In watching the TV show M.A.S.H. the question popped upn in my head a couple days ago. Who the heck started the Korean war and what was it about? any insight would help
It goes back pretty far. If you want the short-term explanation, here goes:
After World War II, the Korean peninsula was divided between Soviet troops and U.S. troops, the region being part of Japan during the war.
The areas of occupation roughly divided at the 38th Parallel.
The UN authorized elections for the whole peninsula in 1947. The Soviets balked at this and two governments were set up, as there still are today.
Tensions were tight between the two sides and there were skirmishes between both sides.
Finally on June 25, 1950, the North started a full-fledged invasion of the South. President Truman decided to oppose this and asked for the UN to intervene. Conveniently, the USSR was boycotting the Security Council at the time and the US was able to get a UN resolution supporting aid to South Korea. And the war was on.
As a side note, has anyone ever taken a history class in high school where the teacher has ever gotten as far as the Korean War?
Well, on preview I see BobT has said all I was about to.
Here’s a timeline: Korean War
I suspect others will be along shortly.
The Korean “War” was the first “war” that was not a war officially. Truman and the UN referred to it as a “police action.” Congress did not authorize the effort. Truman alone involved us with the other UN countries.
People refer to the fact that the war is still going on, as only a “truce” was signed in July 1953. The end of actual combat but no peace treaty. That strikes me as anomalous because there was no war. :rolleyes: North Korea has not been willing to sign off on the war with S Korea because they have refused to recognize S Korea and want to sign with the US. Recently, it has made some concessions to be willing to sign with S Korea a peace treaty, but has not done so yet.
Sure, there was a war. “Police action” spin or no, legally, an international armed conflict is a war, no matter who declares what.
Except that this set the precident for the US getting involved militarily all over the globe, without ever actually declaring a war.
It’s still an fairly open question as to who started the Korean War. In 1950, it was widely believed that Stalin gave Kim Il Sung orders to invade as part of a communist masterplan to make the United States commit all of its readily available military assets in Asia, leaving Germany and the rest of Europe vulnerable to a sudden Soviet invasion. Later it was theorized that Mao had initiated the war to divert attention from China while his regime was still vulnerable to a nationalist counterattack. Anti-American propaganda claims that the US wanted the war and encouraged the North to invade (similar to claims that the US encouraged Irag to invade Kuwait). Nowadays it’s generally believed that Kim decided to invade the south on his own. He probably informed Stalin and Mao of this decision before launching his troops and may even have sought their approval (as well as material support).
Look up the MHQ (the Quarterly Journal of Military History) - they recently had a good issue where they discussed the issues of the who and why of the Korean War. In short, there was a lot more planning and agreement among the Communist powers than is commonly known, even if they were not always on the same page.
To further elaborate on jwg’s post, recently declassified documents coming out of Russia detail a visit to Moscow by Mao. When meeting with Stalin, a timetable for Chinese intervention in Korea was agreed upon, along with plans for supply by the Soviets. This is to many a suprising degree of coordination, and heretofore unknown to the West.
This new information completely blows the “reluctant dragon” theory–a school of thought which believed that the Chinese only intervened in Korea when they felt that they were threatened with invasion–out of the water. Those who esposed that theory were often derided as communist apologists. Turns out they were.
Well, how do you like this? The article we mentioned is online:
Nope, the events up to and including WWII was pretty much it in my high school. But they never got all the way through it to tell us who won. 
Sad really. It seems like most of the time was spent on the U.S. Revolutionary War times and not much else. Granted, I wasn’t focusing on history for my coursework…maybe I needed to take the Advanced History class.
Well, if we leave out the U.S. participation in the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion and the several years we spent suppressing the independence movement in the Philipines, (and the fact that our “peace mission” to open Japan was carried out by a Naval squadron,) it was certainly the beginning of the current round of involvements outside the Americas. (If we consider Central America, the Caribbean basin, and South America to be somewhere “over the globe,” we were “involved militarily” without declaring war on over 50 occasions before WWII, much less Korea.)
Thanks very much for the link, Sofa King. Very informative. There was recently a debate on the SDMB as to the demise of the USSR. That article makes a strong case for the Korean War initiating the eventual demise of communism 35 years later.