Causes and results of the outbreak of the Korean War (causes of the outbreak of the Korean Civil War)

Posted on December 10, 2022

Causes and Results of the Korean War (Causes of the Korean Civil War)

For a long time, people have had different views on the outbreak of the Korean War. It is inappropriate to view the outbreak of the Korean War solely from the events of June 25. The “June 25 Incident” was just a facade.

First of all, the division of North and South Korea laid the groundwork for the outbreak of war.

After the outbreak of the Pacific War, US President Roosevelt considered hosting Korea after the war as a preparation stage for the Japanese colonies to finally gain independence. In November 1942, Roosevelt said that North Korea should undergo “a period of training after the war in order to eventually gain independence***.”

The “Cairo Declaration” on December 1, 1942 stated: Our three main allies, bearing in mind the fact that the Korean people were enslaved, decided to make North Korea gain freedom and independence. At the Tehran Conference, Stalin expressed “full approval of the Cairo Declaration and all its contents”. Roosevelt said after the meeting that Stalin had told him, “The North Koreans are not yet capable of implementing and maintaining an independent Communist Party, and they should be placed under 40-year custody.” During the Yalta Conference in February 1945, Roosevelt proposed to Stalin that the United States and the Soviet Union jointly manage Korea for 20 to 30 years after the war. Stalin agreed to trusteeship, but believed that “the shorter the trusteeship period, the better”. With the gradual defeat of Japan, by the summer of 1945, how to invade and occupy Korea became the burning problem. Truman had considered that the United States would take the lead in occupying North Korea alone, but considering that the Soviet Union needed to undertake more obligations in the war against Japan on the Korean Peninsula in order to reduce American casualties, the United States finally decided to occupy the Korean Peninsula alone. At that time, the U.S. government also believed that it was not advisable for the United States to take full responsibility for the occupation of North Korea, which would affect its ability to control other more important regions. At the same time, the United States does not want the Soviet Union to occupy North Korea alone, because “a Soviet North Korea is likely to threaten the position of the United States in the Pacific.” After the Soviet Union entered the war, the Soviet Red Army quickly entered North Korea from northeast China, while the US military was still in Okinawa, 600 miles away from North Korea. If an agreement with the Soviet Union on their respective jurisdictions is not quickly reached, the Soviet Red Army may soon sweep across the Korean peninsula.

Late at night from August 10th to 11th, the Coordination Committee of the State Department, the Department of the Army, and the Department of the Navy held an emergency meeting in the Pentagon. The representatives of the State Department mainly considered the political aspect, and proposed that the area where the United States accepted the surrender of Japan should be moved northward as much as possible. But then Colonel Dean Rosk, Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs during the Korean War, pointed out that the army “lacks troops that can be immediately deployed, and it will be very difficult to push further north until Soviet troops enter the area, plus the time and empty” and other factors. After discussion at the meeting, it was proposed to use 38 degrees north latitude as the temporary dividing line between the armies of the United States and the Soviet Union. The line, which includes two-thirds of North Korea’s population and the old capital Seoul, is under U.S. military jurisdiction and benefits the United States. On August 15th, Truman informed Stalin about the Japanese surrenderThe “Order No. 1” stipulated that the Japanese troops stationed in North Korea north of the 38th parallel surrendered to the Soviet army, and the Japanese troops stationed in North Korea south of the line surrendered to the U.S. Army. The next day, Stalin wrote back agreeing to the arrangement. Stalin had no objection to this, which surprised American officials such as Rosk. In Stark’s “The Road to Confrontation”, he analyzed: Maybe he (Stalin) also wanted to participate in the operation to occupy Japan, and used the concession to the United States on the Korean issue as a means to achieve this end. Moreover, he is likely to interpret the line as an enduring demarcation line dividing spheres of influence on the Korean peninsula. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, Russia and Japan negotiated the 38th parallel as a possible boundary for their spheres of influence. Soviet troops entered North Korea on August 15. By the time the order to surrender reached the battlefield, Soviet troops had crossed the 38th parallel and were advancing along the highway toward Seoul. But they quickly retreated to the north of the 38th parallel after receiving the order to surrender. The U.S. 7th, 6th, and 40th Infantry Divisions, led by John Hodge, commander of the 24th Army, landed in southern Korea from September 8. The first U.S. military to arrive in North Korea was the 7th Infantry Division. The code name of this operation was “Blacklist 40”. On October 10, U.S. troops entered Seoul. Arnold, the commander of the U.S. Seventh Division who arrived at YouResources.com first, was appointed by Hodge as the North Korean military commander. After the U.S. military entered North Korea, it divided North Korea into two, cut off railways, highways, and telecommunications, and then blocked the 38th parallel, which actually cut off the connection between North and South Korea. The Americans and the Soviet Union artificially created the division of Korea and planted the seeds of disaster for the outbreak of the war.

Second, the outbreak of civil war

If there is no Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union, North Korea will be divided into two occupied areas, North and South, just because they want to surrender to Japan. Not a big problem. The problem is that the United States and the Soviet Union quickly changed from wartime allies to rivals and engaged in a Cold War, making North Korea an important battlefield in the Cold War. In July 1946, Truman said, “North Korea has become the battleground of the struggle between two ideological systems. Our victory in Asia will depend on the struggle in North Korea.” and South Korea are developing in different directions.

After Japan surrendered, North Korea’s voice for establishing an independent and free country continued to rise. On August 24, the People’s Committee, a spontaneous provisional political organization, was first established in North Hamgyong Province. Subsequently, people’s committees were established in all provinces and counties of North Korea. At the same time, the North Korean National Construction Alliance united various political forces and announced the establishment of the “People’s Republic of Korea”. After the U.S. military entered southern South Korea, it immediately announced the imposition of military control south of the 38th parallel, disbanded the established people’s regimes – People’s Committees at all levels and the political institutions of the “People’s Republic of Korea”, and at the same time used the Japanese colonial institutions to maintain “order.” The commander of the Japanese Forces in North Korea asked Occupation Commander Hodge to retain a Japanese armed police force to protect his personnel in North Korea and the 600,000 Japanese nationals from reprisals. Hodge immediately agreed. In Hodge’s view, “the Koreans and the Japanese are kittens” and intends to put them bothas a vanquished enemy. On the basis of the former Japanese colonial government, the U.S. military established the Korean military government and retained most of the Japanese officials and police. The Japanese police, hated by the Korean people, became the executors of the American “military police”. The U.S. occupying forces would rather be friendly to members of the former Japanese colonial machine than to suppress left-wing organizations and patriots in South Korea. The perverse behavior of the Americans has aroused strong dissatisfaction among the Korean people. Hodge reported to the Joint Chiefs of Staff: “In Korea, the division was blamed on the United States, and people in the region grew to hate all Americans.” Truman admitted in his memoirs: “Most Koreans did not want American soldiers Or the Russian soldiers remained on their land.  … In the autumn of 1946, there were several riots and terrorist attacks in the areas we occupied. On a few occasions, our troops had to open fire on the terrorists Guns.” In order to resist the so-called “infiltration of the Communist Party”, the army generals, with the encouragement of Washington and MacArthur’s headquarters, vigorously supported the Communist Party forces in South Korea.

In June 1945, after 30 years away from home, Syngman Rhee, who was in exile in the United States, asked the United States to recognize him as the leader of the Communist Party of Korea. The United States began to refuse to recognize Syngman Rhee as a “temporary ***”. But then the US government changed its mind. In late October, MacArthur flew the 69-year-old Rhee back to Seoul from the United States. Before another North Korean leader, Kim Koo, MacArthur made it clear that Syngman Rhee would be the ruler. Hodge held a homecoming ceremony for Syngman Rhee in Seoul on MacArthur’s order. Hodge wants “all North Koreans to support their leader, Syngman Rhee”. In February 1946, the military government established the “Democratic House” mainly composed of right-wing elements, and appointed Syngman Rhee as the speaker. North Korea’s development is relatively orderly. The Soviet army did not establish a military government, but established a military control agency – the Garrison Command, and established a civil affairs agency – the People’s Government within the 25th Army Command. The Soviet Army recognized the People’s Committees established in various places and took measures to make them the official regime in North Korea. On February 7, 1946, representatives of North Korea’s democratic political parties, social organizations, and local people’s committees held a meeting in Pyongyang, and established the Korean Provisional People’s Committee as the central government agency in the northern half of North Korea. Kim Il Sung was elected chairman. Under the leadership of the Provisional People’s Committee, North Korea carried out land reforms, nationalized former Japanese industries, and instituted democratic reforms in many other areas. Due to the de facto confrontation between North and South Korea and the growing demands of the Korean people for immediate independence, it is difficult to achieve joint trusteeship by major powers. Hodge and his political advisers believe that the United States should gradually transfer power to the Communist forces headed by Syngman Rhee and establish a regime that is obedient to the United States. But at the time, Washington authorities were not prepared to do so immediately. In December 1945, at the meeting of foreign ministers of the three countries held in Moscow, Berners proposed that the headquarters of the US and Soviet occupation forces should form a unified organization to govern the entire territory of Korea, and then at an appropriate time, entrusted by the United States, the Soviet Union, China and Britain in the name of the United Nations to host North Korea for five years. Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov agreed to the trusteeship of the four countries, but advocated the establishment of the Korean people’s own temporary government as the actual administrative agency. The agreement reached at the end of the meeting stipulated that representatives of the U.S. and Soviet Occupation Force Commands formed a joint committee to conduct consultations with the Korean democratic parties and social groups on the establishment of a Korean Provisional Democratic Party, and put forward their respective proposals for the U.S. and Soviet governments to consider; The committee should also make recommendations on trusteeship issues for consideration by the governments of the United States, the Soviet Union, China and the United Kingdom. After the announcement of the foreign ministers’ meeting agreement on the Moscow Youyou resource network, in order to establish the Communist regime, South Korean right-wing forces took advantage of the people’s desire for rapid independence to create “anti-trusteeship” public opinion, regardless of the fact that the United States favored North Korean independence and the Soviet Union advocated trusteeship. The policy of the US government has also changed.

In February 1946, the Coordinating Committee of the U.S. Departments of State, War and Navy concluded in a policy paper that the joint committee was difficult to reach an agreement. After the committee reached an impasse, the The United States should establish a “temporary government” in South Korea on its own. After the start of the joint committee meeting in March 1946, the United States and the Soviet Union had a heated debate on the nature of “democratic political parties and social organizations.” The Soviet Union demanded the exclusion of right-wing organizations that created “anti-trust” public opinion, while the United States insisted that they participate in the negotiations as representatives of South Korea’s “public opinion”. The meeting was adjourned in May without any results. After the meeting resumed in May of the following year, the two sides continued the above-mentioned debate. In September, the United States used its influence in the United Nations to forcefully include the North Korean issue on the agenda of the second session of the United Nations General Assembly.

On November 14, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution on North Korea under the control of the United States, deciding to establish the United Nations Interim Commission on North Korea, which will supervise the holding of parliamentary elections throughout North Korea, and then establish the Korean Unification*** . Earlier, the United States proposed at its meeting to terminate the work of the joint committee. North Korea refused the entry of the United Nations Interim Committee on North Korea, and the United States manipulated the “Interim Committee of the General Assembly” (in order to prevent the Soviet Union from exercising its veto power in the Security Council, the United States proposed at the second session of the General Assembly that each member state send a representative to form the Interim Committee of the General Assembly , From the closing of the second session to the opening of the third session, six related tasks authorized by the General Assembly were carried out. On November 3, 1947, the General Assembly adopted the proposal of the United States and passed a resolution to hold separate elections in Korea. 1948 On May 10, elections were held in South Korea, resulting in the “National Assembly” of South Korea. On August 15, the Republic of Korea was formally established. High People’s Assembly Election. On September 9, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was formally established, and Kim Il Sung was elected Prime Minister. Immediately after the establishment of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, foreign troops were called to leave the Korean peninsula. Soviet troops withdrew from North Korea at the end of 1948. On June 30, 1949, the United States announced that the U.S. troops stationed in South Korea had withdrawn. After the withdrawal of U.S. and Soviet troops, the struggle between the U.S. and the Soviet Union on the Korean issue did not stop.end. This struggle is intertwined with the struggle between North and South Korea and is intensifying. There are more and more misunderstandings, differences, and contradictions between the two sides, and the rift is getting bigger and bigger. Against the background of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, the two regimes and systems of the North and the South had fierce struggles on how to achieve reunification and to whom, and they could not be reconciled, which eventually led to the outbreak of the Korean War. Due to the insufficient strength of the US military, it is difficult to achieve its global strategic goals. To meet the needs of strategic key areas, the United States does not regard South Korea as a key area. Therefore, it was once believed that when a war broke out in the Far East, the US military would not directly defend South Korea, nor would it launch an attack from the Korean Peninsula to the Asian continent. On January 12, 1950, when US Secretary of State Acheson delivered a speech at the National Press Club, he announced the Far East Strategy adopted by the National Security Council and approved by Truman. Acheson announced that the United States’ “defensive belt” in the western Pacific began from the Aleutian Islands, passed through Japan, and reached the Ryukyu Islands and the Philippines. North Korea and Taiwan Province are outside this line of defense. In the eyes of the U.S. authorities, the value of South Korea does not lie in itself, but in its influence on the “credibility” of the United States throughout the Cold War. Therefore, Acheson also said in his speech that if an area beyond this line is attacked by military power, “first of all, it depends on the resistance of the attacked people, and then on the responsibility of the entire civilized world according to the United Nations ***.” obligation”. After the outbreak of the Korean War, it was logical for the United States to intervene immediately under the banner of the “United Nations”, rather than a sudden change in US policy. The United States has not “abandoned” South Korea. According to the “Korea-US Interim Military Agreement” signed in August 1948, the United States sent a large military advisory group of 500 people to South Korea, which was assigned to all levels of the Korean Army Command; the military equipment provided to South Korea was worth 110 million U.S. dollars. Including 100,000 rifles, 50 million rounds of ammunition, 2,000 rocket launchers, more than 40,000 military vehicles, and various artillery pieces (the figure comes from the official US war history “U.S. Army in the Korean War-Before and After the War”).

In January 1950, the United States signed a military aid agreement with South Korea, and South Korea received US$10.97 million in military aid. Before and after the withdrawal of the U.S. troops, Syngman Rhee actively expanded his armed forces. In August 1948, the “Korean National Defense Garrison”, which consisted mainly of military officers and policemen during the Japanese rule of Korea, had 5 brigades, 15 regiments, and more than 50,000 people, and was renamed the “National Defense Forces.” In May 1949, the South Korean Army upgraded its brigade to a division, and the army expanded into eight divisions and 23 regiments, with a strength of more than 100,000 troops. Since then, South Korea’s military strength has continued to expand. According to American war history books, by June 1950, South Korea’s total military strength was more than 150,000, including 94,808 troops from 8 divisions of the Army, 6,145 from the Coast Guard, 1,865 from the Air Force, 48,273 police officers, 27 armored vehicles, artillery More than 700 doors, 140 anti-tank guns, and more than 1,900 rocket launchers. Syngman Rhee strongly advocated the unification of North Korea by force. On January 21, 1949, he publicly stated at a press conference that he hoped that “the national army will advance northward.” On February 7, he delivered a speech to Congress, saying that if the peaceful reunification of North Korea cannot be achieved with the help of the UN North Korea Commission, then the national army will have to march into North Korea. He said: “The division between the North and the South must be resolved through war.” On September 30, he wrote to his good friend, American Robert Oliver: I firmly believe that it is now time to take psychological measures to combine with the Communist Party loyal to us in the North better time to wipe out the rest of him. We would crowd Kim Il Sung’s troops into the mountains and starve them to death. At that time, our line of defense can be built at the mouth of the Tumen River and the Yalu River. Things will get better for us. A week before the outbreak of the Korean Civil War, US State Department adviser John Foster Dulles visited South Korea to inspect the 38th parallel. Dulles visited South Korea on behalf of Secretary of State Acheson. In his speech to South Korea’s National Assembly, he made clear: “If South Korea is attacked and invaded, the United States will defend South Korea.” Dulles told the South Koreans with considerable certainty: “In case South Korea is invaded by North Korea, the United States is fully prepared , and have all possible countermeasures.” The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has made a series of efforts to realize the peaceful reunification of the country. At the same time, the necessary military preparations were made. Import weapons and equipment from the Soviet Union, form various arms and arms, and strengthen military training. In May 1949, Kim Il Sung sent Jin Yi, director of the Political Department of the People’s Army, to China to demand that the Chinese Communist Party’s Korean division return to North Korea. The North Korean army was mainly concentrated in the Fourth Field Army, about 40,000 people, which contributed to the victory of the Chinese revolution. With the final victory of the Chinese revolution and the establishment of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, some of them expressed their intention to return to China to join the People’s Army. *** Agreed to allow the two North Korean divisions operating in the Northeast to return to North Korea, while the other division operating in the South could return to North Korea after completing its mission. In July of the same year, two North Korean divisions returned to North Korea and were incorporated into the People’s Army. According to the report given to Stalin by the Soviet ambassador to North Korea, Stakov, by August 1949, the Korean People’s Army had 5 infantry divisions, 1 infantry brigade, 1 mechanized division, 2 artillery brigades and one with 74 aircraft. The small air force has a total strength of more than 80,000 people, and another 41,000 guards. Since then, the people’s army has developed again. By the time the Korean War broke out, the People’s Army had ten infantry divisions, one tank brigade, and air, army, navy, and garrison forces, totaling more than 135,000 people, equipped with heavy weapons such as T-34 tanks, Yak fighter jets, and 122mm howitzers. . In January 1950, Kim Il Sung formally proposed to the Soviet Union the possibility of unifying Korea by military means, and requested the support of the Soviet Communist Party. That same month, Jin Guangxia was sent to China to demand the return of 14,000 North Korean soldiers. China agreed to their request, and these people returned to North Korea in the spring of 1950 and were incorporated into the People’s Army. In April, Kim Il-sung went to Moscow to hold talks with Starbucks. I agree with Stalin Kim Il Sung’s analysis of the situation in North Korea and his idea of ​​preparing to unify the country by military means. In May, Kim Il Sung went to China and informed the Communist Party of his talks with Stalin. Realizing the reunification of Korea is the common aspiration of the Korean people and conforms to the fundamental interests of the Korean peoplebeneficial. While not ideal, there is nothing wrong with choosing the way to war. In order to achieve reunification, both the North and the South have made military preparations. Moreover, the conflict on the 38th parallel was first provoked by South Korea. From January to April 1949, South Korea used company-level troops to invade north of the 38th parallel 37 times. In May, the South Korean army dispatched more than 4,100 people to attack the People’s Army garrison positions near Kaesong, north of the 38th parallel. In July, South Korea once again dispatched brigade-level troops to attack North Korea. According to North Korean statistics, in 1949, South Korea provoked 1,836 times on the 38th parallel. The scale of the conflict has changed from small to large, and the road to peaceful reunification has been blocked. In the end, the outbreak of civil war to solve the problem by force is inevitable. Later, due to the armed intervention of the United States (although the United States played the banner of the United Nations), the nature of the Korean Civil War changed. The Korean people’s domestic revolutionary war for independence and reunification evolved into a national liberation war against imperialist aggression.