Logan gave the critical newsman a copy of his mission statement: Attack north to rescue a surrounded unit—utmost speed—destroy anything that would jeopardize your mission. Then he asked the correspondent what he would do if he were commanding the battalion. “Before he had a chance to answer, a round landed about twenty feet from us and he bolted. The round was from a shack we had not destroyed. I didn’t get an answer.” Logan mused that “our wars kill more civilians, innocent or not, than battle casualties.” War “is not a gentleman’s game. Codes of honor and conduct are difficult to separate from the various battle situations at hand. What one would call a necessity, another, not present, would call wrong.”
***
As the counterinvasion of North Korea proceeded, it became clear that even if Kim enjoyed substantial support from his subjects, allegiance to his regime was by no means unanimous. Residents in many areas of the North— “unsound people of some social standing,” as Pyongyang described them42— cooperated with the occupying forces. Banding together in “peace preservation corps,” they helped depose local communist rulers.
In Songhwa County of South Hwanghae Province, former landowners still bore a grudge against the deputy chief of the county People’s Committee for his leading role in the land reform of four years before. The man previously had been a substantial landowner himself in local terms, farming his approximately five acres with the help of relatives. Placed in charge of redistributing the county’s land, he had parceled out to those previously landless relatives more than enough to make up for the acreage he had been required to give up personally. Now his aggrieved neighbors saw their chance for revenge. Cooperating with South Korean troops who occupied the county they threw the official’s wife and six children down a 100-meter vertical mine shaft, killing them all.43
Kim Il-sung had already called for reinforcements, documents in the former Soviet archives show. On September 29, three months after the invasion, Kim wrote to ask Stalin to commit the Soviet Union to the war and request China to join the fighting as well. On October 1, Kim wrote directly to Mao to plead for a rescue mission.
The Chinese had anticipated being called upon. When the Americans intervened, Mao “quickly concluded that the real U.S. aim was to threaten China itself, and he began to act accordingly,” say scholars Sergei Goncharov, John W Lewis and Xue Litai. Within a week after the American intervention, the Chinese leader had begun to worry that the North Koreans could not achieve the quick victory Kim had promised. As early as July 7, when the KPA was still pressing south and demolishing all resistance, senior Chinese military officials shifted elite army units close to the Korean border in preparation for possible entry into the war. In quick succession they deployed added reserve units and put the troops through training exercises, with the Americans as their hypothetical enemy.44
Mao and some colleagues calculated, after a review, that they need not fear escalation beyond a conventional war because the Americans would not use nuclear weapons in either China or Korea.45 Their troops battle-ready and in position, the Chinese leaders watched the war. Once the UN troops had landed at Inchon, Mao wrote to his top general in the Northeast: “Apparently it will not do for us not to intervene in the war.” After Kim Il-sung requested help, saying North Korea could not put up sufficient resistance on its own, the Chinese Politburo met on October 2. Skeptics including Premier Zhou Enlai continued to argue that the new communist government should concentrate on pressing domestic matters instead of sending its poorly equipped soldiers for a showdown with the U.S. Army.46
On top of the alarming prospect that a U.S.-backed regime soon would govern the entire Korean peninsula and knock on China’s door, pressure from Stalin helped to stiffen backs. “If we do not send troops,” Mao said, “the reactionaries at home and abroad “would be swollen with arrogance when the enemy troops press to the Yalu River border.” Secretary of State Ache-son’s assurances that the United States had no designs on Chinese territory inspired little trust. If a showdown with the Americans was inevitable, as Mao believed, Korea was a more advantageous place to have it out than Taiwan or Vietnam, two other possibilities. On October 8, the day after units of the U.S. First Cavalry Division crossed the 38th parallel heading north, Mao issued an official order for China’s Northeast Frontier Force, under the new name of Chinese People’s Volunteers, to “march speedily to Korea and join the Korean comrades in fighting the aggressors and winning a glorious victory.47
That still was not the last word, however. Second thoughts ensued when there was a snag over Soviet assistance.48 Another politburo meeting was called for the evening of October 18. Yu Song-chol had gone with Pak Hon-yong to Beijing on Kim’s orders. Around midnight on October 18, the two met with the Chinese Politburo to brief them on the war and repeat the request for aid. When they had finished, “Mao Zedong began by informing us that the Politburo had already decided to send volunteer forces to Korea.” Mao used body language to advise on military strategy, asking his listeners to imagine that one of his legs was the U.S. forces; the other, South Korean forces. First surround and annihilate the South Koreans, and then the Americans will be helpless, he said—and he “raised one leg of his bulky body and hopped around on one foot.49
MacArthur countermanded a Pentagon order to use only South Korean forces near the Chinese border.50 On October 20, he ordered maximum effort to secure all of Korea. On October 24, Mao declared that U.S. occupation of Korea would be a serious threat to Chinese security and could not be tolerated. The first Chinese participation in battle came October 25.51 In October and November, hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops entered the fray.
According to Yu Song-chol, Kim Il-sung at that point lost overall command of the war: The Korean People’s Army was reduced to a support role, in charge of the eastern front, while the Chinese ran operations independently on the central front.52 At whatever temporary cost to his self-esteem, though, China had saved Kim’s bacon. The most important military result of his “strategic retreat” up to that point had been to show so much North Korean weakness the Chinese felt compelled to help.
Khrushchev recalled in his memoir of the Korean War that the Soviet ambassador in North Korea had been writing “very tragic reports concerning Kim Il-sung’s state of mind. Kim Il-sung was already preparing to go into the mountains to pursue guerrilla struggle again”—in other words, to leave the enemy in control of most of North Korea for the time being. He would have had little choice without Mao’s intervention. Stalin was adamant in his refusal to play the rescuer’s role—having become resigned, as Khrushchev wrote, “to the idea that North Korea would be annihilated, and that the Americans would reach our border.”53
United Nations forces were slow to recognize that they faced a new opponent. Early in December, while freshly promoted Lt. Col. Ed Logan’s unit was halted just short of the Yalu, another regiment of the Twenty-fourth Division reported having captured Chinese soldiers. “No one believed it at higher headquarters,” Logan would recall. Soon enough they had to believe, though. Logan’s Third Battalion got orders to head back to the Anju-Sinanju area and hold a crossroads until the retreating First Cavalry Division could pass through to the South. “The First Cav got chopped up something awful.” Logan’s battalion held the crossroads for two days, helping to evacuate First Cavalry Division casualties—“a bloody job.” The UN retreat continued. By December 6, Pyongyang was back in the hands of the North.
The Chinese were not using tanks as the North Koreans had in June and July. Instead, “hordes” of soldiers, hardy veterans of years of battles in the Chinese civil war, attacked at night, on foot, bypassing heavy weapons. “They could go for days with a bag of rice, an army coat, ammo and rifle,” Logan marveled. Americans weren’t accustomed to that sort of combat. “We are road-bound. We try to live in the field as we do at home.”54 South Korean divisions, made up of conscripts shipped to the front lines after only a few days of training, were even less prepared. They bore the brunt of the attacks
and, like many of the U.S. units, completely disintegrated.
MacArthur had said it would be over by Christmas. As it happened, it was on Christmas Day that a Chinese concussion grenade blew Logan off a hilltop in the vicinity of the Imjin River, north of Seoul, where UN forces were making a stand. Both eardrums burst and his back injured, he was flown to a hospital ship for repairs. Told he would be evacuated to Japan, he refused and returned to his command, believing the Chinese would attack on New Year’s Eve. Indeed, the Chinese did attack that day, sending masses of troops to attempt to cross the river. Logan’s unit held until January 2, 1951. The Chinese infiltrated through the Nineteenth Regiment’s flanks, which were exposed by the evacuation of units on its right. Three Chinese soldiers got to the headquarters tent area, where Logan’s men fought them hand to hand. At that point he decided it was time to evacuate his unit south-ward, joining the general retreat.
On January 4, 1951, the Chinese and North Korean troops recaptured Seoul. The UN forces retreated to a line farther south. Logan traversed the roads packed as far as he could see with South Korean civilians and dejected soldiers, once again trying to flee the communist forces, old and young carrying bundles on their heads, on their backs, on handcarts. North Korean soldiers were disguising themselves as refugees and joining the crowds to infiltrate behind the UN lines—“but how could you stop them?”
The Eighth Army commander, Gen. Matthew Ridgway ordered the units defending the new line not to take a fight-to-the-death approach but to save their resources for another day. However, they had nearly lost contact with the enemy. “We did not know exactly-where he was or in what strength— a real violation of the principles of warfare,” Logan said. Against orders, the battalion commanders sent patrols north-ward each day—two miles, then three, then four. Not sighting the enemy, they finally reported this to the division commander “and got chewed out a little.” In a couple of days, Ridgway ordered a task force of tanks, artillery and infantry to reconnoiter north toward Suwon and beyond. They succeeded, which was a great morale booster.
Logan’s role in the combat was over, however. In February of 1951, Ridgway, bringing in new blood for the next phase of the war, evacuated war-weary banged-up and sick regimental and battalion commanders who had been in Korea for the duration. Taking along two Silver Stars pinned on him for valor, Logan went to a hospital in Japan for surgery on his frostbitten toes and recuperation from a variety of other ailments.
Proclaiming a state of emergency in December of 1950, Truman had called upon “our farmers, our workers in industry and our businessmen to make a mighty production effort to meet the defense requirements of the nation.” His proclamation and a drastically increased defense budget signaled that the military-industrial complex was back in business, for the duration of the Cold War and beyond.
Typical of the fruits of the Truman proclamation was the reinvigoration of my hometown, whose post–Civil War slumber had been broken early in World War II with the decision to build and operate there the world’s largest aircraft plant under one roof. Government Aircraft Plant No. 6 closed after VJ Day and by 1950 kudzu vines threatened to engulf its echoing premises. But now the plant’s new contractor, Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, recalled managers, engineers and skilled machinists who had dispersed into the civilian economy55 True to Truman’s summons, Lockheed put out the word to the chicken farmers and shade-tree mechanics of North Georgia that a huge and well-paid production workforce was needed to dust off the Marietta facility and resume sending bombers to the Air Force.
***
Air power was the key to the evolving strategy in Korea. Two months after losing Seoul for the second time, the UN forces regained the capital. But the seesawing battles continued, with the two sides arrayed against each other in the vicinity of the former border. Carrying out a scorched-earth policy of aerial and naval bombardment in North Korea, the UN forces sought to deprive the Chinese and North Korean troops of logistical support from the rear and, ultimately, of the will to fight. Killing millions of people, in what Bruce Cumings once predicted “would be recognized eventually as an “American holocaust,”56 the bombings helped prevent reconquest of the South but fell short of defeating the communists.
As Chinese and North Korean soldiers stubbornly defended their positions, building a net-work of military tunnels along the front, North Korean civilians like-wise dug into mountainsides to construct underground factories that could withstand bombing raids. Children, according to official accounts, kept going to school during the war “while their pencil cases rattled” from the bombing. If those official sources can be credited, the Northerners simply became more determined—and, alas, more verbose: “Hero Kang Ho-yung was seriously wounded in both arms and both legs in the Kamak Hill Battle, so he rolled into the midst of the enemy with a hand grenade in his mouth and wiped them out, shouting: ‘My arms and legs were broken. But on the contrary my retaliatory spirit against you scoundrels became a thousand times stronger. I will show the unbending fighting will of a member of the Workers’ Party of Korea and unflinching will firmly pledged to the Party and the Leader!’”57
The truth, of course, is that war takes its toll on the morale of even the most motivated people. According to defector testimony, North Koreans had become so war-weary that many had come to hope simply for an end to the fighting, regardless of-which side might win.58
As the fighting and killing continued, MacArthur sought to resolve the bloody impasse by carrying the war to China. He wanted to unleash Chiang Kai-shek’s Taiwan-based Nationalist troops for a rematch with the Chinese communists, supporting them this time with American bombing—including the atomic bomb. American generals had been considering and making preparations for the possible use of nuclear weapons since the early weeks of the war, and Truman had publicly discussed the possibility in a press conference on November 30, 1950.59
Truman, however, favored an essentially defensive posture, fearing that MacArthur’s aggressive scheme would attract Soviet intervention (just as the Chinese, unbeknownst to him, had calculated). In the ensuing third world war, with American forces stretched too thin, Europe or Japan or both might fall to the communist forces. When MacArthur, against orders, persisted in maneuvering publicly and privately to get his way Truman fired him for insubordination. The war would be limited to a conventional “police action.”
Limited “war was an unpopular concept among Americans. Right-wing forces opposed it because they-wanted not mere “containment” of communist regimes at their current borders—the usual policy of Cold War–era governments in Washington—but an active “rollback” that would take on such regimes and remove them. Regime change was a minority position, however.
More important in shifting American opinion was the bloodshed that continued in Korea following MacArthur’s march to the Yalu. The violence came to seem gratuitous, giving rise to cynicism in the field that later would be portrayed graphically in the movie and long-running television series M*A*S*H. At home, as well, more and more Americans asked a simple but compelling question: Why get our men killed capturing and relinquishing real estate by the square inch in that far-off land—especially if the United States could wipe out the enemy with a few well-placed nuclear weapons?
Ceasefire talks began in mid-1951, with American officers and one South Korean representing the UN side while the North Koreans and Chinese fielded a joint delegation. Growing American sentiment in favor of using stronger measures to halt the fighting may have been one factor influencing the other side to agree to negotiate.60 Nevertheless, the North Koreans were ready to try to portray Washington’s eagerness to talk as evidence that Pyongyang had triumphed: The United States was “frantic,” “completely bewildered.”61
The talks snagged on the treatment of prisoners of war. UN negotiators insisted that each POW be permitted to decide whether to return to his country or not. Humanitarian considerations aside, Washington’s propaganda goal was to show up communism by encouraging many of
the North Koreans and Chinese to reject a return to communist rule. The communist side would have none of that, and insisted on the return of all prisoners according to the terms of the Geneva Convention.
American public support for Truman waned as the talks and the fighting dragged on, and he decided not to seek reelection. Dwight Eisenhower campaigned on a promise to “go to Korea”—-which voters took as a pledge to try to halt the war, even if that required more serious measures. After taking office as president in January 1953, the former general let North Korea’s allies in Beijing and Moscow know he was prepared to end the stalemate by expanding the war. He withdrew orders with which Truman had neutralized Taiwan; Chiang Kai-shek was now “unleashed,” and conceivably might decide to invade the Chinese mainland, opening a second front. Stalin’s death in March of 1953 further complicated matters for North Korea’s backers. In May, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles told Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru that the United States was prepared to exercise the nuclear option. Nehru duly passed along the threat.
Finally, on July 27, 1953, representatives of the United Nations, China and North Korea, meeting at the neutral village of Panmunjom (“Plank-Gate Tavern”), signed a ceasefire agreement. South Korea did not sign, since Rhee wanted to keep the war going and unify the peninsula. Many military commanders on the UN side privately agreed with him. The generals feared that the ceasefire, while averting further bloodshed in the immediate conflict, postponed an inevitable final reckoning with what they still viewed as the expansionist forces of worldwide communism—a reckoning that would prove even bloodier on account of the delay62
Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty Page 13
