The Vietnam War: The Korean War

The Korean War was the first proxy war, increasing tensions and brought the Communist threat to Asian borders creating the fear of Domino Theory. This war also introduced China as a major player in global affairs due to its intervention when US crossed Chinese borders. Yet since USSR did not help North Korea during this time, tensions decreased slightly.

The Korean and Vietnam war are very similar in that both were the US's attempt to fight communism by waging war in a distant third world country. Both wars were unpopular in the US and both led to a lack of victory.

The Korean War or better known as the forgotten war, was fought from 1950 to 1953. Being sandwiched between World War II and the war in Vietnam it is often overlooked. After World War II, Korea was split into a communist government in the north and a more democratic government in the south. On June 25, 1950 North Korean soldiers marched into South Korea and captured their capital, Seoul. The U.S. and the United Nations sent thousands of soldiers to defend South Korea. The Chinese backed North Korea and soon both sides were in the hills at the 38th Parallel. This imaginary line split the North from the South and the war continued in the hills from 1951 to 1953. Finally, in July of ‘53 prisoners were exchanged and the fighting stopped.

Many historians view the Korean War, or the “forgotten war,” as a conflict of hegemony between the United States and the Soviet Union. This would be the beginning to a new type of political and idealistic war. The Korean War was also America’s first “limited war,” meaning that the national objective was not all-out victory (Navy History). Warfare began to link with the modern age of technology, communication, and sociological change. This war was a “proxy war.” This means that the Soviets and Americans are using a third party country as a substitute for fighting each other directly. The Korean War became the first military conflict of the Cold War and would lead into some exponential changes in the ways of life. The intelligence race between the US and Soviet Union would be played directly, and through indirect, political chess games of real war. The soldier became dispensable. This would be the race for power and hegemony between the differing political positions.

The Korean War (1950-1953) emerged after World War II where the world powers at the time, the United States and Allies-UN Forces and the Soviet Union had conflicting visions for what the postwar world should look like. The shaping of the Korean Peninsula was first on their agendas. The Soviet Union vision was to unify Korea through the expansion of Communism, which made sense strategically with Communist China and the Soviet Union in Korea’s backyard. However, the unification of Korea would only happen via civil war. North Korea would have to invade South Korea and inflict their will by means of armed force. Conversely, as one can imagine the UN-Forces vision was to prevent the expansion of Communism and unify North and South Korea in a single country protected by the United States. (Alexander, 2013) Over a period of three years, the conflicting world powers would duke it out. North Korea would strike first by engaging in civil war and South Korea with UN Forces assistance would help stop their onslaught. Next, uninformed the UN Forces would head into North Korea on the offensive, only to be met by prepared communist forces, which leads to retreat of the UN Forces and ultimately a stalemate. (Hammel, 1981)

The Korean War was a significant event that marked the separation and independence of North and South Korea. When countries like China and Russia, got involved, it became a war of ideas and social values. Those who aided South Korea (United States, Great Britain) were democratic, and those who aided North Korea (China, Russia) were communist. North Korea wanted South Korea to become a communist country, but the South did not want this, and soon a war broke out between South and North Korea. The Korean War was a success in that South Korea did not become communist, and a failure because many American and allied troops died, and still today, North Korea struggles to spread their ideology and continues to cause conflict with the United States.

This was the beginning of what came to be known as the Korean War; and this event was responsible for the crystallization of some of the main antagonisms that would persist throughout the Cold War (see Office of the Historian). In particular, it became clear that South Korea, supported by the United States and Europe, would belong to the Western bloc; and that North Korean, supported by the Soviet Union and Communist China, would belong to the Eastern bloc. This distinction would thereafter become far more important within the context of the modern world than the fact that the division of the Korean peninsula was such a recent one, with no historical, cultural, or ethnological differences meaningfully marking off the people of the one nation from the people of the

The Korean War was the first military action of the cold war and an effort to restrain the growing communist aggression. Despite this however, this war is often forgotten, perhaps it is because The Korean War wasn’t a “declared war” and ended in an unsatisfactory stalemate (U.S Enters). Though the Korean War was overshadowed by World War II and the Vietnam War, the Korean people took the freedom we helped buy with our blood and rose to be one of the top ten economies in the world (Transition). The Korean War is a largely forgotten, overlooked encounter which has a tremendous influence on global politics, ideologies, and rivalries; this war encouraged the civil rights movement in America, it promoted the exchange of philosophies, and formed rivalries between some of the world’s greatest powers.

In the northern regions of Korea post World War II, the majority of the politicians and people were supporters of communism and of course the Soviet Union being the most dominant communist nation in the world, supported the ideals of the north. The southern regions however were completely anti-communism and thus supported by the United States (Robinson p 74). The majority of the problem stemmed from outside of the country itself with Russia declaring war on Japan while using Korea as the battlefield. However, this internal conflict was actually the fuel to the fire originally because it gave Russia and Japan something to fight over; the region that they were fighting for happened to share the same politic views. Until the end of World War II, Japan occupied the entire Korean peninsula. Immediately after the war was over, Russia declared war on a

Since the invention of the newspaper, the press and government has informed us on current events and the troubles going on in each individual nation. With a such a large variety of channels to choose from, there is no doubt that each station will have their own biases and styles of informing people of important events. Though now we can receive the same information from a variety of sources, up until recently, most citizens of the United States only received their local newspaper and potentially a premium newspaper such as Times. The way that information is presented to us may drastically change the way we perceive the event. No such statement is more true when we are talking about the wars we are currently battling. Because the press understood

After World War II, the Korean territory was free to be taken over. Russia took the Northern territory and the United States took the Southern territory. Both superpowers would influence both territories into their own image. When the two countries pulled out in 1947, Korea was left with two regimes with very different ideologies. North under the influence of communism while South under democratic direction. In just a couple of years, tensions rose with both sides wanting to overpower each other. Threats became more serious, spies multiplied in number, and violence between the regions had increased along the 38th parallel, the boundary between North and South Korea. Soon one side would draw first blood and would spark a war.

Vietnam, or Viet Nam, is a Southeast Asian country located on the South China sea. It was formerly a colony of the French, and still, has a lot of French landmarks and food. It is a communist country that used to be split in two, Southern Vietnam supporting Capitalism, and Northern Vietnam supporting communism before the Vietnamese War straightened everything out.

After Japan’s defeat from the World War II in 1945, Japan lost its colonies and the fate of colonized countries was given to the United States and the Soviet Union. The victorious allies, the United States and the Soviet Union, finally agreed to divide Korea into two nations, with Soviet troops occupying the north and U.S. troops in the south regardless of Korean’s opinion. Under the short-lived joy of liberation from Japan, Koreans had to suffer from the tragic division. This arrangement was meant to be temporary until elections could be held to unify the country under a single government. However, those elections were never held. The allies from World War II were broken into the communist and capitalist society. The Soviets installed a communist

didn’t want communism to spread through Korea so they had to do something about it. They got involved in the war and sacrificed many americans in order to stop the spread of communism. Some people thought it would’ve been best to just leave it that way and that the U.S. minds their own business. The reason it was such a big problem it was because communism was going to and meant to take over the world, it was also said that communism would be the world’s system and at the very last be the one to lead to the world’s extinction. So this wasn’t just one ineffective system, it was the living embodiment of the perversion and destruction of all that was America. So it meant no more USA forever. Well the good reason the U.S. got involved was because North Korea was full of communists and that attracted them to get involve in the war and fight along the south with the UN. They would obviously not let communism to diffuse through Korea and the whole world. The war was started after WW2 when the U.S. threw a bomb to Japan and was the main cause of that war, then after that in 1950 The Korean Cold War took place and ended in 1953. In 1953 and the same day the war ended they signed the Armistice treaty that provoked the war to officially end and the end of suffering from the poor suffering Koreans that died and killed in action. Also there was suppose to be a reconciliation for the two countries to

The Japanese invasions of Korea comprised two separate invasions with the same purpose in 1592 and 1597. The conflict officially ended in 1598 with the withdrawal of the Japanese forces from Korea which would result in a “poisoning of relationships that would never disappear” (Hwang). The death toll in Korea of the war is calculated to have been about a deadly one third of the population. In the paper, I will discuss the Imjin invasion and the economic aftermath along with how the brutality and failure found in these two events inspired the royal class to drastically and successfully change the economic and social structure of Korea.