The Korean War: the Unnecessary War

The Unnecessary War

Contemporary World History
Tues. & Thurs. 2:00-3:20
Fall 2010

“It was very easy to start a war in Korea. It was not so easy to stop it.” - Nikita Khrushchev. 1894-1971

Even today, 57 years later, that statement still rings true. The fighting has stopped but the war has been ongoing. In the years since the fighting stopped in 1953, North and South Korea, with their strange love-hate relationship have been in the news numerous times. Most recently with the North Korean sinking of a South Korean military ship and the shelling of   Yeonpyeong, leaving villages destroyed, four people killed and others injured. I often wonder if the conflict between them will ever end in peace.

The Korean War is often called the forgotten war, overshadowed by the end of World War II and with what was brewing in Vietnam. The Korean War ended in an armistice rather than a treaty, which means nobody was said to have won the war.
The conflict between North and South Korea stems back to 1945 when Korea was divided at the 38th parallel.

The Korean peninsula was ruled by Japan from 1910 until the end of World War II on August 14, 1945 when Japan quickly surrendered after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the week before. The Soviet Union invaded Manchuria and drove the Japanese Southward down the Korean Peninsula. The Americans rather arbitrarily set the 38th parallel as the boundary between Soviet and American Control. Soviet troops being stationed above the 38th parallel and US troops stationed below. It was decided that the division at the 38th parallel would be short-term and the US, Soviet Union, Britain and China were to organize a trusteeship administration with the hopes of unifying Korea. However, with strong opposition from the Soviet Union, that didn’t happen. Therefore, Korea was permanently divided in 1948. The United Nations established an anti-communist Republic of Korea in the South, where Sygman Rhee was elected...