Empire: World History - 173. The Korean War: Dividing the Peninsula

Episode Date: July 31, 2024

The Korean War was a brutal affair. It is estimated that 3,000,000 people were killed in the conflict that absolutely devastated the Korean Peninsula. And the legacy of it is still with us today; it was over the course of this war that the division between North and South solidified into two separate nations. It was also at this time that Kim Il Sung rose to prominence, establishing North Korea's ruling dynasty that exists to this day. Listen as William and Anita are once again joined by Paul Thomas Chamberlin to discuss the events of the war and its monumental legacy. Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Assistant Producer: Anouska Lewis Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. Four in the morning on June the 25th, 1950, as a steady drizzle of rain fell from the pre-dawned sky. Some 90,000 soldiers of the North Korean People's Army lurched forward as their artillery opened up on targets from the south. North Korean troops crossed the 38th parallel at six points along a 150 mile wide front. South Korean and American troops near the front were caught by surprise. They had been fighting along the border for months, with each side launching raids against the other,

but nothing of this scale had yet taken place. Kimmel-sung, President of North Korea, anticipated the collapse of South Korean forces in one week, the capture of Seoul and the end of the war. In the early hours of June 27, American officials received orders to evacuate Seoul. Fear swept through the city as the flow of refugees increased

and thousands of civilians tried to flee across the Han River bridges. The first North Korean forces reet Seoul around 7.30pm, but were held off by the city's defenders for several hours. The flow of refugees continued through the night and the next morning, at 2.15 a.m., panicked South Korean officials detonated explosives on the bridges, killing around 1,000 civilians and South Korean soldiers crossing the river, stranding another 44,000 troops on the northern bank. The residents of Seoul watched as North Korean forces seized the city, began throwing up posters of Kim Il-sung and Stalin, and launched a hunt for what they called reactionaries. Many citizens cheered the arrival of communist forces and praised

the liberation of the city. Others mobbed the roads leading out of the city, fleeing the advancing North Korean armies. Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Dalrymple. And what you just heard William Reed was an extract from our guest Paul Thomas Chamberlain's book, The Cold Wars Killingfield. And we left you on a cliff edge in the previous episode of Empire where things were hotting up, where you had Stalin saying to hell with Yalta, ripping up the peace that had been so hard fought for during World War II. And the Americans on their side saying that they will fight for freedom everywhere. That is the thought process then going on in Washington, certainly. Paul, just give us a little more context of this horrifying episode where actually you've got the South Koreans stranding so many of their own people

on the wrong side to God knows what. And the North Koreans making this push against a line that, albeit was drawn in haste on a map, nobody really recognized. How seismic is this moment? So it's incredibly important. And it's a moment that is not initially recognized to be all that. important. As the passage states, there has been fighting going on for some time along the 38th parallel. It's low-level skirmishing. Both sides are conducting raids. So when the initial

operation starts, many observers don't realize just how big it is or important it will be. And this is kind of an important point. I want to drive home. In the West, we often talk about this as an invasion. It's North Korean forces invading South Korea, is an attack by one state against another state. This is not how many Koreans saw it, circa 1950. As we talked about last episode, there is kind of an ongoing civil war that is taking place in Korea in the years leading up to 1950. And the so-called invasion or the crossing of the 38th parallel is just another stage in that ongoing war. Who are the combatants in the Civil War?

Are they militia groups or are they organized and armed national forces? So in South Korea, it's largely what they call people's committees. They are local groups that are receiving some support and aid and encouragement from North Korea. They are composed of communists. Many of them are left-leaning groups. But many of them are just kind of local political. political leaders that are doing this, and they're resisting the consolidation of Singh Munn-Ree's

central government control in South Korea. Meanwhile, as I said, there is skirmishing taking place along the 38th parallel. There is a way to read this, not as the beginning of a new war, but just the beginning of a new stage in an ongoing war. And from the North Korean perspective, their argument is that this is not an invasion because Koreans cannot invade Korea. There's There's no reason for the 38th parallel to exist as a durable international frontier. Is it framed as a liberation movement? Yeah, it's framed as a liberation movement. It's framed as the final offensive in the Korean Revolution.

And so I guess they're crossing that line, thinking that, I mean, they must think that people are going to celebrate their arrival, that, you know, that this is going to be a great moment for all Koreans. I mean, are they surprised by the reaction that they do ultimately get? Well, I mean, in some cases, they're welcomed as liberators, but in other cases, you know, there are plenty of South Koreans that are loyal to the Seoul regime, and there is a sizable South Korean military force that is resisting them. Right. So I don't think they're surprised by the fact that this is a war, but they are very much prepared to conduct this offensive as, you know, the last stage in the civil war that will bring ultimate victory to communist forces. So you've just described, you know, some people will welcome these North Korean forces, others will be loyal to Seoul. I mean, the stage is really set for some terrible violence and it happens, doesn't it? Talk us through some of the really terrible massacres that take place after this. Yeah, this is one of the aspects

of the Korean War that I did not know about as an American who studied foreign policy but did not look specifically at Korea until I wrote this book. The Korean War is just filled with horrific, gruesome massacres. And it actually starts before 1950. But once the, you know, this stage of the war that we're talking about now gets going, it's in the initial days of the crossing of the 30th parallel. North Korean forces are approaching Singh-Munri's capital, city of Seoul, and there is just widespread panic throughout the regime. And one of the things that the South Korean leaders decide to do is that they're holding tens of of thousands of political prisoners, right?

These are communists, their left-wing political figures. They are people suspected of being sympathetic to the communists. And as North Korean forces are approaching the Capitol, they order the summary execution of thousands upon thousands of political prisoners. These are civilians, but the South Korean government does not want them to fall into the hands

of North Korean forces. Any estimate, Paul, of the scale of those killings? The estimate is about 20,000 people. Just in the initial days of the war, their hands are tied behind their back, they're thrown into the sea, they're lined up along trenches and gone down by the thousands. And it's just this horrific, gruesome story, and it's driven by this idea that if these civilians are captured by the North Koreans, then this will just string the hand of the communists.

You've presented it very much as a Korean-led Korean initiative on both sides. What do the Americans who are on the South make of these massacres? Are there attempts to try and set up courts to stop wholesale massacre of prisoners? They're horrified, right? The American observers that see this are sending reports back to the United States, alerting American officials that this is happening. They definitely don't support it. But as I said, this is a moment of panic.

It looks like the war is going to be over really in a matter of weeks. And so there's very little that they can do to stop. It's almost this headlong flight to the south in advance of the North Korean forces. And coming, as this does on the edge of this massive Soviet sweep into Eastern Europe, this is beginning to look to Western observers like a communist wave, isn't it? Correct. You know, by the time that American officials really figure out just what the scale of what happening in Korea is, this is read by officials in the Truman administration as the opening

stage of a global communist offensive. So there are very real concerns that this is just the first place where this is going to happen and the Soviets and the Chinese are prepared to launch similar operations around the world. Yeah, and Truman says to his secretary of state, we've got to stop these sons of bitches no matter what. So, I mean, there's panic on the ground in Korea, but there's also panic in Washington as well. Can I just circle back to one thing? And you may not know the answer to this. But we've covered the split of nations before. And normally there's a religious component, so you can have an othering of people. But in this instance, it's Koreans firing on Koreans because of a difference in political

belief and loyalty. I mean, are there any sort of documents of how people are able to put that sort of humanity to one side and fire on people who look like them, speak the same language, which is them might even be related to them somehow? Yes, actually, South Korea, in the end of the 20th century and beginning years of the 21st century, South Korea actually put together Truth in Reconciliation Commission. And this is one of the reasons why we know so much about these massacres. So it's, you know, it has similarities to the Truth in Reconciliation commissions that have, you know, appeared in South Africa or parts of Latin America.

And so there's a great deal of testimony. of participants and victims of these sorts of massacres. And largely what do they say that just, you know, they were fighting a just cause? I mean, what do they say moved them, motivated them to, again, turn on people who spoke the same language, have the same heritage, might even have been related to them. What do they say about what pushed them to pull triggers, drop people into the sea, kill men, women and children who look like their own families? I think it's a sense that this is a life and death struggle.

and this is a defining struggle to determine the shape of Korean nationalism. And it's really in these instances of civil war where you see a lot of the most horrific, most gruesome instances of these sorts of violence. And this is actually the beginning of a series of conflicts, which will spread then to Vietnam, to other parts of the world, across Latin America, across Africa, where you are having very similar conflicts between left and right among people who are otherwise, indistinguishable from each other. Right. And in many ways, the Korean War establishes the paradigm for a lot of the violence that follows.

And it's this fascinating and terrifying amalgamation of local political forces that are armed and spurred on by the superpowers. And I think that's one of the things that makes it so lethal, right, because you have local enmities that are fueled by outside powers. So, Paul, tell us about the American response. July 1950, the U.S. sends troops to support South Korea. This is the first time America is sending troops back into Asia after the demilitarization at the end of the Second World War. Right. And it does so under the guise of the United Nations, which is an important point here. So it's predominantly U.S. forces, but it is technically a UN, a United Nations intervention.

How come the Soviets don't block that? The Soviets don't block it because the Soviet ambassador to the UN is boycotting the Security Council over the decision to bar the People's Republic of China from taking a seat on the Security Council, right? The seat is still occupied by the representative from Shanghai Shek's government in Taiwan. So the Soviets are not there to veto it. But it's important to point out here that this is not the United Nations of the 21st century, right? It's a United Nations that is predominantly run by Western states, right? You don't have these post-colonial governments that have taken their seats.

The non-aligned movement and so on haven't got into action yet. That happens a little bit later. Is this the first time the UN has sent troops into action ever? They may have sent some small kind of peacekeeping operations, but this is the first really large-scale intervention. And in many ways, I think it's unique in the history. the United Nations because, you know, we talked about this a little bit last episode. It is this tremendously uncertain time in international affairs. It's a time when the world is in the midst

of a complete revolution. So you've got this United Nations in a multinational peacekeeping army that is being sent in, largely propelled by the Americans and staffed by the Americans. And it is going to be placed under the control of a man who President Trump describes as his favorite general of all time, General Douglas MacArthur. Tell us about MacArthur. So MacArthur is one of these really colorful characters in American military history. He is deeply controversial. He has figures like Donald Trump and many other admirers who view him as, you know, one of the most brilliant military commanders in U.S. military history. Then you have plenty of scholars, many military historians that think that he is almost a fraud in.

in many ways. We should paint perhaps a portrait of him. He looks very much like sort of Colonel Kurtz and Apocalypse Now. He's got Raybag glasses. He's got a peak cap. He's tough. He's in khaki. He's got an extraordinary pipe. Hello, the pipe. Yeah, the corned cob pipe. The corned carp. I mean, it looks like something out of Bilbo Baggins. But it is, he cuts an extraordinary figure. He is also, you know, he follows this well-worn, almost a caricature, you know, an army brat who graduates first in his class at West Point, a man's man, hard drinking, hard talking, you know, that is the figure that he is. But he wears a kimono at his desk, which you don't see many West Point commanders doing.

I don't hang out with many West Point command. I mean, I don't know. Some may be listening right now. It may be the fatigue of choice. Who knows? But what's he been doing during the war in World War II? What has he been up to before this? So during the 1930s, he actually goes and becomes a field marshal in the Filipino Army.

He is basically brought in by the President of the Philippines to help build the Filipino Army. And he becomes this almost mythical figure in that regard. And he's on scene at the beginning of the American War as part of the Pearl Harbor attacks. The Japanese also attacked the Philippines. And so he is commanding forces. He's kind of called back into service. He's commanding forces in the opening stages of World War II. And he's going to be instrumental in the Pacific War.

And this is one of the reasons why he's so controversial among a lot of military historians. He lobbies successfully to essentially command one of the two main thrusts across the Pacific during the Second World War, focused on liberating the Philippines. The other is conducted largely by the U.S. Navy, and it's this second line of attack that ends up conquering a lot of these islands that are then used to bomb Japan. And so there are many figures, or there are many scholars that argue that the liberation of the Philippines is largely unnecessary during the Second World War? There's a famous photograph, isn't there, of him striding ashore through the surf at this point in full khaki with again the Raybans and the peaked act.

Right. Right. It's all cultivated. His greatest talent lies in his ability to cultivate this public image as a conquering hero as a military genius. And he, you know, he refers to himself in the third person. Is he a strong and stable genius? I was just about to say, you know, is that what he likes to think of himself? I was going to say, a withering contempt.

I mean, they would call it a paternalistic attitude, I suppose, at the time, towards anybody from Asia. I mean, he describes the Japanese as children. They're children. He says, you know, a man of 45 would be likened to a boy of 12 in our culture. I mean, would you go as far as to say it's a disdain for people in Asia? I would say it's a paternalism, right? He's deeply paternalistic.

I think there is an element of affection there. Well, he wears a kimono, clearly. He fancies himself as this sort of far-eastern military potentate. Right. He's put into command the post-war reconstructed Japan. And so that's where he is after 1945. And that's where he is at the beginning of this stage of the Korean War in 1950. Okay.

So he's plucked out of that arena, chucked at Korea. So tell me, you know, sort of what does he make known his ideas about what must happen in Korea? So he is adamant that the North Korean offensive must be stopped. And he believes that essentially once these North Korean troops encounter American forces and Western forces as part of the UN military intervention, that they will essentially throw down their arms and flee. This is a stunning amount of arrogance from a general that had commanded forces fighting the Japanese. But it's part of this paternalistic attitude he has toward Asian military forces. He thinks that he will just be able to essentially land these troops. pluck them down in South Korea and completely stop the North Korean offensive.

Doesn't quite work out that way, does it? Correct. So let's look at the forces he has at his command. What percentage of them are American? Because there are 15 nations as part of this UN force, aren't there? I'm not sure the exact percentages, but it's really overwhelming an American force. But, yeah, there's British, French, Dutch, Turkish, Belgian, Thai forces, South African forces, Filipino forces. But most of the frontline troops that are going to be fighting are Americans. Most of the

military equipment they're using is American military equipment. But it's important to remember that these are not the same units that had defeated Japan in 1945. Those units had been demobilized, right? It was a citizen army. The veterans had gone home and, you know, they were now living in the United States. These were occupation troops. These were troops that had been brought into Japan. They're really more like a police force. Right. They're not, or at least the initial troops that they send in, are not frontline combat troops. So they're essentially just bowled over by these North Korean troops, many of whom were veterans of the Chinese Civil War. I just want to sort of give you a little taste of MacArthur's attitude as soon as he sort of lands in Korea and what he wants to do. There's a

fabulous quote from your own book, actually. He says he's addressing a group of military leaders. And he says, if we lose the war to communism in Asia, the fate of Europe. will be gravely jeopardized. Win it and Europe will probably be saved from war and stay free. Make the wrong decision here, the fatal decision of inertia, and we will be done. I can almost hear the ticking of the second hand of destiny. We must act now or we will die. That's quite a quote, isn't it?

Yeah. Yeah, and that's that's MacArthur's attitude. And increasingly, this is the sentiment in the United States and in Washington. So he's got the words, he talks the talk. How does he walk the walk? So initially, U.S. forces are knocked back on their heels, right? They're confronting, as I said, hardened veterans in the North Korean army. The North Koreans have tanks. The U.S. and U.N. forces are poorly equipped, and they're being driven back. And they're really just shocked by the initial encounter with North Korean forces. And the war is going very, very badly in the opening weeks. This sets the stage for one of the great tragedies, or one of the mini-traged. of the Korean War. And it's a massacre at a town called No Gunry, which is down toward the south of the Korean Peninsula. It happens on July 26, 1950. So this is, as I said, just several weeks into the

war. It's a chaotic moment. And there are flows of refugees that are streaming down south. They're trying to make it to Western lines. They're trying to escape the communists because, you know, Ultimately, it's not just the South Korean forces that are massacring civilians. North Korean forces are as well. So a lot of these loyalist Koreans are trying to escape the communist onslaught. As this is happening, Western troops are worried about the threat of communist infiltrators and guerrillas, hiding amongst this flow of refugees. So some of the military units outside no-gun-ri receive orders to file.

on any refugees that approached their lines who refused to stop, right, because they were worried that there are guerrillas hiding amongst this flow of refugees. And essentially, outside the village of no gunry, US planes begin attacking these refugees. A group of refugees is driven into a culvert. So just men, women and children, again, I mean, let's just call them what they are. They are frightened men, by and large, frightened men, women, children. But on the off chance that there are some infiltrators, they are aerial bombing these terrified civilians from the sky? Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, these desperate civilians. The civilians seek shelter beneath a railroad bridge, and they're surrounded by U.S. forces who begin firing on them. And over the course of three

nights are directing machine gunfire beneath this bridge to try to clear out these forces. Had there been any reason to suspect that there were guerrillas among them? I mean, had there been shots coming from these refugees? Have there been previous occasions when American lines have been surprised by guerrillas hiding among refugees? Or just the plausible threat that it could happen? I think it's much more of the plausible threat that it could happen is the awareness that communist elements were active through Korea. As I said, this is an ongoing civil war. Violence has been taking place for years. And so it is this mix of a superpower intervention, a civil war by standing Korean armies and also, you know, we see counterinsurgency and insurgency.

Sure, but what you've got is you've got a United Nations force firing on civilians from South Korea. Let's just let that hang in the air just for a second. That's an extraordinary thought right there. I'm guessing from the look on your face, it's not the only episode of massacre violence that we see. Correct. Yeah. I mean, it's, and the Korean War is just, just replete with these sorts of massacres. This is probably the most famous one. The Associated Press breaks the story in 1999, and it ends up becoming understood, at least in the United States, is kind of a precursor to the Milai massacre that takes place later on during the Vietnam War.

Something around 400 people are killed, ultimately. So it's really one of the saddest stories of the war, but it's certainly not one of the only ones. By late July of 1950, U.N. and U.S. forces have really been driven down to the very southern tip of the peninsula. They are able to establish a defensive line outside of the city of Busan, and it's there that they really begin to make their stand. It's long enough that the U.S. military has mobilized. They're beginning to bring in more frontline combat units. North Korean forces are overextended.

The Western forces are concentrated down in the south, and it looks for a moment as if they're going to be thrown into the sea. But of course, this doesn't happen. And as these defensive lines, Stiffon, MacArthur draws up a plan that will be called Operation Chromite. Well, join us after the break when we find out what Operation Chromite entails. Welcome back. At daybreak on September the 15th, 1950, a battalion of U.S. Marines landed at one. Olme Island in the middle of Inchon Harbor. By 1.30 a.m. U.S. forces had surrounded the city,

and Operation Cromite was in action. Paul, tell us what happens. So Operation Cromite is MacArthur's plan to stage this dramatic flanking operation to break out of this tiny foothold at the southern tip of the Korean Peninsula that Western forces have. Outflank North Korean forces. and essentially trap the North Korean military. Just to explain the geography, so that the U.S. enclave is now the furthest southern tip of this peninsula, but the U.S. assault and chromite is halfway up the peninsula, in other words, deep behind enemy lines. Correct. It's at Inchon, which is kind of the port that is closest to Seoul.

So it's very close to the 38th parallel. And MacArthur wants to do this because he wants to, avoid the prolonged bloody slog north up the peninsula. And he knows that he can do this because the United States has perfected these sorts of amphibious landing operations during the Second World War. This is part of what makes the United States a military superpower. And so he believes that he can pull it off. Those sort of landing crafts we saw in D-Day and so on.

This is the kind of thing. These crafts landing on ashore, the gate comes down. the soldiers march through the surf into the beach? Correct. It's a little bit more complicated, and Inchon has a really dramatic tidal range. So the Americans are going to have to slog through a lot of muck to get there. They have to scale a seawall. But this is part of what makes the sort of American military empire, the fact they can land forces on almost any coast. But they are soon fighting in Seoul, and they are directing heavy fire into civilian areas,

including white phosphorus. There are heavy civilian casualties. Tell us about that. Correct. For the second time, and it's important to note here, it's just a matter of a few months here since the North Koreans had crossed the 38th parallel. For the second time, this massive city of Seoul is a battlefield. And so the Americans and the UN forces go back. They're able to liberate Seoul by late September.

But in doing so, they largely leveled the city, which has already been devastated in the initial round of the fighting. But it represents this dramatic reversal in the course. of the Korean War. Also, just don't want to leave white phosphorus unexplained, because it is one of the most heinous weapons, is it not, that we've seen used in warfare? And to use it loosely in civilian areas? Yeah, they almost pepper a place of white phosphorus.

What does it do to a human body? So it burns at, I mean, I don't know exactly what the temperature is, but it's incredibly bright, incredibly hot, and it just, you know, it boars holes through flesh and steel and stone and wood. Yeah, it melts a person. I mean, ostensibly, can melt buildings, it can melt people. It does absolutely untold damage to a human body. There is a reporter who files from the time here as US forces are pouring heavy fire into the city.

And he writes of a tiny figure stumbling down the street. These are his words. A tiny figure stumbled down the street. Her face, arms and legs were burned and almost eaten away by the fragments of an American white phosphorus shell. She was blind, but she was somehow alive. It's horrific, and this is one of the dynamics of a lot of the wars that take place during the second half of the 20th century is they're happening inside cities, inside civilian cities. And so civilians are very much caught in the crossfire. These aren't the sort of wars where there are usually defined battle lines and armies, you know, march up in Napoleonic fashion and exchange of always. This is a war that takes place in the very heart of these societies. But from the point of view of MacArthur, it's a successful offensive.

The North Koreans are taken by surprise. They retreat. There's a very rapid withdrawal back beyond the 38th parallel. And it looks as if it's militarily. It's a massive success. Absolutely. And it is a massive success militarily. And it turns the tide of the war.

It's in very short order. The Americans and the UN forces are driving north. They capture Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea. on October 19th. And it's worth stating for a second just how monumental this is. The Americans proclaim that they've just liberated the first communist capital during the Cold War, right? So up to this point in time, the communist advance had seemed unstoppable.

Yeah, it has just been this never-ending creep of communist influence, but now the rollback has begun, right? So just as the initial phases of the war were, sort of cast as part of this larger communist offensive against, you know, free institutions around the world in the terminology of NSCC8, the so-called liberation of Pyongyang, which is also destroyed in the fighting, is cast as the first stage in the destruction of the communist empires. And just to express the speed of this, in September, all that the Americans had left, all that South Korea had left was this tiny enclave in the southern tip of the peninsula, by the middle

of October, they've captured Pyongyang in the far north. That's a complete victory. So, I mean, if at this one, can we do a thought experiment, if at this point the Americans had decided, okay, mission accomplished, we'll now, we'll retreat back to the 38th line as it was before, would this be seen as a victory for America? They don't, they don't do that. I mean, they decide to push forward, which then drags us into a whole new sphere of violence when China then decides to become involved. But if they would have just said, right, we go back to the 30th, line, what would have happened? So it would have been seen as a stunning victory, both for American power, but also for the rule of international law. It would have propped up the United

Nations as this potent military force that is capable of defending the international legal regime that has been set up after 1945. But of course, that is not what happens. So MacArthur pushes ahead. He wants it all, you know, go big or go bust, is kind of the unofficial motto. They have victory fever. Right, victory fever. Very good way of putting it, you raise the temperature with victory fever. It raises the temperature everywhere, and it raises the temperature in China as well. So what do the Chinese say? They're watching this. They're watching this pushback of communism in their backyard. So what happens then? So as early as late September, the Chinese government in Beijing begins issuing warnings

through diplomatic channels to the United States that U.S. forces should not approach the border with China, which is roughly the Yalu River. Once again, in a display of kind of Western arrogance, these warnings are waived off, right? MacArthur says that, you know, if China dares to intervene against his forces, it would be the, you know, the greatest slaughter in world history. They don't take this seriously. But there's a series of messages coming out of Beijing directed at MacArthur and Washington warning them not to do this. But it's also worth remembering here that there's tremendous pressure on the Truman administration. to continue this offensive. It's been a dramatic reversal after the Inshan landings.

Seoul has been liberated. Pyeong Yang is no longer a communist capital for Truman and MacArthur to essentially take their foot off the pedal now and stop the offensive, particularly in the wake of the humiliation after the victory of the communist in China. There's tremendous political pressure not to do this. And just to look at it from the Chinese perspective, the Chinese have just driven out the Dalai Lama in Tibet, that whole thing has been going on at the same time. You now see People Liberation Army troops and tanks and aircraft taking on very poorly armed Tibetan forces and going right up to the Indian border, seizing great chunks of Asia. So this is a moment of great confidence in China, and they're not going to sit by and watch their

neighbors be crushed by the Americans. Well, it's a moment of great confidence, but also a moment of great insecurity. Because, I mean, it's important. Remember, the communist regime or the victory of the Chinese Communist Party is less than a year old, or it's about a year old at this point in October of 1950, right? They declared victory in October of 49. And so it's just a year later. And suddenly, you know, the most ferocious military power in the world is driving toward their border. Just to give some figures, I mean, it's a big army the Chinese are sending into action. To put this in context, there are 6,000 British troops in the UN forces under MacArthur's command. In contrast to that,

the Chinese send in 120,000 troops, which grows by November to 300,000 troops. I mean, this is a massive, massive army. They've got the manpower, but it's not clear that they have the military technology to actually go up against the full power of the U.S. military. Remember, the United States has atomic weapons. Well, I was going to say, because, you know, you call that a ratchet, I will see your ratchet, and I will give you a MacArthur ratchet because MacArthur says, you know what, let's drop nuclear bombs on them. I mean, he does, doesn't he? He argues that there may be a case for that. He demands that he be given control of atomic weapons.

Just see him in his office and his kimono stroking the red button. Yeah, well, I mean, he's got his hat back on. He put the raybans back on, and he's puffing away to his cornucat pipe at this point. He's full warlord. Yeah, I mean, he talks about this. I would have dropped between 30 and 50 atoll. bombs and spread a belt of radioactive cobalt with a half-life of 60 to 120 years. He knows what it will mean, but that's what he wants to do.

That's what he wants to do. And this is an indication of many things, but one of the things that it tells us is just how desperate the U.S. situation has become, right? Because once Chinese forces enter... 300,000 Chinese troops are heading towards you. Well, they're not just heading toward Western lines. They've actually infiltrated behind them. Because what the Chinese are doing is they're moving in columns of troops under cover of darkness.

Right. They're moving in secret. And by the time that they begin doing this through October and they don't attack until November 25th. So they've allowed Western forces to kind of flow up around them. And then on November 25th, they launched their attack. And this once again turns the tide in the Korean War. So it's yet another reversal in this war that's only, you know, still only a matter of months old. And we should add the climate at this point, because this is now very, very cold, isn't it?

There are lots of stuff of troops freezing on ice and this sort of story. Right. Winter is coming. And it's a brutal winter, you know, particularly in the mountains of North Korea. And the tide of the war has turned once again. Yeah, can I just say, excellent Game of Thrones reference there. I got it. Okay. But you've got sort of, you know, MacArthur there sort of stroking his red button, really wanting to press it. This is alarming everybody else there in the world. There are cooler heads prevailing the British ambassador to the United States thinks he's gone completely bonkers and says our principal difficulty is General MacArthur. He seems to want a war with China. We do not.

So the rest of the world is alarmed by what's happening. And here I think it's important to pause for a second and talk about the larger contours of the Cold War, which is often described as a relatively peaceful period in international history. It comes on the heels of the first two world wars, and it's in the words of the Great Yale historian, John Lewis Gaddis, it's described as a long piece. But of course, we know that there are many conflicts like the one in Korea taking place throughout the decades of the Cold War. But one of the arguments that a lot of historians still make is that the Cold War doesn't witness war between the great powers, right? And when they say this, they mean war between the United States and the Soviet Union.

But what we actually see in Korea is a war between the United States. and China, right? And China is a great power. So the Cold War was not a period of world history that witnessed the absence of war between the great powers. This is a full-blown, you know, intense combat between the United States and China. Right. So we have seen a war between the great powers post-1945, and it happens in Korea. And is this a surprise? Are people aware that China has military forces on this scale that they are effective? Or is this a kind of bolt from the blue? I think it's a surprise to many Western governments that China would dare do this. Again, there's this lingering, call it a colonial arrogance that these non-Western forces would never dare to challenge

the might of the United States. And the crazy thing is that they can still think this in the wake of the Second World War and the bloody conflict against Japan. But they do. And they'll say it again in the case of Vietnam. But this starts undermining Truman's confidence in his man, MacArthur, because if you've got all of these other countries saying, you know, like Britain saying, no, this is looking really dangerous and we don't like it, we don't like it, we really don't like this, we don't want a war with China. Whatever you may think of China, we see China for what it is and you don't. You're underestimating them. So what is the pressure on Truman and how does he react? So I think part of it comes from American allies, but as we know, throughout the Cold War, the United States is

perfectly willing to ignore the advice of its allies. I think one of the great sources of pressure on Truman is coming from MacArthur himself. And it's coming from this rank and subordination. At this point, MacArthur is chafing under what he understands to be what we might call a limited war, right? He's not being given full authority over the U.S. military. Truman has not opened up the full arsenal to MacArthur. MacArthur, I think, justifiably believes that he's locked in a really bloody war. U.S. forces are being pummeled, by the Chinese. He knows the United States has an arsenal of atomic weapons. And he wants those weapons to be given over to American forces in Korea so that you can use them to stem this onslaught.

He also wants to expand the war into China itself. He wants to start bombing Chinese cities. He's not allowed to do that because Truman won't let him, because Truman sees the Korean War as a limited war. Remember, MacArthur is a victorious general from the Second World War, which was a total war. So what MacArthur wants is he wants the same sort of authority that he had in World War II to prosecute the war against North Korea and ultimately China. And he wants to essentially liberate, or, you know, in his words, liberate China from the communist. So he wants World War III. And in his view, the nuclear weapon worked against Japan. Why would it work against China? Yeah. And I mean, it's, it is, and remember, this is only five.

five years since the United States had dropped atomic weapons on two Japanese cities. So there's by no means is it established that atomic weapons will not be used in wartime again. And here the United States finds itself a full-blown war. And MacArthur wants these weapons to be used. And there is a moment where Truman considers doing that. But he's ultimately going to bulk. And as he does so, MacArthur begins kind of standing up and challenging Truman's authority over the military. do you mean he's sort of slagging him off in public, sort of talking smack about Truman in public? Is that what he's doing?

Yes, to the press. He's going to reporters and saying things like there's no substitute for victory. You know, my hands are tied. The war is going badly because the civilian leaders in Washington are not giving me the resources I need to win. And so? And so after MacArthur does this, you know, the umpteenth time and after he offers to meet with Chinese military leaders in the field and broker the terms of armistice. Truman and his age determined that it's time to sack MacArthur. So this happens in April 1951 and in his diary Truman writes this wonderful quote, my favorite from your book, I fired him because he wouldn't respect the authority of the president. I didn't fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that's not against the law for generals. if it was half to three quarters of them would be in jail.

That is quite a quote. That is quite a quote. So with MacArthur fired, then just talk us briefly from that point to where we are now. Right. So MacArthur is fired. It unleashes a political firestorm inside the United States. This is really kind of unprecedented that such a victorious triumph in general is fired during wartime. You know, it's at a time that large numbers of American troops are dying in the field.

But it really represents a defense of the American constitutional system and a defense of the principle of civilian leadership over the military. Because ultimately, what MacArthur wanted was to become a sort of American Caesar. He wanted complete authority. He wanted a complete command over the American atomic arsenal. We can see why Trump really likes him. He wanted to start World War III. That was his plan. But after this, U.S. forces are basically pushed back.

roughly to the 38th parallel, and their things start to stabilize. And what we see now is really the creation of a sort of trench warfare, not unlike the First World War. So just to wind up the war, 1953, Stalin dies. This opens an opportunity for negotiation. An armistice is signed July, 1953. How many people are killed in this war? It's a very bloody war, isn't it? Incredibly bloody, incredibly bloody and incredibly intense. There's a dispute about the figures, but I would say probably somewhere around 3 to 4 million people are killed. That's about, what, 10% of the total Korean population? Somewhere around there, yeah.

And it all happens in the space of, you know, a few years. And you put that up against Vietnam, which, the Vietnam War, which is, you know, much longer. You know, takes place, you know, if you start in 1945, takes place, you know, between, for nearly 30 years. And there may be 5 to 6 million, but in many ways the most intense warfare that takes place after the Second World War, it takes place in Korea. But it also doesn't it set up a template for what will happen in some ways militarily in Vietnam? For example, there are 32,000 tons of Napalm dropped on Korea, along with 635,000 tons of conventional bombs. 18 of North Korea's 22 cities suffer at least 50% destruction.

75% Pyongyang is destroyed. It's unbelievable, and it's an apocalypse. Yeah, and it establishes a paradigm for these so-called limited wars of the Cold War era. It establishes the principle that atomic weapons are not going to be used in these conflicts. That was not something that was guaranteed in the late 1940s in the lead-up to the Korean War. It establishes this model of mixing guerrilla warfare with counterinsurgency, large unit military operations and superpower interventions, which we will see again and again. We see in Vietnam. We see in other places.

And it unfortunately establishes a paradigm for widespread civilian massacres. How does Mao look on the end of the war? Does he regard it as a defeat or is you? just kind of sees it as a sort of temporary blip? How would he look on what happens? Mao sees it as a triumph, right? It's a triumph for the communist revolution in China. And the PRC has stood up to the hated American imperialists.

It has defended itself. It is secured ever greater levels of support from the Soviet Union. And it is prepared to defend communist forces throughout East Asia. And Kim Il-Sung, who gets control of North Korea after, you know, Truman makes his move and that line is firmed up on the 38th parallel. I mean, he sort of, he does become Caesar because it's his progeny and his progeny's progeny that we're still left with today. He establishes one of the most enduring political dynasties of the 20th and 21st centuries. How dangerous is this line? I mean, are we all going to go pop because of the tensions between North and South Korea?

What's your, what's your reading of that? Well, I'm a historian, so I can't predict the future. I certainly hope not. But this leads to one of the other sort of great ironies of the Korean War and also that kind of in some ways the very similar and connected Vietnam War. In the war in Korea, the United States achieved something of a victory, right? They had set out to defend the South Korean regime and they do that. In Vietnam, the United States loses, right? They can't defend South Vietnam. But fast forward to today, in Korea, where the United States achieves the victory, the Korean Peninsula is now a leading candidate for triggering a third world war. Meanwhile, in Vietnam, where the United States lost, Vietnam is emerging as a strategic partner to the United States. And all the investments that the Chinese hoped

was going to go to them is now hemorrhaging out into Vietnam, ironically. Right. Well, with that sobering ending, thank you so much to our special guest, Paul Thomas Chamberlain, Associate Professor of History at Columbia University and author of the excellent,

the Cold Wars killing fields, rethinking the long peace. That's all we've got time for on Empire. Till the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnan. And goodbye from me, William Durenpool.