The Korean War was fought between North Korea and South
Korea from 1950 to 1953. The war began on 25 June 1950 when
North Korea invaded South Korea following clashes along the
border and rebellions in South Korea. North Korea was
supported by China and the Soviet Union while South Korea was
supported by the United States and allied countries. The
fighting ended with an armistice on 27 July 1953.
On 25 June 1950, the KPA crossed the 38th
Parallel behind artillery fire. The KPA
justified its assault with the claim that ROK
army troops attacked first and that the KPA
were aiming to arrest and execute the "bandit traitor Syngman
Rhee". Fighting began on the strategic Ongjin Peninsula in
the west. In five days, the ROK,
which had 95,000 troops on 25 June, was down to less than
22,000 troops. In early July, when U.S. forces arrived, what
was left of the ROK were placed under U.S.
operational command of the United Nations Command.
The Battle of Osan, the first significant U.S. engagement
of the Korean War, involved the 540-soldier Task Force Smith,
which was a small forward element of the 24th Infantry
Division which had been flown in from Japan. On 5 July 1950,
Task Force Smith attacked the KPA
at Osan but without weapons capable of destroying the
KPA tanks. The KPA
defeated the U.S. soldiers; the result was 180 American dead,
wounded, or taken prisoner. The KPA
progressed southwards, pushing back U.S. forces at Pyongtaek,
Chonan, and Chochiwon, forcing the 24th Division’s retreat to
Taejeon, which the KPA captured in the Battle of
Taejon; the 24th Division suffered 3,602 dead and wounded and
2,962 captured, including its commander, Major General
William F. Dean.
By September, UN forces were hemmed into a small corner of
southeast Korea, near Pusan. This 230-kilometre (140-mile)
perimeter enclosed about 10% of Korea, in a line partially
defined by the Nakdong River. In the resulting Battle of
Pusan Perimeter (August-September 1950), the UN forces
withstood KPA attacks meant to capture the
cityat the Naktong Bulge, P’ohang-dong, and Taegu. To
relieve the Pusan Perimeter, General MacArthur recommended an
amphibious landing at Incheon, near Seoul and well over 160
km (100 mi) behind the KPA lines.
On 30 September, Zhou Enlai warned the U.S. that China was
prepared to intervene in Korea if the U.S. crossed the 38th
Parallel. By 1 October 1950, the UN Command repelled the
KPA northwards past the 38th
Parallel; the ROK advanced after them, into North
Korea. In a meeting on 13 October, the Politburo of the
Chinese Communist Party decided that China would intervene
even in the absence of Soviet air support, basing its
decision on a belief that superior morale could defeat an
enemy that had superior equipment. Immediately on his return
to Beijing on 18 October 1950, Zhou met with Mao Zedong, Peng
Dehuai and Gao Gang, and the group ordered two hundred
thousand PVA troops to enter
North Korea, which they did on 19 October.
China justified its entry into the war as a response to
what it described as "American aggression in the guise of the
UN". Chinese decision-makers feared that the American-led
invasion of North Korea was part of a U.S. strategy to invade
China ultimately. They were also worried about rising
counter-revolutionary activity at home. MacArthur’s public
statements that he wanted to extend the Korean War into
China, and return the Kuomintang to power reinforced this
fear.
After secretly crossing the Yalu River on 19 October, the
PVA 13th Army Group
launched the First Phase Offensive on 25 October, attacking
the advancing UN forces near the Sino-Korean border. After
inflicting heavy losses on the ROK
II Corps at the Battle of Onjong, the first confrontation
between Chinese and U.S. military occurred on 1 November
1950. On 25 November, on the Korean western front, the
PVA 13th Army Group
attacked and overran the ROK II Corps at the Battle of
the Ch’ongch’on River, and then inflicted heavy losses on the
U.S. 2nd Infantry Division on the UN forces’ right flank. In
the east, on 27 November, the PVA 9th Army Group
initiated the Battle of Chosin Reservoir. Here, the UN forces
fared comparatively better.
In early February, the ROK 11th Division ran an
operation to destroy guerrillas and pro-DPRK sympathizers in
Southern Korea. During the operation, the division and police
conducted the Geochang massacre and Sancheong?Hamyang
massacre. In mid-February, the PVA counterattacked
with the Fourth Phase Offensive and achieved initial victory
at Hoengseong. However, the offensive was soon blunted by
U.S. IX Corps at Chipyong-ni in the center. The U.S. 23rd
Regimental Combat Team and the French Battalion fought a
short but desperate battle that be the attack’s momentum. The
battle is sometimes known as the "Gettysburg of the Korean
War": 5,600 Suth Korean, U.S., and French troops were
surrounded on all sides by 25,000 PVA. UN forces had
previously retreated in the face of large forces instead of
getting cut off, but this time, they stood and fought, and
won.
In the last two weeks of February 1951, Operation
Thunderbolt was followed by Operation Killer, carried out by
the revitalized Eighth Army. It was a full-scale,
battlefront-length attack staged for maximum exploitation of
firepower to kill as many KPA and PVA troops as possible.
Operation Killer concluded with U.S. I Corps re-occupying the
territory south of the Han River, and IX Corps capturing
Hoengseong.
The PVA counter-attacked in
April 1951, with the Fifth Phase Offensive, with three field
armies (approximately 700,000 men). The first thrust of the
offensive fell upon I Corps, which fiercely resisted in the
Battle of the Imjin River (22-25 April 1951) and the Battle
of Kapyong (22-25 April 1951), blunting the impetus of the
offensive, which was halted at the No-name Line north of
Seoul. Casualty ratios were grievously disproportionate; Peng
had expected a 1:1 or 2:1 ratio, but instead, Chinese combat
casualties from 22 to 29 April totaled between 40,000 and
60,000 compared to only 4,000 for the UN, a casualty ratio
between 10:1 and 15:1. By the time Peng had called off the
attack in the western sector on 29 April, the three
participating armies had lost a third of their front-line
combat strength within a week.
For the remainde of the war, the UN and the KPA
fought but exchanged little territory, as the stalemate held.
Large-scale bombing of North Korea continued, and protracted
armistice negotiations began on 10 July 1951 at Kaesong, an
ancient capital of Korea located in ROK
held territory. On the Chinese side, Zhou Enlai directed
peace talks, and Li Kenong and Qiao Guanghua headed the
negotiation team. Combat continued while the belligerents
negotiated; the goal of the UN forces was to recapture all of
South Korea and to avoid losing territory. The PVA and the KPA
attempted similar operations and later effected military and
psychological operations to test the UN Command’s resolve to
continue the war.
``
The on-again, off-again armistice negotiations continued
for two years, first at Kaesong, on the border between North
and South Korea, and then at the neighboring village of
Panmunjom. A major, problematic negotiation point was
prisoner of war (POW) repatriation. The PVA, KPA
and UN Command could not agree on a system of repatriation
because many PVA and KPA
soldiers refused to be repatriated back to the north, which
was unacceptable to the Chinese and North Koreans. A Neutral
Nations Repatriation Commission, under the chairman Indian
General K. S. Thimayya, was subsequently set up to handle the
matter.
Under the Armistice Agreement, the belligerents
established the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), along the
front line, which vaguely follows the 38th Parallel. In the
eastern part, the DMZ runs north of the 38th Parallel; to the
west, it travels south of it. Kaesong, site of the initial
armistice negotiations, was originally in pre-war South Korea
but now is part of North Korea. The DMZ has since been
patrolled by the KPA and the ROK
and the U.S. still operating as the UN Command.
