Short History Of... - The Korean War

Episode Date: April 28, 2024

Beginning only five years after the end of World War Two, the Korean War was an exceptionally violent conflict which led to the death of at least 2.5 million people. It became the most deadly conflict of the Cold War era, a political battle of capitalism versus communism, that almost triggered World War Three. But how was this war encouraged by American, Soviet, European, and Chinese ambitions? Was anything really achieved by the years of fighting? And what was the true aftermath of the conflict, both locally, and for the world at large? This is a Short History Of the Korean War. Written by Lindsay Galvin. With thanks to Dr Owen Miller, a lecturer in Korean studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.  Get every episode of Short History Of a week early with Noiser+. You’ll also get ad-free listening, bonus material, and early access to shows across the Noiser network. Click the Noiser+ banner to get started. Or, if you’re on Spotify or Android, go to noiser.com/subscriptions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It is 5.30 p.m. on the 15th of September, 1950, in Flying Fish Channel, the twisting sea lane which enters the city of Incheon. It's the closest port to the South Korean capital, Seoul, itself currently occupied by the North Korean army who invaded six weeks ago. A U.S. Marine Reserve, called to active service only weeks ago,

crouches in a small, flat-bottomed assault boat with 30 other Marines as it moves at speed towards land. As the sun sets, a deafening barrage of gunfire and rockets screams overhead from the warships covering them from behind. They have only two hours to complete their operation before the tide changes. After that, they risk being beached on the mudflats, sitting ducks for enemy fire. These US ground troops are fighting the invaders alongside their South Korean allies all across the peninsula. But they're making little ground. The hope is that this covert amphibious maneuver could change the course of the war, allowing them to regain the capital and split the North Korean army from their supply chain.

But they need to get to land first. but they need to get to land first. The soldier's ears ring as he peers from beneath the rim of his heavy helmet. The seawall that protects Inchon is ahead, barely visible through a barrier of black smoke, punctuated by plumes of blue and orange flame. Fighter planes swoop low, their gunfire strafing the concrete barrier. The soldiers duck as bright orange tracer bullets slice across the air above their heads. They've been spotted by North Korean troops who, despite the air barrage, are still defending

the port. Now the Marine jerks back as the assault boat suddenly speeds ahead. The vessel strikes a pile of rubble where the seawall has been crumbled by mortars. He tugs the chinstrap of his helmet tight and checks his pack is secure, his weapon at his side, then follows the other Marines, throwing himself over the steel gunwale into a few centimetres of water. The men scramble on their elbows, snaking on their bellies through the muddy shallows. Bullets wind past, spattering the water. The marine clambers over concrete debris to huddle in a cave created by a gouge in the seawall.

It was thought that the navigation of the channel might be the most precarious aspect of this assault. But he now sees his comrades around him, faces set firm, jaws twitching, knuckles white on their weapons. There's no forgetting the propaganda they've been fed in their training about the brutality of the North Korean army. They might be on solid ground, but they're also in enemy territory. The Incheon landings become a pivotal victory for the US and South Korea in the battle to regain the country from the invading North Korean army. The South Korean capital, Seoul,

just 27 kilometers inland as the crow flies, was liberated ten days after the maneuver. Embraving the treacherous waters of Incheon, the tide of the war was reversed, with the North Korean army forced to retreat up the peninsula. But this was far from the end of the Korean War. Because in fact, the Korean War has never officially ended. Beginning only five years after the end of World War II, the Korean War was an exceptionally vicious conflict. It led to the death of at least 2.5 million people, possibly double that, and left tens

of thousands of casualties. During only three years of active warfare, the USA dropped more ordnance on North Korea than it used in the entire Pacific theater during World War II. It would become the most lethal conflict of the Cold War era, a battle of capitalism versus communism. A civil war that reached international proportions, almost triggering World War III. But it could never have reached this scale without the involvement of foreign superpowers. So how was this war abetted by American, Soviet, European, and Chinese ambitions? Was anything really achieved by the years of fighting? And what

was the true aftermath of the Korean War both locally and for the world at large. I'm John Hopkins from Noisa. This is a short history of the Korean War. The Korean Peninsula is now one of the most famously divided places in the world, with relations between North and South notoriously strained. But for most of its existence, Korea was one nation. Dr. Owen Miller is a lecturer in Korean Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. So Korea actually had been a single, united country for a long time, going back to the

first millennium AD and through a couple of quite long-lived dynasties. So you'd had this unified, independent state within the kind of Chinese cultural, political sphere, right? But they're a separate country with a separate language, culture, state, royal family. Although it has been independent for centuries, its geographical location puts it firmly in the eyeline of bigger powers.

Sharing borders with Russia and China in the north, with Japan only 120 miles away across the Korean Strait in the southeast. It has long been coveted by its neighbors. The independence of Korea is threatened during the period of colonial expansion, when Western powers intrude into East Asia in the mid to late 19th century. So you had this kind of three-way struggle over the Korean peninsula, which came to a conclusion in 1905 when there was the Russo-Japanese War, which was won by the

Japanese. And one of the results of that was that Japan effectively got control of the Korean peninsula. It was another five years until they annexed Korea. So in 1910, they annexed Korea as part of the Japanese empire. And that began a very, very dark and traumatic time in Korea's history. So you had 35 years, quite brutal colonial rule. Japan introduces almost intolerable conditions for Koreans, who are persecuted under ruthless military control. Their personal freedoms are curtailed and culture is suppressed. It is this period of colonial repression that both ignites opposing ideologies within Korea and allows other powers to start exerting their influence.

So one of the things that was going on, obviously, you know, anytime you have a colonial regime somewhere, you tend to have resistance, right? You tend to have the rise of nationalist organizations that want to achieve independence. You have various nationalist movements, nationalist organizations. And as time goes on in the 1920s and 30s, that sort of divides off really into kind of left and right. And you have a sort of more conservative, more kind of middle-class bourgeois sort of nationalists. And then on the other hand, you have left-wing nationalists who come to be headed by communists. While Korea is annexed by Japan, Korean communism gains traction. Its ideology of equality understandably seductive when all Koreans are treated as an underclass.

This development is covertly supported by China and Russia, but many other Koreans dream of a democratic government. Though Korea is still one state, a rupture is forming, forged by the pressure of colonialism. At the close of World War II, the fate of Korea is once again in the balance. When the Americans bomb Hiroshima on the 6th of August 1945, and Nagasaki three days later, Japan is shattered. But in this narrow window, before it officially surrenders, Soviet Russia, ally of the US, Britain, and China, declares war on Japan.

With the war in the Pacific all but over, Korea is free. And Soviet leader Stalin does not intend to leave strategically important Korea with its many communists in a dangerous power vacuum for too long. And at that point, the Soviet army already began to move down over the border from Far Eastern Russia into Northeastern China, called Manchuria at the time, and then down over the border into Northern Korea as well. Stalin and the Soviet Union are basically in a position to occupy the whole Korean peninsula at that point.

Meanwhile, the Americans are concerned really with one thing only, and that is finishing the war against Japan, preparing to occupy the Japanese islands and Tokyo and so on. And for them, Korea is a little bit of an afterthought. However, they did sort of panic sometime around, I think the 12th of August, when they realized that the Soviets could come in and occupy the whole of the Korean peninsula because the Japanese imperial army was just sort of collapsing and surrendering. But the alliances formed in times of conflict don't survive in peacetime. Though Russia had been united with Britain and the USA, without the shared adversaries of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, the friendship soon falters. The end of World War II heralds the

beginning of the Cold War, the open rivalry between Communist Soviet Union and Capitalist USA, and their respective allies. As the US heads towards a boom time of capitalism, the secretive Soviet Union has its sights firmly set on spreading communism in Europe and beyond. Though the USA has shown its might with the atomic bomb in Japan, and Soviet Russia is developing its own nuclear arsenal, the mood in Korea is initially celebratory. Finally free of their Japanese oppressors, the liberated Koreans rejoice in their new-found freedom with street parades. But before the country has a chance to re-establish its own governance, foreign powers are discussing

its fate in distant boardrooms. Korea needs time and support to recover from the horrors of occupation. But the USA's priority is to take action before the Soviets do. So at that point then, the Americans got out a map of the Korean Peninsula and thought, right, we're going to propose to Stalin that we divide the Korean Peninsula. What line can we use? They sent a couple of guys into a room with a map and said, find a line for us to propose to Stalin. And they came up with the 38th parallel, which is sort of roughly halfway down the peninsula.

So it looks kind of like fairly equal. It had the great advantage for the Americans that if they were going to occupy occupy the south they would get the capital they'd get sold because that's south of the 38th parallel stalin accepts the u.s proposal the soviets occupy northern korea down to the 38th parallel but no further by early sept September, the Americans are ready to occupy the southern half of the Korean peninsula. Though they've finally been released from colonial rule, the Koreans, once again, have their fate decided for them. There's absolutely no consultation with Koreans whatsoever. And I mean, of course, at this point, I think you can fairly say that everyone

sort of thought, well, this is a temporary measure. This is not something that's going to last. The Koreans didn't think it was going to last. I mean, the Koreans didn't even really want to be occupied by foreign powers, right? They've just had 35 years of occupation. But anyway, I guess they would accept, well, it's a temporary measure. And both the Americans and the Soviets paid lip service to the idea that Korea would be united under a single government with national elections. In 1945, a U.S.-Soviet Joint Commission Trusteeship Council fills the power vacuum in Korea. In theory, they will figure out together how Korea can be reunified going forward, moving the country towards independence. Korea can be reunified going forward, moving the country towards independence.

In reality, by 1947, Cold War hostilities are more pronounced. Believing the Soviet Union threatens the security of the United States, President Truman is determined to stop Soviet expansion. He wages a propaganda campaign and pledges help for any nation fighting communism. wages a propaganda campaign, and pledges help for any nation fighting communism. Stalin matches this hostility, promising to help smaller countries challenge the colonialism of the USA and the West. On the ground in Korea, the line between North and South is not initially a hard border. The two halves of the peninsula still share water from reservoirs and electricity from power plants. The north is more industrial. The south is the agricultural heartland with a better climate and topography. There's an element that neither state at that time was as viable as it

should be because it didn't have the full resources of the peninsula. It didn't have the full population. It didn't have the full industrial resources, the full mineral resources, all the rest of it. So both countries then, of course, would need huge amounts of aid from their respective sponsors in order to become viable states over the subsequent decades. Despite the impracticalities of the arbitrary 38th Parallel Division, it entrenches deeper. Separate armies are built in the occupation zones, and the USA and Soviet Russia search for Korean leaders who can forward their own ideological agendas. The possibility of the two Koreas becoming unified and self-governing grows more unlikely by the day.

As the Cold War ramps up around the globe, the disquiet in the Korean peninsula is building. Beginning in late 1946, you have a lot of strikes, peasant uprisings and so on. And you sort of have the beginning of a left-right civil war developing, particularly in the southern occupation zone. And the Americans are tending to side with the right most of the time. And at times they're helping to suppress these strikes and uprisings and so on. In 1948, the Americans support the 73-year-old Syngman Rhee to become first president of the Republic of Korea in the South. Korean-born, U.S.-educated, he is authoritarian and stridently anti-communist. He immediately begins imprisoning suspected communists, forcing around 300,000 people into what is claimed to be a re-education program, the National Guidance League.

His aim is a united, capitalist Korea. In 1948, elections are held in North Korea, and 36-year-old Kim Il-sung is chosen to govern the new Democratic People's Republic of Korea in the North. He has spent time in Russia and is a passionate communist, close to Soviet generals. His aim is a united communist Korea. It is what the two new states have in common that will drive them further apart, namely their ambition to reunite Korea. Hostilities soon break out at the border.

These two states both want to reunify the peninsula, and they're both building up their militaries. The 38th parallel border has become by that stage a very militarized border with units stationed all along it and so on. Through 1949, there are frequent clashes between northern and southern forces. So you can see that in particularly 48-49 you have the rumblings, the beginnings of a Korean war. You have both kind of guerrilla warfare going on in the south and you have border skirmishes, border warfare going on actually at the 38th parallel. And you

also have two leaders both of whom don't believe that Korea should stay divided. They want to reunify the country. And both of whom, it seems, want to do it by force if they can, because they don't think there's really another way to do it. Between 1948 and 1950, it's estimated 100,000 Koreans die in border skirmishes, political fighting, and guerrilla warfare. The North Koreans are making more urgent and comprehensive preparations for war than the South, but Stalin is initially reluctant to support Kim Il-sung's plan to reunify.

The Americans have the atomic bomb, and open antagonism is a risk for the Soviets. But by May 1950, Stalin has tested his own atomic weapons, and there is more of a balance of nuclear power. The Soviet leader finally agrees to support the North Korean invasion. Some North Koreans have argued that the war begins in August to September 1949, with earlier border attacks by South Korean forces ordered by the USA. But according to almost everyone else, the war officially begins the following year. It is dawn on the 25th of June, 1950,

and mist laces between mountain villages on the southern side of the 38th parallel. Rising from her sleeping mat, a woman fastens her pale linen tunic at her waist and winds a scarf about her neck against the early morning cool. She draws back the paper screen that separates the bedroom space from the rest of the living area in the bamboo hut. The woman strikes a flint to light the fire. She spoons soybean paste into a pan and adds water from the jug, making the preparations for breakfast. At the far end of her home, her two children are fast asleep. Her husband is already

out on the rice paddy terraces, and though her son of thirteen is old enough to go with him, he must have allowed him to sleep late. But now the calm is broken. A low rumble vibrates through the wooden floor, causing the pots and pans to clank. She darts for the window and flings open the shutters. Her neighbors are doing the same, some of them emerging confused from their homes and onto the street. Her children scramble out of their beds and run over to join her, but as they squint into the distance, only the peaks of the mountains are visible through the mist.

But the rumble gets louder. They squint into the distance, only the peaks of the mountains are visible through the mist. But the rumble gets louder. Along the jagged line of the mountains, there are flashes of light and more unfamiliar sounds. The woman's eyes track to a concrete bunker on the hill to her left, used as a watch post. She can just make out figures running from it. She turns to gather her children to her. The North Korean army have been making incursions into what has been designated southern territory, the South Korean army pushing them back.

But it has never happened in this village. Her daughter clings to her, but her son starts away He grabs a small rucksack from the corner of the room and pulls on his youth club cap Standing in front of the door, she demands that he tells her where he's going The young man pushes past her gently, explaining that he must find his youth club leader They have been training for this As he runs out into the street, he calls behind him that she must leave. Now. Outside, her neighbors are already starting to flee, hacks on their backs.

But as she rushes back into her home and begins stuffing belongings into bags, a different sound comes from down in the valley a steady thumb the dawn is quickly burning off the mist revealing lines of soldiers in tan uniform swarming through the ravine below their villages some breaking off to scale the rice terraces towards them. As the invasion intensifies, tens of thousands of hastily evacuating families are split up. The attacking North Koreans shell villages and anyone opposing them as they surge down the peninsula. The resistance turns out to be meager.

Though the Americans have been working in an advisory capacity with the South Korean Army, they've limited their level of defense, denying them anti-tank weapons and heavy artillery for fear of antagonizing the Soviets. The South Korean Army are not prepared for this surprise assault. So as the North Koreans storm south towards the capital, they are hindered more by the mountainous terrain than by military resistance. Isolated pockets of South Korean troops are soon forced to join the civilian refugees straggling southwards.

The North Koreans are a well-trained fighting force of 135,000 men, equipped with Soviet weapons, including tanks. The South Koreans not only lack tanks, but also have almost 40,000 fewer men, many of whom are not combat-ready. The unequal hardware is not the only disparity. The politics of the North was quite different, obviously. It was a communist country. There was this big sort of ideological push that people were there fighting for a socialist country and for a really bright new future and so on.

So there was a morale factor, I think, in the North. And in the South, I don't think the army had quite the same sort of morale. Another factor is the real battle experience that the North Korean side had, or at least a good part of the North Korean fighting forces had quite a lot of battle experience in the Chinese Civil War, which had been raging in the years just before this. The effect of this relentless invasion on South Korean civilians is devastating and immediate. It is a moving war where nowhere is safe with no time for preparation or organized evacuation. Instead, there is chaos and near starvation as families flee on foot to the South.

The immediate response to the North Korean invasion comes from the top of the South Korean regime. At least 4,900 suspected communists from the so-called Re-Education Program who'd been imprisoned in South Korea are shot in a government-sanctioned massacre. are shot in a government-sanctioned massacre. It's an atrocity that will remain buried for more than 50 years, along with many others from this particularly ruthless war. Syngman Rhee calls his American allies for assistance. The day after the assault begins, panic-stricken and weeping South Korean emissaries visit President Truman in the Oval Office.

The USA war machine has been seriously depleted since the end of World War II, shrinking from 12 million men to 1.6 million. The USA currently has only a peacekeeping force of 200 to 300 troops stationed in South Korea. But this is about to drastically increase. On the 27th of June, two days after the invasion begins, the USA enters the war, led by General Douglas MacArthur. And the US is not alone. At the end of World War II, the United Nations Security Council was formed to protect human rights and solve international security issues.

Now, the UN decries North Korea's attack as a breach of the peace. It recommends their members provide assistance to South Korea to repel the attack. The Soviet Union is not present, having boycotted meetings for several months in protest over the UN's refusal to recognize the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist government. Tens of thousands of US troops now mobilize, their numbers strengthened further by 15 other UN nations who answer the call to action. Only five years after the end of World War II, the US public are unlikely to support the distant conflict without good reason. President Truman makes it clear the fight for the Korean Peninsula is a struggle between West and East, capitalist and communist, good and evil. Korea has become symbolic, a proxy for the Cold War.

The next day, on the 28th of June, the invading North Korean forces take the capital, Seoul, just 50 kilometers below the 38th parallel. It is only three days since the war began. The President and other elites are evacuated. Under North Korean control, masses of Seoul civilians are forced to swear allegiance to the Communist Party or face prison or even execution. The North Korean army soon pushed down the peninsula, heartened by their early successes. Hundreds of thousands of refugees and the remains of the retreating South Korean forces

streamed towards Busan on Korea's southeast coast, the biggest port in Asia. On the 30th of June, a massive U.S US aerial attack on North Korea commences. B-29 bombers target transport, communication, and industrial facilities in order to disrupt infrastructure and army supply chains. But with limited technology to make the strikes accurate, huge numbers of North Korean non-combatants are killed and displaced. Huge numbers of North Korean non-combatants are killed and displaced. The civilian experience of the Korean War is devastating, in both North and South. At the beginning part of the war, you had a lot of refugees having to go right down into the southeastern corner of the country, around the second city of Busan, in the southeastern corner,

which as the North Korean troops advanced down the peninsula towards the southeast, lots of people ended up in that area. Sighted as they are on the exposed end of the peninsula, South Korean refugees have no other country to which they can safely escape. All they can do is flee south. By this time, virtually the only region in South Korea that has not fallen to North Korean troops is the southeastern port of Busan. Strategically, holding this site is essential,

as it allows U.S. troops to enter en masse from their bases in Japan. From the arrival of the first ground troops on the 1st of July, the U.S US works with South Korean forces to hold the Busan perimeter secure. Movement of North Korean troops is halted. But conditions for the mostly untrained GIs are horrific. They are poorly equipped and lacking ammunition.

With the tropical heat reaching 100 degrees Fahrenheit, they are plagued by malarial mosquitoes and forced to drink water from the rice paddy fields, which have often been fertilized by human excrement, causing debilitating gastric illnesses. Fighting spreads out into the areas beyond Busan in isolated battles with no decisive gains. And the arrival of Allied forces doesn't improve the situation for the millions of South Korean refugees either. On the 25th of July, 1950, U.S. soldiers round up hundreds of villages from hamlets around the town of Yongdong in central South Korea. With a North Korean invasion force on the way,

the residents are ordered to evacuate. But at dawn on the 26th of July, the order filters down from U.S. command that all Korean refugees must now be prevented from crossing battle lines. Communist guerrillas, it is believed, are hiding among the populace, disguised in white peasant clothing. A few hours later, hundreds of South Korean civilians approach the double arches of a railroad bridge near the village of Nogun-ri. Fighter jets swoop low and open fire. Men, women, and children are mown down. open fire. Men, women, and children are mown down. Those that survive escape to the tunnel underneath the bridge where, for the next four days, they are shot at by US soldiers. It is believed at least 300 villagers are killed. Meanwhile, in the skies over North Korea, the U.S. Air Force have absolute supremacy.

The devastation on the ground is so comprehensive, they are quickly running out of military targets. In South Korea, near Busan, U.S. troops are demoralized by their orders concerning civilians and struggling to maintain their battle lines. This is when General MacArthur plans a bold move. He intends to cut the North Korean army off at the neck. On the 15th of September, a huge amphibious raid is put into action at the port of Incheon, just outside Seoul, near the 38th parallel. They didn't face that much resistance. They had to fight for a couple of days but they got through

to Seoul and they recaptured Seoul from the North Koreans in late September 1950. And at that point the North Koreans realized that the Americans were landing at Incheon in great force, that they were going to split them in half, and they decided on a tactical retreat at that point. And so the North Koreans carried on fighting in certain small battles, but their main forces, they began to retreat back up northwards. And on that basis, the the inch on landing is seen as this great success the momentum shifts and the north korean army flees behind the 38th parallel the south and u.s capture 130 000 north korean prisoners of war when se Seoul is recaptured in September 1950, 30,000 South Koreans,

many of whom swore allegiance to the invading North Korean army on pain of execution, are shot as collaborators. With the 38th parallel now secured, the peacekeeping objective of the US military has been achieved. the peacekeeping objective of the US military has been achieved. The US shifts the units that recaptured Seoul up to the border and watches for signs of Chinese intervention. But there are none. So at that point, they decided to press their advantage. And you could say they decided to exceed the UN resolution

of what had allowed this UN force to be assembled in the first place, which was to defend South Korea against the aggression of North Korea. You would assume that defending South Korea against the aggression of North Korea would mean stopping at the 38th parallel. They did not. At this point, General MacArthur exceeds his orders from Washington, where President Truman is considering negotiating a ceasefire. On the 9th of October, the 1st U.S. Army Division crosses the 38th parallel and attacks northwards towards Pyongyang, the North Korean capital. U.S. ships leave Busan to travel up the northeastern coast to the major North Korean port of Busan to support the invasion from the sea.

in port of Wusan to support the invasion from the sea. The US surge into communist territory is embarrassing for Stalin and the Chinese leader Chairman Mao, who share both a border and a communist allegiance with North Korea. But despite knowing that the Soviets have nuclear capabilities and that therefore World War III is a real possibility, the US presses on. Their forces power up the peninsula, capturing the capital and continuing their charge north. The air force continues the intense bombardment. The cruel North Korean winter is approaching, but Mercado has no intention of stopping. Soon his troops reach the northern border between North Korea and China.

Mao had also made a commitment to Kim Il-sung that he would aid North Korea if North Korea needed it. And clearly by that point, when the North Koreans were being pressed right up against their northern border, then they did need that help from the Chinese. On the 19th of October 1950, the Chinese army of 300,000 troops sweep over their border. Almost immediately, the frozen, hungry, and battle-weary US divisions are overwhelmed. hungry and battle-weary U.S. divisions are overwhelmed. China's entry into the conflict reverses the situation.

It is no longer the North Koreans retreating, but the U.S. Remembering the conditions at this time would be awful as well, right? I mean, winter is so harsh in Korea and even harsher in Northern Korea. The Chinese army entered in force and began to push the U.S. and U.N UN forces back down south again. And this led to a massive retreat by the Americans. The Yinchon landing was a great success, but it then ultimately led to quite a big reverse only a couple of months later. As US ground forces retreat, the war from the sky ramps up. No military targets are left standing after the sustained bombing of the past months. The U.S. Air Force is given permission to firebomb any North Korean town.

This kind of attack utilizes gasoline gel napalm devices, which incinerate urban areas. which incinerate urban areas. Every installation, means of communication, facility and village in North Korea becomes a US target. In November, the country burns. Civilian casualties are horrific and countless. The counter-attacks of Soviet jet fighters introduced into the aerial war does little to halt the devastation. There's another reason why the war does little to halt the devastation.

There's another reason why the war was very harsh on the civilian population, particularly in North Korea. And when you think about aerial bombardment, you've also got to remember that a lot of the death doesn't come from people being killed by bombs. It comes from people being killed by disease, being killed by lack of sanitation as the whole infrastructure breaks down, the farming system begins to break down. By December 1950, 100,000 US soldiers have been forced to retreat by a Chinese army over three times that size and are driven back to the northeastern port of Hungnam. They are joined by 90,000

North Korean refugees. It is December 21, 1950. Seventeen-year-old Han Bo-bae shivers on the quayside at Hongnam, huddled close to her mother, who holds her young sister wrapped in their only blanket. They have walked miles through deep snow to reach the port, but they are now just one family in a crowd of thousands. Bo Bai stares up at the looming ships in the distance. Bo Bai stares up at the looming ships in the distance. She does not know where they are going to take her or how she would even scale the sloping metal sides to get aboard. All she knows is that the Chinese army is behind them and they are threatening to behead

anyone who collaborated with US troops, whether or not the crime can be proven. A whistle sounds and the crowd starts to move. The small family is herded by U.S. soldiers into a line three abreast towards the biggest of the ships. A huge door opens high up on the ship's hull. From inside, a wooden platform is lowered by ropes on pulleys. The first group of refugees step anxiously onto the platform. Then, as the passengers crouch and cling to each other, it is hauled in jerks up the side of the ship.

Climbing inside the vessel, the refugees are swallowed by the dark. Climbing inside the vessel, the refugees are swallowed by the dark. The interior of the ship echoes and smells metallic, but Bo-Be and her family are guided through a steel riveted corridor and up onto the deck. Here they flop, exhausted, against the base of one of the three massive masts, and Bo-Be rests her head on her mother's shoulder. Despite herself and the noise of the thousands of refugees crowding around, her eyes immediately droop after days without sleep. But then the engine rumbles into life, loud enough to wake the dead. There will be no rest yet for Bobé, her family, or any of the refugees, because they are being hauled to their feet and pulled back further towards the front of the ship.

More and more frightened, exhausted people cram in behind them until it is standing room only. After what seems like an age, eventually a shout goes up, and there is a juddering movement underfoot. They are leaving. Han Bo-Be is evacuated by the Meredith Victory, an unarmed freighter deployed to deliver fuel, trucks, and ammunition to the U.S. fighting fronts in the north. Designed to take a total of 35 crew and passengers, during the evacuation it carries 14,000 North Korean refugees to safety at Busan in South Korea.

The journey takes three days, during which decks and cargo holds are packed beyond any reasonable capacity, and its passengers have no access to either food or water. During the voyage, five babies are born, but everyone on board survives. It is one of the most remarkable evacuations in US history. Following the US retreat, the combined Communist front storms back through the bombed-out, napalm-ravaged lands of North Korea and over the 38th parallel for the second time. On January 4, 1951, Seoul is captured yet again by Chinese and North Korean forces. The South Koreans and Americans push back south of the capital, this time with a bigger force. Brutal ground warfare continues until March 14, 1951, when Seoul is finally returned to the hands of the South Koreans.

The U.S. fight back to roughly the 38th parallel. One of the terrible ironies of the Korean War is you have all this fighting, all this death, all this huge destruction, and yet the front line by the summer of 1951, only a year into the war, is basically fixed back up near the 38th parallel. So by the summer, it was pretty apparent that the war had come to something of a stalemate. The Chinese and Americans had got to a point where they didn't want to pour too much more blood and treasure into this.

The mobile phase of the war is over, for American and Chinese land troops at least. They both feel they have come as far as they can without resorting to nuclear weapons, something that no one truly wants. Neither Kim Il-sung in the North or Syngman Rhee, the President of the South, is keen to accept that the war should end where it started, with a standoff. Both are fighting for the reunification of their country. But without their superpower allies on side,

they are in no position to make further major assaults. The fighting, though, is not over. On the 10th of July, 1951, armistice talks begin. Trench warfare and continued bombardment of North Korea are the main features of this next stage of the war. The fighting continued through 1952, 1953. Fighting on the ground continued over strategic points, gaining a little bit of ground here, losing a bit of ground here.

Both sides knew that the armistice negotiations were going on and knew that the war was going to end, but they wanted to end it at the point where they had the best advantage or they gained this bit of land or that bit of land that they wanted. Another thing that was going on through that whole period was a lot of aerial bombardment by the Americans of North Korea. It was on the scale of the Allied bombing of Germany in the Second World War, the Allied bombing of Japan in the Pacific War,

the bombing of Vietnam in Operation Rolling Thunder in the late 1960s. Much of North Korea is a burning wasteland. In 1952, it leads to a catastrophic famine. The issue of what is to be done with the tens of thousands of prisoners of war taken by both sides slows the peace negotiations. It becomes a political issue as each camp tries to convert its prisoners to its own ideology,

and reports of ill-treatment abound. Finally, two years after the negotiations began, at 10 a.m. on the 27th of July 1953, the Korean Armistice Agreement is signed by UN Command, the Chinese, and Kim Il-sung. Although South Korean President Syngman Rhee accepts the agreement, he never signs it. All fighting stops 12 hours later. The Korean Demilitarized Zone, known as the DMZ, is formed roughly following the 38th parallel. known as the DMZ, is formed roughly following the 38th parallel. It runs for 250 kilometers from coast to coast and two kilometers back from the line of each side. The areas north and south of the DMZ are heavily fortified.

Both sides maintain large defensive contingents of troops beyond the strip. contingents of troops beyond the Strip. There are minor skirmishes at the DMZ in both the 1960s and 1970s, but mostly the deadlock has been preserved. Even so, no peace treaty has ever been signed. Indeed, South Korea has never officially ratified the armistice. With the two Koreas in a frozen conflict, the war leaves millions of families divided. Parents and children, brothers and sisters, parted in search of safety, are never again reunited. Despite the astonishing scale of suffering, in the Western consciousness, the conflict is soon overshadowed by the Vietnam War. Beginning just two years after the Korean armistice, it continues into the 1970s, in time to be considered by many to be the first truly televised conflict.

It becomes much harder for any atrocities to be covered up. It becomes much harder for any atrocities to be covered up. And as time goes on, back in Korea, efforts are made to shine a light on the darkest moments of the war. Though post-war governance of South Korea is authoritarian, democracy arrives in the late 1980s. After that, the extent of the war crimes that had been committed begin to leak out. In 2005, the South Korean Truth and Reconciliation Commission is established, with backing from the South Korean government. Civilian massacres became, unfortunately, quite a normalised part of the war in some ways.

It's something that's still being reckoned with in South Korea now because a lot of that stuff was covered up. I mean, well, basically almost all of it was covered up after the war. And it's really in the last couple of decades that some of it's begun to come out. There are still ongoing excavations in various different places in South Korea, excavations of mass graves of people that were killed during the war in these kind of civilian massacres, usually perpetrated by the military or the police on one side or another. The legacy of the war continues to resonate over 70 years later, and relations between the two fragments of the once-unified country are far from convivial. Many thousands of North Koreans have defected to the South over

the intervening decades, and the rhetoric from the communist dictatorship in the North continues to worry its southern neighbor and indeed the rest of the world. the rest of the world. Even so, for years, both sides have a government department dedicated to a long-term goal of eventual reunification. But in 2024, North Korea abolishes what it calls its Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland. Right now, it's just, I would say, completely stuck. And I think that's quite dangerous because I'm not predicting that there's going to be another Korean War any minute, but

it's always a possibility. It's always a possibility an accident could happen. You have two extremely militarized countries facing each other across a military border, and hanging in the background, you have the US, China, and Russia, who are all nuclear arms states. So it's not a very good place to ratchet up hostilities. It's a really good place to actually try and calm things down and come around a table and talk. But unfortunately, that's not what's happening at the moment. Though to the rest of the world, the conflict fades into history, to Koreans it remains a painful keystone of national identity. It's an absolutely key part of their ideology and their worldview, and it still informs

a lot about what's going on in Korea and the way that North Koreans see the world, the way they treat America. It's not a forgotten war in South Korea either. Both countries have massive war museums dedicated to the Korean War. All school children have to learn about it. But long after the Cold War ended with the dissolving of the Soviet Union in 1991, the catastrophic divide in Korea remains. And North Korea's arsenal is the biggest nuclear threat the world over. Today the DMZ is still heavily surveilled and strewn with landmines, and the areas beyond

the Strip are among the most heavily militarized in the world. And though South Korea is recognized as one of the most democratic nations in Asia, the North is known globally as a secretive and volatile state, dominated by one family for half a century. So what, if anything, can be learned from this conflict that never officially ended? I said one lesson from it. I think partitioning countries is a really bad idea. Pakistan-India conflict is a result of partition. The Irish conflict is a result of partition.

The Korean conflict. And all of Africa, basically most African countries are a result of some kind of European arbitrary sort of partition between what they imagine should be countries but are not actually. So partition, people coming in from the outside and dividing places up, almost always leads to extremely bad consequences. So that's a lesson we perhaps should learn. Next time on Short History Of, we'll bring you a short history of Polynesian exploration. You sort of have to imagine what it's like to be people who have for thousands of years sailed from one island to another, moved from one island to another.

You would know, you would believe, you would imagine that there was always another island, that an island would rise from the sea, which is the way it's phrased, that an island would rise from the sea as you voyage toward it. I think must have been deep in the imagination of the people. Basically, one of the things you have to do to understand this story is you have to imagine a people who are at home on the sea. That's next time. Thank you.