Korean War
The Korean War was a major conflict on the Korean peninsula lasting from 1950 to 1953, between the communist forces of North Korea, supported by the Soviet Union and China, and the democratic forces of South Korea, supported by a multinational United Nations force.
Prelude
A Japanese territory until the end of World War II, Korea was then divided by the Yalta agreement into two administrative zones in 1945, along the 38th parallel, occupied by the Soviet Union and the United States. In both zones competing government organizations were created to rule a unified Korea, and military forces raised.
August 31, 1946, Harold J. Noble wrote an article in the Saturday Evening Post entitled, "Our Most Dangerous Boundary." The author pointed out that the Soviet Union had garrisoned North Korea with a larger force than the Americans possessed in Japan and Manchuria. The Communists were disposed to invade at a moment's notice. Where the U.S. had a squad near the border commanded by a corporal, the Soviet Union had a battalion, commanded by an officer, equipped with motor transport, ninety per cent of which came from America. The Soviet Union had established a police state in North Korea and suppressed every political organization except the Communist Party.
In 1947, General Albert Wedemeyer made his report on China and Korea. The Korean part was suppressed. Wedemeyer said:
- "American and Soviet forces . . . are approximately equal, less than 50,000 troops each, [but] the Soviet-equipped and trained North Korean People's (Communist) Army of approximately 125,000 is vastly superior to the United States-organized constabulary of 16,000 Koreans equipped with Japanese small arms. The North Korean People's Army constitutes a potential military threat to South Korea, since there is strong possibility that the Soviets will withdraw their occupation forces and thus induce our own withdrawal."[1]
Wedemeyer warned that this would take place as soon as "they can be sure that the North Korean puppet government and its armed forces . . . are strong enough . . . to be relied upon to carry out Soviet objectives without the actual presence of Soviet troops." General Lyman L. Lemnitzer said that before June 1950, when the attack occurred, no aid had been sent but a few hundred dollars worth of bailing wire.[2]
Comintern propagandist Owen Lattimore writing in the leftist New York Compass said that the U.S. should give Korea a "parting grant" of $150,000,000 and "let South Korea fall but not to let it look as though we pushed it."[3]