After the Second World War, the question of who should control the Korean peninsula became a sticking point of the rapidly deteriorating U.S.-USSR alliance against the defeated Japan. After the Soviet dictator Stalin declared war on Tokyo in August 1945, it was decided that Russia should enter Korea and occupy it down to the latitude of the 38th parallel, cutting it in two, with the southern half occupied by the United States. As the South went about building a prosperous and relatively free nation (albeit under the thumb of our Princeton-educated puppet, Syngman Rhee) the communists solidified their iron grip over the north. By 1948, Korea was officially divided, each half claiming rightful authority over the other. It was clear that no peaceful re-unification would take place.
Gambling that the U.S. would not come to the defense of a nation its careless Secretary of State Dean Acheson had publicly offered was out of our zone of influence, on June 25, 1950, Kim Il-Sung sent his 90,000-man North Korean People’s Army (NKPA) across the 38th parallel to bring the south under communism’s jackboot once and for all. Equipped with Soviet-supplied tanks and artillery, the NKPA shattered the ill-prepared Republic of Korea (ROK) army and was soon poised to overrun the South. But to the communist leader’s surprise, U.S. President Harry Truman did, in fact, intervene and, leading the U.N. in the effort, sent American troops and materiel to South Korea. Although it was officially declared a “police action,” the United Nations had gone to war to defend a member state against blatant aggression. (In protest of Communist China’s exclusion from the body in favor of Taiwan, the Soviets had been boycotting the U.N., removing themselves from any position on the Security Council to veto the resolution. It was a mistake they never repeated.)
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