From: MaxPlumm@aol.com
Date: Tue Jan 07 2003 - 14:42:11 MST
I have heard hundreds of opinions on vietnam but almost none on korea. I am
hoping to find intellectual opinions on the korean conflict. I have recently
talked with a friend who claims to be an historian but he didn't really
offer much information. Basically, what was really going on? Also what
relation did korea have if any to Vietnam? What relation did korea have to
WW2?
Any info or new ideas would be helpful, thanks Nate
***Well, first let me welcome you aboard, not that I'm an old hand myself,
but the more the merrier. I am a student of history, and hopefully my history
minor counts for something. It is unfortunate that the Korean War has been
such a neglected conflict, in terms of contemporary discussion, not least of
all because of all the Americans who lost their lives there in a noble cause.
But the Korean War also helps to provide a better understanding of the
Vietnam War, especially when closely examined. Most people deride the Vietnam
War as a pointless folly, while very few dismiss the Korean War as such. This
is quite interesting, when one considers they were in essence the same
conflict.
In each case you had a Communist Northern totalitarian entity backed with men
and materiel from the Soviet Union and China pitted against a Southern
authoritarian regime backed by the United States and its allies.
There are many reasons why one effort succeeded and one failed. In both
cases, the Communist North began by attempting to sow the seeds of revolution
in the South through the use of guerrilla warfare and political
assassination. In South Korea, this effort failed miserably, just as it had
earlier in Malaya and Burma. In South Vietnam this tactic also eventually
failed, but not before destroying morale and public support for the war in
the United States. The North Vietnamese were able to keep the guerrillas
afloat through the use of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the supply line that led
through Laos and Cambodia and into South Vietnam. In the cases of South Korea
and Malaya, they are surrounded by water, and the Communists had no way to
continually re-supply the rebels, and they died out within a year or two.
It is also important to note that the North Vietnamese Army's Ho Chi Minh
Trail was in blatant violation of Article 12 of the Geneva Accords, which
stated that all parties would respect the neutrality of Laos and Cambodia.
In the end, both conflicts in Korea and Vietnam were to become conventional
wars. In one instance, the South Koreans were able to achieve a stalemate due
in large part to a huge commitment of American men and supplies in the face
of conventional attack. The South Vietnamese, by contrast, were defeated by
the third largest army in the world at that time (see Stephen J. Morris, "Why
Vietnam invaded Cambodia") armed to the teeth with state of the art Soviet
weaponry and Chinese logistic aid. All this at a time when United States aid
had all but dried up.
Perhaps you have seen the picture of the North Vietnamese crashing down the
gates of the Saigon Presidential residence in 1975. They are aboard Soviet
T-54 tanks.
In fact, what is most disturbing of all in my mind is the fact that most
people are aware, to some degree, that on June 25, 1950, the North Koreans
launched an invasion force of 135,000 men into South Korea. Most people are
ignorant, however, that the North Vietnamese launched an invasion into the
South on March 30, 1972, of 250,000 men! So blatant was this attack, in fact,
that not one regular division remained in North Vietnam. (see Lewis Sorley,
"A Better War", and Michael Lind's "Vietnam, the Necessary War")
By July 1st, 1950, the North Koreans had captured the South Korean capital of
Seoul. During the five month North Vietnamese invasion, only the northern
city of Quang Tri fell to the Communists, and that was retaken by the South
Vietnamese despite the fact that they were outnumbered and only 6000 US
combat troops remained in the country. In fact, Seoul would fall not once,
but twice, during the Korean War to the Communists.
Despite that, we did not leave Korea. We did not, as Walter Cronkite said
following the TET Offensive of 1968 in which the Viet Cong captured ONE FLOOR
of our embassy in Saigon, decide to withdraw because our enemy could "match
any move we made, any escalation."
The Americans, in fact, after a daring landing at Inchon in northern South
Korea, behind the advancing North Korean army, actually turned the tide of
the war quickly. By October 1st, 1950, Seoul had been retaken by US and South
Korean forces. It was at this point that General Douglas MacArthur, commander
of the allied forces, was able to convince Truman and his cabinet that he
could conquer North Korea and reunify the country once and for all. It would
prove to be a costly mistake, one that would haunt the United States and
contribute directly to their defeat by the Soviet proxy in Vietnam.
Within two weeks, allied forces had crossed the 38th parallel (the border
between the two Koreas) and on October 27th, Pyongyang, the capital of North
Korea, fell. MacArthur continued his march toward the Yalu River, the border
between Korea and China. On November 26, 1950, the Chinese launched a
surprise attack, sending a "human wave" of 300,000 men at the stunned allies.
Forced into a humiliating retreat, MacArthur was informed on November 30 that
reunification was no longer a goal of the United States.
Avoiding total defeat became the primary goal, as once again, on January 7,
1951, the Communists captured Seoul. Having rejected the United States offer
of a cease-fire that would've provided him with a major public relations
victory, Mao hoped to deal the allies a crippling defeat. It too would be a
major mistake. The air support promised by Stalin never came, and US bombing
and offensive efforts turned the tide again by April. When MacArthur again
pressed to take the attack to the Chinese in North Korea, he was relieved of
command by Truman and replaced by General Matthew Ridgeway.
This stalemate would last until 1953, when President Eisenhower was able to
use threats of the United States overwhelming nuclear superiority and a dying
Joseph Stalin to achieve an armistice. The cease-fire remains in affect to
this day, as does the presence of thousands of US troops in South Korea. A
fifty- year commitment has been required of the United States to maintain two
Koreas, and the differences in the quality of life in the two nations could
not be any more stark.
The Chinese involvement in Korea, and the threat of it in Vietnam, in a sense
doomed our efforts to succeed in Saigon before the first combat troops
arrived. Lyndon Johnson chose not to send US troops into North Vietnam for
fear of Chinese reprisals. He chose to follow the policies of his
predecessor, John Kennedy, and "neutralized" Cambodia and Laos, not sending
any combat troops in to disrupt the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
The United States had tied its hands behind its back, fighting a three front
war in only the nation of South Vietnam. The North Vietnamese could choose
when and where to engage the United States, and all the Americans could do
was suffer casualties. Lewis Sorley pointed out that the NVA initiated 88% of
the battles in the Vietnam War.
Still, all was not lost. In January of 1968, the North Vietnamese chose to
launch the Tet Offensive, a coordinated assault on all of South Vietnam's
major cities, in hopes of sparking a peasant revolution that would overthrow
the South Vietnamese regime. This plan failed, as no popular uprising took
place, the Viet Cong infrastructure was rooted out and severely damaged, and
the North Vietnamese Army suffered 45,000 casualties.
But what was in fact a crippling blow to the North Vietnamese was turned into
a psychological victory for them by an all to cooperative US press. I will
not dwell on this issue here, I will simply leave it to the words of Colonel
Bui Tin, the NVA colonel who accepted the South Vietnamese defeat in 1975:
"Thanks to the media, which exaggerated the damage caused by this offensive,
the American public was bedazzled, and the administration had to agree to
negotiations in Paris." (Bui Tin, "Following Ho Chi Minh", p. 62)
After the TET Offensive, the war actually began to go in the US's favor, as
the South Vietnamese populace at large was finally introduced to the brutal
terror of the Hanoi regime. The number of enlistees in the ARVN increased,
and the South Vietnamese was able to consolidate more control over its own
territory.
I could go into the remainder of the Vietnam War at length, but that would
probably be another two plus pages, and I know your focus was mainly on
Korea. I hope you have found some of this information helpful. If I can add,
or clarify anything else, I'd be happy to. Feel free to comment/ critique on
what I've provided, and again, welcome to the forum.
Regards,
Max Plumm
"At every turn, we have been beset by those who find everything wrong with
America and little that is right."
-Richard Nixon
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