Korean War

Just read a lot about the Korean War. The most disturbing event of it all is probably this: Clicky. (which techinally happened AFTER the war, but since no peace treaties were ever signed…the war actually is still on till today)

Anyway to sum up the whole stupid war: North started attack South. US helped South and pushed North back. North got hitted like shit and almost got pushed to China. China sent PVA (not PLA) to help North and pushed them all the way to Seoul, the South’s capital. (in fact they captured Seoul I think) Then both sides push each other a little here and a little bit there and finally signed an Armstice. (NOT a peace treaty) The place where it took place, Panmunjom, became the Joint-Security Area. (the place where North and South guards glare at each other) And a whole chunk of land in between the two countries became the DMZ. (De-militarised Zone, where the armies glare at each other with high-powered artillery spotters from either side) At the end of the war, there were about 390,000 PVA casualties and 1 million UNC casualties: US 144,173, Republic O Korea 844,000 (415,000 killed, 429,000 wounded), Commonwealth 6000, others 8,800. Can’t find a North Korean casualty list.

Sigh, in the end none of the sides were fighting for the good cause. North wanted to rule. USA were a bunch of racists. (at least at that time) Chinese only wanted to protect their own interests in North Korea and their own border at Yula. (hint: they named their army supporting NK the “People’s Volunteers Army” because sending the PLA, their main army, will mean officially declaring war on the other UN members too)

USA had worse POW camps than what they claimed Vietcong had. The Chinese prisoners were given a chance for so called “volunteery repriatation” that basically mean that they had a “choice” on whether to go back to PRC (People’s Republic of China) or go to Taiwan. Since much of the PRC’s army were once KMT (GuoMingDang) forces before they were defeated and forced into Taiwan, US assumed that many POWs will rather go to Taiwan and in this way, promote the fact that they were unhappy under communist rule and rather head towards “freedom”. However many POWs choose to be returned to China, and were tortured. The Chinese were treated by US troops guarding the POW camps like animals as it was believed that they were savages. (based on British sources, quite accurate if you ask me since only USA was in charged of handling POWs) Meanwhile according to POWs freed later, UN (other countries took part in the war) POWs were treated fairly, although there was a re-education programme, (which was later labelled as brain-washing by western historians) and were allowed to return home.

Then in 1967-1969, North Korea took advantage of the Vietnam War (some say they cordinated with the Vietnam) and launched many offensives against the South. They used commando tactics and almost managed to infiltrate the Blue House. (South Korea presidential building) Then USA diverted some forces originally due for Vietnam to South and defended the border. After the Vietnam War, the North stopped their aggressive tactics. Of course this time China did not help NK as its border was not threatened, unlike the previous time. (it was also looking for better relationships with US and tensions were breaking out with the Soviet Union)

Baaah, that was a stupid war. Next time we look at an even dumber one, the Vietname War.