A Short History of the Korean War

The Korean conflict seems so contemporary in a way that earlier American wars do not. Think of N. Korea as Saddam's Iraq and you have a very contemporary story of trying to contain a dangerous rogue state, even if American leaders thought of their job more as containing communism.


A Good Survey of the Korean War   June 8, 2002
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"A Short History of the Korean War" provides the reader with an excellent overview of the War, without becoming bogged down in details. Stokesbury adequately covers all aspects of the war, including political, military, naval, air and the peace negotiations.

The Korean war is portrayed as one into which both sides, essentially, blundered. Numerous American officials had sent the message that Korea lay outside the United States' Asian perimeter of defense. In response to these signals, the Communists took what they thought was an easy pick and were surprised when the U.S. did respond militarily to the invasion.

The pre-war situation in South Korea under the Rhee administration is amply covered. One reason that South Korea was so ill-prepared to respond to the invasion was that the U.S. had deliberately limited the Republic of Korea (ROK) forces because of a fear that President Rhee would launch his own invasion of the North if the ROK was strong enough to do so.

The initial North Korean invasion lead to a rout of South Korean defenders and, initially, the Americans sent to their aid. Ultimately, the build-up of United Nations' Forces, the bombardment of Communist forces by U.N. air power and the limitations of the North Korean supply system saved the U.N. forces from being driven into the sea. The weakness in the Communist supply system was an inability to maintain the supply of the troops once an offensive was begun. When a Communist offensive exhausted its stored supplies it tended to run out of steam. This was the situation at the time of the Inchon landing which lead to the collapse of the North Korean invasion and the U.N. advance to the Yalu.

At this point the U.N. was at a critical juncture. Despite Chinese warnings, the U.N. continued its drive to unite Korea all the way to the Yalu. The unanswered question remains as to whether a more modest advance which occupied some of North Korea, while allowing a remnant North Korea to remain as a buffer between South Korea and China would have permitted the war to have ended much sooner and on terms more satisfactory to the U.N.

Restraint was not the rule of the day and the Chinese did enter the war and, again, threatened to drive the U.N. into the sea. Again, it was U.N. determination and air power which stemmed the tide and allowed the war to degenerate into a stalemate which lead to the commencement of peace talks. Unfortunately, the talks were to drag on for two years while men froze, and bled and died over No Name hills.

Eventually the peace talks became bogged down over the issue of repatriation of POWs. The problem was that many of the Communist POWs did not want to be repatriated to North Korea or Red China. Many, ultimately, were repatriated to South Korea or Nationalist China.

Stokesbury gives the reader an introduction to the role of air and naval power as well as the contributions of other U.N. members. The truth is that about two-thirds of U.N. members contributed to the war effort in some way or another. The political problems arising out of this international effort are also explored.

At the end of this book I felt that I had a good, general understanding of the Korean War and a whetted appetite to read more.