Post by dodger on Feb 4, 2014 6:41:33 GMT
Useful study of that appalling war, 3 Feb 2014
This William Podmore review is from: Brothers at War: The Unending Conflict in Korea (Hardcover)
Korea, like Vietnam, was a single, united country until 1945. In 1945 Soviet forces entered Manchuria and the north of Korea to create a defensive barrier against any renewed Japanese aggression. The USA, Britain and the Soviet Union recognised Korea’s unity and independence at the Cairo and Moscow conferences. The three allies agreed that the country would be divided only for a short time and pledged that no foreign troops would stay in Korea. The Soviet Union honoured its agreement and withdrew its forces in December 1945.
The US government proposed a temporary division of Korea at the 38th parallel, which Stalin accepted. Jager writes, “Why did he agree when Soviet forces could have easily occupied the entire peninsula? Rather than territorial gain, Stalin’s main concern was to eliminate Japanese political economic influence in the region. ‘Japan must be forever excluded from Korea’, stated a June 1945 Soviet report on Korea, ‘since a Korea under Japanese rule would be a constant threat to the Far East of the USSR.’ Stalin accepted a divided occupation in Korea because the Americans could help in neutralizing Japan.”
But the USA proceeded to install a fascist government in South Korea. The US and British governments have always claimed that the Korean War started in June 1950, but there was war well before then. Jager notes that on the island of Cheju-do, “whole villages became targets, innocent suspects were beaten and hanged, and women and children massacred. A reign of terror largely perpetrated by government forces, the police, and the Republic of Korea Army … gripped the island. … By the end of June 1949, an estimated thirty thousand had been killed in Cheju-do, many of them innocent civilians massacred by government forces.”
As Jager observes, “Some of the worst atrocities were committed by South Koreans against South Koreans. … Caught in the roundup of suspected leftists and communists were innocent civilians, including women and children who were summarily executed in the thousands in the name of fighting the communists. It is estimated that at least a hundred thousand South Koreans were killed in the summer of 1950.”
President Eisenhower’s May 1953 threat to use nuclear weapons did not cause the armistice agreement. China and North Korea had agreed to voluntary repatriation of POWs in March.