Battle of Inchon – US LSTs unloading at Inchon 15 September 1950 as American forces land in Inchon Harbor one day after the battle began

(18) KOREAN WAR (1950-1953)

Often labelled the forgotten war, at least in the United States, or compared to the First World War as a conventional stalemate for most of its duration as well as its inconclusive ceasefire, with a tendency to overlook both for the Second World War, or the Korean War for the Vietnam War (with even the MASH television series set in the former being more a commentary on the latter)

Yet it was the only war in which the United States went toe to toe with the People’s Republic of China in direct military combat – or for that matter, its primary Cold War adversary, the Soviet Union, as Soviet pilots covertly fought against the United States in aerial combat.

It was also the closest the United States came to using nuclear weapons against an adversary in war since the Second World War, actively contemplating or planning their use against China, or North Korean and Chinese forces – including plans to effectively seal off the Korean peninsula with nuclear bombs or a radioactive demilitarised zone (or both).

Jet aircraft confronted each other in air-to air combat for the first time in history and it was the first war in which jets played the central role in air combat, as well as one of the most intense air wars in modern history. The war was also a major milestone not just for fixed-wing aircraft but for rotorcraft, featuring the first large-scale deployment of helicopters, notably for medical evacuation as featured in MASH.

And it featured General Macarthur’s daring amphibious invasion behind enemy lines for the Battle of Inchon. The Battle of Inchon has commonly been considered among historians and military scholars as a strategic masterpiece or one of the most decisive military operations in modern warfare, a particularly distinctive accolade for an amphibious operation – “a brilliant success, almost flawlessly executed,” which remained “the only unambiguously successful, large-scale US combat operation” for the next 40 years.

It is a pity that he did not demonstrate the same strategic sense – or even more so the same political judgement he had shown in the American occupation of Japan – when it came to approaching the border with China. One wonders if it might have been more feasible to leave North Korea essentially as a narrow impotent rump state along the border, perhaps to negotiate into a demilitarized zone between a unified Korean peninsula and China or the Soviet Union.

While the last two years of it does indeed resemble the conventional stalemate of the Western Front in the First World War, albeit crammed into the narrower space of the Korean peninsula, the first year of the Korean War should be distinguished as far more mobile, seesawing back and forth between far more dramatic reversals of fortune than the Western Front, even in 1914 or 1918. Seoul was captured four times.

“Geographically at least, the war played out much like a football game in which both teams make it to the final 10-yard line only to fumble”.

The initial North Korean offensive that started the war caught South Korean forces off guard and American forces in the process of closing up shop, forcing them back to a small residual defensive perimeter around Busan. After the Battle of Inchon, this was dramatically reversed, with the North Koreans finding themselves being desperately forced all the way back to their border with China.

China’s entry into the war involved another abrupt and dramatic reversal of fortune, forcing the American-led forces all the way back into South Korea and capturing Seoul, before the American-led forces under their new commander General Matthew Ridgeway managed to stabilize the situation, capturing Seoul (for the fourth and final time) and pushing the Chinese forces back to the original border between South and North Korea. That is where the fighting largely stayed for the next two years – and also ended by ceasefire.

The Korean War might be styled as the two world wars – or at least the Western Front of those wars – crammed into the Korean peninsula. The more mobile part of the war might be styled as corresponding to the Western Front in the Second World War – the initial North Korean offensive corresponding to the German blitzkrieg in 1940 (if the Allies were able to hold a defensive perimeter in France), the American amphibious invasion in the Battle of Inchon and aftermath corresponding to the Allied amphibious invasion at Normandy and campaign in France in 1944, and the Chinese counter-offensive perhaps corresponding to the Battle of the Bulge had it succeeded. The static part of the war would then of course correspond to the Western Front in the First World War, without the decisive campaigns in 1918.

One point to be observed is that the First World War and Korean War with their inconclusive armistices or ceasefires are far more typical of modern war than the Second World War and Vietnam War with their decisive victories.

That is also to overlook the scale of the Korean War, which while not to the scale of the First World War, might well be styled as first world war of the Cold War – particularly given the involvement of the Soviet bloc and China on the North Korean side, as well as the United States and United Nations on the South Korean side.

Alternatively, the Korean War might be styled as the Second World War and Cold War crammed into the Korean peninsula – in a very literal sense. The Korean War was the intersection between the Second World War and the Cold War, with the Korean War “largely fought by the same commanders and with the same doctrines, weapons, and equipment as the Second World War” – including strategic bombing on the same scale, dropping more bombs than in the whole Pacific War, ranking North Korea as one of the most heavily bombed countries in history.

That ranking is one reason why the Korean War is often compared to the Vietnam War, albeit the latter again overshadows the former – given that North Korea has that ranking only somewhat above Cambodia, but less than Laos and North Vietnam.

Other reasons include the striking similarity as front lines in the Cold War – with the United States intervening in both wars on the side of a southern non-communist state in some degree of civil war against their northern communist counterpart in Asian peninsulas divided into two by occupation or insurgency.

However, it is ironic that the Korean War is forgotten or overlooked in comparison with the Vietnam War it otherwise resembled, particularly as the United States managed to preserve the non-communist southern state it fought for in Korea as opposed to Vietnam – and arguably its clearer moral purpose.

It is even more ironic that the Korean War is forgotten or overlooked in comparison with the Vietnam War, as the Korean War is still very much with us – with the ceasefire division of the Korean peninsula into opposing North and South Korea, still technically at war with each other, in a frozen conflict like bugs preserved in some strange Cold War amber.

Although the Korean War had about half as many American deaths as the Vietnam War, it was in a much shorter period of time in correspondingly more high-intensity combat. The Korean War remains one of the most destructive conflicts of modern history, in destruction inflicted on Korea itself (although South Korea rebounded from it) and casualties – with approximately 3 million killed, the majority of them civilians, a proportionately higher civilian casualty rate than the Second World War or Vietnam, and the deadliest conflict in the Cold War.

RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)