40 Years Later, Korea Remains a Divided Land

On a Sunday morning 40 years ago, North Korea sent thousands of troops across the 38th parallel into South Korea, starting a war that killed more than a million people, including 54,000 American soldiers.

It is the only war the United States has entered in this century that remains unresolved. The Korean peninsula, divided after World War II, still is split between the communist North and the capitalist South.

The invasion stunned and enraged the West. The North Koreans occupied Seoul, the South Korean capital, in three days and overran most of the southern half of the peninsula in six weeks.

Fifteen nations sent soldiers to fight for South Korea under the U.S.-led United Nations Command. Twenty-five others provided medical aid, food and weapons.

China, with war just across its border, sent hundreds of thousands of soldiers to help the North.

When a cease-fire took effect 37 months later, the losses were staggering: an estimated 2.4 million soldiers and 4.4 million civilians killed or wounded. Military dead totaled more than 800,000. A land of remarkable beauty lay ravaged, treeless, burned and barren.

The Korean War was a traumatic chapter in American history and its impact on succeeding generations has been profound.

It was an inglorious war without victory, often nearly forgotten, patched into history between World War II and Vietnam. No peace treaty has been signed.

“It was a war in which we turned the tide against communism for the first time, in a victory regrettably sometimes ignored by history,” President Bush said at a dinner for veterans of the war.

Korea was the first confrontation of the big powers in the nuclear age. It intensified hostilities between East and West, and spurred a U.S.-Soviet arms race that only now is ending.

From it grew the notion that communism in East Asia could be contained with help from the U.S. military. That led to American intervention in Vietnam a decade later.

Forty years after the battle, North and South Korea watch one another from behind barbed wire and concrete bunkers on either side of a demilitarized zone 2 1/2 miles wide and 155 miles long.

The single telephone line between them is in Red Cross offices. There is no mail, radio or television communication, no direct travel without the permission of both governments, which is hardly ever given.

Nearly 9,000 American military personnel still are unaccounted for or listed as prisoners.

Last month, in a gesture seen as a political overture to Washington, North Korea returned what it said were the remains of five American soldiers. It was the first such action since 1954.

The American Korean War Veterans Assn. says it has reports from witnesses indicating that some Americans still may be alive in North Korea or other communist countries.

Sporadic dialogue has occurred between the Koreas over the years, but little progress has been made in lessening tension, mutual suspicion and distrust. They have accused each other of more than 1 million violations of the armistice agreement, an average of 75 a day since the war ended.

Reunification of the peninsula, long a dream of Koreans on both sides, remains elusive.

The United States keeps 43,000 soldiers in South Korea to deter another invasion. There are plans to reduce the number, but some U.S. forces are expected to remain indefinitely.

For Washington, the conflict of 1950-53 was a war in which the politicians wrenched control from the generals. It is remembered as much for President Harry S. Truman’s firing of Douglas MacArthur as for the general’s bold strategy of pushing the enemy back with an amphibious landing at Inchon, a western port.

Historians divide the Korean War into the first year of dramatic, far-reaching maneuvers and the next two years of static, positional battle.

Americans were not prepared mentally or physically for a war fought in foxholes and trenches on rugged, mountainous terrain that was freezing in winter and scorching in summer.

No place was so cold, so dirty. Grease from a hundred C rations was frozen to parkas and gloves. Underwear wasn’t changed for months. Perspiration in boots turned to ice in winter. Blood froze on wounds before it could coagulate.

Men fought hand-to-hand for small pieces of territory called Punchbowl, Hamburger Hill, Heartbreak Ridge, Bunker Hill. Each changed hands many times.

More than 5 million men and women served in the American forces. Their casualties were 103,284 wounded and 54,246 dead, including 33,629 killed in combat. The infantry bore the brunt of the fighting.

What began as a crusade to save South Korea from communism enjoyed only brief public popularity. Soldiers returned home not to a hero’s welcome, but to a public dissatisfied with an unpopular, unsatisfactory war.

Weary soldiers, disheartened and dispirited, faded into the placid, prosperous American society of the 1950s, keeping their pain to themselves.

Not until Vietnam veterans received public attention did the Korean vets begin to organize. They formed an association five years ago and are trying to raise $10.5 million for a memorial. Korea is the only war without a memorial in Washington.

In South Korea, the war is called the 6-25 incident, reflecting the date it began and the Korean preference for numbering rather than naming events.

Some South Koreans feel shame that the country needed help to defend itself and the anniversary is not a cause for celebration.

Many people who remember those days remain deeply grateful to the Americans. Monuments have been built in rice paddies and town squares to all nations that sent soldiers and aid.

The relationship between South Korea and the United States has changed dramatically in the last 40 years. South Korea’s booming economy and growing pride in its own accomplishments make it less tolerant of pressure from Washington on economic, trade and political issues.

Anti-American sentiment continues to grow. Visiting Korean-Americans say relatives and others scold them for wearing American-style haircuts and clothes, and for speaking Korean with American accents.

Most Koreans disapprove of militants who burn U.S. flags and shout, “Yankee go home,” however, and polls indicate they want American troops to remain.

BACKGROUND Korea, historically one land was divided into two countries after World War II as part of the breakup of the Japanese empire. Japan had occupied Korea since the early 20th Century. After the partition, the Soviet Union dominated the northern section, the United States the southern section. The Soviet Union refused to sanction elections in 1948 that would have unified Korea. Separate governments evolved in each section that remain to this day.