The Korean War wasn’t as protested as Vietnam, but everything in Vietnam had its forerunner in Korea. Support of corrupt tyranny, atrocities, management of news and sabotaging of peace talks. Americans were convinced that Korea was one country invading another without provocation, or bad guys attacking good guys with even better guys saving the day. This is the narrative: North Korea attacks South Korea in early morning of 25 June 1950. There were no accusations of imperialism because the US was fighting “as part of” a United Nations Army. The McCarthyism that existed in the United States made this propaganda campaign even less controversial.

After the Second World War, the Soviets and the US occupied the Korean peninsula to expel the occupying Japanese. There was a demarcation line between the Russians and the US – it was called the 38th Parallel. There was no intention of establishing two separate countries before the Cold War started, but this initiated what we now know as North and South Korea. Both powers, at the time, insisted that unification was a desired goal, although both sides wanted unification in their own image. No agreement was made for years, and both the DC and Moscow-picked leaders accepted the division as “better than nothing”. Although the citizens and officials still wanted unification, the real politik wasn’t creating such a situation.

The two sides (North and South) had been clashing for years, effectively in a state of civil war. The day of the official civil war was simply an escalation of pre-existing conditions. North Korea claimed that in 1949 alone, South Korea had perpetrated 2617 armed incursions for murder, kidnap, pillage and arson. At times, thousands of soldiers were involved in a single battle. A United States State Department official stated that “there is constant fighting between the South Korean Army and bands that infiltrate the country from the North. There are very real battles, involving perhaps one or two thousand men. When you go to this boundary, as I did … you see troop movements, fortifications, and prisoners of war”. In this context, the question “who fired first?” is far less significant.

On the day itself, the North Korean story is that their invasion was provoked by two days of South Korean bombardment from the 23-24th June, plus a surprise attack across the border on 25 June. No UN group witnessed the outbreak of hostilities, and its statements are based purely on speculation and the word of South Korean officials. South Korea had taken Haeju by the night of 26th June, which South Korea reported before denying it later on in order to paint a particular picture. There are independent reports from Western media which confirms such facts, which align more with the North Korean perspective than that of South Korea and the United States.

South Korean President Syngman Rhee wanted unification by force but was waiting for United States’ approval before making significant moves. Even the New York Times reported that before the war, “warlike talk strangely [had] almost all come from SK leaders”. Rhee had reason for a full-scale war apart from unification – a month prior, he suffered a setback in his elections, and would have wanted war in order to garner support. The Labour advisor attached to the US Aid mission in South Korea resigned, stating the South Korea was “an oppressive regime”. He said that “an internal South Korean rebellion against the Rhee government would have occurred if North Korea had not invaded”.

From the Soviet perspective, Khrushchev’s writings on the period are quite unreliable. He had said that North Korea had contemplated invasion for some time, and reports their invasion without mention of any kind of provocation on that day. But, as Khrushchev says himself, his memories of that day are “unavoidably sketchy” – he didn’t become the leader of the Soviet Union until after the war was over. The evidence pointed to by Western sources comes from a transcription of Khrushchev’s tapes. A study done on these tapes, however, reveals large discrepancies in dictation and translation. In the book, it is said that “Kim went home and then returned to Moscow when he had worked everything out”. In the transcripts however, it says “in my opinion, either the date of his return was set, or he was to inform us as soon as he finished preparing all of his ideas. Then, I don’t remember in which month or year, Kim Il-Sung came and related his plan to Stalin”.

The US presented to the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) condemning North Korea of unprovoked aggression. Egypt and Yugoslavia both suggested that “unprovoked” be dropped from the resolution to reflect longstanding hostilities between North and South, but these suggestions were rejected. Yugoslavia in particular wanted the North Koreans to present their side of the story, but this was denied. The UNSC then recommended that the United Nations should assist South Korea, although the United States had already sent their own Navy and Air Force. The Council made their decision with basically no information, and the United Nations, especially of the 1950s, was far from balanced. A majority of nations in the UN were dependent on the United States as there was not yet a bloc of Third World nations who were independent (this would come later). The United Nations Secretary-General Trygve Lie was overtly anti-communist and had a secret deal with the United States to dismiss officials with “questionable” politics. The Soviet Union was also absent from the UN as they were protesting Taiwan being given a seat rather than China, meaning that they could not veto the resolutions. The resolution being passed meant that the established the UN Command, recommending that all members make assistance available to unified command under the United States. In reality, however, the UN Command was just the United States Military with some allies providing assistance.

Dwight Eisenhower, US President at the time, wrote that he was considering intervention in Vietnam in 1954. He wanted it to be another “coalition” but knew that the United States would have to lead it. He wrote, “the token forces supplied by these other nations, as in Korea, would lend real moral standing to a venture that otherwise could be made to appear as a brutal example of imperialism”. This is all but an admission that the Korean War was pure imperialism.

Syngman Rhee was, as many United States allied leaders, a puppet of the Americans. It is difficult to find a good word about Syngman Rhee outside of South Korean government sources. He was brought back to South Korea after exile in the United States in the Second World War. He was put into a prominent position by the US Army Military Government in South Korea (USAMGIK). In the process, the United States had to suppress the Korean People’s Republic (KPR).

Despite the communist-sounding name, the KPR also included many conservatives. Syngman Rhee himself was chairman at one point, but didn’t particularly like the organisation because it was too “left-wing”. After 35 years of Japanese occupation, the KPR was the resistance movement. It was the most popular political grouping in South Korea, but the United States denied it any “authority, status or form”. Instead, the United States treated South Korea as the enemy as opposed to a liberated, independent state. Member of the USAMGIK Alfred Crofts wrote, “a potential unifying agency became thus one of the fifty-four splinter groups in South Korean political life”.

Rhee was Washington’s man – he was anti-Communist and controllable. Crofts wrote, “before the American landings, a political Right, associated in popular thought with colonial rule, could not exist; but shortly afterward we were to foster at least three conservative factions”. Much of the property, businesses and other assets which had been confiscated by the Japanese was sold to the highest bidder, which happened to be those who had collaborated with the Japanese occupying forces. As opposed to the situation in North Korea, in which the Soviet Union persecuted those who had collaborated with the Japanese, the United States only further emboldened them. Blum writes, “with half of the wealth of the nation up for grabs, demoralisation was rapid”. The United States in South Korea had allowed the collaborators, and even the Japanese themselves, to retain high offices. The United States goal was simple: to make sure that the Koreans could not gain independent power. Resentment grew through KPR suppression and the “elections” got so ridiculous that Syngman Rhee’s leadership was an embarrassment to the United States who threatened to cut off aid.

The resentment against the South Korean government manifested itself through frequent rebellions from 1946. These were dismissed as communist-inspired and were repressed. John Gunther wrote, “it can be safely said that in the eyes of Hodge (US commander) and Rhee, particularly in the beginning, almost any Korean not an extreme rightist was a communist and potential traitor”. US troops were heavily involved in the repression. They “fired on crowds, conducted mass arrests, combed the hills for suspects, and organized posses of Korean rightists, constabulary and police for mass raids”. Rhee was, according to Chicago Sun correspondent Mark Gayn, “two centuries before fascism – a pure Bourbon”. Pro-Western political scientist John Kie-Chiang Oh wrote, “in these campaigns, the civil liberties of countless persons were often ignored. Frequently, hapless villagers, suspected of aiding the guerrillas, were summarily executed”. Another example of Syngman Rhee’s brutality, the National Assembly launched an investigation into the those who had collaborated with the Japanese, and Rhee had the Assembly raided. The result was sixteen members with either broken ribs, skulls or eardrums. Yet another example is the Koch’ang incident, “in which about six hundred men and women, young and old, were herded into a narrow valley and mowed down with machine guns by a South Korean army unit”. The reason for the massacre: they were suspected of aiding guerrillas. By the outbreak of the Korean War, there were 14,000 political prisoners in South Korea. During the War itself, the South Koreans carried out slaughter against their own. The New York Times reported a wave of South Korean government executions in Seoul in December 1950. US diplomat Gregory Henderson stated, “probably over 100,000 were killed without any trial whatsoever”.

Throughout the war, the United States perpetrated many myths to garner support back home. There was the myth that the brutality of the war was only on the North Korean side. The many incidents explored above provide a different story. Another counter to this myth is the United States’ use of napalm throughout the conflict. The New York Times reported that the damage in some villages was so bad, nowhere in [the village] have they buried the dead because there is nobody left to do so”. In the words of Major General Emmett O’Donnell, “I would say that the entire, almost the entire Korean Peninsula is just a terrible mess… Everything is destroyed. There is nothing standing worthy of the name”. Although this statement was made in 1951, the worst bombings would not start until 1952.

There was also the myth that US prisoners of war were dying like flies because of the Communist neglect, but a quick check of the numbers shows that the United States greatly exaggerated the numbers. A 1951 US Military announcement stated that between 5000 and 8000 POWs had died. Later, a study by the US Army stated that the total death toll was 2730, and that these deaths were not due to maltreatment. The North Korean side of the story was that many of the prisoners had died from the relentless United States bombardment. The South Korean POW deaths were far higher, with 6600 dead at the halfway point of the war, although this was also because the South had held many more POWs than the North.

Another myth was that the North Koreans were brainwashing US soldiers. It is true that 30% of US POWs had collaborated with North Korea. Although brainwashing as a concept has never been proven, there are many accounts of political indoctrination that spans back to the Second World War and US Civil War. The accounts of the US Army describing the “brainwashing” simply describes a relaying of facts to US soliders:

“In the indoctrination lectures, the Communists frequently displayed global charts dotted with our military bases, the names of which were of course known to many of the captives. “See those bases?” the instructor would say, tapping them on the chart with his pointer. “They are American—full of war materiel. You know they are American. And you can see they are ringing Russia and China. Russia and China do not have one base outside their own territory. From this it’s clear which side is the warmonger. Would America have these bases and spend millions to maintain them were it not preparing to war on Russia and China?” This argument seemed plausible to many of the prisoners. In general they had no idea that these bases showed not the United States’ wish for war, but its wish for peace, that they had been established as part of a series of treaties aimed not at conquest, but at curbing Red aggression.”
China’s involvement was another subject on which propaganda was often based. The Chinese did intervene, but they had their reasons. It was four months after the war began, after the US had been bombing Chinese territory (apparently in error) and after the US had gone up the Yalu River located on the Chinese border. Blum writes, “The question must be asked: How long would the United States refrain from entering a war being waged in Mexico by a Communist power from across the sea, which strafed and bombed Texas border towns, was mobilized along the Rio Grande, and was led by a general who threatened war against the United States itself?”.

Yet another myth surrounded the negotiations between the two countries. It was purported that the North would not negotiate, prolonging the war – but this was wrong. In fact, it was Syngman Rhee who was opposed to any outcome short of total victory. This was even too extreme for the Americans, with Truman and Eisenhower both plotting to overthrow him for being too difficult. The United States themselves were not negotiating either, with the New York Times reporting in 1951 that “the Communists have made important concessions while the United Nations Command, as they view it, continues to make more and more demands. … The United Nations truce team has created the impression that it switches its stand whenever the Communists indicate that they might go along with it”.

The whole situation is best summed up in William Blum’s own words: “Once upon a time, the United States fought a great civil war in which the North attempted to reunite the divided country through military force. Did Korea or China or any other foreign power send in an army to slaughter Americans, charging Lincoln with aggression?”