driven south once more by the Chinese forces. In July 1951 after 13 months of fighting the two sides began armistice talks, which dragged on for more than two years. After Stalin's death in March 1953, the new leadership in Moscow moved more rapidly towards reaching an agreement. The cease-fire was ultimately signed on July 27, 1953.

The human cost of the war was catastrophic. In the first month of their operation alone, the Strategic Air Command groups dropped 4,000 tons of bombs. Besides high explosives, the bombers used napalm. In retirement, Curtis LeMay described the devastation saying, "we eventually burned down every town in North Korea... and some in South Korea too. We even burned down [the South Korean city of] Pusan -- an accident, but we burned it down anyway." Estimates of the casualties vary widely, but there is reason to believe that besides the three and a half million military dead, wounded and missing on both sides, more than two million civilians died in North Korea. In the end the border dividing the two countries remained exactly where it had been before the North Korean invasion.

World War II divided Korea into a Communist, northern half and an American-occupied southern half, divided at the 38th parallel. The Korean War (1950-1953) began when the North Korean Communist army crossed the 38th Parallel and invaded non-Communist South Korea. As Kim Il-sung's North Korean army, armed with Soviet tanks, quickly overran South Korea, the United States came to South Korea's aid. General Douglas MacArthur, who had been overseeing the post-WWII occupation of Japan, commanded the US forces which now began to hold off the North Koreans at Pusan, at the southernmost tip of Korea. Although Korea was not strategically essential to the United States, the political environment at this stage of the Cold War was such that policymakers did not want to appear "soft on Communism." Nominally, the US intervened as part of a "police action" run by a UN (United Nations) international peace- keeping force; in actuality, the UN was simply being manipulated by US and NATO anti-Communist interests.

With the US, UN, and South Korean (ROK) forces pinned against the sea at Pusan, MacArthur orchestrated a daring amphibious assault on Inchon, a port on the western coast of Korea. Having made this landing, MacArthur crushed the North Korean army in a pincer movement and recaptured Seoul, the capital of South Korea. Instead of being satisfied with his rapid reconquest of South Korea, MacArthur crossed the 38TH Parallel and pursued the North Korean army all the way to the northernmost provinces of North Korea. Afraid that the US was interested in taking North Korea as a base for operations against Manchuria, the People's Republic of China secretly sent an army across the Yalu River. This Chinese army attacked the US/UN/ROK forces. Only after the appointment of Lt. General Matthew Ridgway as commander of ground forces did American morale improve and the initiative begin to swing against the Chinese Communists.

Although President Truman hoped to end the war quickly and pressed MacArthur to be more tactful, the brilliant strategist went against presidential orders and continued spouting incendiary lines about his hopes to reunify Korea. After gaining the support of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), Truman relieved MacArthur of command. The move was extremely unpopular in America; MacArthur was perceived as a popular war hero. Only the support of the JCS saved Truman from impeachment after the firing.

Ridgway took MacArthur's command and held off the Communists with strong fortifications and entrenchments just north of the 38TH Parallel, sending occasional offensives against the Iron Triangle, the Communists staging area for attacks into South Korea. Peace negotiations dragged on at Kaesong, then moved and continued to drag at Panmunjom through 1951 and 1952. The US tried using strategic bombing to intimidate the Communists into negotiating a peace treaty, but they wouldn't budge, particularly on the issue of POW (Prisoner of War) repatriation. Neither side wanted to appear weak, and so the talks went on, occasionally breaking down for months. Only after Eisenhower, who was a war hero and was unafraid of Republican criticism (since he himself was a Republican), became President, could the US make substantial concessions to the Communists. In 1953 a peace treaty was signed at Panmunjom that ended the Korean War, returning Korea to a divided status essentially the same as before the war. Neither the war nor its outcome did much to lessen the era's Cold War tension.

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After five years of simmering tensions on the Korean peninsula, the Korean War began on June 25, 1950, when the Northern Korean People's Army invaded South Korea in a coordinated general attack at several strategic points along the 38th parallel, the line dividing communist North Korea from the non-communist Republic of Korea in the south. North Korea aimed to militarily conquer South Korea and therefore unify Korea under the communist North Korean regime. Concerned that the Soviet Union and Communist China might have encouraged this invasion, President Harry S. Truman committed United States air, ground, and naval forces to the combined United Nations forces assisting the Republic of Korea in its defense. President Truman designated General Douglas MacArthur as Commanding General of the United Nations Command (UNC).

The first several months of the war were characterized by armies advancing and retreating up and down the Korean peninsula. The initial North Korean attack drove United Nations Command forces to a narrow perimeter around the port of Pusan in the southern tip of the peninsula. After the front stabilized at the Pusan perimeter, General MacArthur surprised the North Koreans in September 1950 with an amphibious landing at Inchon behind North Korean lines, forcing the North Koreans to retreat behind the 38th parallel.

In October, the United Nations, urged by the United States Government, approved the movement of UN forces across the 38th parallel into North Korea in an effort to unify the country under a non-communist government. In spite of warnings issued by the Chinese Government, the United Nations forces moved toward the Yalu River, marking the North Korean border with Manchuria. Discounting the significance of initial Chinese attacks in late October, MacArthur ordered the UNC to launch an offensive, taking the forces to the Yalu. In late November the Chinese attacked in full strength, pushing the UNC in disarray south of the 38th parallel with the communist forces seizing the South Korean capital, Seoul.

In early 1951 the Chinese offensive lost its momentum and the UNC, bolstered by the revitalized 8th U.S. Army led by General Matthew B. Ridgway, retook Seoul and advanced back to the 38th parallel. From July 1951, until the end of hostilities the battle lines remained relatively stable and the conflict became a stalemate. The Truman Administration abandoned plans to reunite North and South Korea and instead decided to pursue limited goals in order to avoid the possible escalation of the conflict into a third world war involving China and the Soviet Union. When General MacArthur publicly challenged the Truman Administration's conduct of the war, the President, "...concluded that...MacArthur is unable to give his wholehearted support to the policies of the United States Government..." and relieved him from command in April 1951, replacing him with General Ridgway.

Acting on a campaign pledge, President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower went to Korea on December 2, 1952. After visiting the troops, their commanders and South Korean leaders, and receiving briefings on the military situation in Korea, Eisenhower concluded, "we could not stand forever on a static front and continue to accept casualties without any visible results. Small attacks on small hills would not end this war." President Eisenhower sought an end to hostilities in Korea through a combination of diplomacy and military muscle-flexing. On July 27, 1953, seven months after President Eisenhower's inauguration as the 34th President of the United States, an armistice was signed, ending organized combat operations and leaving the Korean Peninsula divided much as it had been since the close of World War II at the 38th parallel.

The Korean U.N. "police action" prevented North Korea from imposing its communist rule on South Korea. Also, the United States' actions in Korea demonstrated America's willingness to combat aggression, strengthened President Eisenhower's hand in Europe as he sought to organize European military defense under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and insured that the United States would pursue its military buildup called for in the famous cold war document, National Security Council Policy Paper No. 68.

Presidential candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower makes 1952 campaign pledge, “I shall go to Korea.” Speech, October 24, 1952. [Papers of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Speech Series, Box 2, Oct 23, 1952 to Nov 3, 1952 and Dec 1952 (1); NAID #12012607]

Public opinion on the Korean War, 1953. Memorandum on recent polls, June 2, 1953. [C.D. Jackson Records, Box 4, Korea (3)]

President Eisenhower’s thoughts on the eve of the Korean Armistice signing. Staff note, August 6, 1953. [Records of the White House Staff Secretary, L. Arthur Minnich Series, Box 1, Miscellaneous - K; NAID #12012729]

The President's hand-edited draft of his public statement on the occasion of the Armistice, July 26, 1953. [Papers of James C. Hagerty, Box 9, The President-Drafts (3); NAID #12012654]

President Eisenhower on his administration's post-Armistice policy toward Korea. Staff note, January 5, 1954. [Records of the White House Staff Secretary, L. Arthur Minnich Series, Box 1, Miscellaneous - K]