The Korean War (25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953)[29][a][31] was a war between the Republic of Korea (South Korea), supported by the United Nations, and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea), at one time supported by the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union. It was primarily the result of the political division of Korea by an agreement of the victorious Allies at the conclusion of the Pacific War at the end of World War II. The Korean Peninsula was ruled by the Empire of Japan from 1910 until the end of World War II. Following the surrender of the Empire of Japan in September 1945, American administrators divided the peninsula along the 38th parallel, with U.S. military forces occupying the southern half and Soviet military forces occupying the northern half.
The failure to hold free elections throughout the Korean Peninsula in
1948 deepened the division between the two sides; the North established
a communist government, while the South established a right-wing government.
The 38th parallel increasingly became a political border between the
two Korean states. 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. In 1950, the Soviet Union boycotted the United Nations Security Council.
In the absence of a veto from the Soviet Union, the United States and
other countries passed a Security Council resolution authorizing
military intervention in Korea.
The U.S. provided 88% of the 341,000 international soldiers which
aided South Korean forces, with twenty other countries of the United
Nations offering assistance. Suffering severe casualties within the
first two months, the defenders were pushed back to the Pusan perimeter. A rapid U.N. counter-offensive then drove the North Koreans past the 38th parallel and almost to the Yalu River, when the People's Republic of China (PRC) entered the war on the side of North Korea.
Chinese intervention forced the Southern-allied forces to retreat
behind the 38th parallel. While not directly committing forces to the
conflict, the Soviet Union provided material aid to both the North
Korean and Chinese armies. The fighting ended on 27 July 1953, when the
armistice agreement was signed. The agreement restored the border
between the Koreas near the 38th Parallel and created the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), a 2.5-mile (4.0 km)-wide fortified buffer zone between the two Korean nations. Minor incidents still continue today.
From a military science perspective, the Korean War combined strategies and tactics of World War I and World War II: it began with a mobile campaign of swift infantry attacks followed by air bombing raids, but became a static trench war by July 1951.
Mao Zedong's decision to confront the United States in the Korean War
was a direct attempt to confront what the Communist bloc viewed as the
most powerful anti-Communist power in the world, undertaken at a time
when the Chinese Communist regime was still consolidating its own power
after winning the Chinese Civil War.
Mao primarily supported intervention not to save North Korea or to
appease the Soviet Union, but because he believed that a military
conflict with the United States was inevitable after the United States
entered the Korean War. Mao's secondary motive was to improve his own
prestige inside the communist international community by demonstrating
that his Marxist concerns were international. In his later years Mao
believed that Stalin only gained a positive opinion of him after China's
entrance into the Korean War. Inside Mainland China, the war improved
the long-term prestige of Mao, Zhou, and Peng, allowing the Chinese
Communist Party to increase its legitimacy while weakening
anti-Communist dissent.[339]
China emerged from the Korean War united by a sense of national
pride, despite the war's enormous costs. The Chinese people have the
point of view of the war being initiated by the United States and South
Korea. In Chinese media, the Chinese war effort is considered as an
example of China's engaging the strongest power in the world with an
under-equipped army, forcing it to retreat, and fighting it to a
military stalemate. These successes were contrasted with China's
historical humiliations by Japan and by Western powers over the previous
hundred years, highlighting the abilities of the PLA and the CCP.
The most significant negative long-term consequence of the war (for
China) was that it led the United States to guarantee the safety of
Chiang Kai-shek's regime in Taiwan, effectively ensuring that Taiwan
would remain outside of PRC control until the present day.[339] Mao had also discovered the usefulness of large-scale mass movements in the war while implementing them among most of his ruling measures over PRC.[340] Finally, anti-American sentiments,
which were already a significant factor during the Chinese Civil War,
was ingrained into Chinese culture during the Communist propaganda
campaigns of the Korean War.[341]
The Korean War affected other participant combatants. Turkey, for example, entered NATO in 1952[342] and the foundation for bilateral diplomatic and trade relations was laid.[343]
Racial integration efforts in the U.S. military began during the
Korean War, where African Americans fought in integrated units for the
first time. Among the 1.8 million American soldiers who fought in the
Korean War there were more than 100,000 African Americans.[344]
Postwar recovery was different in the two Koreas. South Korea
stagnated in the first postwar decade. In 1953, South Korea and the
United States concluded a Mutual Defense Treaty. In 1960, the April Revolution occurred and students joined an anti-Syngman Rhee demonstration; 142 were killed by police; in consequence Syngman Rhee resigned and defected to the United States.[345] Park Chung-hee's May 16 coup enabled social stability. In the 1960s, western princesses earned 25 percent of South Korean GNP with the help of their military government.[346] During 1965-1973, South Korea dispatched troops to Vietnam and got $235,560,000 allowance and military procurement from the US.[347] GNP increased fivefold during the Vietnam War.[347]
South Korea industrialized and modernized. Contemporary North Korea
remains underdeveloped, but its external debt is 30 times lower than
that of South Korea.[348][349] South Korea had one of the world's fastest-growing economies from the early 1960s to the late 1990s. In 1957 South Korea had a lower per capita GDP than Ghana,[350] and by 2010 it was ranked thirteenth in the world (Ghana was 86th).[351]
Postwar, about 100,000 North Koreans were executed in purges.[352] According to Rummel, forced labor and concentration camps were responsible for over one million deaths in North Korea from 1945 to 1987;[353] others have estimated 400,000 deaths in concentration camps alone.[354] Estimates based on the most recent North Korean census suggest that 240,000 to 420,000 people died as a result of the 1990s North Korean famine and that there were 600,000 to 850,000 unnatural deaths in North Korea from 1993 to 2008.[355]
The North Korean government has been accused of "crimes against
humanity" for its alleged culpability in creating and prolonging the
1990s famine.[356][357][358]
A study by South Korean anthropologists of North Korean children who
had defected to China found that 18-year-old males were 5 inches shorter
than South Koreans their age due to malnutrition.[359]
Korean anti-Americanism after the war was fueled by the presence and behavior of American military personnel (USFK) and U.S. support for the authoritarian regime, a fact still evident during the country's democratic transition in the 1980s.[360]
However, anti-Americanism has declined significantly in South Korea in
recent years, from 46% favorable in 2003 to 74% favorable in 2011,[361] making South Korea one of the most pro-American countries in the world.[362]
In addition a large number of mixed-race
'G.I. babies' (offspring of U.S. and other U.N. soldiers and Korean
women) were filling up the country's orphanages. Korean traditional
society places significant weight on paternal family ties, bloodlines,
and purity of race. Children of mixed race or those without fathers are
not easily accepted in South Korean society. International adoption of
Korean children began in 1954.[363] The U.S. Immigration Act of 1952 legalized the naturalization
of non-whites as American citizens, and made possible the entry of
military spouses and children from South Korea after the Korean War.
With the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965, which substantially changed U.S. immigration policy toward non-Europeans, Koreans became one of the fastest-growing Asian groups in the United States.[364]