Was the US Getting Involved in the Korean War Worth It?

A friend of mine, who is from China, already seems to have a lifetime full of stories. One she doesn’t consider especially noteworthy—but I certainly do—is her trek to the Chinese-North Korean border.

“It’s really boring,” she says dismissively, “there’s nothing there and it takes hours of hiking to get to it.”

Considering that the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) of North Korea and South Korea is one of the most militarized, increasingly dangerous borders in the entire world, maybe you can understand my amazement at how the situation seems completely different a few hundred miles north.

Though recently overshadowed by domestic political crisis and Islamic State-related attacks, the threat posed by North Korea, steadily growing with each provocation and nuclear missile test should arguably be taken more seriously than any other global security threat. With events like these, it got me thinking: was the Korean War worth fighting if it only led to this increasingly unstable stand off? Was too little, or too much for that matter done all those years ago? 

For this piece, I won’t give the same amount of context I usually give for a historical event. Rather, I’ll try to talk solely about American involvement in the war and assess its gains and losses, and have it serve as a potential introduction for another post in the future.

The Korean War, succeeding the Second World War and preceding the Vietnam War for American forces, is often forgotten due to being sandwiched between these greater conflicts. While WWII is perennially considered a, ‘good’ war, and Vietnam a ‘bad’ one, which side does the Korean War fall on, if any?

The first major post-WWII conflict of the Cold War was never intended to take place in Asia, but rather in Europe. Neither the Americans nor the Soviet Union wanted to fight there, even though they were each backing their own puppets in the region, north and south, respectively. Kim Il-Sung however, founder of the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea following the Japanese surrender, and installed by the Soviets, decided to take his chances and reclaim the southern Korean peninsula. The South was lightly defended, and its capital, Seoul, was captured in a matter of days. It was expected that the rest of the country would soon follow. However, President Harry Truman shocked the world, and much of America for that matter, by throwing US troops stationed in Japan into the fray and stating his determination to protect the South.

Truman’s rationale for this was that communism simply could not be allowed expand from where it already existed, otherwise one country after another would fall under the communist influence. US commitment sent a clear message to the Soviets in particular that hostile military takeovers of free (and "free") countries would not be tolerated. However, as we'll see later on, the US-led forces in Korea soon overplayed their hand.

So far though, American forces weren’t doing much protecting. For the first time in American military history, the Americans were forced to retreat on a large scale in the face of overwhelming North Korean numbers. With their backs to the wall in the southeast corner of Korea, Pusan, the odds didn’t look good. Then General Douglass MacArthur, hero of the Pacific in WWII launched an amphibious invasion behind the North Korean lines at the port island of Inchon. With the North Koreans cut off, within a few months American-led forces recaptured Seoul and pushed them back to their border.

The war could have ended there. However, MacArthur, sensing blood in the water, wanted to invade North Korea and finish the job, knocking the communists out of North Korea. Truman was uneasy. Defending the South from communist aggression was one thing, but driving through the North would alter the pre-war communist boundaries and status quo of Asia. He was worried China might perceive such a move as a threat. However, Secretary of State Dean G. Acheson and MacArthur advised Truman that China, led by Chairman Mao Zedong, was too concerned with building their own nascent People’s Republic and consolidating their power. An intervention would not be in their interests. With this advice, Truman gave MacArthur approval, and within another few months, the North Korean forces were driven back to their northern border along the Yalu River. Victory was within reach.

However, Mao and the Chinese Politburo saw the invasion as a direct threat. A US base along its border could mean they themselves could be invaded in the near future. As a result, the war was of vital interest into the Chinese. In one of the more understandable things Mao has ever done, without any warning he quietly flooded North Korea with Chinese troops, taking American forces by surprise. Once again half of Korea was rolled over by an invading force, but the American-led forces made a stand at the 38^th parallel. After that, there’s not much to say about the war. Over two years, little change came to the stalemate that formed there. The key point however is how the war ended. What happened was simply an end to the fighting was negotiated (the sticking point for a long time were prisoners of war returns for both sides) and reluctantly agreed upon. No ‘armistice’ or peace treaty was signed. That means we, along with South Korea, are still technically at war with North Korea, 64 years later.

So where does that leave us today? In the decades following the war, for a while the North Korean GDP per capita was larger than the South’s. However, in the late 70s and early 80s, the South Korean economy took off and its hard-right government liberalized. Today, South Korea is an incredible success story of a country with few natural resources. It has one of the largest GDPs in the world, a flourishing democracy, has gifted the world with numerous products and is an excellent global citizen. North Korea, by contrast, has doubled and tripled down on its tyrannical rule, especially after losing its strongest backer with the fall of the Berlin Wall. North Korea is one of the poorest, most illiberal places to live and its government has grown increasingly erratic, desperate even, and has grown increasingly dangerous. It is a “loose-cannon” in every sense of the phrase, aggressive enough to provoke the world but risking even full-scale nuclear war if it perceives any outside response as a threat. It believes disarmament invites annihilation, or reunification, which for them without Kim Jong Un leading would be even worse. There are certainly options available for disarmament—consistent sanctions and cooperation with China to use their leverage on the North is probably the best option. However, that policy needs to be fundamentally overhauled, otherwise it risks falling apart.

So did the 35,000 American troops killed in the war and the thousands of others who fought in it do so for a good cause? I believe so. Not only did their actions save South Korea, a country that bloomed into an invaluable gift to the world that otherwise would have made the Northern regime even stronger, their actions likely saved more. Under Truman’s “Containment” doctrine of communist countries, those troops sent a clear message to communist countries that they would not allow invasions to go unopposed. Such an action in Korea likely prevented one occurring in Europe, which would have involved the Soviet Union and would have risked all-out nuclear war. These men indeed gave their lives for good.

However, the work they were thrown into is undone. War cannot be allowed on the Korean peninsula again. It carries grave risks for the region and possibly the world. I don’t think most people understand that, something that could have dire consequences maybe sooner than later.