The End of the War

THE UN INVADES NORTH KOREA ... AGAIN

The Chinese invasion petered out in late January, 1951, and in February to March the 8th Army launched a series of operations – Thunderbolt, Killer, Ripper, Courageous, Tomahawk – which drove the PVA back to the 38th Parallel. 

In April 1951, Operation Rugged crossed the parallel and advanced into North Korea, pushing forward five miles to the ‘Kansas Line’, and Operation Dauntless advanced even further to the ‘Wyoming Line’, some 20 miles north of the parallel. 

At this point, Truman had had enough.  Whispers in Washington were saying that having to go to Wake Island to meet MacArthur had been a huge insult to the President's authority.  MacArthur’s suggestion of using nuclear weapons was what Truman was desperate to avoid.  Most of all, MacArthur’s orders were to invade North Korea only if it did not provoke China to war – that had turned out disastrously in October 1950, yet here was MacArthur invading again!  On 11 April, Truman sacked MacArthur. 

STALEMATE

Fighting in 1951 was a disaster for both sides.  The Chinese Fifth Phase Offensive (April-May 1951) was defeated with perhaps 100,000 PVA casualties.  Equally, the result of UN forces’ attempt to ‘lean on’ the NKPA in September 1951 can be gathered from the names of the battles: eg ‘Bloody Ridge’ and ‘Heartbreak Ridge’. 

Thereafter, the war on the ground bogged down into a deadly war of attrition, fought in raids, mostly at night – a third of all US casualties occurred in this period, though the front line did not change at all.  The PVA would choose a UN defensive position, swarm it, then defend it to the death as UN soldiers died to take it back.  From the north, the PVA poured an average of 24,000 shells per day onto the US lines; in an attack, that could rise to 1,000 in ten minutes.  ‘White Horse’ Hill changed hands 24 times in the ten days 6-15 October 1952.  Worse still was Pork Chop Hill, site of a desperate hand-to-hand battle in July 1953, which resulted in 1,500 UN casualties, and perhaps 5,500 Chinese casualties, in six days fighting. 

In the air, the USAF was bombing North Korea to such an extent that airmen were returning to base saying that they could not find any more targets left to destroy.  Meanwhile, the USSR was sending modern MiG jets and trained airmen (disguised as Chinese, to avoid escalation); the Soviets/PVA lost 3,000 planes; the UN, 3,500. 

Behind the lines, fanatical communist POWs, imprisoned on Koje Island off Pusan, rioted and kidnapped the US officer in charge, scoring an embarrassing propaganda victory. 

The Chinese could not defeat the UN forces on the open plains of South Korea; but the UN realised that to dislodge the NKPA from the hills and ridges of North Korea would involve loss-of-life on a WWI scale. 

Washington made it clear to the US Army that the loss of life was politically unsustainable.  The United Nations stopped demanding the withdrawal of China, and passed Resolution 384 seeking a ceasefire. 

It was time to talk. 

PSYWAR

(Click the images to see a larger version:)

Source A - Two US leaflets

1950-53 the US 1st Radio Broadcasting and Leaflet Group dropped 2.2 billion leaflets.  This leaflet shows Stalin, pushing the PVA, pushing the NKPA into an explosion labelled 'South Korea'.  It asks: "Need you choose death for the sake of the Soviet Union and Communist China?"

This leaflet asks: "North Korea: A Chinese colony? Or a land of freedom?"

Source B - Two NKPA leaflets

This North Korean leaflet shows "the way leading to your home!" blocked by the US Army holding a gun, whilst US business unloads more men and materiel for the war.  Meanwhile, the soldiers' children are asking: "When'll papa be home, mama?"

This North Korean leaflet – showing an artillery barrel wrapped in a DPRK flag and an anguished US soldier serving the dollar – lists (exaggerated) US losses.

ATROCITIES

IIn October 1950, as the 8th Army pushed the NKPA back and into North Korea, two US Army surgeons, Capts Roberson ad Phelps, passed a small hill as they followed the troops.  There, buried waist-deep, hands wired behind their backs, faces in agony, were 500 ROK soldiers and 86 GIs; they had been bayoneted, clubbed or shot. 

In 1954, the US Army published a report of atrocities committed by enemy forces.  In addition to numerous examples of US soldiers being massacred:

“American prisoners of war who were not deliberately murdered at the time of capture or shortly after capture, were beaten, wounded, starved, and tortured; molested, displayed, and humiliated before the civilian populace and/or forced to march long distances without benefit of adequate food, water, shelter, clothing, or medical care to Communist prison camps, and there to experience further acts of human indignities.”

This behaviour, the report concluded “[cannot] be explained away on the grounds that inhumanity is often associated with so-called civilized warfare”. 

Nor was this behaviour restricted to the communists.  It has been estimated that ROK forces may have killed 100,000 civilians as they drove the communists out of South Korea; 30,000 members of the Bodo League were slaughtered.  The South Korean Truth Commission in 2010 found that ROK soldiers were guilty of four-fifths of the 9,600 cases it investigated, but exonerated US forces of 200 allegations of war crimes. 

This was very generous.  At No Gun Ri, in July 1950, US planes and ground troops fired on fleeing civilians, mainly women, children and old men, killing at least 150.  The US has also been accused of indiscriminate bombing of civilians, particularly during the saturation bombing of Pyongyang in 1952; official war histories record that 10,000 litres of napalm and 697 tons of bombs were dropped, resulting in the deaths of almost 8,000 people. 

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