United States Involvement in the Korean War

The establishment of the Republic of Korea (South Korea) and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) in 1948 as separate states and the division of the Korean peninsula demonstrated the failure of the agreement by Allied forces to govern Korea multilaterally after defeating Japan and in “due course” give independence to that country. During various conferences that took place between the Allies between 1943 and end of the Second World War, both the US and the Soviet Union had formally acknowledged that the creation of the two separate states in the two occupation zones was not a permanent solution and the establishment of a united government for Korea was the official commitment of the two occupying powers. On 25th June 1950 the North Korean army invaded South Korea and in doing so created one of the decisive moments of the United States and Soviet Union rivalry which escalated the existing tensions between the two countries known as “The Cold War”. This essay will begin by discussing briefly the US Foreign Policy towards Korea during and after the end of the Second World War and examine the agreements reached between the victorious Allied governments following the defeat of the Axis forces (Germany, Italy, Japan) and debate the reasons for the US involvement in the Korean War. Significantly, the Korean War was the start of a nuclear arms race between the US and the Soviet Union (Russia was referred to by this name after the Second World War). Although this essay will emphasize mainly on the policies and actions of the US government prior and during the Korean War, it will inevitably make references to other governments involved in that conflict especially the Soviet Union.

The American policy toward Korea chang...

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...orld Politics 1, no. 02 (1949): 223-232.

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