The Korean War (10 page)
The first and most obvious manifestation of the commitment to NSC-68 was that the United States began to give active support to the French in their struggle against the communist Vietminh in Indochina. Washington felt a growing concern that the Russians might consider some move against Japan, the centrepiece of the American defence of the Pacific basin. While Acheson remained unwilling to commit the United States to the protection of Formosa, his Assistant Secretary for the Far East, Dean Rusk, was increasingly anxious to do so.
Yet in June 1950, the hardening of attitudes within the Administration remained little understood within the United States, and scarcely at all outside it. NSC-68 has been cited as a classic example of a document whose secrecy destroyed its very purpose. Its conclusions remained unpublished for more than twenty years after they were drafted. The public signals reaching Moscow about
American intentions thus remained unchanged, and uncertain. Had the Russians possessed any inkling of the strength of Washington’s newfound determination to seek a battleground upon which to challenge communist expansion, it is profoundly unlikely that Moscow would ever have allowed the North Korean invasion of June 1950 to take place.
To this day, there remains no explicit, trustworthy evidence about the circumstances in which Kim Il Sung made his decision to invade South Korea in June 1950. But the circumstantial evidence is strong that the Russians sanctioned, rather than instigated the attack. Plainly, it would have been impossible for Kim to act at all without the active assistance of Moscow in providing arms and supplies, and the connivance of Peking in allowing rail-movements through Chinese territory. In addition, in the months before the invasion, many thousands of communist veterans who had fought with Mao Tse Tung’s armies, but were Korean by birth, returned to their homeland in the north. In sending the Koreans back, the Chinese were almost certainly inspired more by their urgent need to demobilise their vast forces, rather than any desire to reinforce Kim Il Sung’s divisions. But the effect was the same. Pyongyang’s army was strengthened by large numbers of combat veterans.
The memoirs of Nikita Khrushchev, a heavily tainted source, nonetheless offer a plausible version of the events leading up to the invasion. According to Khrushchev, Kim Il Sung came to Moscow to seek Stalin’s acquiescence in his plans for war, and the North Korean was successful in convincing the Russian that he could gain a speedy victory. Mao Tse Tung agreed that the United States would not intervene, ‘since the war would be an internal matter which the Korean people would decide for themselves’.
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The behaviour of Moscow in the months following the outbreak of war suggested Soviet reluctance to identify wholeheartedly with Kim Il Sung’s adventure, to stake everything upon his victory. The Soviets appear to have satisfied themselves that the Korean could
make his attempt to unify the country under communism without intolerable political or military risk to themselves. They were probably encouraged in this view by their knowledge of the widespread communist support within the South, which might be expected to rally when the Northerners swept across the country.
One of the foremost historians of this period, Allan S. Whiting, concludes that there was ‘no agreement . . . nor . . . any direct evidence on the degree to which Communist China participated in the planning. It is possible that Stalin did not even inform Mao of the forthcoming attack during their weeks of conference in Moscow, although this is highly unlikely.’
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The Chinese, the overwhelming probability suggests, were passive, if acquiescent parties to North Korea’s intentions. Peking, that first summer after attaining final victory in its own civil war, had ample national problems at home, without seeking any share in those of Korea.
In the summer of 1950, a wave of intelligence reports reached both American headquarters in Tokyo, and the CIA in Washington, suggesting that the North Koreans were preparing an invasion of the South. One CIA report, of 10 March 1950, pinpointed June as the chosen date. Later that month, MacArthur’s intelligence department even prepared a report, predicting a war in Korea by early summer.
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Yet, as so often on the eve of twentieth-century crises, those at the summit of power showed no sign of expecting real trouble. MacArthur repeatedly declared his disbelief in the imminence of war. His absolute lack of attention to the combat training of his divisions in Japan can only be explained by his conviction that they would not be called upon to fight. The most serious contingency Far East Command recognised was likely escalation of the communist guerrilla struggle against Syngman Rhee, which had been in progress for many months.
But only historians can focus with such clarity on the intelligence warnings of war; the few flimsy sheets upon which these were provided reached the desks of MacArthur’s officers and the Departments of Defense and State in Washington among a vast
paper harvest of contradictory, confusing, often obviously unreliable information and analysis. It was the familiar intelligence problem, of distinguishing ‘signals’ from ‘noise’. The ‘noise’, that summer of 1950, came in the form of communist threats that seemed to touch every quarter of the globe: on the occupation boundaries in Europe, at Trieste and in the oilfields of the Middle East, among the Huk guerrillas of the Philippines, on the borders of Greece and Yugoslavia. Korea was indeed recognised, in the war departments of the West, as a possible point of confrontation with the communists. But it lay near the bottom of a long list of prospective battlefields.
The devastating North Korean artillery and mortar barrage opened at 4 a.m. on the morning of 25 June 1950. In Washington, it was early afternoon on Saturday 24 June. The communist attack, masked by a skilful deception plan in the preceding weeks, achieved complete strategic and tactical surprise. The Korean People’s Army possessed seven combat-ready divisions, an armoured brigade equipped with Russian T-34 tanks, three newly activated divisions and ample supporting artillery. Since Kim Il Sung’s army was founded in February 1948, it had been welded into an intensely motivated, well-equipped fighting force of 135,000 men. The air force of some two hundred Yak-9 fighters and Il-10 ground attack bombers was negligible by Western standards, but sufficed to provide formidable close support for the North Korean assault, and to wipe out Seoul’s pitiful handful of T-6 trainers on the ground in the first hours of war. Syngman Rhee’s 95,000-strong army had been deliberately denied armour, anti-tank weapons, and artillery heavier than 105mm. In the summer of 1950 more than a third of the ROK army’s vehicles was immobilised in want of repair. Spare parts were almost non-existent. There were just six days’ ammunition reserve in the country. Only around a third of Rhee’s army was deployed in the line confronting the communist
assault on 25 June. Like its parent regime, the ROK army was a corrupt, demoralised body entirely devoid of the motivation that was so quickly apparent in the communist formations.
Four communist spearheads were soon driving south, led by their almost invulnerable armour, checked more by terrain and natural obstacles than by the ROK forces as they forged through the gaps in the hills. Ten communist divisions, supported by 1,643 guns, streamed over the Parallel. The town of Ongin fell within hours to the KPA 6th Division. The communist 1st Division drove for Kaesong, while in the east the 3rd and 4th Divisions took the Uijongbu corridor. Further eastward, the 5th Division mounted its own attack, supported by amphibious landings along the coast behind the collapsing ROK front. The fighting, such as it was in those first hours and day, involved only isolated stands by pockets of ROK troops. Faced by an assault of such formidable power and decision, Syngman Rhee’s army was wholly unable to mount a coherent defence by formations. Reeling, its battered and broken companies began to straggle southwards, often abandoning their equipment, hastening to keep a brief bound ahead of the bleak, mustard-drab battalions of Kim Il Sung’s victorious army. At 9.30 a.m., Kim himself broadcast the version of events along the 38th Parallel which would form the basis for the public posture on Korea throughout the communist world from 1950 until the present day:
The South Korean puppet clique has rejected all methods for peaceful reunification proposed by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and dared to commit armed aggression . . . north of the 38th parallel . . . The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea ordered a counter-attack to repel the invading troops. The South Korean puppet clique will be held responsible for whatever results may be brought about by this development.
Four hours after the North Korean onslaught began, it was evident in Seoul that this was no border raid. The American Ambassador in Seoul, John J. Muccio, cabled the State Department in Washington: ‘North Korean forces invaded Republic of Korea at several places this morning . . . It would appear from the nature of the attack and the manner in which it was launched that it constitutes an all-out offensive against the Republic of Korea.’
3 » THE WEST’S RIPOSTE
1. Washington
Han Pyo Wook, the thirty-five-year-old First Secretary at the South Korean Embassy in Washington, was at home in Tacoma, Maryland, on Saturday night, 24 June, when a journalist acquaintance from United Press International telephoned him. ‘Philip’ – the name Han had long ago adopted for his American life – ‘you know your country’s been invaded?’
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No indeed, ‘Philip’ did not know. He called the Associated Press to confirm the news, then the State Department. The Administration, like Han, had received its first news of the invasion from the agency wires. But this was now being confirmed from Muccio’s office in Seoul. Han was told to come at once to Foggy Bottom with his Ambassador, whom he telephoned. Wretched and silent, the two men drove themselves into the city. Han had lived in America since 1938, and was a devoted adherent of Syngman Rhee, whom he had come to know well. He was embittered by the chronic criticism of his President in the State Department, the complaints that he was dictatorial. ‘Sure, he’s dictatorial compared with President Truman,’ shrugged Han. He hated always to go to the Far East Department at State as a suppliant. In May 1949, when Rhee personally requested him to explain to the Americans that his army lacked ammunition to train, Han was deeply wounded when John Williams, on the Korean desk, answered lightly: ‘Well, Philip, I guess you must be using too many bullets back there.’
This Saturday night, the two little Koreans were shown at once
into the office of Dean Rusk, the Assistant Secretary of State. They found him standing grimly among a little cluster of his officials, all in dinner jackets. Rusk said: ‘We have received cables from Ambassador Muccio, indicating that there is no doubt that an armed attack has occurred. Do you have any information?’ The Koreans shook their heads. They made an immediate plea for American military assistance. Rusk’s reply was inaudible, but plainly non-committal. The Koreans were merely thankful that the possibility was not ruled out. Twenty minutes after their arrival, they drove home through the darkness to the Ambassador’s Residence. It was there, less than an hour later, that they took a call direct from Syngman Rhee in Seoul.
Rhee’s voice was remarkably clear, but in the background they could hear a babble of voices from his Cabinet. ‘The communists have invaded,’ said the doctor calmly. ‘Our soldiers are fighting courageously, but they lack weapons. Please ask the government of the United States to hasten the delivery of arms to us.’ In reality, even as Rhee spoke he was preparing to flee with all the speed he could muster for the southern city of Taejon. But his representatives in Washington hastened to do his bidding. At 1 a.m. on Sunday morning, they were back in Rusk’s office at the State Department, with the same group of American officials. ‘This is plainly a serious matter,’ said Rusk, ‘a large-scale attack. This is a matter that should be the concern of the United Nations.’ America’s Ambassador to the UN was away in Vermont for the weekend, but his deputy had been contacted. The UN Secretary-General, Trygve Lie, had been requested to summon a meeting of the Security Council. But the Koreans still received no clear answer about military aid.
The next morning, they flew from Andrews Air Force Base to New York with two State Department officials, alongside whom they worked through the flight, preparing a short statement for the United Nations Security Council. At the UN’s temporary home at Lake Success that Sunday afternoon, the Council met. Some members protested about the short notice, which had prevented
them from receiving instructions from their governments. The Yugoslavs demanded that if the South Koreans were to be heard by the Council, no resolution should be passed until the North Koreans had also attended to put their case. They were outvoted. On 13 January, the Soviet delegate, Yakov Malik, had walked out of the Security Council in protest against the UN’s refusal to seat communist China in place of the Nationalists. On 25 June, he was still absent. In these extraordinary circumstances, at 6 p.m. a UN resolution condemning the North Korean attack, and calling for the withdrawal of Kim Il Sung’s forces south of the 38th Parallel, was passed by a 9–0 vote.
The UN resolution on Korea passed into history. It was a landmark event, probably never to be repeated in the history of this, or any other world body. Here, for once, was no mere vote for a peace-keeping force, a body to intervene between two warring parties; but unequivocal support for one combatant against another. Many times since 1950, nations have committed flagrant acts of armed intervention in the affairs of others: in many cases, the victim has appealed to the United Nations for military protection, and heard this refused. Whatever excesses states commit against their neighbours – Russia in Afghanistan, Libya in Chad, Israel in Lebanon – the issues are adjudged too confused, the tangle of international loyalties and hostilities too great, to achieve a consensus for international military action. The UN intervention in Korea was a fluke of history, made possible by the unique accident of the Russian boycott. In the absence of the Soviets, the United Nations in 1950 was still overwhelmingly the instrument of the Western democracies and their clients. In that last period before the rush of colonies to independence multiplied the UN’s size and its dissensions, it possessed only fifty-eight members. Many of these cherished a sincere crusading enthusiasm that the new body should prove capable of more than the sterile debates of the interwar League of Nations.