At dawn on June 25, 1950 — 75 years ago today — soldiers of the communist Korean People’s Army crossed the 38th parallel in a coordinated strike south into the non-communist Republic of Korea.
Behind a rolling barrage of artillery, the Korean People’s Army, with Soviet-made tanks and aircraft, advanced quickly. The Republic of Korea's Army, unprepared and poorly equipped, suffered heavy losses. Within three days, the North Koreans occupied the South Korean capital, Seoul, and President Syngman Rhee — a protean, brutal autocrat — made a temporary capital in Busan on the south coast.
The Korean War has never formally ended. Although an armistice was signed on July 27, 1953, the conflict remains legally paused, and no peace treaty has ever been agreed to. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the Republic of Korea remain separated, north from south, by a 160-mile demilitarized zone that is patrolled by 2 million soldiers.
The U.S. had not expected a war in Korea. The division of the country into a Soviet-sponsored north and an American-backed south was a temporary post-World War II measure, pending reunification. When the Republic of Korea was established in 1948 and began forming its own military, President Harry Truman created a U.S. Military Advisory Group to train and support Rhee’s forces.
The U.S. military presence was withdrawn in 1949, leaving only 200 to 300 advisers. Secretary of State Dean Acheson outlined U.S. policy in Asia in his “Perimeter Speech” in January 1950, but his perimeter did not include Korea. A CIA memorandum the same month described a North Korean invasion as “unlikely.”
Then the invasion happened. It was immediately condemned by the U.N. Security Council. Washington could not allow South Korea to fall to communism, as a non-hostile Korea was essential for the security of Japan, the lynchpin of American policy in the region.
Gen. Douglas MacArthur was placed in charge of the United Nations Command — still in existence today — to defend South Korea. By the beginning of 1951, there were 498,000 United Nations ground troops in Korea, half of them American. The active conflict phase of the war lasted for three years, with the loss of 35,000 American lives. Today, U.S. Forces Korea numbers around 28,500.
Truman never referred to the conflict as a war but rather a “police action” under U.N. command. Yet Korea is the ultimate “forever war,” the lack of a formal treaty rather than an armistice making it easily America’s longest conflict. It also prefigured some features of modern warfare, not least in in Ukraine.
The very messiness of definition and outcome in Korea has contemporary resonance, given the difficulty of imagining what a settlement between Ukraine and Russia might look like today. It was also a war conducted at several levels: the acknowledged protagonists were the American-led U.N. coalition on one side against North Korea and (after October 1950) China on the other, but the Soviet Union supplied equipment, aircraft and pilots to North Korea.
As with Ukraine, Western nations were unprepared and ill-equipped to fight in Korea after drawing a huge peace dividend from the end of World War II five years earlier. Between 1945 and 1947, the U.S. armed forces reduced its personnel by nearly 90 percent, the U.K. by 85 percent. As America adapted to a defensive posture, much intellectual and administrative energy was consumed by the closer integration of the armed services in the National Security Act of 1947.
In a similar way, Western nations have rapidly depleted their peacetime inventories of arms and ammunition in supplying Ukraine. The conflict has also forced the U.S. and its allies to reexamine organization, strategy, tactics and doctrine at a breathless pace.
The specter of nuclear weapons hung over the Korean War. At a press conference in November 1950, Truman, pressed on potential use of the atomic bomb, said “there has always been active consideration of its use.” He denied that it required the authorization of the U.N., insisting “the military commander in the field will have charge of the use of the weapons, as he always has.”
A press release issued later that day tried to downplay, but not rule out, this prospect. “Consideration of the use of any weapon is always implicit in the very possession of that weapon,” it read. “However, it should be emphasized, that, by law, only the President can authorize the use of the atom bomb, and no such authorization has been given.”
MacArthur asked for discretion as commander in the field to use nuclear weapons, then submitted a list of targets for which he would need 34 atomic bombs. His request was denied, but not as a matter of policy. The Joint Chiefs of Staff would consider the nuclear option again after MacArthur was relieved in April 1951.
America had only lost its nuclear monopoly in 1949, when the Soviet Union detonated its first fission bomb, but by 1951 it maintained a massive numerical advantage over the U.S.S.R. There was still a lively debate about whether the atomic bomb was a weapon like any other, albeit vastly more powerful, or a fearful class apart.
Vladimir Putin has several times during the war in Ukraine attempted to use his strategic and tactical nuclear weapons as a threat and deterrent. Seventy-five years on, we are all still playing an unknown game, as nuclear weapons have never been used since August 1945. No one knows — nor can know — where the limits are or what the consequences might be.
Despite 35,000 American dead, the Korean War is often dubbed “the forgotten war.” That may stem from its lack of genuine conclusion and the absence of a clear narrative. But if history does not repeat itself, it can often rhyme, and Korea has sometimes found its counterpart in Ukraine. Seventy-five years after the Korean War began, that alone is worth pause for reflection.
Eliot Wilson is a freelance writer on politics and international affairs and the co-founder of Pivot Point Group. He was senior official in the U.K. House of Commons from 2005 to 2016, including serving as a clerk of the Defence Committee and secretary of the U.K. delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.
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