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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Offner, Arnold A. Another Such Victory: President Truman and the Cold War, 1945-1953. 1st September 2002. New Article. 11th March 2014.
The alliance formed between the US and USSR during the second world war was not strong enough to overcome the decades of uneasiness which existed between the two ideologically polar opposite countries. With their German enemy defeated, the two emerging nuclear superpowers no longer had any common ground on which to base a political, economical, or any other type of relationship. Tensions ran high as the USSR sought to expand Soviet influence throughout Europe while the US and other Western European nations made their opposition to such actions well known. The Eastern countries already under Soviet rule yearned for their independence, while the Western countries were willing to go to great lengths to limit Soviet expansion. "Containment of 'world revolution' became the watchword of American foreign policy throughout the 1950s a...
The Korean War changed the face of American Cold War diplomacy forever. In the midst of all the political conflict and speculation worldwide, the nation had to choose between two proposed solutions, each one hoping to ensure that communism didn?t sweep across the globe and destroy American ideals of capitalism and democracy. General Douglas MacArthur takes the pro-active stance and says that, assuming it has the capability, the U.S. should attack communism everywhere. President Harry Truman, on the other hand, believed that containing the Soviet communists from Western Europe was the best and most important course of action, and that eliminating communism in Asia was not a priority.
In the late 1940’s the United States became involved in the United Nations action to stop the spread of communism against North Korea. For many months the U.N. force had been beaten back by a persistent NKPA force. The tactic chosen by the North Korean’s was to conduct a swift frontal assault with a rapid follow-on assault from both the left and right flanks. This proved extremely effective and caused the loss of Seoul and had forced the U.N. forces to fall back to the very tip of the Korean peninsula. Here the U.N. force, commanded by General Walton H. Walker, and the Eighth Army could fall back no further without retreating off the Korean peninsula altogether. General Walker formed his remaining troops into what would be known as the Pusan Perimeter.1 Still unfazed, the North Korean army battered the lines of the Eighth Army and many casualties resulted. It was clear that although the force could remain here indefinitely with naval support many U.S. troops would be lost and no new ground would be gained. For six weeks the North Korean Army conducted attacks trying to breach the line and it wa...
To begin with, the foreign policies that affected the United States during the 1950s and 1960s include: “containment,” “brinkmanship,” and “domino theory.” The concept of “containment” involved utilizing “firm” military, economic, and diplomatic tactics to halt the proliferation of communism, improve United States’ national security, and augment worldwide influence. In supplement of “containment,” U.S. involvement in Korea provided an example of how “containment” influenced the decision to enter the country. With China falling to communism at the hands of Mao Zedong, Korea was the next to become “infected.” Subsequently, Korea underwent a physical division, which resulted in the communist state of North Korea and the now vulnerable South Korea. Urgent to unify Korea as a communist nation, North Korea invaded South Korea and war broke out. In the midst of this, the United States had seen China fall to communism and now h...
Suri, J. (2012). Anxieties of empire and the Truman administration. A Companion to Harry S. Truman: Blackwell Publishing.
Tucker, Spencer C., Jinwung Kim, Michael R, Nichols, Paul G. Pierpaoli, Priscilla Roberst, and Norman R. Zehr, eds. Encyclopedia of the Korean War: A Political, Social, and Military History. Vol. I. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2000. Print. 89-90.
Throughout the early 1950’s the Korean Peninsula was a location with much civil unrest and violence. For this reason, it is a miracle that the Korean Armistice Agreement was actually mutually agreed upon by North and South Korea. Even with the constant complications, and early opposition surrounding the Korean Armistice Agreement, the aid of Dwight D Eisenhower made this unrealistic attempt of peace a reality.
Weathersby, K. (2004). New Evidence on the Korean War. Retrieved from COLD WAR INTERNATIONAL HISTORY PROJECT BULLETIN 14/15: http://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/Bulletin_11_Korea.pdf
Jervis, Robert, ‘The Impact of the Korean War on the Cold War’, The Journal of Conflict Resolution, 24, 4, 1980, p. 580
Despite the fact that this was the age of Western imperialism and gunboat diplomacy, Korea failed to erect a large standing military and navy. Instead of uniting under the banner of protecting Korea’s sovereignty, some officials were more concerned with protecting their own privileges. Robinson wrote “The lack of consensus in domestic politics…inhibited any program to gather
Heller, Francis. “The Korean War A 25-Year Perspective”. Kansas: The Regents Press of Kansas, 1977. Print
This book is pieced together in two different efforts, one which is to understand the latter history of the post-1945 era with its political liberalization and rapid industrialization period, while at the same time centering its entire text on the question of Korean nationalism and the struggle against the countless foreign invasions Korea had to face. The purpose of this book was composed to provide detailed treatment of how modern Korea has developed with the converged efforts of top eastern and western scholars who wanted to construct a fair overview of Korea's complicated history. Also, the writers wanted to create an updated version of Korea's history by covering the contemporary arena up to the 1990's. The ...
North and South Korea were not very different politically or culturally from one another before mid 1940’s (White, Bradshaw, Dymond, Chacko, Scheidt, 2014, p. 125). However, North Korea started the Korean War when they invaded South Korea in 1950. These two countries, which were once the same, are vastly different in the areas of politics and culture The Koreas’ continue to disagree and not be at peace with each other since the Korean War despite small steps toward progress over the
The Korean War explicitly portrayed the atrocious battle between both the North and South side which gave the United Nations its military role for the first time, thus expanding the war from a domestic to an international scale. Sometimes called “The Forgotten War”, the Korean War was mainly overshadowed in historical terms by the conflicts that occurred before and after it, World War II and the Vietnam War. The Korean War had raged for years without a true resolution and after years of battles, even the compromise that was made was not a complete one. The current situation regarding North and South Korea is quite volatile. In order to apprehend the Korean War, one has to look at events that took place before the war, how the war was conducted and the aftermath of the War.