KOREAN WAR

conflict that began in June 1950 between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) and the Republic of Korea (South Korea), which resulted in an estimated 4,000,000 casualties, including civilians. The United Nations, with the United States as the principal participant, joined the war on the side of the South Koreans, and the People's Republic of China eventually came to North Korea's aid. After exceptional vicissitudes, the war was ended inconclusively in July 1953; it established a precedent for United States intervention to contain communist expansion. At the end of World War II, the Allies agreed that Soviet forces would accept the surrender of Japanese troops in Korea north of the 38th degree of latitude, while American troops would accept the Japanese surrender south of that line. In 1947, after the failure of negotiations to achieve the unification of the two separate Korean states that had thus been created, the United States turned the problem over to the United Nations. The Soviet Union refused to cooperate with UN plans to hold general elections in the two Koreas, and, as a result, a communist state was permanently established under Soviet auspices in the north and a pro-Western state was set up in the south. By 1949 both the United States and the Soviet Union had withdrawn the majority of their troops from the Korean Peninsula. On June 25, 1950, the North Koreans, with the tacit approval of the Soviet Union, unleashed a carefully planned attack southward across the 38th parallel. The United Nations Security Council met in emergency session and passed a resolution calling for the assistance of all UN members in halting the North Korean invasion. (The Soviet delegate, who was absent from the Security Council in protest against the UN's failure to admit the People's Republic of China, was not present to veto the council's decision.) On June 27, U.S. President Harry S. Truman, without asking Congress to declare war, ordered United States forces to come to the assistance of South Korea as part of the UN police action. Meanwhile, the South Korean army was overwhelmed by the North Korean forces, and the four ill-equipped American divisions that had been rushed into the battle were driven all the way southward across the Korean Peninsula to a small area covering the approaches to Pusan, on the peninsula's southeastern tip. The American forces there were heavily reinforced, however. On September 15, troops commanded by General Douglas MacArthur made a daring amphibious landing at Inch'on, about 100 miles (160 km) below the 38th parallel and on a line with Seoul, the South Korean capital. This brilliant landing far north of the main battlefront succeeded in cutting the North Korean forces' lines; the North Korean army was then totally shattered by the convergence of Allied forces from north and south, and more than 125,000 prisoners were captured by the Allies. As the Allied forces now advanced northward back to the 38th parallel, the Chinese warned that the presence of UN forces in North Korea would be unacceptable to the security of the Chinese People's Republic and would force the Chinese to intervene in the war. UN forces, however, ignored the warnings and advanced into North Korea with the expressed intention of unifying the country. By mid-November the Allied forces were nearing the Yalu River, which marked the border between North Korea and Manchuria, the northeast part of China. The Chinese considered the approach of UN forces to the Yalu to be an unacceptable threat to Manchuria. On November 24 MacArthur announced his Home by Christmas offensive, in which his forces would boldly advance right up to the Yalu. The next day approximately 180,000 Chinese volunteers entered the war, and by December 15, after bitter winter fighting and a harrowing retreat, the Allied troops had been driven southward back to the 38th parallel. On December 31, 1950, the communists began their second invasion of South Korea with about 500,000 troops, but their attack soon faltered in the face of incessant Allied aerial bombing campaigns, and the front lines eventually stabilized along the 38th parallel. Meanwhile, MacArthur was demanding the authority to blockade China's coastline and bomb its Manchurian bases. Truman refused, feeling that such a course would bring the Soviet Union into the war and thus lead to a global conflict. In response, MacArthur appealed over Truman's head directly to the American public in an effort to enlist support for his war aims. On April 11, 1951, President Truman relieved MacArthur as UN commander and as commander of U.S. forces in the Far East and replaced him with General Matthew B. Ridgway. On July 10, 1951, truce talks began while the North Koreans and Chinese vainly strove for further success on the battlefield. The negotiations dragged on for months, but the situation changed after the U.S. presidential elections in the fall of 1952 and the victory of Dwight D. Eisenhower, who had criticized the unpopular war and announced his intention to visit Korea if elected. Eisenhower secretly informed the North Koreans and Chinese that he was prepared to use nuclear weapons and would also carry the war to China if a peace agreement was not reached. After a brief renewal of hostilities in June 1953, an armistice was concluded on July 27, and the front line was accepted as the de facto boundary between North and South Korea. The exchange and repatriation of prisoners soon followed. The Korean War resulted in the deaths of about 1,300,000 South Koreans, many of whom were civilians, 1,000,000 Chinese, 500,000 North Koreans, and about 37,000 Americans (the original figure of more than 54,000 was revised in 2000 after it was discovered that a clerk had incorrectly included noncombatant military deaths worldwide), with much smaller numbers of British, Australian, and Turkish casualties on the Allied side. Several million Koreans temporarily became refugees, and much of South Korea's industrial plant was damaged, while North Korea was utterly devastated by American bombing campaigns.