Blowback - S3 Episode 5 - “Train to Busan”

Episode Date: October 24, 2022

With a rightwing, US-backed klepto-case to his South, Kim Il-Sung bets the house.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Will there be peace or war? In 1950, men throughout the world learned to look on the brutal face of communism. Berlin, powder keg of Europe saw a mass demonstration of indoctrinated young Germans on Mayday. France was also beset by communist-inspired strife. Red Union members adopted violent methods to prevent the unloading of Marshall Plan aid. And across the world in Japan, America's stronghold in the Pacific, the busy commies were at it again. Students went on a rampage in Tokyo with something less than successful results when opposed by Japanese police aided by occupation military police.

But far more sinister to Americans was home front communism. Union Square in New York was the backdrop for these scenes of red violence. From their ranks will come the saboteurs, spies and subversives should World War III be forced upon America. From a pamphlet titled What's Happening in Korea? Published by New Century Publishers and American Communist Press in 1950. Kenneth Shadrick left Skinfork, West Virginia, to get away from the coal mines in which his family had labored away their lives. Two years later, he was dead, killed at the age of 19, buried in a graveyard near Sojung Korea. When Ken was 17, he told his people he wanted, quote, to see.

see some of the world beyond the West Virginia Mountains. So, with permission of his parents, he enlisted. Two months later, he was sweating it out in General Douglas MacArthur's army in Japan. Ken didn't know much about Korea. Maybe he didn't even know that the Korean people were demanding independence and unity of their country. He may not have known that the regime in South Korea was imprisoning and torturing men trying to organize unions, minors' unions, too. But Ken and his buddies in the 24th Division were ordered to Korea. He was ordered to shoot Koreans, and Ken obeyed. So Ken, the blue-eyed lad who joined the army to see the world, is dead now,

buried in a rain-soaked grave in Korea, mourned by his folks in West Virginia. Welcome to Bluelssohn. Welcome to Blowback. I'm Brendan James. And I'm Noah Colwyn. And this is Episode 5, Train to Busan. Last episode, we saw the breakdown in South Korea in 1948 and 1949. The suppression of people's revolts on Jeju Island and the mainland itself, which resulted in as many as 100,000 people dead, the vast majority

at the hands of the U.S.-backed South Korean government. We also saw the victory of the communists in China, the conclusion of a decades-long civil war with the nationalist forces of dictator Chiang Kai Shek. This would change the political possibilities in Asia and was of particular interest to the USSR, the Korean communists in the north, and the anti-communist U.S.S.S.S.S. and the anti-communist U.S. and South Koreans. Now, this apparent upset victory by the communists in China fed into the red scare that was already gaining momentum in the U.S. The Truman administration nurtured it as a way to organize a post-New Deal America, but also his administration became a target of this red scare

via hardline anti-communists such as Joe McCarthy. Now, with the so-called loss of China, The stakes were even higher, and a coalition began to form in the minds of American demagogues like McCarthy, those in the Pro Chang China lobby, and hawks like General Douglas MacArthur. Now in this episode, we'll follow a string of clashes on the 38th parallel, correspondence between Stalin, Mao Zetung, and Kim Il-sung, and a series of conspicuous meetings of U.S. officials in Asia, until we reach the fateful week of June 25th, 1950. We'll look at where things stood before the war broke out,

on the northern side, on the southern side, the Soviet side, the Chinese side, and the American side. Who was ready for war, and why might they desire it? Was everything as it appeared, as it's often written about in American textbooks? After all these years, do we really know? Can we really know? The first of the screen stars to testify before the committee on un-American activities is veteran actor Adolf Marshall. Once known as the screen's best-dressed man, he states, The Communist Party in the United States should be outlawed by the Congress of the United States.

It is not a political party. It's a conspiracy to take over our government by force. The court is packed with fashionably dressed women as witness Robert Taylor takes the stand. In answer to a committee question on whether the Communist Party should be outlawed in America, Mr. Taylor replies, If I had my way about it, they'd all be sent back to Russia or some other unpleasant place. Refusal to testify results in a contempt of Congress charge. Next on the list of witnesses is Ronald Reagan. Throughout the 1940s, anti-communism, as we've seen,

scene was percolating in different corners of America, in Hollywood, organized labor, and in the military. And of course, some of the fiercest anti-communist warriors were businessmen, who were close to Chiang Kai Sheck, who had recently had to flee to Taiwan after the victory of the communists on the mainland. Alfred Colberg is a good example. A Jewish-American importer, based in New York, Colberg was a co-founder of the John Birch Society and other anti-communist causes, including an influential magazine from the 40s called Plain Talk. Naturally, he loved Chang and was close to him, and Colberg hated communism above all else. And in 1947, with the help of ex-FBI agents, Colberg set up another magazine called Counterattack.

So by the time of our story, this episode, in June of 1950, as McCarthyism coursed through the country, counterattack released red channels, a list of 151 people in entertainment and broadcast journalism who were, supposedly, communists. This was the first Hollywood blacklist of the McCarthy era. The list included Orson Wells, Dorothy Parker, and Lillian Hellman. But the first person to ever be a victim of the McCarthyite purge, now being called a blacklist, was the actress Gene Muir. She lost her job on NBC's sitcom The Aldrich family.

The show's sponsor, General Foods, told the network that her presence was now unacceptable. But by the time Muir had been fired, the world was perhaps no longer paying much attention. The anti-communist fervor at home was being whipped up, after all, because of this situation developing in the Far East. The United States presented the matter of Korean independence. through America's spokesman the late John Foster Dulles. But the Soviet-dominated North regime walled up behind the 38th parallel that split the nation, refused to cooperate.

To Moscow went thousands of North Korean political puppets to hear their Soviet masters instilling them the dream of a Kremlin-led world domination. The message was this. Whatever stands in our way, destroy. In the summer of 1949, during the final gasps of revolt on Jeju Island, The first of many clashes on the 38th parallel kicked up between North and South Korea.

In early May, in Kaysong, a town just over on the northern side, the South's troops fired on their northern countrymen, as many as 400 North Korean troops and 100 civilians died, and two South Korean army companies defected to the north. This was the most intense example of recent fighting on the parallel that would go on for the next six months. Per internal American accounts, the South instigated most of the fighting. At that point, South Korean troops outnumbered the North, standing 100,000 men in total. The South Korean commander, who would lead key skirmishes later, told the United Nations, North and South, quote, may engage in major battles at any moment. Korea was in a, quote, state of warfare. Quote, we should have a

program to recover our lost land, North Korea, by breaking through the 38th border, which has existed since 1945. The moment of major battle, he said, was rapidly approaching. The American ambassador, Philip Jessup, issued a radio address in April after visiting Korea. Quote, The boundary on the 38th parallel is a real front line. There is constant fighting. There There were very real battles involving perhaps one or two thousand men, end quote. In early August of 49, South Korea occupied a piece of North Korean territory. The fighting there went on for days. Bruce Cummings writes, quote, North Korea was not ready for war at this point,

quote, since it had tens of thousands of soldiers still fighting in the Chinese Civil War. It did not respond to major provocations, such as several South Korean ships that invaded its waters, and shelled a small port that same summer. After the Chinese Civil War ended, however, the North got those troops back. The last southern assault across the parallel was in December, 1949. As we mentioned at the end of last episode, the South continued to threaten an invasion of the North month after month. By that point, the DPRK was working on a way to end this once and for all.

Here is how Bruce Cummings put it to us. Well, there were forays across the 38th parallel, often to gain some sort of strategic advantage. It began in May of 1949 and went on to December of 1949 with the South starting the majority of the incidents, according to General Roberts, the American commander. And it came to a head in the first week of August. in 1949, when the South attacked on the West Coast to try and capture a promontory that would give them a vision of the planes leading up to Pyongyang. And they took that promontory, a small mountain, and then the North Koreans counterattacked

and beat the Hell out of them. And the Ongen Peninsula, which just south of the 38th parallel on the West Coast, was nearly lost. And Singman Re went to the ambassador of Muccio and said he wanted to attack and take over Chunchan, which is a city north of the 38th parallel. That nearly led to a civil war right then. By 1950, British Minister Vivian Holt, who would soon be a prisoner of North Korea, wrote that American influence in the Republic of Korea, the South, quote, penetrates into every

branch of administration and is fortified by an immense outpouring of money. Bruce Cummings writes, quote, Americans kept the government, the army, the economy, the railroads, the airports, the mines, and the factories going, supplying money, electricity expertise, and psychological sucker. American gasoline fueled every motor vehicle in the country. American cultural influence was exceedingly strong, ranging from scholarships to study in the U.S. to several strong missionary denominations, to a score of traveling cinemas and theaters that played mostly American films,

to the Voice of America, to Big League Baseball. Now, South Korea was getting over $100 million a year from the United States, most of it in the form of outright grants, for an idea of how much that really was. The entire national budget for South Korea for 1951 would be $120 million.

Joseph Stalin met Kim Il-sung in the spring of 1949. How's it going, Comrade Kim? Stalin asked. Everything will be all right, Kim said. Only the Southerners are making trouble all the time. They are violating the border. There are continuous small clashes. Around this time, when Kim Il-sung was looking for some help from Joseph Stalin for the near future, North Korea had started training guerrilla.

bands who would infiltrate the South and set up camp in the mountains, mostly of the East Coast. Kim considered the South ready for revolution. He was seeing the same things we talked about last episode, about uprisings in Jeju Island that spread to the mainland, the incredible unpopularity among large swaths of the population of Rhee's government. But things were proving tough for these guerrillas. They didn't make any significant headway and suffered some major losses. According to the scholars, Zhu, Goncharov, and Lewis, quote, one former North Korean general concludes, I know that Kim Il-sung pinned his hopes on the guerrilla movement in the South,

but by this time, by the end of 1949, that is, Singhman Rhee had effectively subdued the guerrillas. The anti-communist police state that Rhee and his government and the Americans had perfected over the previous year was really paying off. And what is interesting is that when Soviet documents became available after the collapse of the Soviet Union, you find both Singman Rhee and Kimmel-sung wanting to settle the hash at the other side then and there. And the American ambassador is restraining Rhee and the Soviet ambassador is restraining Kim and saying you don't want to start a civil war. And that situation really is a key background to the North Korean invasion.

in June of 1950, because North Korea had tens of thousands of its soldiers fighting in the Chinese Civil War, crack troops who were blooded and became the shock forces in the initial invasion. I mean, you had entire divisions in China. I think the North Korean calculation was they were going to respond to the first big attack across the parallel, the first provocation of the summer of 1950, Stim and Rie was told by a Preston Goodfellow who was deputy director of the OSS, a generally unknown figure,

but a very crucial figure, that if the South Koreans don't provoke things, but are victims of an attack, the U.S. will defend them. And so they were trying not to provoke things, which in a way was provocative to Washington. The North Koreans didn't get that memo. You know, I mean, they just thought the summer of 1950

was going to be like the summer of 1949. Despite its friendship with the United States, it was South Korea that inspired a UN mission to monitor tensions in Korea. The UN Commission on Korea was the code, of military observers installed after, quote, worries about aggression emanating from the South more than from the North. Quote, it did not escape the attention of the North Koreans, who reported accurately that the decision to post-U.N. military observers grew out of two

months of private discussion in Seoul about the possibility of a war along the parallel. The North Koreans said publicly that the UN military observers were an American ploy to, quote-unquote legalize interference in Korean affairs. At this time, the North was publicly calling for peaceful unification, perhaps, sincerely, perhaps counting on the South to reject it. No dice with the South Koreans. But Rhee had one major assist from the United States against even this liability. The Korean aid bill, passed by Congress in February 1950, carried the proviso that aid,

much-needed, virtually non-negotiable aid, that is, would be terminated, quote, in the event of the formation in the Republic of Korea of a coalition government, which includes one or more members of the Communist Party or of the party now in control of the government of North Korea. American law had basically made support for Korean unification illegal. The head of the U.S. military government, the advisory group to the Republic of Korea, wrote, quote, quote, the American taxpayer has an army that is a fine watchdog over the investments placed in this country and a force that represents the maximum results at minimum cost. Asked about a possible attack from the north, the head of the military government said something

rather interesting. Quote, at this point, we rather invite it. It will give us target practice. In fact, American intelligence knew an attack might come around this time. Investigative journalist I.F. Stone muses that, quote, it would be strange if, in a country like Korea, American intelligence were to overlook a military buildup as impressive as that which went into action on the 38th parallel on June 25th.

There were 500 American officers and 700 civilian technicians in South Korea. Nowhere was the Iron Curtain less formidable than on the 38th parallel. The New York Times had noted here, quote, intermittent fighting and border raids were a part of daily life. An American official, quote, privately said that the United States expected the attack. Quote, this officer pointed to the fact that ships were ready to evacuate the families of the American officers and others in South Korea as evidence that the eventual North Korean invasion was not a surprise. And one U.S. Navy Admiral said that the CIA knew, quote, conditions existed in Korea that could have meant an invasion

this week or next. The one thing that we don't have is signals intelligence. And I will, you know, have in my mind a hypothesis that the U.S. did see it coming through signals intelligence until I'm contradicted, until the materials come out. I mean, there were 14 NSA listening posts in South Korea. It wasn't the NSA. It was the Army Security Agency at the time, but it became the NSA. And there were also surveillance flights along the North Korean coast photographing whatever they wanted to photograph.

In messages to Stalin from the winter of 1949 onward, Kim Il-sung would make the case for unification of Korea via military campaign. And Stalin would express, quote, his general sympathy for reunification, but refused to sanction all-out attack. Stalin feared any conflict that might provoke an American confrontation with the Soviet Union. Both Stalin and Mao, having recently concluded their own treaty between the USSR and the New People's Republic of China, they were both in communication on Kim's desire to level an attack against the South. Some of this conversation took place while Mao was actually visiting Moscow in January of 1950. Stalin was growing more open to it, but Mao remained hesitant, considering everything. on China's plate. Kim was also feeling his oats, as by this point the Soviets had provided

a lot of military hardware and expertise to the North Koreans, not to mention the troops who were on their way home or already back from Manchuria, having volunteered in the Chinese civil war. Still, Nikita Khrushchev remembers Mao saying that, quote, the USA perhaps would not be involved, because this was an internal question that would be solved by the Korean people themselves. Jue, Gantorov, and Lewis write that Kim had by now recognized the South as hell-bent on destroying the North,

and with the United States preventing a proper reunification of Korea. Quote, even though he and his generals knew quite well that Singman-Ree's army was far weaker than the KPA, the Korean People's Army, southern-initiated border clashes in the militant speeches of the South Korean military, calling for Korean unification by force,

this gave Kim the evidence that he needed to stress the threat from the South. According to Chinese Marshal Nirong Chen, 14,000 Korean soldiers who had joined the Chinese Fourth Field Army were armed and sent back into North Korea to join the KPA. The KPA was by now executing combat reconnaissance in the region of Ongjin Peninsula

and to the north of Kaysong, near the 38th parallel. But Kim had still not cleared with stoneration, and Mao, a real go-ahead for future military confrontation with the South. Kim made a secret visit to Moscow from March 30th to April 25th, 1950. According to an ex-DPRK diplomat present at that meeting, Kim made his pitch on the ripeness of the South for revolution, that the guerrillas were still operating over the parallel, the surprise nature of his attack plan, and the unlikelyhood of an American response in time. Stalin, according to these eyewitness accounts, consented to the idea of an attack, not necessarily a full invasion, but insisted that Kim talked to Mao and clear it with the Chinese comrades.

As one account goes, Stalin said, quote, if you should get kicked in the teeth, I shall not lift a finger. You have to ask Mao for all the help. So, on his way home from Moscow, Kim stopped in Beijing to consult Mao. The Chinese Marshal Pung da Huai, who would lead the Chinese military effort in Korea, soon enough, recalled that Mao disagreed with Kim's proposed action, but had no way of really opposing or stopping it. And Xu, Gancharov and Lewis write, a senior Soviet diplomat, with knowledge of the archives, has told us that Mao at first expressed considerable skepticism when Kim told him that Stalin had reassessed the North's potential for a successful assault on the South. So why then did Mao eventually back it?

There are several possibilities. One is that there was a revolutionary solidarity. In the months preceding the Korean War, the Chinese were still fighting to bring together their own country from a bunch of U.S.-backed reactionaries. Mao might have simply felt that he could not, in any good faith, argue against Kim's same mission. Another angle, more of a realpolitik angle,

one articulated by Zhu Louis and Goncharov, for this entire period from the Stalin meeting, into the spring of 1950, Mao was preparing for the final move to unite his own country by taking back Taiwan, then called Formosa, where Chen Kai Sheck and his top brass had set up after the successful Chinese revolution. Mao was being very careful on every front not to jeopardize the Formosa objective. Quote, on April 29th, Mao directed Liu Shao Chi to rewrite a report on the situation at home and abroad, quote, in a more tactical way and to de-emphasize China's role in the worldwide struggle between socialism and imperialism, so is not to irritate the

United States. Although fierce anti-American propaganda continued to fill the pages of Chinese newspapers, Beijing made modest conciliatory gestures toward Washington, including the release of three captured American airmen. Meanwhile, the Chinese Communist Army, the People's Liberation Army, was putting together an invasion force to take back Formosa. Now, as for Formosa's direct effect on the Korean question, quote, by now the Chinese leader, Gonsharov had all right, had secured a promise of Soviet support for the invasion of Formosa. Mao could not express his fears of American intervention in Korea

without admitting to Stalin the likelihood of the same U.S. involvement in Formosa, thereby jeopardizing that support. But let's be clear, China remained in the American crosshairs all the same. On March 15th, U.S. Secretary of State Dean Atchison, publicly denounced the recent Sino-Soviet Treaty as, quote, an evil omen of imperialistic domination and castigated the Chinese leadership for having sold out China to the Soviets. There are indications that Mao was kept in the dark by both Kim and Stalin in the preparations for a military escalation. Zhugev and Lewis report that, quote, on the very eve of the war.

Relations between the Chinese representatives in Pyongyang and North Korean authorities were very tense. Sometimes the Soviet embassy even had to mediate. And now by the time Kim had returned from Moscow and Beijing, Soviet supplies had picked up considerably. But that would be the limit. Kim had secured Stalin's tacit approval with material support, but no Soviet troops or air support. A few weeks before the Korean War said to have broken out,

in late May of 1950, South Korea had held parliamentary elections. They were, simply put, a disaster for Singhman Rhee and his right-wing friends. However fair the elections were or were not, they brought into government a bunch of moderates or even left-leaning types, quote, most of them hoping for unification with North Korea. The Korean ambassador to the United States saw an obvious problem, Rie looked ready to spiral out of power. He sent for backup.

If I'm curt with you, it's because time is a factor. I think fast, I talk fast, and I need you guys to act fast if you want to get out of this. On Monday, June 19, 1950, the Associated Press reported, quote, the newly elected South Korean Assembly, opened with an anti-communist address by President Singh-Men-Ree, and a promise of continued American support by John Foster Dulles. Dulles, who was by now broadly considered the, leading foreign policy light of the Republican Party, and still a diplomatic advisor to Democratic President Harry Truman, he stopped by in Korea en route to Japan. Now, Dulles wasn't merely in

town to tip his hat at South Korea's nascent, quote-unquote, democracy. He was there to meet with Singhman Rhee, privately, and to address the new South Korean legislature. When he met with Dulles, quote, Rhee not only pushed for a direct American defense, but advocated an attack on the north. And this was captured by Dulles's pet reporter William Matthews of the Arizona Daily Star, quote, he is militantly for the unification of Korea, openly says it must be brought about soon, re pleads justice going into North Country, thinks it could succeed in a few days. If he can do it with our help, he will do it, even if it, quote, brought on a general war. Now, a photo was taken and widely disseminated of John Foster Dulles, wearing a top hat, next to the South Korean

foreign minister, wearing a pith helmet, looking out over the 38th parallel. As Cummings puts it, quote, Pyongyang has never tired of waving that photo around. Speaking before the Korean Parliament on the same day that he had visited the parallel, Dulles congratulated the government before him on its admission to a Dulles called, quote, the free world. There is what we call the free world. The free world has no written charter, but it is no less real for that. Membership depends on the conduct of the nation itself. There is no veto. The American people welcome you as an equal partner in the great company of those who make up this free world,

a world which commands vast, moral, and material power and resolution that is unswerving. That power and that determination combine to assure that any despotism which wages aggressive war dooms itself to unutterable disaster. Meanwhile, General Douglas MacArthur, along with Chenkyshek, were hoping that the dullest visit would bring about a harder line against the emerging revolutionary atmosphere they were witnessing firsthand in Asia. One of the reasons Pyongyang was so unnerved by Dulles' visit is that he was always very interested in a resurgent Japan.

Here's journalist Tim Sharok describing Dulles' role in synergizing the agenda of Chankajek and his fans, the American ally in South Korea, and a new bright future for Japan. China finally, you know, declare the People's Republic of China on October. 1st, 1949. And so U.S. policy began to shift away from like, let's stop reforming Japan and let's build it up as an economic power to help us fight the Cold War against the Soviet Union. In June 1950, just a few days before the North Korean crossed the border, crossed the 38th parallel and actually invaded South Korea, Dulles was in Korea at the border, you know, looking

fiercely at the North Korean side and saying the U.S. is prepared to take action against communism and vowing that the U.S. would stand up to communists. And then he went to Japan and he met with all these capitalists

and, you know, high-ranking people in the Japanese government who were close to the royal family. And they were really wanting to have that same kind of policy. And at that time, Japan's economy was sinking because nobody was investing.

There was a lot of strikes. And then when the Korean War began and Truman invaded, that was a massive invasion. And Japan's economy was reborn overnight. They still say on the State Department website at this period, Korea came along and saved us in Japan because Japan became the workshop and the factory for producing a lot of the military goods that the U.S. used in Korea, like from jeeps to lots of different kinds of ammunition. And the problem at this moment was that the Japanese elections, which had happened on June 4th, had not turned out so well for the America-friendly party in that country.

On the contrary, it was the socialist party that came out as the second largest winners in the upper house, with an uptick for the Communist Party as well. Even conservatives in Japan were vibrating to the idea of getting rid of the American bases and opening up a little bit to business with the Soviets. General MacArthur, still the preeminent authority in Japan, continue to agitate to outlaw the Japanese Communist Party, a small group, yes, but nevertheless existing. I.F. Stone reports, quote,

two days after the Japanese elections, MacArthur himself ordered the 24 members of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in Japan, purged from public life, an order which brought a protest from the Russian representative on the Allied Council. Tokyo. Also, recent attacks on American GIs in Tokyo, on Memorial Day of all days, inspired MacArthur to place a ban on all rallies of, quote, an extreme nature. This,

according to I. F. Stone was, quote, a ban so rigidly enforced that even a lecture on hygiene and a violin concert had to be abandoned. Then there was this. A top-level conference between British, and U.S. military brass in the Pacific, a week before war on the Korean Peninsula. Quote, there is no stranger coincidence in this story of strange coincidences, writes I have Stone, than the meeting of General Omar Bradley and Defense Secretary Louis Johnson themselves, who would only say cryptically that, quote, they had come to learn facts affecting the security of the United States and the peace of the world, end quote. They desired, Stone reports, quote, most accurate info,

available here on the Soviet Union's military position on the mainland and its potentialities for aggression in the Pacific in the case of war. All this apparent concern, the Dulles visit, this American military confab, strangely none of it produced any statement of warning to dissuade North Korea from an attack that, as John Foster Dulles suggested, and American intelligence knew by now, was expected at some point very soon. But by mid-May, neither the U.S. nor the usually gung-ho South Korean government was saying a peep. By early May 1950, Singhman Rhee had declared, quote, May and June may be the crucial period in the life of our nation,

and asked for combat planes from his American patrons. On May 10th, a South Korean captain held a press conference in Seoul and said, quote, North Korean troops were moving in force towards the 38th parallel and that there was imminent danger of invasion from the north. And as late as June 9th, an American advisor to Rhee made a further plea for warplains. Quote, what puzzles won in the record of events, writes Iye of Stone, is why the South Korean government made no effort after its defense minister's press conference of May 10th to attract

public attention to the danger it feared and the inadequate equipment of which it complained. After this, quote, no press dispatches from Tokyo, no statements from Seoul, no speeches in Congress, could it be, I. F. Stone asks, that re-received advice that it would be wiser to invite or provoke an attack? Even odder, when war would break out on June 25th, President Truman was home in Missouri, Dean Atchison was on a country retreat, and George Kennan in a summer cottage. We still do not know, writes Bruce Cummings, why the Pentagon approved and distributed in the week of June 18th, a war plan known as SL-17, which assumed a North Korean invasion,

a quick retreat to and defense of a perimeter at Busan, and then an amphibious landing at Inchon. So you had the suppression of people's committees, the Cheju Rebellion, the guerrilla war, and then border fighting in the summer of 1949. And I think that that particular, experience, which then extended to the mainland with guerrilla war in 1949 and 50, I think it made the North Korean leadership think we're not going to put up with this anymore.

Our brothers and sisters are being slaughtered in the south. From the book, The Road to No Gunry. The war had begun with the rainy season. In the darkness before dawn, a hard rain was falling at the 38th parallel when the North Korean Army, led by tanks, struck across the line. 35 miles to the south in Seoul, military trucks and jeeps were careening through the city's streets, with loudspeakers blaring orders for soldiers on leave to return to their posts.

On the radio, the people of Seoul heard one story, quote, our heroic soldiers are fighting and repelling them. All the nation's people are urged to remain calm and carry on business as usual. But in the mountains north of the capital, a different story was unfolding. In the main attack, two North Korean divisions, more than 20,000 men with 80 tanks, were pushing down the Yuijung Bu corridor, a valley system leading straight to Seoul. Other prongs of attack came down to the east and west of the main threat. A highly trained and well-equipped North Korean army swarmed across the 38th parallel to attack unprepared South Korean defenders.

Caught off guard, they were all but overwhelmed. New York Herald Tribune reporter Marguerite Higgins reported that she arrived in Seoul before it was captured by the Korean people's army. During that brief window, while there were still American boots on the ground, Higgins reported that she arrived at the Korean Military Advisory Group headquarters, whereupon she was greeted by American Colonel Sterling Wright, and he told her that the situation was, quote, fluid but hopeful. Refugees had already been filing out of Seoul. Quote, I remember vividly the midnight briefing during that first siege of Seoul,

Higgins wrote, saying that Colonel Wright had told her, quote, the South Koreans have a pathological fear of tanks. That's part of the reason for all this retreating. They could handle them if they would only use the weapons we had given them properly. What happened instead, in Higgins' words. Quote, in the first few hours of the attack, the South Korean Army fought well, retreating to prepared positions. It soon became clear that the main communist threat was in the Yunjiangbu corridor, just north of Seoul.

The menacing Soviet tanks headed the onslaught. At first, the South Koreans bravely tackled the tanks, with highly inadequate two-and-a-half bazookas. They saw their volleys bounce off the monsters, and many squads, armed with grenades and Molotov cocktails, went to suicidal deaths in frenzied efforts to stop the advance. The decisive crack-up came when one of the South Korean divisions failed to follow through on schedule with a counter-attack in the Seoul Corridor.

But this night, the South Korean retreat had been temporarily halted just north of Seoul, where the troops had rallied, As we left headquarters, General Chi, Higgins writes, then Southern Korean Chief of Staff, bustled past us toward his office. He was resplendent in his brightly polished American helmet and American uniform and told us, We've fighting hard now. Things getting better.

It seemed as if I had hardly closed my eyes when Colonel Wright's aide burst in. Get up, he shouted. They've broken through. We have to run for it. This, a savage war of attrition in which no quarter was given by a foe equipped with the latest. is Russian Arbond. John Foster Dulles said in Honolulu that the North's attack came sooner than expected. I have Stone notes, quote,

no one asked him when he expected the attack. The actual record, available intelligence, etc., still doesn't definitively show who started the fighting that day. Most historians argue that the North Korean line that the South had launched a general invasion, is wrong. There is, however, ongoing speculation as to what southern troops were doing in the town of Haidju on June 25th, or whether they initiated fighting in Ongjin. This is still inconclusive, with existing evidence pointing both ways. Here's Bruce Cummings. Well, a number of people that I quoted talked about the regiment of the South Korean Army taking overhead you on the day the war broke out. I think that happened.

But the question is, did they move first? In the captured North Korean materials, you know, it's just a ton of interesting stuff. But there's one document about the placement of landmines by North Korea. Now, here's another interesting secret. The South did not put down the landmines that the U.S. had provided to them. And the reason was they didn't want landmines in the way of their invasion. The North Koreans had mined the 38th parallel for years. But 48 hours before the fighting began, they picked up landmines north of Hedju and Quesong.

That's just very clear on the documentation and pretty clear, you know, that they implemented their plans for an invasion at the very last minute. A North Korean invasion, whether the American invasion, whether the American. Americans had expected it or not, had to be reversed. Something was happening at the airport in Kansas City. The president was breaking off his weekend, saying a hurried goodbye to his wife and taking off suddenly for Washington. The U.S. perspective, via Secretary of State Dean Atchison, quote, had everything to do with American prestige and political economy.

Prestige is the shadow cast by power, Atchison once said, and the North Koreans had now challenged it. American credibility was at stake. South Korea was also essential to the industrial revival of Japan, Acheson thought, as part of his quote-unquote Great Crescent strategy that sought to link Northeast Asia with the Middle East. June 25th to 26 decisions prefigured the commitment of American ground forces, which ultimately came in the early hours of June 30th.

Acheson notified Truman and immediately prepared to go to the United Nations. The U.S. prepared air cover for evacuating Americans and put the seventh fleet between Taiwan, Formosa, and the Chinese mainland. The Joint Chiefs of Staff were not consulted by Truman. Now, the CIA's account of these events from a document called Baptism by Fire that was published in 2021 reads, At 4 a.m. on Sunday, June 25, 1950 in Korea, while it was still Saturday 3 p.m. in the U.S., North Korean troops, supported by tanks, heavy artillery, and aircraft crossed the 38th parallel and invaded South Korea. Notified at his home in Independence, Missouri, by Secretary of State Acheson, who had received a communication from the U.S. ambassador in Seoul,

President Truman instructed the Secretary of State to contact the United Nations, and he returned to Washington. In fact, Secretary of State Acheson had already moved to notify the U.S. Truman had been on vacation, and Acheson was already empowered. to act as the president's powerful envoy. On the evening of June 25th, before Truman had returned to Washington, Atchison argued at an emergency meeting for ramping up military aid to the Republic of Korea and Singman Rhee. Earlier that day, the United Nations Security Council voted 9 to 0 to condemn the Korean

People's Army and formally sided with the Republic of Korea. Now, wasn't the Soviet Union part of that Security Council? Well, as you might remember, they were currently boycotting the body for not letting in the now legitimate communist government of China. And so did not exercise their potential veto power to stop the resolution supporting South Korea and condemning North Korea. The seating of nationalist China's delegate on the Security Council precipitated a clash between the free nations and the Soviet bloc, which only ended with the abrupt departure of Jacob Malik, head of the Red delegation. A blunder they were to regret. When the invasion of South

Korea by North Korea and Reds came up for consideration by the council. Quote, Dean Atchison's staff had produced overnight a study paper waited toward intervening in Korea, writes Sung Hun, Hanley, and Mendoza. Thirteen senior U.S. officials convened over a fried chicken dinner at the Blair House, the president's home during White House remodeling. Korea, quote, offered as good an occasion for drawing the line as anywhere else, said General Omar Bradley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Dean Rusk described Korea as a dagger pointed at Japan.

The Blair House Group ordered General MacArthur to expedite weapon shipments to the South Korean defenders and deploy air and naval forces to try and save Seoul. Atchison's study paper, the authors write, minimizing the Koreans' urge to reunite, said the North Korean invasion must be a, quote, Soviet move. Within hours, American policy is crystallized. I'm Atchison and his assistant Dean Rusk leave the White House. American troops have been dispatched to Korea. In contrast to America's immediate snap into crisis mode and the ruling at the Security Council,

Masuda Hajimu observes the reactions of other countries around the world to the flare-up in Korea. In India, Prime Minister Nehru actually caught flack for condemning North Korea as an aggressor. Many, such as one former minister, said that Nehru had chosen sides in a civil war. A Calcutta man told one newspaper that the Koreans were simply having out their civil war, like the Americans did once upon a time. Egypt condemned the Security Council's decision, and its Prime Minister pointed out that the West didn't seem so interested in police actions when it came to, say, the issue of Palestine.

Even America's neighbor to the north, Canada, seemed to edge toward restraint, which was encapsulated in a Toronto Star cartoon that urged, quote, no hysterics, please, end quote. On Tuesday, June 27th, the Army told reporters, quote, at the beginning, it is not contemplated that ground troops or Marines will be used in Korea. But the South Korean Republic was folding like an old man's hip. Seoul fell to the North Koreans on Wednesday, June 28th, just three days after they invaded. McArthur flew across the strait to get a look at the situation for himself.

On June 30th, back in Tokyo, the Supreme Commander advised the Joint Chiefs in Washington that U.S. ground forces would be needed, but Truman seized on a reporter's suggested term for the U.S. operations shaping up in Korea. Yes, the President said, it was a police action. Without consulting the full joint chiefs, without submitting a war resolution to Congress, Truman was now sending American soldiers to fight the North Koreans. But by June 27th, the highest echelons of the D.C. military and national security establishment understood what was unfolding. On that day, a CIA assessment concluded that, quote,

it is doubtful whether cohesive Southern Korean resistance will continue beyond the next 24 hours. Not long before Seoul fell, MacArthur sent a message to the U.S. presence there, a cable saying, quote, good cheer, momentous events are pending. In Seoul, the main bridge across the city's great river, the Han, crumbled, and hundreds of people along with it. South Korean engineers blew up the bridge as people were fleeing the city. According to Sang-Hun, Hanley, and Mendoza, quote, they gave no warning to the throngs of civilians

and retreating soldiers who were walking and riding in bumper-to-bumper traffic across the length of the bridge. Hundreds were killed in the explosion, and many more fell to their deaths or drowned when surging crowds pushed them into the gap created by the bridge. They further write, units of the North Korean Third Division had entered Seoul on Tuesday evening their tanks smashing open Sotomon prison and freeing thousands of jailed leftists. By Wednesday afternoon, the Northerners had held the entirety of Seoul north of the Han River. Some Some cheered the conquering army, some stayed home, hoping for the whole thing to end quickly. And soon, people's courts, run by prisoners freed from jail, quote, summarily executed

national policemen, and others they blamed for their persecution. Quote, within another two days, less than a week into the war, the Korean People's Army controlled all the territory above the Han River, and the South Korean Army was struggling to regroup after having lost 44,000 of its 98,000 men, either killed. killed, captured, or missing. Rhee's government handled this collapse the only way it knew how, methods of terror. All over South Korea, villagers began disappearing from their homes, as the re-regime rounded up enemies, real or imagined.

Douglas MacArthur's friendly biographer said the general was completely surprised by the North Korean attack. I. F. Stone considers this. Quote, more extraordinary than the oversight itself is MacArthur's readiness to admit it. This is what seems so out of character in a commander who would normally tend to cover up the slightest retreat or the most excusable defeat in high-sounding circumlocutions. What adds to the difficulty of believing that MacArthur was quite that unaware is the visit paid to Korea at the time by John Foster Dulles. End quote. According to MacArthur, quote, within 24 hours. President Truman authorized the use of ground troops. In addition to being SCAP, or the Supreme

Commander of Allied Powers, McArthur was now the, quote, Commander-in-Chief Far East, cementing his position as the top of the military chain of command in Asia. MacArthur had a few divisions of U.S. troops available to him in Japan, and these were not battle-ready divisions. They were ill-equipped, without the heavy weaponry that would be required to take on the KPA's tank push directly. The immediate plan was to beef up the presence at Busan, the port city on the southern coast of the Korean Peninsula, where the military and naval presence was strongest,

and where MacArthur planned to set up the American base of operations in the country for the future. MacArthur and Truman disagreed about how to proceed. MacArthur requested about 30,000 soldiers' worth of reinforcements, which he claimed he needed to further push back the North Koreans, This request was denied by Washington, a decision that MacArthur writes, quote, amazed him. He couldn't understand why those bureaucrats in Washington were scared to go in on, you know, a full-scale war with an escalating troop commitment, not to mention that there really weren't those kinds of numbers of troops available.

Truman did enumerate some instructions for MacArthur, which included sending a survey group, naval ships, and further supplies. He also specified that, quote, the Air Force should prepare plans to wipe out all. Soviet air bases in the Far East. And this is not an order for action, but in order to make the plans. In another one of Truman's orders, quote, careful calculations should be made of the next probable place in which Soviet action might take place. And you can already see here, Truman and MacArthur, who would only meet once in person in their lives, beginning to draw swords.

Though Truman's policy was containment, and MacArthur was saying, this is what the cost of containment would be, Truman wasn't quite ready to get his feet that wet. But MacArthur was popular and politically connected, and he was also the man running the show on the ground. James Reston in the New York Times on MacArthur's appointment as Commander-in-Chief foreshadows this, calling him a, quote, sovereign power. July 7, Singman Rhee signs the Geneva Conventions. July 8th, Truman names McArthur head of United Nations Allied Forces. McArthur authorizes Japan to increase army size to 100,000 men and to bring U.S. units in Korea up to full strength by, quote, integrating

Koreans into the ranks. July 13, Indian Prime Minister Nehru sends notes to Stalin and Aitchison urging for peace. Here's how the two responded to Nehru as described by IEF. Stown. Quote, two days later, Stalin welcomed Nehru's efforts and said the first step should be to reactivate the Security Council, meaning presumably to admit Red China. Atchison replied that any such move would subject the United Nations to, quote, coercion and duress. Singman Reed declares a state of emergency in South Korea, which will last three years. While the Korean Republicans fought a desperate delaying action, a United Nations police force with General Douglas MacArthur as commander-in-chief was formed. During the early days of UN action, General MacArthur fought a grim defense.

battle, his troops outnumbered three and four to one. Stovernly, forces under his command clung to a shrinking beachhead in Southeast Korea, and for months the allies fought to keep from being driven into the sea. So the UN forces in Korea were to serve under the, quote, unquote, unified command of Douglas MacArthur, combined with President Truman's order for an official wartime mobilization. In effect, argues I have Stone, MacArthur was handed a blank check by the United Nations.

Quote, should some border incident or bombing, accidental or otherwise, suddenly extend the war from Korea to China or China's ally Russia, MacArthur had a blank check from the United Nations and an unlimited draft on manpower from the United States. The nature of MacArthur's authority here was something unique. He technically served the UN, supposedly an international body, but had no obligations to the organization to clear any strategies to file anything with them at all. Stone sums up, the finishing touch was to make the, quote, United Nations forces subject to

MacArthur without making MacArthur subject to the United Nations. William Bloom also notes, military personnel of some 16 other countries took part in one way or another, but it was to be an American show. Ten days after Singman Rees' declaration of a state of emergency, MacArthur reported to the United Nations that the North Korean forces were being supported by communist China and Russia. But official U.S. military briefings from Tokyo headquarters, on the other hand, painted pictures of ragged North Korean troops, buttressed by conscripts,

hardly a sign that Stalin and Mao were lining up fully behind Kim. The Truman administration, to many, was actually appearing to buckle under this kami pressure. In spite of substantial Republican opposition, and probably that of many Democrats, too, Truman said on July 19th that the United States had no particular designs for the island of Formosa, a possible olive branch to Communist China. It was in this context a week and a half later that Douglas MacArthur took a flight to Formosa, seeking to change his boss's mind by throwing his own geopolitical weight around. By late July, MacArthur's area of strategic concern had won.

widened to Formosa, where he was worried that the Chinese nationalist government was vulnerable to attack. Though MacArthur's appointment as UN commander was, in his words, quote, generally well received in the U.S., despite the usual clamor of my leftist enemies, his visit to Formosa at the end of July, and his meeting there with Chiang Kai Shek was, quote, to my astonishment, greeted by a furor. What's more? The following month, President Truman scolded MacArthur for sending a message to the Federans of Foreign War's annual gathering that, quote, the decision of President Truman on June 27th lighted into a flame, a lamp of hope throughout Asia that was burning dimly toward extinction. It marked for the Far East the focal and turning

point in this area's struggle for freedom. It was swept aside in one great monumental stroke all of the hypocrisy and the sophistry which is confused and diluted so many people distant from the actual scene. MacArthur was, of course, talking here about his own president. MacArthur, a persnickety man, got into a war of words over cables with the White House, and in his memoirs, he claims that he doesn't understand what started the whole, you know, spat between him and Truman at this moment. MacArthur believed that if a confrontation with, quote-unquote, imperialistic communism

was coming to the Christian Western United States, and it was happening in Korea, the U.S. needed the help of an old friend, Chang Kai Sheck, no matter that Chang was corrupt, brutal, and politically, a totally spent force on the mainland. Formosa and Chang had to be protected, in MacArthur's view, but from Truman's point of view, McArthur was pushing the U.S. towards strategic and military commitments

that he had no business making. McArthur, Stone writes, was pretty plainly trying to subvert any chance at a negotiated peace. The day before MacArthur flew to Formosa, the Soviet Union had announced that it would return to the Security Council, accepting that the Chinese mainland would not be represented by the Chinese mainland government, the communists, with the hope that the Soviet Union could do some diplomacy for their benefit. Stone called it, quote, eating humble pie.

MacArthur's flight to Formosa and his public message in support of Chang, quote, in a common crusade of liberation against the new regime on the mainland, it had the effect of, quote, drowning out the quiet voices that were still urging mediation and peace. And MacArthur himself was forced to disavow news of his very real political support for Chang as, quote-unquote, malicious gossip. But while the world expected an Asiatic Dunkirk in Korea, as MacArthur put it, he was using the summer of 1950 to plan for how the U.S. would strike back. A police action had been approved, after all, to use that phrase.

Fighting over the head of the chairman of the joint chiefs, his old colleague, General Omar Bradley, MacArthur was pushing for something more, an amphibious landing. His idea was pretty simple. If the goal is to push the KPA back north, then we need to have them fighting on two fronts. So let's create a new front, behind their lines. The summer of 1950 saw the North Korean army sweeping southward, as Cummings puts it, with one humiliating defeat after another for American forces. By the end of July, despite outnumbering the KPA, American and ROK forces were still in retreat. In early August, however,

the First Marine Brigade went into action and finally halted the North Koreans advance. The front did not change that much from then until the end of August. It stabilized at what became known as the Basan perimeter. Camille Sung later said that the plan that summer was to win the war for the South in one month, and by the end of July, Cummings puts it, he had nearly done so. As the north swept the country, the South Korean regime had gone to work. Forced evacuations and village burnings of any suspected leftist or communist sympathizer towns were in vogue. The many ROK troops who simply hightailed it were wise not to get caught by an officer who gave a shit. Quote, ROK officers exploited their own men and beat them mercilessly for infractions.

One American GI observed an officer execute a man for going AWOL, shooting him in the back of the head and kicking him into a grave. By now, President Rhee's National Guidance Alliance went from being a re-education network that we discussed last time into more of an actual death machine. guiding thousands of people, whether their socialism was real or perceived, to extermination. Huangskyung writes, quote, most executions here took place in the first six months of the war outside metropolitan Seoul. The dead were rarely seen dying. They simply disappeared from everyone's sight in the summer of 1950. Most of the bodies, if ever found, were retrieved

years later, from obscure ditches or shady mountain valleys, huddled together with hands tied behind their backs and bullet holes in their skulls. When the north took Seoul, the city was not set aflame by the North Koreans, perhaps out of a more rigorous discipline, perhaps because they also planned to make Sol their capital. Quote, once Sigmund Rie fled Seoul and blew up the bridge over the Han River, pictures of Kim Il-sung and Joseph Stalin were plastered on the walls. Instead of regular classroom, students attended lecture, urging them to join the war of liberation. Sukhung writes, quote, the People's Army opened up the jails and released thousands of political prisoners,

armed them with weapons, and encouraged them to take revenge on their accusers. The People's Committee was back, too, and now with a People's Court. No doubt there was retribution against right-wingers, but Suk Young advises that the reports of barbarism were, quote, based on hearsay allegations of a handful of political personalities who left Seoul in the first week. The descriptions of merciless street justice were stretched to the extreme to incite fear against the collective subversion of South Korean communists. End quote. Not unlike the scandalizing reports that we mentioned last season, in which the officers of Fulhenio Batista were executed in newly revolutionary Cuba, in areas not yet

under the DPRK's control, and even within the areas that were, mass arrests of purported communists or left sympathizers sped up. It was a scorched earth policy as the northern troops rolled down the peninsula. Sukhung, quote, more people were executed in the countryside than in Seoul. Among the 330,000 people rounded up in Rhee's National Guidance Alliance, quote, 200,000 had been killed nationwide, but the highest death rate in the Kyeongsang area. The victims were targeted for the possibility of having suspicious intent, such as collaborating with the people's army, without necessarily committing the act. Back on Jeju Island, things were going down fast.

When the Korean War began, Sukheng writes, the Jeju police arrested 344 people and 218 of them were executed after a short period. Sukheng personally spoke to Koreans who told of a massacre. Quote, I remained unconvinced of their reports for years. until I ran into a North Korean pamphlet from the time that described the incident with a corresponding photograph. It documented the arrest, detention, and execution of 400 civilians. Despite the typically indignant tone of the North Korean texts, this passage came close to affirming the occurrence of the Ochoong Massacre. The location, time period, number of victims, method of destruction,

and the aftermath roughly matched the eyewitness. accounts. The pamphlet detailed the ways in which the police and constabulary apprehended laborers, peasants, office workers, and even young schoolchildren. Once arrested, they were beaten or tortured. It was reported

that about a thousand people were driven away quote, like pigs, to an execution site near a water reservoir. And then there was this. At the end of July, West troops evacuated villages ahead of the northern advance. Hundreds of these refugees, when led to the village of No Gun Re, were ordered by Americans to stop at a roadblock.

Suddenly, the refugees found themselves under attack by an American airstrike. From the book, The Bridge at No Gunry, quote, it looked like heaven crashed on us, said one survivor. Villagers said fireballs from some kind of heavy weapon. weapon came from the hills, that soldiers on the ground had opened fire on them. The planes, two to four, flew off. But the killing went on. Families, every few feet, were being torn apart bit by bit, life by life. Freeze frames of horror were burned forever into young survivors' minds. The 17-year-old student, Chung Kuhun, unscathed under a thick quilt, looked

up through the smoke and saw people climbing a nearby hill. hillside, only to be cut down by American soldiers' fire. The attack fit the policy the Air Force was pursuing at the Army's request to, quote, strafe all civilian refugee parties that are noted approaching our positions. Navy pilots were instructed attack any group of more than eight people. All of this, so the U.S. military's logic went, was to root out any possible North Korean infiltrators crossing south. The entire story of the massacre was suppressed until the late 1990s, when U.S. soldiers confirmed the accounts that had long been coming out of Korea. Perhaps the largest massacre took place at Tejan. This is a city 100 miles south of Seoul,

where in July, as the People's Army approached, South Korean officers, before retreating, executed as many as 7,000 people, a preventative measure. they said, to deny the North support. The only news outlets to report this at the time were the North Korean Hebang Ilbo and the British Daily Worker. This is what people read in the Daily Worker written by correspondent Alan Winnington. Quote, 7,000 people have been horribly butchered

in a little valley about one kilometer from this village under the supervision of American officers. American service rifle, pistol, and carbine bullets were used to kill them. The trucks that drove them to their deaths were American. and some of the drivers were American. The 40 cigarette packets, which still litter the scene, are American. The shooting, beating, and beheading were done by South Korean puppet police, but this is an American crime.

Winnington spoke to as many Koreans as he could, mostly peasants, who themselves, So Qion notes, were tortured by being forced to dig the graves of the victims. The British government confiscated Winnington's passport. and he was being considered for treason. Dean Atchison, meanwhile, demanded a denial be put out by a quotable official. Meanwhile, not only did the Americans scramble to cover up information that they had on the massacre, which remained covered up until the 1990s, they actually possessed photographs of the scene, victims before and after, bodies upon bodies.

The U.S. Embassy in London denounced the newspaper report as a, quote, atrocity fabrication. The daily workers' account would eventually be supported, however, by a U.S. military report and those classified materials that had been kept secret at that point for almost half a century. What really happened then? Quote, the South Korean military police had trucked hundreds of political prisoners to a spot outside Tejan, shot them, and dumped their bodies in long trenches. The killings were photographed by U.S. Army officers. A report to the armed Army intelligence staff in Washington went, quote, execution of 1,800 political prisoners at Tejean, requiring three days, took place during the first week in July 1950. The accompanying

photographs, Sukhung adds, were grimly reminiscent of scenes from the recent Nazi Holocaust, showing the terror on prisoners' faces beforehand and the tangle of corpses afterward. The U.S. Embassy attache, who wrote that report, suggested that the Tejohn bloodbath, was only one of many, Sukyang writes. He wrote that he believed that, quote, thousands of political prisoners were executed within a few weeks after the fall of Seoul to prevent their possible release by advancing enemy troops.

Orders for execution undoubtedly came from the top level. End quote. Not only did the Americans deny this massacre, they issued a document that stated, it was the North Koreans who had killed all of the thousands dead at Tejan. And for 40 years, that is what people knew. However, one July refugee traveled more comfortably, writes Sung-Han Henley and Mendoza. President Singman-Ree had hopscotched by car and special train

all the way to the southern tip of the Korean Peninsula within a week of the invasion, moving into an island beach home under Korean Army protection. One of the funniest things, I'm sure many people don't think it's very funny, but Singh-Munri ran away. I mean, he just took off, and the U.S. was trying to find him. And he ended up in Mokpo, which is a far southwestern port city. Also very interesting is that the South Korean elite made plans for exile, and about half of them wanted to go to Japan for exile.

Ordinary South Koreans were unaware how far from the front lines their president had retreated. They were also unaware that, back in Seoul, 48 legislators of the 210-member National Assembly, foes of Rhee's rightist autocracy, had pledged allegiance to Kim Il-sung's Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Masuda Hajima notes, in fact, that it was not unusual for a majority of the population to remain in their cities and villages instead of fleeing southward. Quote, if the Re regime had enjoyed enormous popular support and trust among the population, then the

majority of the population might have evacuated their cities and villages and followed the president all the way to Busan. However, it did not. The fact is that not only workers and peasants, but many businessmen, industrialists, and intellectuals stayed in their cities and villages. These are American troops going into action

as the relentless war between communism and democracy continues in South Korea. General Walton Walker, field commander, and MacArthur, consults with General William Dean, now meeting after directing operations north of Tajjong. In July, the American General William F. Dean was captured, several miles south of Tejong. Dean had been the U.S. military governor in the area and was actually present in our story a few times already. He was the U.S. commander who rejected the peace agreement. during the early days of violence on Jeju Island. But also the same man who had demanded, apparently to no effect,

that the South Korean army discontinue massacring thousands of their countrymen in Tejong. In the chaos of abandoning that city to the north's advance, Dean and his men took a wrong turn, and he was later separated from even that small detachment. The general wandered for a month through the country before North Korean troops discovered him and took him in. He would end up a prisoner of war for several years. General Dean wrote a book detailing his experience,

which, while unmistakably the thoughts of an American general, remains a compelling firsthand account of his days in captivity. In the first days of his capture, Dean noticed the conduct of the North Korean soldiers, quote, I never saw the Inmun Gun steal anything, outright. When a soldier wanted a farmer's peach, he always paid for it. He went out and bought it. So even when the currency turned out to be worthless, that individual soldier was not the target of

the farmer's wrath. Dean also noticed the reception to the communist soldiers, from his vantage point in Chinan. Quote, I was struck by the fact that if the people of South Korea resented the northern invaders, they certainly weren't showing it. To me, the civilian attitude appeared to veer between enthusiasm and passive acceptance. I saw no sign of resistance or any will to resist. Sanghan, Hanley, and Mendoza write what Dean perhaps did not yet realize. The Americans did not understand that many South Koreans despised the government the U.S. Army was defending.

In fact, as the Northern Army swept down the peninsula, most South Koreans stayed put in their homes, end quote. General Dean goes on. The one thing I noticed especially was that my guard was quite a hero to all the small children we met on the way. Whenever we passed a group, he would say a phrase to them and the children would reply in chorus. It sounded like Chosan All, which I assumed must be some communist slogan about a

United Korea, because they all knew it and repeated it with enthusiasm. I thought, boy, these communists have done a job of indoctrinating these youngsters. They were delighted with the soldiers, but not even interested in a captive. The cost was high to Americans who bore the brunt under the UN banner. For here they faced an enemy who ruthlessly slaughtered prisoners, many with their arms bound. Scores died before red guns as they stood helpless. In the first hours after the crisis broke out on June 25th, Stephen Casey writes, it was the second-ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that asked whether the battle in Korea was a communist assault egged on by the Russians

or, quote, a fight between Koreans. On the other side of the aisle, a Democratic senator from Utah had no such doubts, inclining to the view that, quote, legally, this was a civil war and not an act of aggression. Casey calls these views apostasy and notes that they were almost immediately drowned out by a growing consensus that all of this was puppeteered by Joseph Stalin. But you can find it expressed elsewhere at the time, if you look. In the American Civil War, observed one British official in the early 1950s, quote, the Americans would never have tolerated for a single moment the setting up of an imaginary line between the forces of North and South. And there could be no doubt as to what would have been their reaction if the British had intervened in force

on behalf of the South. This analogy is a close one, because for the U.S., the conflict was not merely between two groups of U.S. citizens, but was between two conflicting economic systems, as is the case in Korea. Here's a former State Department advisor, William Polk, he actually sat on Kennedy's missile crisis management team, on the origins of the Korea conflict. Quote, the event that appears to have precipitated the full-scale war was the declaration by Sigmund Rhee's government of the independence of the South. If allowed to stand, that action, as Kim Il-sung clearly understood, would have prevented unification. He regarded it as an act of war. He was ready for war. Kim Il-sung must have known in detail the corruption, disorganization,

and weakness of Rees administration. Rees' entourage was engaged in a massive theft of public resources and revenues. Money intended by the foreign donors to build a modern state was siphoned off to foreign bank accounts. The former State Department advisor concludes, quote, bluntly put, re-offered Kim an opportunity he could not refuse. Here we'll finish with Bruce Cummings. Quote, Kim Il-sung crossed the five-year-old 38th parallel, not an international boundary like that between, say, Iraq and Kuwait or Germany and Poland. Instead, it bisected a nation that had a rare and well-recognized existence going back to antiquity. The counter logic implied by saying Koreans invade Korea disrupts the received wisdom.

By the end of June, the KPA paused south of the capital, Seoul, for nearly a week. Some wonder if this was due to supply line issues or cold feet, or even because they had only expected to make it to Seoul and no further. Whatever the case, as MacArthur had told the Americans in Korea during the earliest hours of the North invasion, quote, Be of good cheer. Mementous events are pending. You know,