Korea’s Protracted Conflict

The central fact in Korea today is something that happened thirty years ago.

On June 25, 1950, at 4 o’clock in the morning, ninety thousand North Korean troops, supported by tanks, heavy artillery, and Soviet-made Yak fighter planes, poured across the 38th Parallel. Seoul was taken in three days; within a month the survivors among the South Korean troops had been pushed back into an enclave in the extreme southeast of the peninsula, around the port city of Pusan. Slowly, as men and matériel arrived from the United States, the tide began to turn; and with MacArthur’s masterstroke—the Inchon landing—came new hope, that South Korea would be able not only to reverse her losses, but to liberate the North as well. The Truman Administration, however, foreshadowing so much of our later foreign policy, made the decision to fight only a limited war, for a return to the status quo ante.

About the Author

Linda Bridges

Ms. Bridges is the former editor-at-large of National Review.

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The central fact in Korea today is something that happened thirty years ago.

On June 25, 1950, at 4 o’clock in the morning, ninety thousand North Korean troops, supported by tanks, heavy artillery, and Soviet-made Yak fighter planes, poured across the 38th Parallel. Seoul was taken in three days; within a month the survivors among the South Korean troops had been pushed back into an enclave in the extreme southeast of the peninsula, around the port city of Pusan. Slowly, as men and matériel arrived from the United States, the tide began to turn; and with MacArthur’s masterstroke—the Inchon landing—came new hope, that South Korea would be able not only to reverse her losses, but to liberate the North as well. The Truman Administration, however, foreshadowing so much of our later foreign policy, made the decision to fight only a limited war, for a return to the status quo ante.