US Foreign Policy and the Korean War

Abstract

Sometimes called the “Forgotten War” because Americans pay so little attention to it, the Korean War was nevertheless a pivotal event in US foreign policy. Three themes will be integrated into this article as it analyzes Korean War policy. First, the Korean War heightened the debates and divisions among US foreign policymakers. If Japan’s 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor helped to silence these divisions, then President Truman’s handling of North Korea’s 1950 invasion of South Korea helped resurrect them. Second, while foreign policy goals are generally assumed to drive the objectives of war in the classic Clausewitzian sense, the opposite frequently occurred in Korea as changes on the battlefield drove policy objectives of officials in Washington. Third, although the Americans, Chinese and Soviets all worked assiduously to keep the Korean War limited to the Korean Peninsula, the war had repercussions far beyond the Korean battlefield. Its ramifications were felt in Taiwan, Vietnam, Europe and in US defense expenditures as well.     

NORTH KOREA’S PERSPECTIVES IN ITS ARGUMENT FOR A PEACE TREATY

In recent years, North Korea’s military provocations have been making the headlines. Beyond its harsh actions and remarks, North Korea persistently mentions ‘peace’ through a demand for a ‘peace treaty’. This may sound paradoxical. However, the origin of the North Korean argument for a peace treaty dates back to the Korean War (1950–53). Since then, North Korea has continued to raise the issue of a peace treaty in a consistent manner and the arguments have displayed similar logic and terminology throughout. It is this consistency and similarity that this article examines: through reviewing North Korea’s original texts, this article attempts to undercover North Korea's perspectives reflected in its argument for a peace treaty.     

Trends in North Korean foreign policy

North Korea’s foreign policy track record in the post-cold war era is mixed. Most notable setbacks are the diplomatic normalization between the Soviet Union (now Russia) and South Korea; the reversal of its UN policy that paved the way for the simultaneous admission of the two Korean states to the world organization; and the diplomatic normalization between China and South Korea. On the credit side of Pyongyang’s diplomatic ledger are changes in its relations with Tokyo and Washington. While tangible results have yet to materialize, particularly in North Korea-Japan relations, the groundwork has nonetheless been laid for significant improvement. North Korea’s suspected nuclear weapons development program has played a major role in the unfolding of its relations with the United States. Conceptually, North Korean foreign policy can be explained in terms of its quest for three interrelated goals: security, legitimacy, and development. In the post-cold war era security appears to have emerged as the most important of the three goals. North Korea is at a crossroads. The choices it makes in foreign policy will determine not only the direction of its domestic policy but, ultimately, the survival of the regime itself. The external players in Seoul, Washington, Tokyo, Beijing, Moscow, and Vienna (the IAEA) have varying degrees of leverage over Pyongyang’s policy as well.     

Editors’ Introduction

Abstract

This article explains why the United States has not fought a preventive war against North Korea despite that country’s moves to arm itself with nuclear weapons. I argue that the absence of war is mainly attributable to military strategies that the US military has with regard to North Korea. With only attrition strategies available, the United States neither expects to lose a precious military opportunity nor anticipates grave future vulnerabilities vis-à-vis North Korea. The prospect of a costly attritional campaign deters both Washington and Pyongyang from resorting to military force. Straightforward attrition strategies also allow little chance for miscalculation, thereby making inadvertent escalation to war unlikely. The research finds sufficient evidence for my argument, whereas conventional explanations offered by international relations theory fall short when applied to this case.     

The legacy of the Korean War: Impact on U.S.-Taiwan relations

If there had not been a Korean War, the Chinese Communists would probably have invaded Taiwan in 1950. After the outbreak of the Korean War, the United States began to reverse its hands-off policy toward the Chinese Nationalists on Taiwan. The Korean War first compelled the United States to grant military aid to Taiwan and then put the island under U.S. protection. The war forestalled the deterioration of the ROC’s international status, but the legal status of Taiwan became undetermined in the eyes of U.S. policymakers. U.S. economic aid prevented Taiwan from sliding into an economic depression in the 1950s, and greatly contributed to the island’s later economic takeoff. He is the author ofThe Taiwan Security Triangle (Taipei: Laureate Publishing Company, 1989).     

Old and new Korean wars

Abstract

As I write this we have come off one week when it looked as if we might have another war in Korea, and the next week when peace broke out between Washington and Pyongyang as a result of Jimmy Carter's meetings with Kim Il Sung. This pattern of crisis followed by relaxation has lasted at least since the spring of 1993, when North Korea threatened to withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. During the entire period most Americans and especially our print and television media have demonstrated that they have no understanding of the terrible destructiveness of the Korean War—and therefore they easily conjure up a new one. Indeed, talk of a new war in Korea is casual and almost routine in the United States.     

浅析奥巴马政府的对朝政策

在应对处理朝鲜半岛危机中,美国一直扮演着一个关键的角色。奥巴马上台后,朝鲜半岛危机出现了急剧的变化,这也让人们对奥巴马政府的对朝政策更加关注。实际上,在2009年春美国国务卿希拉里访问亚洲后,奥巴马政府的对朝政策就产生了很大的变化。朝鲜半岛不断升级的紧张局势,使得美国有机会重振其世界领袖的雄风,重新确立美日韩在东亚的铁三角同盟关系,并通过不断的联合军事演习对朝鲜施加了除军事动武以外的巨大压力,同时也侧面敲击和缓解了中国力量在亚太地区伸展的势头。奥巴马的外交理念是做一个实际的理想主义者和一个有理想的现实主义者,其对朝政策的核心策略就是软的更软,硬的更硬,以硬逼软。     

Fighting the Korean War in pacifist Japan: Korean and Japanese leftist solidarity and American Cold War containment

Where does “pacifist” Japan fit within the history of the Korean War? Was Japan simply the beneficiary of the wartime boom – a case best exemplified by Japanese Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru’s characterization of the Korean War as “a gift of the gods”? When North Korean troops crossed the thirty-eighth parallel and launched a full-scale attack against South Korea, the U.S. occupation in Japan quickly transformed the pacifist nation into the indispensable rear base of United Nations military intervention in the Korean War. The Japanese Communist Party and leftist groups organized by zainichi Koreans (Korean residents in Japan) launched an antiwar movement to stop Japan from producing and sending arms to UN forces in Korea. The U.S. occupation responded with determined efforts to contain every antiwar voice emerging from the streets of the pacifist country. By examining the political dynamics of zainichi Korean and Japanese leftist solidarity and U.S. countermeasures, this article shows how the Korean War was fought in pacifist Japan. It also illuminates how the practice of Cold War containment was mutually linked on the ground between occupied Japan and South Korea.     

Introduction

Abstract

“The only thing that convinces people like Kim II Sung is the threat of force and extinction,” blasted U.S. senator John McCain as the nuclear crisis in Korea neared the flashpoint in early June 1994. His words rang out as the multilateral tension surrounding North Korea's nuclear program escalated after more than a year of rapid policy vacillations and fluctuating rhetoric. The United States threatened to seek sanctions in the U.N. Security Council, and North Korea vowed to treat any international aggression as an act of war. What is remarkable about McCain's war yearnings, however, is not their aberrance in the otherwise cool-headed world of international diplomacy, but their similarity to imperial declarations toward North Korea since the battles of the Korean War. It is a sentiment routinely echoed by the mainstream Western press.     

America's Korea,Korea's Vietnam

Atrocities committed by American soldiers against Vietnamese civilians during the Vietnam War have once again become an issue of public debate in the United States, yet similar actions by South Korean troops fighting America's war in Vietnam remain virtually unknown in the West. The Republic of Korea (ROK) dispatched more than 300,000 combat troops to Vietnam between 1965 and 1973, but after decades of enforced silence by successive authoritarian governments, Koreans have only recently begun to grapple with the ambiguous legacy of the Vietnam War for South Korea. In the spring and summer of 2000, testimonies in the South Korean media by Korean veterans of the Vietnam War revealed for the first time detailed, extensive accounts of Korean atrocities against Vietnamese civilians. These revelations, and the controversy they triggered within South Korea, bring into bold relief the role of Koreans in America's Vietnam War and the role of the Vietnam War in the political and economic development of South Korea.     

金大中"阳光政策"的两难处境与当前的朝鲜半岛形势

由于"9.11"事件的发生,美国的军事外交战略发生了的重大变化,而布什在今年1月29日发表的"国情咨文"中又公开点名朝鲜,伊拉克,伊朗为"邪恶轴心",从此朝鲜半岛的形势开始震荡起来.韩国政府和美国布什政府在朝鲜半岛问题上产生了裂痕.本文分析了金大中"阳光政策"遇到的困难和朝鲜半岛形势的症结所在以及可预见的前景.     

甲午启示录——朝鲜半岛篇

1894年甲午战争爆发后,朝鲜在摆脱与清王朝之间藩属关系的同时又陷入了日本侵略势力的魔掌。随着世界反法西斯战争的胜利,朝鲜终于挣脱了日本的殖民枷锁,获得了独立自主。然而,1954年日内瓦会议关于朝鲜问题的讨论无果而终,无情地宣告朝鲜半岛又进入了南北分治时代。当新的甲午年来临之际,回顾前两个甲午年朝鲜半岛的历史,总结其经验教训,将会为我们客观认识和妥善处理当前朝鲜半岛问题,避免历史悲剧的重演,提供一些有益的启示。     

Beyond de-nuclearization: debating deterrence and North Korea in Asia’s new nuclear age

ABSTRACT

Review of : Jeffrey Lewis, The 2020 Commission report on the North Korean Nuclear Attacks against the United States: a speculative novel (Mariner: New York, 2018); Van Jackson, On the Brink, Trump, Kim and the Threat of Nuclear War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018); Sung Chull Kim and Michael D. Cohen, eds., Entering the new era of deterrence, North Korea and nuclear weapons (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2017); and Victor D. Cha, and David C. Kang, Nuclear North Korea, a debate on engagement strategies, second edition (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018).     

Populism and Peasant Iconography: Turkish painting in the 1930s

The Six Day War is renowned for its impact on the shaping of the Middle East. In the last few decades, much research examining the reasons for the outbreak of the Six Day War, its development and its ramifications has been published. Most of the research has focused on an examination of Israeli government policy before and after the war, on the Egyptian regime's hatred of the ‘Zionist entity’ and on the involvement of the superpowers during and after the war. Some research has also touched on Syria's role in the outbreak of the war. Researchers such as Eyal Zisser and Moshe Maoz have shown Syria's decisive role in initiating the war and suggest that various factors, such as a lack of government stability in Syria, precipitated the conflict. This research continues, to a great extent, in the line of those researchers: indeed, it points to Syria as being the main factor behind the outbreak of war through an examination of the changes that occurred in the character of its government from 1966. However, unlike other research so far, this attempts to show that the unique character of the neo-Ba'ath regime is what brought war to the region and that, had the Ba'ath coup not occurred in 1966, it is doubtful whether Syria would have entered the conflict. This article seeks to emphasize that the Syrian regime went blindly into the war despite military unpreparedness and a lack of political and military cooperation with other Arab countries and with the Soviets. It also exposes, for the first time, the state of the Syrian troops on the front and in the cities, as well as the feelings of the senior officers on the eve of the war, and reveals documents about the military and political cooperation between Syria and Egypt that would eventually force President Nasser to enter a war he did not want to get involved in. Moreover, the research exposes the deep rift – which many believe pushed Syria to take rash independent measures –between the Soviet leadership and the Ba'ath regime before the war. And, finally, the research exposes the atmosphere in Syria following the war, and the administrative and military steps the Syrian regime took immediately after the defeat in order to consolidate its power.     

The Turkish Republic's Jihad? Religious symbols,terminology and ceremonies in Turkey during the Korean War 1950–1953

On 25 July 1950, a month after the beginning of the Korean War, the newly elected Democratic Party (DP) in Turkey announced that a brigade would be sent to assist South Korea as part of the UN mission led by the United States. The main argument of this article is that although the DP regime is considered a secular and Kemalist one, the state continued the Ottoman tradition and practice of using Islam to gain support for the war and to mobilize the Turkish nation. To do so, the article will show the similarity of both the means and the content of religious propaganda used in the Korean War to those used in the Ottoman jihad in the First World War. This article suggests that parts of the public understood the war as a religious conflict and not just as an ideological one thus indicating the success of the religious messages and their efficiency.     

The Korean Communist movement

Abstract

The first full-scale war fought under the leadership of the United States after 1945 was that against the Korean people. The Korean War of 1950-53 remains, without the slightest doubt, the most important un-excavated event in modern imperialist and revolutionary history.     

冷战与韩国一心会

二战后朝鲜半岛成为冷战的前沿阵地,美国为了执行冷战反共的战略,需要韩国有一个强大的政府和稳定的政局。美国还帮助韩国实现了军事现代化,极大地提高了军队的社会政治地位,栽培扶植了一批韩国新军人。这些军人以全斗焕等韩国陆军士官学校的毕业生为代表,建立秘密军事集团＂一心会＂。这支新军部集团在冷战的背景下迅速壮大,抓住朴正熙遇刺事件的时机,通过一次次政变夺取军权、政权,打击社会民主力量,最终从冷战的工具成为韩国的统治者。当冷战缓和、终结,民主力量壮大的时候,韩国威权统治也就到了终点。     

A sinologist’s observations on North Korea

This report provides reflections on a one-week visit to North Korea in April 1989 by a China scholar who lived in Maoist China. It draws on meetings with American and Chinese specialists on Korea, and with North Korea scholars and Party officials. It compares Kim’s North Korea with Mao’s China in terms of agriculture, policy towards education and intellectuals, and the Cult of Personality; it discusses apparent tentative stpes in the North towards openness and reform, but recognizes the dilemma of understanding complicated forces for the against reform in such a short visit. Finally, the report outlines discussions with North Korea international relations specialists and a member of the Secretariat of the Korean Worker’s Party which welcomed the end of the cold war and improved Sino-U.S., U.S.-Soviet, and Sino-Soviet relations as favorable for peace in the region and Korean reunification. He is author ofAgrarian Radicalism in China, 1968–1981 (Harvard University Press, 1989).     

Statement on peace and reunification of the Korean Peninsula

Abstract

We who have been praying and working for peace and the reunification of Korea would like to express our deep concerns about the rising tensions surrounding the north Korean nuclear controversy and the potentially imminent war on the Korean peninsula. We still remember vividly the nightmare of the Korean War beginning 25 June 1950, and we have endured tremendously painful experiences for the last half century because of the division of our country. We would like to express our positions to the governments of the Republic of Korea (ROK), the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), the United States, and to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), as we firmly believe that the shortest route to reunification is through the reconciliation and solidarity of the Korean people:     

“战争罪犯”还是“民族英雄”——以日本战后恢复对军人和战犯的抚恤政策为视角

对军人军属进行抚恤是日本军国主义战争动员的重要内容,日本战败后曾经一度废除。《旧金山和约》签订后,日本政府很快恢复了对不包括战犯在内的复员军人的抚恤、救助工作。在日本遗族会等保守团体的推动和"战犯释放运动"的影响下,经过几次修改,至20世纪50年代中期,日本政府全面恢复了对包括战犯在内的军人军属抚恤工作。无论是刑死还是狱死的"战犯"均被视为因公死亡享受抚恤,战犯服刑期间仍被作为"在职期间"累积计算抚恤年金,服刑期间伤病者另可以享受"伤病抚恤",战争罪犯俨然成了日本的"民族英雄"享受优待。日本政府从立法层面恢复对战犯的抚恤,对日本社会的战争认识和战争记忆的重构产生深刻的影响,也成为此后甲级战犯被靖国神社合祀的社会意识的基础。