Transcript of By: Shalesia Lide The Basis Of the Korean War The Korean War (25 June 1950 - armistice signed July...
- Slide 1
- Slide 2
- By: Shalesia Lide
- Slide 3
- The Basis Of the Korean War The Korean War (25 June 1950 -
armistice signed July 27 th, 1953 was a military conflict between
the Republic of Korea, supported by the United Nations, and the
Democratic People's Republic of Korea, supported by the People's
Republic of China (PRC), with military material aid from the Soviet
Union. The war was a result of the physical division of Korea by an
agreement of the victorious Allies at the conclusion of the Pacific
War at the end of World War II.
- Slide 4
- HOW THE WAR STARTED The Korean peninsula was ruled by Japan
from 1910 until the end of World War II. Following the surrender of
Japan in 1945, American administrators divided the peninsula along
the 38th Parallel, with United States troops occupying the southern
part and Soviet troops occupying the northern part. The failure to
hold free elections throughout the Korean Peninsula in 1948
deepened the division between the two sides, and the North
established a Communist government. The 38th Parallel increasingly
became a political border between the two Koreas. Although
reunification negotiations continued in the months preceding the
war, tension intensified. Cross-border skirmishes and raids at the
38th Parallel persisted. The situation escalated into open warfare
when North Korean forces invaded South Korea on 25 June 1950. It
was the first significant armed conflict of the Cold War.
- Slide 5
- Continued 38 th Parallel Video North Korean invasion came as an
alarming surprise to American officials. As far as they were
concerned, this was not simply a border dispute between two
unstable dictatorships on the other side of the globe. Instead,
many feared it was the first step in a communist campaign to take
over the world. For this reason, nonintervention was not considered
an option by many top decision makers. (In fact, in April 1950, a
National Security Council report known as NSC-68 had recommended
that the United States use military force to contain communist
expansionism anywhere it seemed to be occurring, regardless of the
intrinsic strategic or economic value of the lands in question.)
http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=hh0hyALDW7Y http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=hh0hyALDW7Y http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=hh0hyALDW7Y
http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=hh0hyALDW7Y
- Slide 6
- PROXY WAR The Korean War was the first major proxy war in the
Cold War, the prototype of the following sphere-of-influence wars
such as the Vietnam War (195975). The Korean War established proxy
war as one way that the nuclear superpowers indirectly conducted
their rivalry in third-party countries. The NSC-68 Containment
Policy extended the cold war from occupied Europe to the rest of
the world.
- Slide 7
- What Truman Had To Say If we let Korea down, President Harry
Truman (1884-1972) said, the Soviets will keep right on going and
swallow up one place after another. The fight on the Korean
peninsula was a symbol of the global struggle between east and
west, good and evil. As the North Korean army pushed into Seoul,
the South Korean capital, the United States readied its troops for
a war against communism itself.
- Slide 8
- The Struggle At first, the war was a defensive onea war to get
the communists out of South Koreaand it went badly for the Allies.
The North Korean army was well- disciplined, well-trained and
well-equipped; Rhees forces, by contrast, were frightened,
confused, and seemed inclined to flee the battlefield at any
provocation. Also, it was one of the hottest and driest summers on
record, and desperately thirsty American soldiers were often forced
to drink water from rice paddies that had been fertilized with
human waste. As a result, dangerous intestinal diseases and other
illnesses were a constant threat.
- Slide 9
- Strategies Planned By the end of the summer, President Truman
and General Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964), the commander in charge
of the Asian theater, had decided on a new set of war aims. Now,
for the Allies, the Korean War was an offensive one: It was a war
to liberate the North from the communists. Initially, this new
strategy was a success. An amphibious assault at Inchon pushed the
North Koreans out of Seoul and back to their side of the 38th
parallel. But as American troops crossed the boundary and headed
north toward the Yalu River, the border between North Korea and
Communist China, the Chinese started to worry about protecting
themselves from what they called armed aggression against Chinese
territory. Chinese leader Mao Zedong (1893-1976) sent troops to
North Korea and warned the United States to keep away from the Yalu
boundary unless it wanted full-scale war
- Slide 10
- Unlike World War II and Vietnam, the Korean War did not get
much media attention in the United States. The most famous
representation of the war in popular culture is the television
series M*A*S*H, which was set in a field hospital in South Korea.
The series ran from 1972 until 1983, and its final episode was the
most-watched in television history
- Slide 11
- Korean Demilitarized Zone Fighting ended at the 38th parallel
and the Korean Demilitarized Zone, a strip of land 248x4 km
(155x2.5 mi), now divides the two countries. Even so, skirmishes,
incursions, and incidents between the combatants have continued
since the Armistice was signed.
- Slide 12
- The Korean War Reaches A Stalemate In July 1951, President
Truman and his new military commanders started peace talks at
Panmunjom. Still, the fighting continued along the 38th parallel as
negotiations stalled. Both sides were willing to accept a ceasefire
that maintained the 38th parallel boundary, but they could not
agree on whether prisoners of war should be forcibly repatriated.
(The Chinese and the North Koreans said yes; the United States said
no.) Finally, after more than two years of negotiations, the
adversaries signed an armistice on July 27, 1953. The agreement
allowed the POWs to stay where they liked; drew a new boundary near
the 38th parallel that gave South Korea an extra 1,500 square miles
of territory; and created a 2-mile-wide demilitarized zone that
still exists today.
- Slide 13
- Inchon Landing On September 15, 1950, U.S. and South Korean
forces launched an amphibious landing at the port of Inch' on, near
the South Korean capital, Seoul. A daring operation planned and
executed under extremely difficult conditions by U.S. Gen. Douglas
MacArthur, the landing suddenly reversed the tide of the war,
forcing the invading North Korean army to retreat in disorder up
the Korean peninsula.
- Slide 14
- No Substitute For Victory? This was something that President
Truman and his advisers decidedly did not want: They were sure that
such a war would lead to Soviet aggression in Europe, the
deployment of atomic weapons and millions of senseless deaths. To
General MacArthur, however, anything short of this wider war
represented appeasement, an unacceptable knuckling under to the
communists. As President Truman looked for a way to prevent war
with the Chinese, MacArthur did all he could to provoke it.
Finally, in March 1951, he sent a letter to Joseph Martin, a House
Republican leader who shared MacArthurs support for declaring
all-out war on Chinaand who could be counted upon to leak the
letter to the press. There is, MacArthur wrote, no substitute for
victory against international communism. For Truman, this letter
was the last straw. On April 11, the president fired the general
for insubordination.
- Slide 15
- Continued MacArthur had started to think about a landing
somewhere behind enemy lines in early July 1950, and on August 12
he ordered his staff to prepare for an amphibious landing at Inch'
on, the port outlet of Seoul, located on Korea's west coast.
Planning and preparation for a major amphibious operation usually
took five or six months; MacArthur was allowing only one, with a
target D Day of September 15, the earliest date that tides would be
suitable. In Washington, D.C., the Joint Chiefs of Staff were at
first opposed to such a landing. They feared that because of the
grave situation at the Pusan Perimeter, MacArthur would not be able
to hold out enough units to fight elsewhere and might be defeated
in both places
- Slide 16
- The Ending Result Before the armistice, talks had gone on for
nearly 2 years. Eisenhower had promised that if he was elected in
the election of 1952, he would go to Korea and end the war. There
was no simple way to end the conflict. Talks had collapsed in
October 1952. In 1953, the US threatened to bomb China, but
eventually a ceasefire was declared between UN forces and
Korean/Chinese forces. The "De-Militarized Zone" which designates
the border between North and South Korea has remained one of the
most heavily-armed stretches of land on Earth. The stability of the
region is threatened by the development of nuclear weapons by North
Korea.
- Slide 17
- Casualties The Korean War was relatively short but
exceptionally bloody. Nearly 5 million people died. More than half
of these about 10 percent of Koreas prewar populationwere
civilians. (This rate of civilian casualties was higher than World
War IIs and Vietnams.) Almost 40,000 Americans died in action in
Korea, and more than 100,000 were wounded.