a highly educated Christian, with decades of experience in Korea’s volatile political history. This included imprisonment by the Japanese and advising at the Treaty of Portsmouth negotiations in 1905. By 1945 he was already 70 years old. Virulently anti-Communist, Rhee was elected the first President of South Korea in July 1948.
While Rhee and Kim manoeuvred themselves into power between 1945 and 1948, there were parallel efforts by the USA, Russia and the United Nations to reach some kind of agreement which would unify the country. The Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers in December 1945 had agreed to establish a joint US-USSR Commission for the government of Korea. Largely ineffectual, the Commission at least served to prevent open conflict between the Americans and Russians in Korea. In the South, Rhee’s ‘Democratic Council’ opposed the Commission’s timetable for independence and provoked riots and strikes. Eventually the Americans took the Korean problem back to the UN General Assembly, which called for elections across Korea. The Russians rejected this proposal and the two elections which brought Rhee to power in the summer of 1948 were confined to the US zone. In May, Rhee’s party secured control of the National Assembly. In July, he won a personal mandate when elected directly to the South Korean presidency. These were followed by one party ‘elections’ in the North later that year.
By 1949, both the USA and Russia had withdrawn their military forces from the peninsula. Korea was split into two hostile mini-states, each beholden to its super-power. The rhetoric between them was heated, with claim and counterclaim. Rhee and Kim were Nationalists – both sought dominance over the whole of Korea. Neither recognized the legitimacy of the other. Border incidents and guerilla attacks in the South became commonplace. The scene was set for war.
June 1950: The Surprise Attack
The Korean War began just before dawn, on Sunday, 25 June 1950. Taken completely by surprise, and outclassed in every respect, South Korean forces were pushed rapidly back. Within days, however, the United Nations had intervened on behalf of the South. The first UN ground troops, an American unit, would meet the North Koreans on 5 July.
The war began early that Sunday when, four or five miles north of the 38th Parallel, Russian-built Katyusha rocket batteries lit up the sky with a blistering barrage. T34 tanks rolled forwards, accompanied by swarms of North Korean infantry.
It was immediately clear that this was a well-planned, full-scale invasion. The South Koreans had no tanks or heavy artillery, and but a handful of obsolescent aircraft. Their infantry formations were under strength, with divisional organization only notional. Arrayed against them were ten fully equipped North Korean divisions trained in the Soviet tactical doctrine. Thousands of the North Korean troops were combat veterans, recently returned from fighting under Mao’s command during the Chinese Civil War.
They were supported by independent tank battalions and a small but capable tactical air force. In these early clashes, there really was no contest. In most cases the South Korean units disintegrated, clogging roads that were already swarming with refugees. A series of North Korean columns raced towards Seoul, down the centre of the country and along the eastern coast as well.
To General Douglas MacArthur, woken with the news only hours after the first North Korean assault, this seemed an obvious Russian move designed to test Western resolve. MacArthur headed the American Far Eastern Command, with his headquarters in Tokyo. Until now, his preoccupation since the end of the Second World War had been the rebuilding of Japan, of which he was in effect emperor. The North Korean attack would quickly change those priorities. When President Truman was told the news on what was still Saturday evening back in the USA, his instincts told him the same thing: this was a Russian gambit.
From the opening hours of the Korean War, therefore, the American attitude was to look for a conspiracy emanating from Moscow. This strategic stance would colour much of the policy towards the Korean situation over the next three years. Millions of words have since been written on the role played by Russia and, indeed, China in the North Korean attack. Given the secrecy of those regimes, and notwithstanding the volume of information made available since the collapse of the Soviet Union, historians remain divided as to the extent of Russian or Chinese culpability.
Some things are indisputable. The North Korean Army had been supplied with large amounts of Soviet military hardware, making it a much stronger force than its southern counterpart. Crucially, the armour meant that this was an army capable of offensive operations – unlike Rhee’s. Soviet instructors had been seconded to North Korean units since 1948. Kim was close to the Russians, having spent several years there. He had visited Moscow and Beijing earlier in 1950. It is stretching credulity to imagine that the possibility of invasion was not mentioned. Chinese railways would be needed to maintain the North Korean logistical effort, and, in particular, any resupply from Russia. It is, therefore, difficult to imagine that either China or Russia was entirely in the dark prior to the North Korean assault.
That is some way from asserting, however, that the attack was ordered by Moscow, Beijing, or both. Perhaps the most that can be said is that while it is possible that Kim initiated the attack under direct instructions from Moscow, it is more likely that Stalin’s headquarters at the Kremlin was simply content that it should go ahead.
Russia and/or China may have been willing to take a gamble with Korea at this level – to offer support without full-scale involvement. The Truman Administration was after all emitting confusing political signals during these critical months of the Cold War. Although secretly resolved to confront Communist aggression robustly, a speech by Secretary of State Dean Acheson in January 1950 seemed to concede that Korea was not a vital American interest.
Yet China was in no position to entertain war with the United States. Mao had only recently secured power in Beijing and was much more interested in finishing the war against Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan than he was in new adventures to the north. Chiang’s KMT (Kuomintang) Nationalist forces were now confined to this large island and Mao hoped to invade it. This would eliminate final opposition to Communist rule in China, putting a definitive end to the Civil War there.
Although Moscow had exploded an atomic device in 1949, it was in no position to risk a nuclear confrontation which, in 1950, it would have lost. But if the United States was ambivalent about Rhee’s regime in South Korea, then why not let their ally Kim Il Sung see what he could achieve?
This kind of speculation must have been academic to the South Korean troops thrown into the line across the 38th Parallel in June 1950. Such was their routing, that of the 100,000 men notionally under arms on 25 June, about 80 per cent were unaccounted for after the first week. Rhee himself fled the capital with his key ministers on the 27th. By the 29th, the city had fallen. The bridge across the Han river was choked with refugees as families fled Kim’s troops. South Korean Army vehicles barged through in their panic. The elderly or infirm were run over, some falling into the water. Children lost their parents – sometimes for ever.
South Korean refugees flee the invasion in 1950 (Image by US Defense Department)
The North Korean drive was organized into four fighting columns. Two of them converged on Seoul, one cleared the Ongjin peninsula to the extreme west, and one pushed down the east coast, supported by a small-scale amphibious assault. After the fall of the capital, these were consolidated into two – an eastern and a western thrust.
About thirty miles south of Seoul lies the small town of Osan, spanning the main route south. On the morning of 5 July 1950, elements of the North Korean 4th division advanced towards the town from the north. As they did so they came under fire from infantry and artillery. After a sharp firefight, during which the defenders attempted to knock out several tanks using antiquated bazookas, the attacking North Koreans enveloped the position and the defence collapsed. The poorly disciplined troops scattered, many of them falling prisoner to the advancing Communists, others making their way south in dribs and drabs. Before too long, it dawned on the North Korean commanders that the