The Korean War -> Impacts + Consequences Flashcards
What were two main reasons for why the Korean War ended?
- Truman loses the 1952 November election to Eisenhower
- Stalin dies in March 1953
What overall impacts did the Korean War have on South Korea and North Korea?
- Long-term security protected
- No further warfare on Korean peninsula from Panmunjom Armistice Agreement
- Uneasy stability
- Between 3-4 million civilians killed
- NK fell behind SK economically
- US troops remained, causing tension between 2 states
How many deaths were there during the Korean War?
- 3.5 - 4 million Korean civilians
- 1.2 million combatants from all sides
Outline the National Defence Corps Incident:
in the winter of 1951, 50,000 to 90,000 South Korean National Defence Corps soldiers starved to death while marching southward under the Chinese offensive when their commanding officers embezzled funds earmarked for their food
How much damage was done to Korea’s economic infastructure?
Significant damage was done to Korea’s economic infrastructure - especially in the North - with widespread economic hardship
what did American Major General Emmett O’Donnell report about Korean destruction?
In mid-1951, American Major General Emmett O’Donnell reported that “almost the entire Korean Peninsula is just a terrible mess. Everything is destroyed”
How many tons of bombs did the U.S. drop on Korea?
The US dropped 635,000 tons of bombs - including 32,557 tons of napalm - on Korea
- don’t learn their lesson and try to fight same war in Vietnam and don’t win
- more than they did on its Japanese enemy during the whole Pacific campaign of WWII
- however, Korea was not industrialised/ not a threat like imperial Japan -> wastes thousands of lives
Did the Soviets and Americans go to war in Korea?
The Soviets and the Americans never go to war and the dying happens in the Third World
What kind of war can the Cold War be classified as and why?
an ‘undeclared Third World war’
- mixed up with the issue of decolonisation, struggle of people to escape domination of foreign imperialist powers
What made the Korean War an extremely costly war?
- $18 billion spent
- largely due to fighting a ‘High-tech war of Attrition’
- where you wear your enemies down until they can’t fight anymore worked in WWII but not in Korea
When did the Chinese join the war and what technique did they use?
The Chinese joined the war in 1950 and used ‘human wave attacks’
How was North Korea particularly effected by the war?
- There was massive loss of life and significant economic hardship
- Capital , Pyongyang saw 75% of the city destroyed by the bombing
what did an internal damage assessment from the US Air Force say about North Korea?
“eighteen of twenty two major cities in North Korea had been at least half obliterated”
How had South Korea established itself after the war?
South Korea esablished itself as a state firmly in the Western camp, with American troops stationed there.
- in this sense, ‘containment’ was successful
- Communist expansionism from the North was prevented
- a pro-American state was established
How would South Korea’s economy go onto develop in the future ?
- South Korea would go on to develop a successful capitalist economy based on advance technology
- a major trading partner with Japan and the USA, South Korea was arguably exactly the kind of state that the USA aimed for East Asia
How had North Korea established itself after the war?
North Korea remained firmly in the Communist camp till this day
Who had been more rebuilt by 1960?
Reconstruction began and by 1960, North Korea had rebuilt more than South Korea
What happened in South Korea in 1962?
In 1962, South Korea began rapidly industrialising and had overtaken North Korea by the 1980s
What was the overall consequence of the Korean War for the USSR?
The war was a political disaster for the Soviet Union
Why was the war a political disaster for the USSR?
Its central objective, the unification of the Korean peninsula under the Kim Il-Sung regime was not achieved
- boundaries of both parts of Korea remained practically unchanged
What impacts did the Korean War have on Sino-Soviet relations?
- Raised tensions from disagreements over who should pay for supplies and damages
- The Chinese did all the fighting and suffered the most losses
- The Chinese came to feel that the Soviet Union was both an unreliable and demanding ally and took greater steps to ensure independence from the USSR in the years following the war
- USSR demanded cheap raw materials in return for signing Sino-Soviet Pact
- Made PRC pay excessive sums for military supplies
What did strained relations between the Soviet Union and China lay the foundations for?
The foundations of the Sino-Soviet split that would occur in 1956-62 were laid
What could the US have done to prevent a Soviet intervention in Yugoslavia?
The US’ strong resistance to the invasion may have prevented a Soviet intervention in Yugoslavia during the Tito-Stalin split
- Americans had a strong interest in protecting Tito
How did the Korean War unite countries within the capitalist bloc?
- the Korean War accelerated the conclusion of a peace agreement between the U.S and Japan
- accelerated the warming of West Germany’s relations with other western countries
- accelerated the creation of military and political blocs ANZUS (1951) and SEATO (1954)
What was ANZUS (1951)
A military treaty between Australia, New Zealand, USA and was all about containment
