Korean War and the International Relations (Focusing on the Origins of the War as related to U.S. and Soviet Union`s Foreign Policy)

1994 ◽  
Vol 9 (0) ◽  
pp. 153-169
Author(s):  
Myong Sang Choe
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Korean War ◽  
Kim Il Sung ◽  
The North ◽  
Lasting Peace ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Intimate Knowledge ◽  
Korean College Students

I believe the most important patriotic duty of Korean is to continue lasting peace in Korea and reunify the Korean peninsula while promoting growth and prosperity. Although it has been almost fifty years since the outbreak of the Korean War, we have yet to accurately examined the origins of the war. With the recent death of Kim, Il-Sung, who might have had an intimate knowledge of the facts, the effort to uncover truth of the origins of the Korean War seem even more distant. With the truth behind veils, some Korean college students still have believed the North Korean view that the Korean War was a war of national liberation and the unification of the fatherland. These students even proclaim that the South initiated the war.

Korean Society: North and South

North Korea ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick McEachern
Keyword(s):  
Classification System ◽  
Korean War ◽  
Personal Power ◽  
Korean Society ◽  
Kim Il Sung ◽  
The North ◽  
System P ◽  
Social Classification ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
North And South

What is North Korea’s Songbun social classification system? After the Korean War, North Korea’s founder and leader Kim Il Sung aggressively moved to enhance his personal power at the top of the North Korean system. He continued to purge individuals and factions that...

The Korean War

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
James I. Matray
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Korean War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Pacific War ◽  
The South ◽  
The North ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
The U.S

On June 25, 1950, North Korea’s invasion of South Korea ignited a conventional war that had origins dating from at least the end of World War II. In April 1945, President Harry S. Truman abandoned a trusteeship plan for postwar Korea in favor of seeking unilateral U.S. occupation of the peninsula after an atomic attack forced Japan’s prompt surrender. Soviet entry into the Pacific war led to a last minute agreement dividing Korea at the 38th parallel into zones of occupation. Two Koreas emerged after Soviet-American negotiations failed to agree on a plan to end the division. Kim Il Sung in the north and Syngman Rhee in the south both were determined to reunite Korea, instigating major military clashes at the parallel in the summer of 1949. Moscow and Washington opposed their clients’ invasion plans until April 1950 when Kim persuaded Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin that with mass support in South Korea, he would achieve a quick victory. At first, Truman hoped that South Korea could defend itself with more military equipment and U.S. air support. Commitment of U.S. ground forces came after General Douglas MacArthur, U.S. occupation commander in Japan, visited the front and advised that the South Koreans could not halt the advance. Overconfident U.S. soldiers would sustain defeat as well, retreating to the Pusan Perimeter, a rectangular area in the southeast corner of the peninsula. On September 15, MacArthur staged a risky amphibious landing at Inchon behind enemy lines that sent Communist forces fleeing back into North Korea. The People’s Republic of China viewed the U.S. offensive for reunification that followed as a threat to its security and prestige. In late November, Chinese “volunteers” attacked in mass. After a chaotic retreat, U.S. forces counterattacked in February 1951 and moved the line of battle just north of the parallel. After two Chinese offensives failed, negotiations to end the war began in July 1951, but stalemated in May 1952 over the issue of repatriation of prisoners of war. Peace came because of Stalin’s death in March 1953, rather than President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s veiled threat to stage nuclear strikes against China. Scholars have disagreed about many issues surrounding the Korean War, but the most important debate continues to center on whether the conflict had international or domestic origins. Initially, historians relied mainly on U.S. government publications to write accounts that ignored events prior to North Korea’s attack, endorsing an orthodox interpretation assigning blame to the Soviet Union and applauding the U.S. response. Declassification of U.S. government documents and presidential papers during the 1970s led to the publication of studies assigning considerable responsibility to the United States for helping to create a kind of war in Korea before June 1950. Moreover, left revisionist writers labeled the conflict a classic civil war. Release of Chinese and Soviet sources after 1989 established that Stalin and Chinese leader Mao Zedong approved the North Korean invasion, prompting right revisionist scholars to reassert key orthodox arguments. This essay describes how and why recent access to Communist documents has not settled the disagreements among historians about the causes, course, and consequences of the Korean War.

scholarly journals Actualized Stigma: The historical formation of anti-Americanism in North Korea

2017 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 543-576 ◽  
Author(s):  
TAEWOO KIM
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
North Korea ◽  
Korean War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Early Years ◽  
The North ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Japanese Colonial

AbstractDuring the Open Port period and Japanese colonial period (1876–1945), Koreans generally had a positive image of the United States. This positive view of the United States held by Koreans persisted until after liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945. The United States was a ‘liberator’ that saved the Koreans, and was viewed as ‘a cooperator’ with whom Korea was to solve its national task of establishing a new country. However, the concept of ‘American imperialist warmonger’ had begun to be promoted in North Korea from 1948–49. It was a concept advanced by the Soviet Union and the North Korean leadership. The negative image of the United States, which spread throughout North Korea from the early years of the Cold War, was merely a perplexing stigma lacking substantiated grounds. However, the experiences of the Korean War actualized the image of the United States as a ‘warmonger’ in the hearts of the North Korean people. Alleged indiscriminate aerial bombings, mass slaughters, sexual assaults, and arson attacks against Korean civilians became the most important reason for the expansion of intense sentiment. Anti-Americanism began to be systemized and routinized in every aspect of North Korean life after the Korean War.

The Role of the Mongolian People’s Republic in the Korean War

2018 ◽  
pp. 97-130
Author(s):  
Denzenlkham Ulambayar
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Korean War ◽  
World Order ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
History Of

Since the 1990s, when previously classified and top secret Russian archival documents on the Korean War became open and accessible, it has become clear for post-communist countries that Kim Il Sung, Stalin and Mao Zedong were the primary organizers of the war. It is now equally certain that tensions arising from Soviet and American struggle generated the origins of the Korean War, namely the Soviet Union’s occupation of the northern half of the Korean peninsula and the United States’ occupation of the southern half to the 38th parallel after 1945 as well as the emerging bipolar world order of international relations and Cold War. Newly available Russian archival documents produced much in the way of new energies and opportunities for international study and research into the Korean War.2 However, within this research few documents connected to Mongolia have so far been found, and little specific research has yet been done regarding why and how Mongolia participated in the Korean War. At the same time, it is becoming today more evident that both Soviet guidance and U.S. information reports (evaluated and unevaluated) regarding Mongolia were far different from the situation and developments of that period. New examples of this tendency are documents declassified in the early 2000s and released publicly from the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in December 2016 which contain inaccurate information. The original, uncorrupted sources about why, how and to what degree the Mongolian People’s Republic (MPR) became a participant in the Korean War are in fact in documents held within the Mongolian Central Archives of Foreign Affairs. These archives contain multiple documents in relation to North Korea. Prior to the 1990s Mongolian scholars Dr. B. Lkhamsuren,3 Dr. B. Ligden,4 Dr. Sh. Sandag,5 junior scholar J. Sukhee,6 and A. A. Osipov7 mention briefly in their writings the history of relations between the MPR and the DPRK during the Korean War. Since the 1990s the Korean War has also briefly been touched upon in the writings of B. Lkhamsuren,8 D. Ulambayar (the author of this paper),9 Ts. Batbayar,10 J. Battur,11 K. Demberel,12 Balảzs Szalontai,13 Sergey Radchenko14 and Li Narangoa.15 There have also been significant collections of documents about the two countries and a collection of memoirs published in 200716 and 2008.17 The author intends within this paper to discuss particularly about why, how and to what degree Mongolia participated in the Korean War, the rumors and realities of the war and its consequences for the MPR’s membership in the United Nations. The MPR was the second socialist country following the Soviet Union (the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics) to recognize the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) and establish diplomatic ties. That was part of the initial stage of socialist system formation comprising the Soviet Union, nations in Eastern Europe, the MPR, the PRC (People’s Republic of China) and the DPRK. Accordingly between the MPR and the DPRK fraternal friendship and a framework of cooperation based on the principles of proletarian and socialist internationalism had been developed.18 In light of and as part of this framework, The Korean War has left its deep traces in the history of the MPR’s external diplomatic environment and state sovereignty

American Policy-making and the North Korean Aggression

1955 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-232 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander L. George
Keyword(s):  
Policy Making ◽  
Korean War ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
American Experience ◽  
The Past ◽  
The North ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
American Policy ◽  
Peripheral Areas ◽  
And Behavior

The Korean War represented the first American experience with the problem of meeting local Communist aggression by means of limited, if costly, warfare. But despite the revulsion with that experience, and the “new look” at military strategy and foreign policy, it may not be the last. The character of recent weapons developments and the passing of our thermonuclear monopoly make it probable that in the future, as in the past, American policy-makers will be forced to consider the alternative of local conflict, with all its problems and risks, in determining how to respond to the threat or actuality of Communist moves in the peripheral areas.In these circumstances, analyses of American policy-making immediately before and during the Korean War may well illuminate the perspectives and considerations relevant to this difficult and dangerous type of operation. Here, no more can be done than toexamine the effect of strategic planning and estimates of Communist intentions and behavior on the decision to commit American forces to the defense of South Korea. This decision, and even the crucial decision to commit ground forces to eventual offensive operations against the aggressor, was made within afew days of the North Korean attack. Attention, accordingly, is focused on American policy reactions to the war in the first week or ten days following June 25, 1950.

The CIA Confronts the Tito-Stalin Split, 1948–1951

2011 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-145
Author(s):  
Coleman Mehta
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Korean War ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
The United States ◽  
Central Intelligence Agency ◽  
Intelligence Agency ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Soviet Invasion ◽  
Political Economic

After relations between the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia broke down in 1948, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) devoted a good deal of attention to Yugoslavia. Initially, however, the Truman administration was reluctant to provide extensive security assistance to the regime of Josip Broz Tito, who until 1948 had been a brutal Stalinist. The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 changed the situation. The United States developed much closer political, economic, and military ties with Yugoslavia, and the CIA established a formal agreement of cooperation with the Yugoslav Ministry of State Security, especially on intelligence-sharing and covert operations. U.S. officials were particularly concerned about ensuring that Yugoslavia would be able to defend itself, if necessary, against a Soviet invasion.

Mr. X and the Pacific

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul J. Heer
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Korean War ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
The Impact

This book chronicles and assesses the little-known involvement of US diplomat George F. Kennan—renowned as an expert on the Soviet Union—in US policy toward East Asia, primarily in the early Cold War years. Kennan, with vital assistance from his deputy John Paton Davies, played pivotal roles in effecting the US withdrawal from the Chinese civil war and the redirection of American occupation policy in Japan, and in developing the “defensive perimeter” concept in the western Pacific. His influence, however, faded soon thereafter: he was less successful in warning against US security commitments in Korea and Indochina, and the impact of the Korean War ultimately eclipsed his strategic vision for US policy in East Asia. This was due in large part to Kennan’s inability to reconcile his judgment that the mainland of East Asia was strategically expendable to the United States with his belief that US prestige should not be compromised there. The book examines the subsequent evolution of Kennan’s thinking about East Asian issues—including his role as a prominent critic of US involvement in the Vietnam War—and the legacies of his engagement with the region.

4. From colony to competing states

2020 ◽  
pp. 69-86
Author(s):  
Michael J. Seth
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Korean War ◽  
The United States ◽  
Republic Of Korea ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
Japanese Colonial ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Second World

As the Second World War came to an end, most Koreans hoped that their nation would be an independent and prosperous state. ‘From colony to competing states’ shows that, instead, events took an unexpected turn. Korea became both free of Japanese colonial rule and simultaneously partitioned into two occupation zones by the United States and the Soviet Union. From these zones, two separate states were created: the Republic of Korea and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea; two societies with different leaderships, political systems, and geopolitical orientations. When North Korea attempted to reunify the country in 1950, foreign powers again intervened resulting in the Korean War, a costly conflict that left the peninsula still divided.

Communist Parties Come to Power in Korea and Vietnam

2021 ◽  
pp. 135-142
Author(s):  
George W. Breslauer
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
South Korea ◽  
Communist Party ◽  
Korean War ◽  
World War ◽  
The North ◽  
Guerrilla War ◽  
Northern Half ◽  
The Korean War ◽  
The Status

In Korea, the USSR occupied the northern half of the country after Japan withdrew its occupation forces. The Soviets installed a regime of North Korean communists who enjoyed popular support due to their sacrifices in fighting the Japanese during World War II. The leadership convinced Moscow and Beijing to sanction and support an invasion of South Korea that they hoped would reunify the country. This led to the Korean War, which merely restored the status quo ante at the expense of millions of lives. The pathway was different in Vietnam, where a guerrilla war against Japanese, then French, occupation led to the victory of the Vietnamese communist party in the North.

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