EMGP II

Fall 2022
Sem V
Instructor: Asma Hamid
Awan

KOREAN CISIS
38th Parallel
• Since the beginning of the 20th century, Korea had been a
part of the Japanese empire, and after World War II it fell to
the Americans and the Soviets to decide what should be
done with their enemy’s imperial possessions. In August
1945, two young aides at the State Department divided the
Korean peninsula in half along the 38th parallel. The
Russians occupied the area north of the line and the United
States occupied the area to its south.
Division
• By the end of the decade, two new states had formed on the
peninsula. In the south, the anti-communist dictator
Syngman Rhee (1875-1965) enjoyed the reluctant support of
the American government; in the north, the communist
dictator Kim Il Sung (1912-1994) enjoyed the slightly more
enthusiastic support of the Soviets. Neither dictator was
content to remain on his side of the 38th parallel, however,
and border skirmishes were common. Nearly 10,000 North
and South Korean soldiers were killed in battle before the
war even began.
Invasion by North Korea
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 People’s Republic of Korea to the
north and the pro-Western Republic of Korea to the south. This invasion was
the fi rst military action of the Cold War. By July, American troops had entered
the war on South Korea’s behalf. As far as American offi cials were concerned,
it was a war against the forces of international communism itself. After some
early back-and-forth across the 38th parallel, the fi ghting stalled and
casualties mounted with nothing to show for them. Meanwhile, American
offi cials worked anxiously to fashion some sort of armistice with the North
Koreans. The alternative, they feared, would be a wider war with Russia and
China–or even, as some warned, World War III.
US Response
• Even so, the North Korean invasion came as an alarming surprise to
American offi cials. As far as they were concerned, this was not simply
a border dispute between two unstable dictatorships on the other side
of the globe. Instead, many feared it was the first step in a communist
campaign to take over the world. For this reason, non-intervention
was not considered an option by many top decision makers. (In fact, in
April 1950, a National Security Council report known as NSC-68 had
recommended that the United States use military force to “contain”
communist expansionism anywhere it seemed to be occurring,
“regardless of the intrinsic strategic or economic value of the lands in
question.”)
Symbolism
• “If we let Korea down,” President Harry Truman (1884-1972)
said, “the Soviet[s] will keep right on going and swallow up
one [place] after another.” The fight on the Korean peninsula
was a symbol of the global struggle between east and west,
good and evil, in the Cold War. As the North Korean army
pushed into Seoul, the South Korean capital, the United
States readied its troops for a war against communism itself.
US active involvement
• At fi rst, the war was a defensive one to get the communists out of South Korea,
and it went badly for the Allies. The North Korean army was well-disciplined,
well-trained and well-equipped; Rhee’s forces in the South Korean army, by
contrast, were frightened, confused and seemed inclined to fl ee the battlefi eld
at any provocation. Also, it was one of the hottest and driest summers on
record, and desperately thirsty American soldiers were often forced to drink
water from rice paddies that had been fertilized with human waste. As a result,
dangerous intestinal diseases and other illnesses were a constant threat.
• By the end of the summer, President Truman and General Douglas MacArthur
(1880-1964), the commander in charge of the Asian theatre, had decided on a
new set of war aims. Now, for the Allies, the Korean War was an off ensive one:
It was a war to “liberate” the North from the communists.
Chinese threat
• Initially, this new strategy was a success. The
Inch’on Landing, an amphibious assault at Inch’on, pushed
the North Koreans out of Seoul and back to their side of the
38th parallel. But as American troops crossed the boundary
and headed north toward the Yalu River, the border
between North Korea and Communist China, the Chinese
started to worry about protecting themselves from what
they called “armed aggression against Chinese territory.”
Chinese leader Mao Zedong (1893-1976) sent troops to
North Korea and warned the United States to keep away
from the Yalu boundary unless it wanted full-scale war.
Gen MacArthur’s dissent
• This was something that President Truman and his advisers decidedly did not want: They
were sure that such a war would lead to Soviet aggression in Europe, the deployment of
atomic weapons and millions of senseless deaths. To General MacArthur, however,
anything short of this wider war represented “appeasement,” an unacceptable knuckling
under to the communists. As President Truman looked for a way to prevent war with the
Chinese, MacArthur did all he could to provoke it. Finally, in March 1951, he sent a letter
to Joseph Martin, a House Republican leader who shared MacArthur’s support for
declaring all-out war on China–and who could be counted upon to leak the letter to the
press. “There is,” MacArthur wrote, “no substitute for victory” against international
communism.
• For Truman, this letter was the last straw. On April 11, the president fi red the general for
insubordination.
Armistice
• In July 1951, President Truman and his new military commanders started
peace talks at Panmunjom. Still, the fighting continued along the 38th
parallel as negotiations stalled. Both sides were willing to accept a
ceasefire that maintained the 38th parallel boundary, but they could not
agree on whether prisoners of war should be forcibly “repatriated.” (The
Chinese and the North Koreans said yes; the United States said no.)
Finally, after more than two years of negotiations, the adversaries
signed an armistice on July 27, 1953. The agreement allowed the POWs
to stay where they liked; drew a new boundary near the 38th parallel
that gave South Korea an extra 1,500 square miles of territory; and
created a 2-mile-wide “demilitarized zone” that still exists today.
A destructive ‘forgotten” war
• Finally, in July 1953, the Korean War came to an end. In all, some 5 million
soldiers and civilians lost their lives in what many in the U.S. refer to as
“the Forgotten War” for the lack of attention it received compared to more
well-known confl icts like World War I and II and the Vietnam War. The
Korean peninsula is still divided today. The Korean War was relatively short
but exceptionally bloody. Nearly 5 million people died. More than half of
these–about 10 percent of Korea’s pre-war population–were civilians. (This
rate of civilian casualties was higher than World War II’s and the
Vietnam War’s.) Almost 40,000 Americans died in action in Korea, and more
than 100,000 were wounded. Today, they are remembered at the
Korean War Veterans Memorial near the Lincoln Memorial on the National
Mall in Washington, D.C., a series of 19 steel statues of servicemen.
North Korea Today
• In principle, any person is allowed to travel to North
Korea; only South Koreans and journalists are routinely
denied, although there have been some exceptions for
journalists. ... A tourist visa typically comes in the form of a
blue travel paper which is stamped by North
Korean customs instead of the passport. North Korean
citizens usually cannot freely travel around the country, let
alone travel abroad. Emigration and immigration are strictly
controlled. ... This is because the North Korean government
treats emigrants from the country as defectors.
Kim Jong-Un
• After the death of his father
in December 2011, Kim
Jong-Un was declared North
Korea’s “supreme leader,”
continuing the Kim dynasty
into a third generation.
North Korea’s Nuclear Ambitions, Relations with US

• In July 2017 North Korea successfully launched two intercontinental ballistic missiles
(ICBMs); the estimated range of these missiles was in excess of 5,000 miles (8,000
km). With the mainland United States now theoretically within striking distance of
North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, U.S. Pres. Donald Trump vowed to respond to threats
from Pyongyang with “fi re and fury like the world has never seen.” The UN—acting
with Chinese support—levelled new sanctions that eff ectively banned all of North
Korea’s most signifi cant exports. Seemingly unmoved by these developments, the
North Korean military issued a statement saying that it was considering a strike in
the waters off Guam, a U.S. territory and the site of a major U.S. military installation.
• On June 30, 2019, Trump met Kim in P’anmunjŏm, in the demilitarized zone between
North and South Korea. During that encounter Trump briefl y stepped across a
concrete marker indicating the border between the two countries and became the
fi rst sitting U.S. president to set foot in North Korea.
Nov 2022 Situation
• North Korea has fi red multiple missiles, including a failed suspected intercontinental
ballistic missile (ICBM) that forced the Japanese government to issue evacuation alerts
in the northern and central parts of the [Link] launches are the latest in a series
of North Korean weapons tests in recent months that have raised tensions in the
region. They come a day after Pyongyang fi red more than 20 missiles, the most in a
single day, including one that landed off South Korea’s coast for the fi rst time and
prompted Seoul to fi re air-to ground missiles in response. The United States and its
allies have clashed with China and Russia, accusing the pair of preventing action being
taken by the United Nations Security Council against
North Korea for its escalating ballistic missile launches.
• The 15 members of the Security Council failed to agree on a joint statement
condemning the recent barrage of ballistic missiles from North Korea. Instead, a
number of countries – including France, the United Kingdom and the US – separately
condemned Pyongyang’s ongoing missile tests.