Who started the Korean War and why?

                                 Yiming Luo, Wolfson College 

    One of the most disputed questions that Korea leaves the world is the mystery of the starter of the Korean War. How to understand this war, which is a significant part of the ongoing history of a divided Korea, can have an influence on the Korean history goes in the future. None of the shareholders involved in the war are willing to easily give up the moral or material advantages it already gained or the chance to gain it. As simple as is known to all, the war of guns is merely ceased but not concluded, so is the war of words.

    In order to improve human’s understanding on the truth, generalization is always employed when men studies the world, especially its history. However, whenever generalization take place, part of the truth disappears at the same time, even though it seemed to be understood. Whenever men give up generalizing in order to see the truth comprehensively, the complexity of it already make it hardly understandable. In the case of the Korean War, a Cold War pattern is usually applied to explain it. Under the Cold War perspective, Korean War is perfectly pigeonholed into a conflict of two confronting political blocs with different ideologies. Although in the battle field are only Korean, UN force dominated by US and Chinese, as is known to all, at the back of the North Korea, there is Soviet Union who did not show on the stage. In Stalin’s global strategy, Korea and China is involved in its major interests in Asia. A Communist Korean peninsular can be a good step board to threaten the Japanese, and a China fighting on the peninsular, will be hostile by the western world, which can make more trouble to the US and partake Russia’s pressure from its rival. On the other side, US could not tolerate a communist victory on the peninsular. The conflict of the super powers clearly has a great impact on the origin of the war.

    However, it is hard to imagine that some one others’ interests prompt Kim Il Sung and Rhee Sung Man to fire against each other. Either of them are real puppet of the super powers as they were called by each other. When they fight, for the most part they fight for themselves. So besides the international-scale, a look on the domestic-scale is also needed. One thing ironic about war in history is that war itself is the worst form of conflicts, but it is usually employed as a final solution to conflicts. The Korean War, not only reflects the conflicts between duopoly superpowers, but also that of the Koreans themselves. Supposing that the cold war context did not exist in the 1950s, the instable elements of the peninsular are still evident. The dramatic change in the Korean society in its modern history had already made it into complexity. The traditional Korean society with landed aristocracy and peasantry had gradually disintegrated towards one with a number of capitalist bourgeois and a much more populated working class. A social structural division of this kind, is no less significant than a geographic division along the 38 degree parallel to the historical track of Korea. Although the capitalist elite and the landed had most of the social resources, it can not overweight the majority of the population who constitute a large, impoverished and revolution-abled working class and peasantry. Profound social cleavage caused plural and confronted interests. No wonder that immediately after the demise of the colonialism Japanese, a huge amount of social organizations mushroomed to protect and promote the interests of its members. Another fatal element to worsen the cleavage is the lack of a single ideology that can consolidate the whole people. Nationalism did not work. The nationalism color of the alleged nationalist elite was gradually faded away due to their connections to the Japanese colonialism. Instead, socialism became an attracting option for the mass as it is implied in the widespread of People’s Committees. Communism was so popular based that when Kim Il Sung prepared himself for war, he was quite optimistic about the collaboration of the communists within the south.

    In a word, the intense conflict in the Korean society would certainly find a outlet, be it a civil war or not, and not necessarily in a north-south pattern. But because of the existence of the cold war context and the particular international climate, this outlet finally took the form of a hybrid war, both civil on the domestic level, and international on the global scale. 

Bibliography:

Cumings, Bruce. The origins of the Korean War. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981.

Goncharev, Sergei N. et al. Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993.

Cao Zhongping, Zhang Lianwei et. Modern History of Korea (Dangdai Hanguo shi), Nankai University Press, 2005.