Korean war - World History for IAS - North Korea VS South Korea

I will be discussing the Korean war with you

It is a very important part of the cold war and hence we need to know about the Korean war.

First of all, where is Korea?

So this is a map of East Asia.

You can see China here and this is Japan and in between these two big countries is Korea.

So today there are two countries North Korea and South Korea, but for 1000 years this was

the kingdom of Korea.

It was one kingdom united.

And despite being between such two rich civilisations of China and Japan.

It had its own language, its own cultural identity and a very rich tradition and heritage.

So if you zoom into the map you can see this is the Korean peninsula.

It is called the Korean peninsula.

It comprises of two countries today North Korea and South Korea.

The capital of North Korea is Pyongyang and south Korea is Seoul.

Now you need to know a bit geography because lately UPSC has been asking questions on geography.

For example, they ask questions about the black sea.

The country situated between black sea and Mediterranean and so on.

So we need to be very thorough with the geography of the world.

So this is the sea of Japan.

It is also called East Sea sometimes.

You will see in most of the maps it is written as the east sea in the bracket so

the sea

of Japan is in between Japan and Korea.

And the sea between China and Korea is the Yellow sea.

So a question can be asked like this.

Which is the sea between Korea and Japan?

And then towards south of Korea, we have this East

China sea here down below.

And this small channel between Japan and Korea is the Korea strait.

So we have four important seas to remember.

The sea of Japan, the Yellow sea, the East China sea and the Korean strait.

Now you can see the border of North Korea, here it is with China.

So it is mainly bordering with one country only.

There is a small border shared with Russia as well.

But mostly it is with china.

In the earlier part of the 20th century, Japan was a big imperial power, it was conquering

all territories, surrounding islands like Taiwan,

Korea.

It attacked China also two or three times.

So in 1910, Japan occupied the kingdom of Korea.

They deposed the king of Korea and they occupied it.

And for the next 35 years they

ruled as a very oppressive regime in Korea.

They tried to eradicate the complete culture of Korea.

They even tried to remove the language of Koreans from Korea itself.

They made compulsory that you have to learn Japanese and not Korean language.

So it was a very bad period of time for the Koreans.

Also during WWII there were a large number of comfort women.

It is a very sensitive issue for Korean and Japan both.

So the comfort women were Korean women who were used as sex slaves for the Japanese

soldiers.

So they were used for the Japanese soldiers and this is the reason japan has apologised

many a time to Korea and it still continues to do so.

Japan has been doing this since the past 70 years.

They have apologised to many countries

Malaysia, Singapore, Burma, Vietnam, Taiwan and so on.

Also china.

Now when the WWII ended in 1945.

At that time Korea was ruled by Japan.

But Japan lost the WWII when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed by the atom bombs.

After that, the army of USSR entered Korea from the north and the army of USA entered from south.

So these two armies were marching in and they decided mutually that we will stop at 38th parallel.

So you stop at 38th parallel from north and we will stop from the south, that is what

US army told USSR and they agreed.

So you can see that at that point in time only, in 1945 itself.

In August 1945 at that time only there is a division of the country.

it is a de facto division.

What they planned was, in five years, we will unite this area and because we have agreements

beforehand that some areas will be occupied by USSR and some will be occupied by the USA.

That is why they occupied both these territories.

They divided the territory into north and south.

But that plan was, after five years we will reunite them.

So this is the map of Korea in 1945 when it was divided along the 38th parallel north.

There is also a 38th parallel south.

But it is commonly called as the 38th parallel.

So this is the border decided by US army and the capital of North after that became Pyongyang

and south was Seoul.

So this North Korea which was ruled by USSR from 1945 to 1948.

And this south Korea was administered by the US up till 1948.

So you can imagine that this automatically became communist under the communist influence of USSR

And this was becoming a more pro-western country although not the people of Korea were

supporting America but leaders.

They tried to put up some leaders who were pro-America.

Now you should know that this is also the time period when cold war starting in 1949

in neighboring China, the communists had won the Chinese civil war, a very important development

for the Korean conflict because you will come to know why China is so important to this

war and also in 1949, USSR tested its first nuclear weapon, so this changed the dynamics of the world.

Now not only the USA had nuclear weapons, also USSR had nuclear weapons.

This lead to MAD. What is MAD? It is not mad.

It is Mutually Assured Destruction, it means that if USA will attack USSR with nuclear

weapons, they can also now attack, means both of them will be destroyed and in fact, the

whole world can be destroyed.

So this is called mutually assured destruction.

This is the biggest reason that cold war never became a hot war.

Do you understand?

Cold war USA and USSR never fought directly and one of the main reasons for this was mutually

assured destruction.

If they started fighting openly, then both of them could have been destroyed.

Now we come to Korea again.

As I told you from 1945 to 48, both of them were ruled by the occupying armies of USSR

and USA, so in 1948, South Korea had elections and though these elections were not completely

fair there were allegations that they were rigged so this political leader called Syngman

Rhee, he comes to power and he is pro USA and he was favouring USA, Syngman Rhee.

And in North, there were no elections.

USSR simply put up a leader and his name was Kim Il Sung.

They put him up because he had stayed in USSR and he was a big time communist.

He was a Korean and he had stayed in USSR and he believed in communist ideology.

So they simply made him the leader of North Korea.

He was very young at that time, hardly 35-40 years of age.

While this guy was very old when he was made the President of South Korea.

So both these leaders came to power at almost the same time in 1948, and both of them were

against each other.

Why?

Because this person, Syngman Rhee was a big anti-communist.

He hated communism and on the other hand, Kim Il Sung hated USA and he wanted that the

entire Korean peninsula should be united under one government once again.

Both of them said that it should be reunited but they said, South Korean said that they

should be under our government, and he said that they should be under my government.

Now there is a question for you.

Please write in comments, who are the current leaders of South and North Korea?

I guess North Korean leader you must have heard his name somewhere.

He is very famous but the South Korean president has also been in the news lately, for the

past two months since the problems in South Korea.

Write down the names if you know.

So from 1948 to 1950, both these Koreas were supported by their respective backers.

USSR, so they supplied their military to North Korea and thus their military was very strong

by 1950.

On the other hand, South Korea was not supplied by very good weapons or even tanks.

USA did not give tanks to them.

They did not give rifles.

They only gave them pistols and small weapons.

So their military was very weak.

And from 1948 to 50 small conflicts or small skirmishes were going on between these two.

Small border clashes, some little bit firing, these things were going on for two years.

And By 1950, the very strong Korean army was completely ready to attack south and they

did that on 25th June 1950 when they invaded South Korea to unify the Korean peninsula.

As I told you, Kim Il sun wanted to unify Korea under him and as soon as it was invaded,

the United Nations passed a resolution to help South Korea.

This is very important because that was the first time that UN was intervening militarily

anywhere in the world.

UN was found hardly 5 years back.

Now you might wonder that why did USSR not use its veto.

USSR was a permanent member of the security council and they could have vetoed this resolution.

But they were boycotting the security council at that time.

Why?

Because they wanted the Peoples Republic of China to use the permanent seat at the Security

Council.

At that time, the seat was given to republic of China or Taiwan.

If you have any confusion between these two, you can watch my video on Taiwan.

Then these doubts will be cleared.

So ROC is Taiwan and they were given the veto power at that time.

USSR was protesting this thing and hence, they were absent from the security council.

But as I told you that north army was very strong and they soon ran over the entire peninsula

up to Busan.

I will show you on the map.

Don't worry.

See, this is Busan and it was a big city and an important city situated on the southern

coast of South Korea.

So the north army came all the way from here.

So this was the border This was 38th parallel.

Here they came all the way from here till here.

This small area was remaining which was protected by the soldiers of USA and South Korea and

apart from this, the entire Korea peninsula came under the control of North Korea, North

Korean army.

So this was in the initial stages of the war.

What happens is.

The US General Douglas MacArthur.

His name was Douglas MacArthur.

So he was the general who was ruling over Japan and at that time, Japan was also under

the control of US only, so this US General called Douglas MacArthur, he made a brilliant

plan.

He said that we cannot fight them back.

It will take us a very long time He took ships from here and they landed here in Inchon,

near the capital Seoul and they did an amphibious landing and they won this area.

And what happens when they win this area?

They cut off the entire army in the south region.

So this lead to the defeat of the North Korean army.

From here again, the UN army had sent its force and the leading army under this was

US only.

Actually more than 90% of the army was comprised of US soldiers but officially it was called

UN force.

The United Nation's force.

The United Nation's force after cutting off the northern army here, they moved north.

They crossed the 38th parallel.

Now you can see that it was wrong on their part, they were supposed to stay south of

the border but no.

They crossed because Douglas MacArthur wanted to defeat them completely.

So they went up till here.

So by the time, in few months only, in two months they pushed the Northern army to this

region.

So they had been here.

So as I told you, an outflank manoeuvre by the US forces, amphibious landings at Inchon

and retaking of Seoul, the capital.

UN forces reached up to the Yalu river and after this point, china entered the war.

Now this is the Yalu river.

Yalu river is the border between China and the North Korea.

So UN forces reached up till here.

But at this time, suddenly China came into the conflict.

Now China had just come out of its own revolution and no one expected that China could bring

in such a big army to this fight.

China had large number of army and they silently moved their armies from mainland China to

the border and from there,In October the chinese army started pushing the UN forces.

And after only two months or so.

They had captured Seoul.

By January they had captured Seoul.

And again they moved and pushed back till here.

Till these regions.

So you can see that this region was again under the control of North Korea.

But now the main fighting force was not North Korean army.

This time it was mainly China that was fighting.

And they received some amount of support from USSR.

USSR did not send its army but they sent its Airforce.

They gave support in the form of guns and tanks and also airplanes.

Mainly aeroplanes.

But again the UN forces pushed back and in April they recaptured Seoul.

Seoul was captured and recaptured four times.

Four times it changed hands between the two armies.

Then after so much of army going back on forth.

Douglas MacArthur, who was the US general, he was called back by the US President Truman

because he said that you are waging a war and your methods are not correct.

He was called back because he was a very popular General and calling him back was a big decision

But the General had become very, he did not listen to the President and that's why he

was called back.

Now after this, when the UN forces captured Seoul, they again pushed the Northern Army

to the border.

This is the 38th parallel.

So now again, the north army, the Chinese army was somewhere here.

Now this fighting went on for two years in this area only.

There was kind of stalemate.

Neither the Chinese wanted, neither the Chinese had the resources to push back down south

nor the south army or the US army had the courage to go up again.

They did not want to go up actually.

Because they had lost a lot of soldiers in their campaign towards the north.

So this stalemate continued for two years around the 38th parallel.

So most of the fighting was done by 1950 April and May.

So you can say by June 1950 to April/May 1951.

Most of the fighting was done in this one year.

After that, there was a stalemate for two years around the 38th parallel.

Finally an armistice was signed on 27 July 1953.

The fighting stops.

India played a very big role in this armistice.

India and Jawaharlal Nehru, the leading negotiator in these talks.

And we were part of the UN delegation that was sent for this armistice agreement.

And General Thimayya, he also played a big role in the repatriation of prisoners of the

war.

Under his leadership the agreement for repatriation of prisoners of war was signed.

So you should just remember India played a big role in the negotiation.

According to this Armistice, they stopped fighting wherever they were.

They moved 2 km back.

It means that North army went 2 km back and the South army went 2 km back.

In this manner a 4 km exclusion zone was created and that was the de facto border.

Now remember, this was not a peace treaty.

A peace treaty is a final settlement.

This was an armistice.

An armistice just means that the fighting is stopped until a final agreement is reached.

But there was no final agreement reached ever.

And up till now even after almost 65 years.

This war is officially still going.

So the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, this is North Korea and the Republic of Korea

that is South Korea.

They are officially still at war.

It is also said that this is the longest running conflict of modern age.

You can see here this was the map of 1948 when the 38th parallel was the line.

After the war this became the line.

So right now 38th parallel is not the border between North and South Korea.

This is a popular misconception that the 38th parallel is still the border.

No it is not the 38th parallel.

You can see that the line is more of a zig-zag now.

Wherever the fighting was going on, they just stopped there and that became the border.

This is you can see here this is zoomed in.

This is the demilitarized zone.

You can see the boundary But actually the demilitarized zone is very much militarized.

There are lots and lots of landmines planted there are lot of barbed wire inside it.

But army officially, they did not put the army here.

They only go for patrols.

The army is along this area.

So North Korea here and South Korea just outside the demilitarized zone.

They have the heaviest deployment of troops.

In fact this is the most militarized zone in the entire world.

As I told you 4 km exclusion zone and there is a militarised zone around the DMZ.

That is the demilitarized zone.

You can see how much wire is there.

They have put up so much wire.

This 4 km area no one lives here.

There is nothing.

Only wild animals roam here.

So this has become such a good place for wild animals that many species which were almost

extinct or were vulnerable, their number has increased.

So there are some very rare animals I have seen sometimes in camera captured near the

border.

This is one of the rare goat species of Korea captured from CCTV here, near the border.

Now this war had a lot of war crimes from both the sides.

So because of war crimes.

Whenever there are war crimes a lot of civilian deaths happen.

As we have seen in Vietnam war and also in WWII here also there were so many civilian

deaths, 2.5 million almost 25 lakhs.

Some people say even 30 lakhs civilians died.

And even though this number is not a big one.

But I will tell you how much the population was in 1945 after the end of WWII.

South Korea had a population of 16 million and North Korea had a population of 9 million.

So total 25 million.

So imagine every 1 in 10 persons in Korea died during this war.

So this is a huge number.

If you consider it percentage wise, 10% percent died in this war.

And in military deaths around 1 million.

It is said that no one has declared.

No one knows.

It is very difficult to count bodies when so many people are dying.

And especially with so many soldiers of China invading, around 4 lakh Chinese soldiers died

in this war.

And North and South Korea do not have any confirmed record but US has confirmed record

of 35,000 US soldiers dying in this war.

Now a very important fact about this war is that even though it was such a disastrous

war, there is hardly any geographical change.

You have seen that there is only little change in the border from the 38th parallel to the

current DMZ.

There was also not much political change.

North Korea was a communist country, it is still a communist country.

South Korea was a not a democracy but still it was favorable to US and western powers,

it is still favorable to US and western powers.

Also not much administrative change.

So you can say that this war was actually fought for nothing.

Now we will see the importance or the impact of Korean war.

See firstly, it is important because United Nations intervened militarily for the first

time.

This was a big departure from the earlier policy of League of Nations.

League of Nations did not intervene militarily anywhere.

Secondly, this was the only time USA and USSR fought openly.

Earlier as said that they did not fight openly but see their jet fighters were fighting.

USA and USSR planes fought each other in the air during the conflict.

So this was the only instance where this happened.

There was a big threat of nuclear weapons being used.

In fact General MacArthur, the one who was called back by the President.

He said that let's use nuclear weapons on Chinese army.

Because our so many soldiers are getting killed, so let's just throw nuclear bombs on North

Korea and the Chinese army.

So this is also one of the reasons he was called back.

Domino theory took shape in the USA.

Domino theory means that, see these are dominos.

If this falls, this will also fall and this will also fall.

So the US policy maker said that if one country becomes communist, then around that other

countries will also become communist.

So now China was a communist country after its civil war in 1949, North Korea was also

a communist country and they will try to turn Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, all these countries

into communists.

They will try to bring them into communism.

So this domino theory was one of the biggest reasons they intervened in Vietnam later.

The USA sent its army to Vietnam, another disastrous war.

Helicopters were used for the first time, jet planes were used.

See earlier the planes used in WWII were not jet planes.

They were earlier generation planes.

But now jet planes, the MiG-15 at that time it was one of the most advanced planes in

the world.

MiG-15 were used by USSR and it was a new plane and USA aeroplanes were very much behind

MiG-15.

Then there was effective medical care of soldiers.

And USA took care of its soldiers.

Many soldiers who were wounded, they regained back because of the medical facilities provided.

It is also called the forgotten war sometimes in the USA.

Because it is not depicted in the popular culture so much.

You might have hardly seen any movie which showed Korean war.

You might not have seen any reference to it in any popular novels or any popular songs

or anywhere.

On the other hand, you see Vietnam war, you can list so many movies about Vietnam war,

WWII, WWI.

So this is called forgotten war.

It came between two big wars viz. WWII and Vietnam war.

In between nothing much was achieved.

People don't understand why Korean war was fought especially in the USA at that time.

And this is the reason it is not very much in the popular culture.

Now, what happened to Koreas?

Both the Koreas, Republic of Korea i.e.

South Korea, it was very much equal to North Korea for the next 20-30 years.

It was a very poor and backward country, but in the 1970s there was a big economic boom.

And suddenly big companies like Hyundai and Samsung, all these companies are South Korean

companies.

So they started production and suddenly South Korea became a developed country within the

next 30 years.

It is one of the largest economies in Asia now.

Also there was no democracy in South Korea until 1987.

It was also a totalitarian state.

And there were military dictators.

But in 1987 there was a revolution and since then it has been a vibrant democracy.

On the other hand DPRK i.e.

North Korea, it is till date a totalitarian state.

Kim Il Sung, the leader who was made in 1948 by the USSR, he ruled till 1994.

So for 46 years that one man ruled.

Then his son ruled for 20 years and from 2011 Kim Jong Un is ruling over the country.

So I have given you the answer to the question that I asked you earlier, for North Korea

at least.

This is Kim Jong Un.

And North Korea is a unique kind of state.

They don't allow anyone to enter the country, the people living in North Korea are not allowed

to go anywhere outside.

You cannot call, there is no internet access, there are no telephones.

Nothing.

It is a very backward country.

There have been a lot of famines because North Korea refuses to take help from outside.

There is hardly any trade with any other country.

So, there have been millions of people dying in famine.

They are self-reliant.

They call this the Juche policy.

I don't know how it's pronounced.

So this is the policy which was given by Kim Il Sung and because of this policy, millions

of people have died of starvation in North Korea.

See this is the photograph which was taken by NASA satellite of the Korean peninsula

at the night time.

Look at here, this is North Korea hardly any lights.

What do lights mean?

Development.

Look at here, this is the capital Seoul, this is Busan and the entire South Korea is a very

developed country now.

And on the other hand, hardly any lights here.

Only the capital Pyongyang is illuminated.

And here you can see cities of China.

So this is how backward North Korea is today.

But still, they say they have developed Nuclear weapons.

And the world is today threatened by the Nuclear weapons or the hydrogen bombs North Korea

says it has tested.

Although, no one has been able to verify what the weapons are, what is the capability.

But they say they have the Nuclear weapons and it is taken very seriously as a threat.

So I hope you have understood the topic and you can give us suggestions what topics you

want us to make the videos on.

And before leaving if you identify this person, you have been watching the news very carefully

and it's good.

And if you do not, then search for agent VX in news and you will know who this person

is.

Thank you very much.

Have a good day.