KOREA: THREE YEARS OF WAR

On June 29, 1950, the President of the U.S. told the American people that a "bunch of bandits" had crossed the 38th parallel in Korea. "Under the circumstances," said Harry Truman, "I have ordered U.S. air and sea forces to give the Korean government troops cover and support."

Korea is a war in which the U.S. 1) within six months, decisively defeated the original aggressor, North Korea; 2) has fought inconclusively for 2 1/2 years with a second, Red China. It is an international war, piled onto a civil war, undertaken in behalf of the "free world." It is the first U.N. war, the first jet-air war.

It is also a war of superlatives that brought more men (5,000,000) from more countries (16) to a smaller piece of real estate (85,000 sq. mi.) than any other war in history. It has kept the U.S. fighting longer than World War I; it has already cost the U.S. $22 billion.

The human cost is higher. On democracy's side:

P: Killed in combat: 71,500. ROKs: 45,000; Americans: 24,000; British 600; others 1,900.

P: Wounded: 250,000.

P:Missing & captured: 83,263.

Communist losses were far greater, though U.N. estimates are unreliable: 1,347,000 killed or wounded.

The war to save Korea has also killed 400,000 Korean civilians, left 500,000 homes wrecked beyond repair. One fourth of all Koreans are homeless, and 100,000 are orphans; all are underfed. In North Korea, 40% of all habitations are destroyed, and of military targets--factories, power plants, etc.--U.N. airmen agree that there is not much left to destroy. Its army is smashed, its civilian population has diminished from 8,000,000 to 4,000,000.

South Korea, likewise, is a war-wrecked shell: 75% of its mines and textile factories are out of action, 2/3 of its schools unusable. But out of disaster has grown a tough army of 16 divisions, and a sense of nationhood.

In the air over North Korea, U.S. pilots learned to fight at 40,000 ft. and 600 m.p.h. and won their war (see BUSINESS). On the ground, the U.S. Army fought a war that resembled the Somme.

World War II had brought to near perfection two major techniques of modern war: the fast-moving, armored blitzkrieg, and strategic air bombardment, culminating in the Abomb. Korea saw both techniques disabled by physiography (mud and jagged hills) and politics (no bombs beyond the Yalu, a decision made in the U.S. in the summer of 1951). The result: a return to sitzkrieg, a mode of warfare that forced the mobile U.S. to fight on the enemy's terms. Thus it was that the most powerful nation in the world failed for the first time to win a war that it engaged in.

The U.S. & Korea. Britain, in the nineteenth century, fought scores of "police actions." Its people got used to having their young men dying in some corner of a foreign field while the nation, half forgetting, remained forever England.

Korea made the same demand on the U.S., but Americans, new to the controlled exercise of great power, resisted the role. They could not forget Korea (the newspapers saw to that), and it spoiled some of their pleasure in TV sets and Cadillacs that a handful of young men knew death each day in a strange land far from home.

In the beginning it was just like other wars: the marines sailed from San Diego, and the nation glowed with the conviction that its sons were fighting in an honored cause--to save the weak from the strong. The mood changed with the headline: resolute at Pusan, proud at Inchon, angry and alarmed at defeat on the Yalu.

Chinese intervention transformed a "police action" into a major war--an "entirely new war," Douglas MacArthur called it. In the U.S., it provoked the bitterest soul-searching since the Lend-Lease decisions of 1940-41. The debate opened old sores and inflicted new ones all its own. MacArthur wanted to ease the strain on U.N. forces in Korea by a blockade of the Chinese mainland and by air attacks beyond the Yalu.

The debate over MacArthurism went straight to the heart of the war in Korea. To win a decisive victory, U.S. commanders knew that they must make China sue for peace. But this could only be done if the U.S. i) kept heavy pressure on the Chinese, and 2) accepted the risk of war with China's ally, Soviet Russia--a risk which may have been very small.

The alternative was to play it safe, settle for a patched-up peace along the battlelines. The memorable phrases that symbolized the two choices were MacArthur's ("the will to win"), and Bradley's ("the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time"). Washington adopted the second course.

Once taken, this decision predestined the war in Korea to frustration and stalemate. U.S. commanders, trained in offensive tactics, found themselves committed to a purely defensive war. "We can't lose, we can't win, we can't quit," said one disgusted G.I.

Back home the people got mad. What had begun as an idealistic adventure became a begrudged duty. General Van Fleet stoutly insisted that the enemy could be defeated militarily inside Korea, but once the enemy insisted on truce talk (which went on & off fruitlessly for two of the three years), U.N. instructions were to protect their lines and avoid excessive casualties.

Eventually the whole mess, truce talks and all, was dropped into the threshing machine of a U.S. presidential election. Bitterness overflowed against Korea, the allies, the U.N. and all its works. "The war in Korea," cried Senator James P. Kern of Missouri, "is a stalemate, a treadmill, a yo-yo war . . . Our allies take the cash. Our boys take the bullets."

The climactic event of the presidential campaign was Dwight Eisenhower's promise to go to Korea to see about putting an end to the Korean war. The U.S. did some thing it had never done before: it changed administrations in the middle of a war.

U.N. in Korea. For the United Nations, Korea was its first affirmation that the nations of the world will fight together to resist aggression. But did the U.N. really work?

When the first British reinforcements arrived in beleaguered Pusan, many Americans thought so. Their confidence waned as the U.S. and its allies fell out over the conduct of the war. The first squall arose when Douglas MacArthur wanted U.N. authority for crossing the 38th parallel in pursuit of the North Koreans. In studiedly vague language, the General Assembly authorized the Eighth Army to "insure stability in Korea," and bring about "a unified, independent and democratic government." The vote was 47-5 (the Russian bloc), but India and six other Asian and Arab nations parted company with the U.S., because it "would impair faith in the U.N. if we were to authorize the unifi cation of Korea by force against North Korea after [resisting] North Korea's attempt to unify Korea by force against South Korea." A fortnight ago, President Eisenhower used a somewhat similar argument to dissuade Syngman Rhee from going it alone. Said the President: "It was indeed a crime that [North Korea] invoked violence to unite Korea. But I urge that your country not embark upon a similar course . . ."

Another big falling-out was over troop reinforcements. The glory of Britain's Gloucesters and the heroism of the fighting

Turks, among others, stood out like medals of honor. But nothing did the U.N. more harm in the U.S. than the comparative figures of forces in Korea:

ROKs 460,000

U.S 250,000

The Rest 40,000

By supporting the U.S., albeit reluctantly, the U.N. confirmed and strengthened the principle of collective security. It saved its honor but lost much of its popularity. The U.S. was well aware that only a lucky break (the temporary absence of veto-wielding Jacob Malik) made possible the U.N. resolution backing intervention in Korea. And its commanders in the field disliked being held accountable to a

Hydra-headed political committee, some of whose members disapproved of the war.

Was It Worth It? At the moment it might be hard to persuade a South Korean that it was. Yet, in the world outside Korea, there was reason to believe that Communism lost more and gained less from the war than the rest of the world did. Comparing June 1953 with June 1950, the U.S. and the non-Communist world is, in many respects, in a stronger position in the cold war than it was on the day the Korean war began. One measure is rearmament.

In 1950, the U.S. had 1,500,000 men under arms. Now it has 3,600,000.

Breakdown: 1950 1953

Army divisions 10 20

Monthly tank production. . . -- 1,000

Navy ships at sea 237 408

Marines 74,000 232,000

Monthly plane production... 150 1,000

The allies armed, too. Example: the Labor government adopted the biggest arms budget in Britain's peacetime history. Korea put teeth into NATO (SHAPE now counts eight divisions and five airplanes for every one it had in 1950), thereby raising hopes that the balance of world power will one day swing to the West.

In Asia, the results of Korea are less tangible. U.S. intervention:

P: Prevented Communism from gobbling up all Korea.

P: Pinned down the bulk of Red China's army, which otherwise might have overrun all Southwest Asia. If Korea had not been resisted, Japan itself might now be gone.

P: Saved the U.S. and its allies from the disaster suffered when Czechoslovakia was allowed to fall to Hitler in 1938.

P: Asserted to the world, and especially to Formosa and Japan, that the U.S. would not again tolerate Communist aggression.

Red China had gained face all over Asia by fighting the U.N. armies to a military null Yet its losses were enormous, its five-year plan stalled for lack of steel and treasure that was poured out in Korea. And Peking had visibly failed to do what it had set out to do: to unify Korea under Chinese tutelage. No amount of "face" can undo the fact that all Red China's men have not changed the map. Whether the Communists have been "taught that aggression does not pay" is an open question. At least, since June 1950, there have been no major military aggressions.

A final judgment on whether it was all worthwhile depends upon its effect on both sides in decisions yet to be taken. If Korea has taught the Communists a lesson, if it has set back their timetable of conquest and roused free men against them, then a great good has been achieved. The other half of the verdict waits on the people of the U.S., for what has been gained by Korea could be undone, if Korean losses and a subsequent disillusionment persuade the U.S. to duck the next challenge.

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