From air bases in Okinawa and naval aircraft carriers, the U.S.Over 36,000 American soldiers died in the war. The three-year Korean War resulted in the deaths of three to four million Koreans, produced 6-7 million refugees, and destroyed over 8,500 factories, 5,000 schools, 1,000 hospitals and 600,000 homes.General Douglas MacArthur headed the United Nations Command. Sixteen nations supplied troops although the vast majority came from the United States and South Korea. obtained the approval of the United Nations for the defense of South Korea (the Soviet Union had boycotted the UN over the issue of seating China). The Korean War officially began on June 25, 1950, when North Korea conducted a massive invasion of the South. Army counter-intelligence corps organized paramilitary commandos to carry out sabotage missions in the North, a factor accounting for the origins of the war. Christians as well as business and land owners faced with the confiscation of their property began fleeing to the South. In North Korea, the government of Kim II-Sung arrested and imprisoned student and church leaders, and gunned down protesters on November 23, 1945.By 1948 partisan warfare had enveloped the whole of South Korea, which in turn became enmeshed in civil war between South and North Korea. In South Korea, the United States built up a police force and constabulary and backed the authoritarian leader Syngman Rhee, who created a police state.Both South and North Korea became repressive regimes. With Japan on the verge of defeat in World War II, two young American army officers drew an arbitrary line across Korea at the 38th parallel, creating an American zone in the south and a Soviet zone in the north.Japan imposed colonial rule over Korea from 1910 to 1945.ArmyĮndnotes Recommended Resources About the author Racism and class stratification in the U.S.“The Horror, The Horror”: Korea’s Lieutenant Kurtz.Dirty little secrets: Maltreatment of prisoners of war.South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and atrocities in the war.The war’s costs, dirty secrets, and legacies Letter exchange between a questioning Marine, his father, and Dean Acheson.American soldiers’ experience and disillusionment.Grassroots antiwar activism and dissent.The responsibility of intellectuals: “Crackpot Realists” and the New Mandarins.Manufacturing consent: Media coverage of the war.Public opinion and antiwar dissent in the United States Bombing ‘em back to the Stone Age: Aerial techno-war over North Korea.High noon: The Truman-MacArthur stand-off.Chinese counterattack and American retreat.“So terrible a liberation:” Pusan, Seoul, Inchon, and Operation Rat Killer.North Korean blitzkrieg and occupation of Seoul.Domestic politics and bipartisan support for the war.Southern provocations and the origins of the war.Brutal anticommunist pacification in South Korea.Social revolution and repression in North Korea.“Massacre in Korea” by Pablo Picasso, 1951 I.
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