South Korean War Research Paper

monsoon-drenched morning four decades ago and raged up and down a remote peninsula for 37 months. When it finally ended in a stalemate at a bleak "truce village" in no- man's land called Panmunjon, it had involved 22 nations, claimed five million lives and set off political and economic tremors that rever- berate still. It is appropriate on the anniversary of the Korean conflict (the Cold War turned hot) that we are now witnessing the apparent end of the Cold War. The animosity that prevailed be- tween North and South Korea after World War I1 ignited into open war- fare Sunday, June 25, 1950, when, without warning, the North invaded the South. President Harry S. Tru- man promptly ordered U.S. troops, planes and warships into action to defend South

The Korean War was an old- fashioned kind of war, dominated far more by field artillery, machine guns and rifles than by bombers, tanks and aircraft carriers. These modern weapons, along with para- troopers, occasionally figured in the fighting, but for the most part, the Korean War was fought along pre-20th Century lines. Hand-to- hand combat was common. Bayo- nets and hand grenades were widely used, as were barbed wire and field mines. It was once said of a war be- tween France and Austria that it was a war of 1859 fought between armies of 1809 using tactics of 1759; it might be said of Korea that it was a war of 1950 fought by ar- mies of 1945 using tactics of 19 16. The U.S. Army's total strength in 1950 numbered less than 600,000, with one division in Europe and four divisions on occupation duty in the Far East. Understrength was the norm: divisions had two regiments instead of three, regiments had two battalions instead of three and artil- lery battalions had two firing batter- ies instead of three. And as