This Kind of War: The Classic Korean War History

by T. R. Fehrenbach

  March, particularly, had been a bad month. But then, unaccountably, all activity had ceased. Fat Chae was worried.

  Chae had talked to the Americans about it, but the Korean Military Advisory Group was not concerned. One officer told Chae that the Communists were becoming more sophisticated, settling down at last. The Americans seemed to feel that when Communists left you alone, it was all to the good. But Chae worried. He might be handier with a whiskey and soda than with command of the Army, but he was not completely a fool.

  Chae had read Time, which three weeks before had printed a splendid article on the Korean Military Advisory Group and its work with the Korean Armed Forces. Like most people outside the United States, Chae Byong Dukknew that what Time printed was not only true, but official.

  Time had said the Republic of Korea Army was the best outside the States. That was one thing that comforted him, as more and more reports reached Seoul from refugees from the northern regime, informers, and his own officers stationed along the parallel. Because General Chae Byong Duk had no great trust in Communists, despite the Americans.

  But now the bright lights were coming on in Seoul, and, shrugging, Chae Byong Duk prepared for the evening's battle. As he got into his well-tailored American-style uniform, he knew that many of his officers from the border would be down this night, and before they departed their posts they would sign passes for many of their men, who also liked to get away now and then. The American advisers had been very persuasive with their discussions of troop morale.

  It grew dark. General Chae prepared to go out. He could accomplish nothing by brooding, and he might accomplish a great deal drinking with the Americans.

  As evening fell, among the teeming, raucous hordes of white-clad people thronging the streets and alleyways from North Gate to the massive railway station to the odorous reaches of 'Yongdungp'o, the talk was of rice and of rain. As always before the monsoon, the price of grain had skyrocketed; the green seedlings, already transplanted, were patching. Only the monsoon rains, with promise of a good crop, would bring ease to the people's mind.

  Even now a great black cloud was forming over North Mountain, and toilers, shopkeepers, even yangban—those who did not work—watched it hopefully. There was prayer that a storm, indeed, was brewing.

  Never far from the smell of the brown soil, or starvation, the desperately poor masses of Koreans talked of rain and rice.

  But as the dark clouds soaked up the last of the fading daylight, the current of Seoul's social life quickened. It had been a hot and muggy day, with showers in the morning. At the Sobingo Gun Club on the banks of the Han, the KMAG officers and civilian members had worked up a fine sweat over the traps. With the last clay target shattered, they had eased their bodies with a short dip in the KMAG pool, followed by a long cool one at poolside.

  Slowly, the American colony came to life. The largest American mission in the world was based in Seoul, two thousand strong, and they had had a busy week.

  Foster Dulles had been in town. He'd got the usual tour, in VIP fashion: up to Uijongbu on the parallel, to be snapped staring across no man's land, surrounded by grinning ROK officials. The usual press release had to be handled smoothly: something about continuing American interest in South Korea, and the pride in its progress toward democracy and a vitalized economy. After that, Dulles got back on his plane at Kimpo, to his own and the American Mission's relief.

  But from the roof gardens of the Naija to the lounge of the Traymore, in the carefully cordoned embassy bars where men and women gathered, there was no talk of crops. Over tax-free liquor, the colony laughed over Foster's visit, and over the official who had been caught keeping North Korea's Number One female spy. This man had even bought the woman a short-wave radio, and it was said the ROK's would shoot her.

  In spite of American influence, the ROK's were still extremely brutal to leftist elements in their midst. Of course, they could not shoot the American official.

  There had been a child, towheaded yet, the American wives in Seoul told each other. Some American couple would, of course, adopt it.

  Now the embassy taxi service began to hum, ferrying couples from the Traymore to the Banto, and from the Banto to the Chisan. Two topflight cocktail parties were scheduled, and there was the regular Saturday night dance at that palatial symbol of midcentury Occidental culture, the KMAG Officers' Open Mess.

  None of the Americans knew that Captain Vyvyan Holt of the British Legation had advised His Majesty's subjects to get out of town. Like Chae Byong Duk, Captain Vyvyan was uneasy. He had heard things.

  American Intelligence, Seoul-bound, heard things, too. They reported them. But each report crashed headlong into a wall of belief that despite the recent takeover in Czechoslovakia, the unpleasantness in Berlin, and the military conquest of China, Red designs for the world were not too inimical to those of the West. And since Topside failed to worry, Intelligence relaxed.

  So behind its walls and screens, carefully cordoned from the distasteful Orient about them, the American colony went about its Saturday-night business. It was no different from any other American colony, from the Straits of Gibraltar to Hong Kong, no better, and no worse. It was certainly no wiser.

  As the bars filled in Seoul, Brigadier General William L. Roberts, lately commanding KMAG, the Korean Military Advisory Group, was on a States-bound ship. His time was in; he was going home. And his tour had been capped by an interview by Time.

  Time had quoted him correctly: "The South Koreans have the best damn army outside the United States!"

  The ROK's had eight divisions. Except those fighting guerrillas in the South, they were armed with American M-1 rifles. The guerrilla fighters had to make do with old Jap Model 99's. The ROK's had machine guns, of course, and some mortars, mostly small. They had five battalions of field artillery to back up the infantry divisions, all with the old, short-range Model M-3 105mm howitzer, which the United States had junked.

  The best damn army outside the United States had no tanks, no medium artillery, no 4.2-inch mortars, no recoilless rifles. They had no spare parts for their transport. They had not even one combat aircraft.

  They didn't have any of those things because the American Embassy didn't want them to have them. KMAG was not under the United States Army, or even responsible to the aloof and powerful satrap in Tokyo, MacArthur. Because the United States was determined to show the world that its intentions in Korea were nonaggressive, KMAG was under the State Department.

  Most KMAG officers recognized this policy was nonaggressive. But as they told their Korean colleagues, who asked plaintively about guns and jets, "You can't fight city hall."

  Ambassador John J. Muccio had been instructed to take no chances of the South Koreans attacking the Communists to the north. An attack would certainly convince the Soviets that America was not really bent on co-existence.

  Ambassador Muccio had taken none, though his First Secretary, Harold Noble, had announced, "The ROK's can not only stop an attack but move north and capture the Communist capital in two weeks."

  Whether they could or not, such reassurance was good for ROK morale.

  Lynn Roberts had told Time that while the troops were excellent, the Korean officers' corps was not so hot. After all, in only eleven months staffs and commanders could not be made and trained, starting from scratch. Lynn Roberts, a professional soldier, also knew that soldiers are only as good as their officers make them. But that kind of attitude sounded un-American and was not popular in Washington, and there was no point in playing it up.

  Not knowing the kind of tough, doctrinaire, disciplined armies that were being built in Asia by the Communists from Vietnam to Manchuria, KMAG and Ambassador Muccio really did not expect the ROK's to have to fight.

  Now, sailing home on Saturday night, 24 June 1950, Lynn Roberts' sense of timing, at least, was perfect.

  As the music started up in Seoul, in Kokura, Japan, Major General William Frishe Dean was guest of honor at a 24th Division Headqu
arters costume party. Which was one way for infantrymen to try to forget Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson and his fat-cutting, the supercarrier, the Strategic Air Command, and the nagging feeling that in the Atomic Age footsloggers might be obsolete.

  Bill Dean came as a. Korean yangban, one of the aristocratic class who did no work, with a black stovepipe hat perched on his close-cropped head, and a long, flapping robe covered his two-hundred-pound, six-foot frame. The 24th Division Staff thought he was hilarious.

  Bill Dean remarked to his wife, who also came dressed as a Korean—they had both been in the Occupation Forces—that he felt a bit ridiculous. Besides, as the evening wore on, the hard hat hurt.

  It was Sunday morning in Seoul now, and the embassy bars were closing. Only a few dreaming—or drunken—young people still lingered in the KMAG Officers' Open Mess. It was almost dawn, and even the private parties were dying.

  Any young officer who had not made out by now never would.

  And the storm that had hovered over the high peaks of Bukhan Mountain north of the city broke. The rain sheeted down, true monsoon, and it was good to sleep by. People woke, smiled in the dawn's freshness, and returned to sleep. Workers, passing out of the city through Namdai Mun, the South Gate, laughed and sang as they crossed the bridge over the Han. Below them the gray shapes of massive junks and the thin shadows of motor launches lay quietly on the rain-speckled dark water.

  White-clad farmers smiled as they scooped up chamber pots outside the surrounding villages' doors, and filled their reeking honey buckets. Life was hard, but again the people would be able to buy rice.

  The million and a half people of Seoul did not expect the future to be good. The expected to survive.

  And miles to the north, beyond where the roads the Americans had named Long Russia and Short Russia ended, beyond the religious missions on the parallel at Kaesong, where the Methodist missionaries, reassured by Ambassador Muccio, still slept, far to the east of Seoul in a town called Hwach'on, Senior Colonel Lee Hak Ku looked once again at his watch.

  He looked up, met the eyes of the booted and blue-breeched officers standing about him in the Operations Post. They were all young, and hard, and most of their adult lives had been spent at war, with the Chinese, with the Soviets. They had fought Japanese; they had fought Nationalists. Now they would fight the running dogs of the American Imperialists, or whoever else got in their way.

  All around, men in mustard-colored cotton uniforms were moving in the wet, predawn murkiness. Covers were coming off stubby howitzer muzzles; diesel tank engines shuddered into raucous life. The monsoon was turning into drizzle now along the dark hills that framed the demarcation zone.

  The varihued green paddies glistened with water, but the roads were hard and firm. The big long-gunned tanks began to move.

  Back along the valley, where two divisions awaited the order to slash southward, officers raised their right arms. Section chiefs filled their lungs for shouting. The heavy guns had been trained and loaded long before.

  Then men shouted, and dark cannon spat flame into the lowering sky. From the cold Eastern Sea to the foggy sandbanks of the Yellow Sea to the west, along every corridor that led to the South, night ended in a continuous flare of light and noise.

  The low-slung, sleek tanks attached to the 7th Division spurted forward, throwing mud from their tracks. Designed for the bogs of Russia, they rolled easily over the hard-packed earth. Behind them poured hordes of shrieking small men in yellow-brown shirts.

  "Manzai!" Senior Colonel Lee Hak Ku said, and, eyes gleaming, his staff repeated it.

  It was 4:00 A.M., Sunday, 25 June 1950. The world, whether it would ever admit it or not, was at war.

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  2

  The Crime of Marquis Ito

  The twentieth century knows no greater crime.…

  — Under Secretary of State Summer Wells, speaking of the Japanese occupation of Korea, 1905-1945.

  THERE HAVE BEEN three Korean Wars in modern times. Each time, foreign powers have fought in Chosun, and each time the Korean people have been the losers. It is already an old pattern, and it seems one likely to continue, so long as the empires of man collide.

  Korea, or Chosun, is a peninsula, 575 miles in length, averaging 150 miles across. It resembles in outline the state of Florida, though bigger. Along its eastern coast a giant chain of mountains thrusts violently upward; the west coast is flat and muddy, marked by estuaries and indentations. Inland the country is a series of hills, broad valleys, lowlands, and terraced rice paddies. Its rivers run south and west, and they are broad and deep.

  It is a country of hills and valleys, and few roads. Most of Korea is, and always has been, remote from the world.

  Chosun is a poor country, exporting only a little rice. But its population density is exceeded in Asia only by parts of India. For four thousand years the Koreans have tilled their misty valleys, forming a separate culture, with distinct language, literature, and ethos, within the broader frame of Sinic Civilization. Koreans are neither Chinese, Manchu, nor Japanese. They took their basic civilization from ancient China, passed it on to the then barbarous islands of Japan, but always, shrouded by their hills and bordering seas, the people of the Hermit Kingdom wished to be left in peace.

  The wish is hopeless, for Korea is a buffer state.

  It juts southeastward for Chinese Manchuria, and touches the maritime eastern province of Russia. One hundred and twenty miles from its southern tip lie the islands of Japan. To Japanese eyes, looking upward, Chosun is a dagger, aimed eternally at her heart.

  Neither China, nor Russia, nor whatever power is dominant in the Islands of the Rising Sun, dares ignore Korea. It is, has been, and will always be either a bridge to the Asian continent, or a stepping-stone to the islands, depending on where power is ascendant.

  Throughout history the great powers surrounding Chosun have proclaimed and guaranteed its continued freedom and independence. But none of them have truly accepted such guarantees. They dare not, because they do not trust each other.

  So Korea has suffered, without profit to herself. So she is suffering still. The crimes against her have been continuous, for Korea is a breeding ground for war.

  From the time of the Manchus China controlled Korea, but with a lax and distant hand. But by the nineteenth century Manchu power had decayed, and the stars of Russia and Japan were rising in the East. Collision was inevitable.

  The cause of collision was not the poor land of Chosun with its teeming millions, but vast and wealthy Manchuria, looming high beyond the Yalu. Manchuria is the richest area in all East Asia, with iron ores, coal, water power, food, and timber, and whoever owns Manchuria, to be secure, must also own Chosun.

  The newly awakened Empire of Japan began to put fingers of economic penetration through Chosun, inching toward Manchuria. In 1894 Japan and the Empire of China went to war, in Korea.

  Near P'yongyang, the Japanese met the Chinese hordes, and defeated them. By the Treaty of Shimonoseki, signed 17 April 1895, the Manchu Empire renounced all influence in Chosun, and ceded to Japan the Island of Taiwan. The weakness of China was revealed, and the Western powers, unconcerned with the Rising Sun, gathered for what loot could be had. Russia gained forts and bases in Manchuria, and pressed down across the Yalu, seeking to control North Korea.

  All powers agreed to the continuing freedom of Chosun.

  Russian troops, however, garrisoned the north, while Japanese corporations began to swallow up the south. It was an uneasy situation that could not last.

  In 1904 Japan and czarist Russia went to war. Japanese troops debarked at Inch'on, Korea, and marched north. They attacked across the Yalu River, and defeated Russia in a brilliant campaign. Meanwhile, the Japanese signed a treaty with Chosun, guaranteeing the Hermit Kingdom's independence, in return for the use of its territory as a base of operations.

  It is the nature of peoples to see the ancient foes, and to ignore those newly arising. J
apan defeated Russia with the moral and material aid of Great Britain and America, who had watched the Russian advance to the Pacific with unconcealed dread. Japan, with far greater ambitions than the rotting Empire of the Bear had ever entertained, now was the dominant power in East Asia, and America and Britain applauded.

  They did not sense that, in time, Japan would overthrow the old order completely.

  At the Treaty of Portsmouth, signed in New Hampshire under the good offices of President Theodore Roosevelt, Russian influence in Manchuria was checked. All powers again guaranteed the freedom of Chosun, but the treaty recognized Japan's "paramount political, military, and economic interests in Korea."

  The Empire of Japan was free to move.

  In the crisp, smoky early fall of 1905, the Marquis Ito was called to Tokyo. The Marquis Ito—Japan had now adopted French-style titles for its aristocracy—was not only a member of the high nobility but also one of the most capable men under the Rising Sun.

  In Tokyo, the Foreign Office briefed Ito on recent events. The Tenno, the Son of Heaven, he was told, had sent a personal message to the king of Chosun, asking the king to bring his small realm into the friendly arms and great prosperity of the Rising Sun. But the king and cabinet of Chosun were most shortsighted. They did not understand that Japan must control Manchuria, or see that to exploit that province, Japan must hold a land bridge to its wealth.

  In short, both king and cabinet. wanted no part of the Rising Sun. This, in itself, was sacrilege—but worse, the king had dispatched a note to the President of the United States, begging help against Japanese pressure.

  The Marquis Ito, a small and dapper brown-skinned man, winced. He knew a great deal about the American President, who sometimes spoke softly, but always maintained an uncomfortably large navy.