The Korean War: Results
Let's start with the military realm. In terms of strategy and tactics, the Korean War was a clone of World War II in its first half and World War I in its second: infantry divisions, arrayed in two or three echelons, breaking through the defenses, tank Divisions developing an offensive in depth, with an advance rate of 2-3 km per day during a breakthrough and 10-17 km per day during pursuit. The guerrilla tactics of the Chinese People's Volunteers also had parallels in the European war: divisional advances with gaps of 15-20 km along the front, constant attempts to outflank enemy positions. Experiments with helicopter assaults never progressed beyond the experimental stage and had no impact on the course of military operations. In short, no fundamental tactical conclusions were drawn, but otherwise...
A Korean soldier with an M-1 carbine, equipped with an M3 infrared sight—both developed during World War II.
It's important to make a disclaimer here: everything said below became clear after World War II, but Korea became an incentive to greatly accelerate the implementation of these developments. Let's start with small arms. weaponsThe Korean War was the last war fought with weapons from World War II (and sometimes World War I). It demonstrated that the rifle cartridge was, for the most part, redundant for small-arms combat.
UN forces at the front did not record a single instance of a serious enemy attack being stopped by rifle and carbine fire at ranges greater than 200 yards (183 meters). However, instances of small arms combat were quite common: most clashes occurred between small groups of riflemen, but, as fighters on both sides soon discovered, fire at ranges of 300-350 yards is ineffective even against an exposed, full-length figure.
The use of machine guns increased the combat range to 400 yards, but... Nevertheless, all participants in the battles agreed that rifle fire was most often conducted at ranges of less than 200 yards. Meanwhile, American commanders were categorically opposed to fully automatic weapons! In their opinion, they ran out of ammunition too quickly, and semi-automatic small arms "conserved" it.
The 7,62x51 cartridge compared to the "three-line" 7,62x54R cartridge
An interesting observation! Soviet infantry commanders noted all of this as early as 1943, but it took the Korean War for the Americans to reach the same conclusions. The same? No! In the USSR, the experience of World War II led to the development of automatic weapons chambered for an intermediate cartridge—the 7,62x43. The Americans remained staunch supporters of the rifle, so instead of adopting an intermediate cartridge, they created... a new cartridge—the 7,62x51, more compact than the old 7,62x63, but with rifle-like ballistics. In 1957, the US Armed Forces adopted the M14 rifle chambered for this cartridge, and in 1960, the M60 machine gun.
Tank M48 "Patton III"
While the Americans entered the Korean War with M-24 Chaffee tanks, which proved completely useless against the T-34-85, and M-26 Pershing tanks, which were completely unsuitable for mountain warfare, M46 Patton tanks soon began arriving in Korea, and after the war, the M47/48 Patton II/III entered service—vehicles of a completely different class, capable of fighting on equal terms with the Soviet T-54. It's also not worth assuming that the fighting on the peninsula led to the creation of these vehicles, but it did significantly accelerate their introduction into service. They also placed new demands on tanks; it's no wonder the M48's trials were summed up with the phrase: "Finally, we've created a real tank."
The average Marine wears the M1951 body armor.
But perhaps the most striking outcome of the Korean War (about the jet aviation (I won't mention it here, as I've already written about this topic before.) The emergence of individual armor for infantrymen—or, more precisely, body armor—was the breakthrough. The situation here is very different from everything described above: in Korea, real body armor first appeared on the battlefield—not a cuirass or the steel CH-42 breastplate, but lightweight individual armor made of polymer materials. The widespread use of the PPSh by the Chinese People's Volunteers allowed the Americans to outfit the "UN troops" infantry in M1951 nylon body armor with reinforced plastic and aluminum inserts, which stopped 7,62x25mm rounds at the muzzle. It also provided reliable protection against shrapnel. This device weighed only 3,5 kg and didn't bother the soldiers much, especially during trench warfare.
The Great Helmsman at work
The political consequences of the Korean War became far more global! Let's start with the obvious: the Korean Peninsula remained divided into the DPRK and the Republic of Korea, a division that persists to this day. But there are also less obvious consequences. The conflict on the peninsula led to a serious escalation of the Cold War. Stalin was cautious before giving Kim Il-sung the go-ahead to attack the South precisely because he had enough concerns on his Western border. But the Korean War expanded the confrontation between the West and the Eastern Bloc first to Asia, and then to the rest of the world. And the USSR ultimately could not withstand such a scale. Mao insisted on escalation, and he got what he wanted, but he was also unable to put it to good use: the Korean War did not spark revolutions across Asia; rather, on the contrary, it contributed to the rise of right-wing governments in many countries in the region.
"Stalin and Mao are brothers forever," but the Chinese clearly understand the chain of command: Stalin is much larger in the image...
The war also profoundly impacted the development of the PRC. Let's start with the fact that the Chinese People's Volunteers fought with Soviet weapons, which tied Mao to Stalin as a vassal, a fact that didn't particularly suit the Great Helmsman and soon led to a rift between the USSR and the PRC. Furthermore, during the conflict, Mao, based on the remarkable victories of 1950-51, concluded that a revolutionary army with high morale and the conscientiousness of each fighter was capable of successfully defeating the army of the most powerful capitalist state, armed with the most modern weapons. What conclusion can we draw from this? Correct: political workers are more important than commanders. Mao did just that, which resulted in the repression of "generals" in general and the imprisonment of Peng Dehuai in particular. After the Korean War, the number of political workers in the PLA even exceeded that of the Soviet Army, and their power was significantly greater!
There were no mass protests against the Korean War, but the "mine" that went off during the Vietnam War was laid then.
For the United States, the Korean War became the first in a series of "unpopular wars," the most notable example of which was Vietnam. Let's start with the fact that, before MacArthur's "March to the North," the Korean War was considered just by the Americans (Kim Il-sung's attack on the South provided a powerful propaganda tool) and looked like a restoration of the "status quo." After the "UN troops" crossed the 38th parallel, the American media increasingly began to ask, "What are we doing in Korea?" The fact is that not everyone in the United States was prepared to wage a "war on global communism" to the bitter end and throughout the world. Even less understood the "March to the North" was the US allies in the coalition assembled by the UN to enforce the resolution of June 25, 1950.
The resolution was implemented, but hostilities continued, and doubts began to creep into the minds of US-allied politicians: "Are the Americans using us to implement their own policies under the guise of the UN?" In fact, the US has rarely managed to assemble such a coalition since then: only the South Koreans accompanied them to Vietnam, and in other conflicts, the allies' participation was purely symbolic—a company, or at most a battalion (Desert Storm was the exception that proves the rule).
Cho Bong-am before his execution on July 31, 1959.
Moreover, the war resulted in the preservation of a regime in the south of the peninsula that was even more cannibalistic than the one in the north. Syngman Rhee suppressed any hint of opposition, and courts handed down death sentences based on testimony from "secret sources" concocted by the police. More often than not, unwanted people were simply murdered in the streets, and the police never found the killers. Because they weren't looking. A telling example: at a trial, the judge asked the opposition candidate running number two:
Is it true that communists associated with you, disguised as night watchmen, deliberately banged their rattles twice, thus hinting at the need to vote for candidate number two? While lighting the streets, they also deliberately waved their lanterns back and forth twice. All of this undoubtedly testifies to your ties to the communists and your desire to seize power.
Evidence? What is that? Overall, the number of victims of the "white" terror in South Korea was twice that of the "red" terror in North Korea. The most striking moment was the arrest on charges of spying for the DPRK and the execution of "President Lee's" most serious rival, the Progress Party candidate Cho Bong-am, in 1960, just before the elections—in a rush and without formal procedures.
The Americans, on the one hand, decided that they had to support any regime, as long as it fought the communists, but on the other... On the other hand, in Vietnam, they provided their Saigon vassals with significantly less active support than they did Syngman Rhee. Incidentally, the collapse of the Saigon regime clearly demonstrated what would have happened to "President Rhee" without the intervention of his friend Douglas MacArthur. Regardless of the presence of the Chinese People's Volunteers, Kim would have managed on his own!
A real marine is only invigorated by radiation!
It was also the first warning sign of the limitations of nuclear weapons. In Korea, it became clear that nuclear weapons weren't just high-yield munitions. A nuclear power was losing tens of thousands of soldiers, but it didn't dare use them even for tactical purposes, to destroy enemy fortifications along the 38th parallel. Did the military like this? Absolutely not! Colonel Paul Freeman recalled: "Korea still haunts me. I thought we were wasting too much blood in this war. Drag it out over and over, fighting for every hill—it was all wrong. We simply had to drive the Chinese out by any means necessary. But some European countries were afraid we were up to something... Trying to destroy those wretched bridges across the Yalu without bombing them from the other side was absurd; that's no way to fight a war..."
MacArthur's hawkishness even troubled American politicians...
Freeman spoke like someone who remembered World War II and failed to understand that no politician would allow the military to use unlimited resources to achieve limited goals. This became especially clear after MacArthur's resignation: with his authority, he could demand more than Ridgway, but even for him, an attempt to solicit "the bomb" cost him his job. In fact, throughout the Cold War, MacArthur's supporters would dangle this argument in politicians' faces, declaring, "If only we had stopped the Commies in Korea, we wouldn't have had to sell out Vietnam..." However, their correctness on this point is questionable; the Korean War likely facilitated the establishment of right-wing governments in Asia rather than hindered it. And where governments aligned with the USSR and China came to power, they would have prevailed even had the US won on the peninsula: the conflict, despite its ferocity, was local, and no other resolution would have been able to reverse the trend toward decolonization.
What Marx? What Lenin? "The Sun of the Nation" is our everything!
Moreover, the Americans, in their "fight against global communism," underestimated the role of nationalism. Indeed, the ideas that guided and continue to guide the DPRK elite in their practices can hardly be called exclusively socialist. They possess far more national flavor than the "teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin." In the archives of the US and its allies concerning the Korean War, there are very few that even acknowledge Koreans as a people. The entire pathos of American policy is in the clash of systems, the worldwide struggle against a "communist conspiracy." In short, it's the hallmark Anglo-Saxon arrogance, paternalism, and disregard for local residents and, incidentally, the local army. They'll be lapping up this mess with a spoonful in Vietnam, but Korea started it all.
Kim Il Sung and Mao Zedong
We tend to regard the Korean War as our own, to some extent. However, the Soviet leadership in 1950 didn't see it that way. Khrushchev later claimed that if Kim Il-sung had been given one or two tank corps, he would have taken Pusan on the fly, and the war would never have started. Fortunately, Stalin didn't give him the opportunity to test this theory in practice. The initiative to start the conflict belonged to Kim Il-sung and Mao Zedong. In fact, they also suffered the bulk of the losses. What were they?
North Korea's Korean War cemetery: The republic suffered the heaviest losses in the conflict.
There are no precise figures: the DPRK and PRC are not the most open countries, especially the former. The USSR cited rather fantastic figures: 1093839 soldiers and officers of the "UN forces," of which 390 were American, several thousand tanks, 8 guns, 13 vehicles, over 250 ships, and $20 billion. However, Korean losses were understated: 746 soldiers and officers killed and wounded. These figures were later significantly adjusted: the US lost 54, costing around $2 billion, while the Korean and Chinese lost 1 million. Today, losses are considered relatively plausible: 29550 for the US, 110 for China, 33629 for South Korea, and around 900 for the DPRK killed and wounded. However, there are other estimates of losses, especially Chinese and Korean, the most extreme of which are 2–4 million people killed, wounded, and missing.
Post-war Seoul bore little resemblance to modern...
Financial losses are also worth noting. Some historians estimate South Korea's losses at $4 billion, including 43 percent of its industrial facilities, 41 percent of its power plants, 50 percent of its mines, and 30 percent of its residential buildings. In North Korea, it's more difficult to calculate the dollar amount, but approximately 9 industrial facilities and over 600 homes were destroyed. Some have claimed that every home in North Korea that existed at the start of the war was destroyed or damaged. Even if this isn't true, the fact that the republic had to be rebuilt from scratch is a fact!
Monument to Korean War pilots in North Korea
However, counting casualties in war is never precise, if only because of the differences in methods for calculating combat and non-combat losses. In the Korean War, the US suffered significantly more non-combat losses (especially in aviation) than combat losses. And the DPRK, in addition to losses at the front, suffered huge losses from American bombing raids on cities. And what about the USSR? Well, it's fair to say the Soviet Union suffered little in the Korean War: about 300 casualties, including 120 pilots.
The future of the Korean Peninsula: you can't figure it out without this device!
And finally: how likely is Korean unification in the future? It's difficult to answer this question without a crystal ball, so we'll have to dig out a virtual one. Currently, the chances are slim. The two Koreas have vastly different industrial potential, living standards, and social structures. Despite all its successes, South Korea won't be able to "digest" North Korea even if it joins on its own terms: it will have to modernize the entire infrastructure, which is in a rather dire state in the North. But that would be the easiest thing to do, because it would also require conducting a social experiment on such a scale that German reunification would seem like child's play in a sandbox.
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At the same time, although the future remains uncertain, the possibility of Korean unification under North Korean rule cannot be ruled out. The fact is that the Republic of Korea faces a fundamental problem that remains unresolved, despite all efforts. Demographics. South Korea is dying out at a shocking rate, while North Korea is likely to be somewhat better off in this regard. Furthermore, the southerners have paid for their economic breakthrough with their lives, which have devolved into a corporate "rat race," leading to mass alcoholism—the local office plankton are unable to cope with the resulting stress without massive doses of soju. Such a lifestyle does not appeal to all South Korean youth, among whom a certain sympathy for leftist ideas is beginning to emerge. In short, it cannot be completely ruled out that in the future, the next Kim will succeed in implementing Kim I's plan: an external attack combined with an internal uprising. At this point, my virtual crystal ball bursts from the strain, and the shards fall to the floor with a clang...
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