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THE PUSAN PERIMETER

AUG.-SEP. 1950
GENERAL DISPOSITION OF 8TH ARMY & NORTH KOREAN FORCES

U. S. MARINE OPERATIONS IN KOREA
1950–1953
VOLUME I
The Pusan Perimeter

by
LYNN MONTROSS
and
CAPTAIN NICHOLAS A. CANZONA, USMC

Historical Branch, G-3
Headquarters, U. S. Marine Corps
Washington, D. C., 1954

Foreword

An ability to furnish skilled forces to meet emergency situations on short notice has long been a hallmark of the Marine Corps. When the call came for such a force to be dispatched to Korea on 2 July 1950, the Corps was handicapped by the strictures of a peacetime economy. Nevertheless, a composite brigade consisting of a regiment and an air group was made available within a week’s time.

With a reputation built largely on amphibious warfare, Marines of the 1st Brigade were called upon to prove their versatility in sustained ground action. On three separate occasions within the embattled Perimeter—south toward Sachon and twice along the Naktong River—these Marine units hurled the weight of their assault force at the enemy. All three attacks were successful, and at no point did Marines give ground except as ordered. The quality of their performance in the difficult days of the Pusan Perimeter fighting made them a valuable member of the United Nations team and earned new laurels for their Corps.

Lemuel C. Shepherd, Jr.,
General, U. S. Marine Corps,
Commandant of the Marine Corps.

Preface

This is the first volume of a planned series dealing with United States Marine Operations in Korea during the period 2 August 1950 to 27 July 1953. Volume I is designed to give the military student and the casual reader an accurate and detailed account of the operations in which Marines of the 1st Provisional Brigade and Marine Air Group 33 participated during the fighting in the Pusan Perimeter, from the date of their landing on 2 August until their withdrawal on 13 September 1950, in preparation for the Inchon landing.

Since this is primarily a Marine Corps story, the activities of other services during this period are not described in detail except to present a proper background to the overall account.

Many officers and men who participated in this campaign have contributed to the preparation of the book by answering inquiries, submitting to interviews, and commenting on the preliminary manuscript. Their assistance has been invaluable. Special acknowledgment is also extended to the Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, Pacific Section, and particularly Lieutenant Colonel Roy E. Appleman, USA, for enemy intelligence material; to the Marine Corps Board Study: An Evaluation of the Influence of Marine Corps Forces on the Course of the Korean War for its interpretations and conclusions; and to Life Magazine for courtesy shown in permitting use of Korean photographs made by Mr. David D. Duncan. Maps included herein were prepared by the Reproduction Section, Marine Corps Schools, Quantico, Va. United States Army, Navy and Marine Corps photographs have also been used to illustrate this monograph.

T. A. Wornham,
Brigadier General, U. S. Marine Corps.
Assistant Chief of Staff, G-3.

Contents

Illustrations

CHAPTER I
Korea, Doorstep of Strategy

The Historical Background—The Russo-Japanese War—Korea as a Japanese Colony—The Partition of Korea—Red Victory in China—Civil Strife in Korea

It meant little to most Americans on 25 June 1950 to read in their Sunday newspapers that civil strife had broken out in Korea. They could hardly have suspected that this remote Asiatic peninsula was to become the scene of the fourth most costly military effort of American history, both in blood and money, before the end of the year. Yet the danger of an explosion had been present ever since the end of World War II, when the United States and the Soviet Union rushed into the political vacuum created in Korea by the defeat of Japan.

The Korean question came up officially for the first time at the Cairo Conference of December 1943. With Soviet Russia not yet being represented as a belligerent in the Far East, the United States, Great Britain and China agreed that “in due course Korea shall become free and independent.”[1]

[1] Quoted in James F. Byrnes, Speaking Frankly (New York: Harper, 1947), 221.

Any discussion of this issue had to take into consideration Korea’s status as a Japanese possession since 1910. Government, industry, commerce, agriculture, transportation—every phase of Korean life had been administered by Japanese for the benefit of Japan. As a consequence, the 25,000,000 inhabitants of the peninsula were woefully lacking in experience to fit them for the responsibilities of independence.

Syngman Rhee, the elderly Korean patriot, had long been clamoring for recognition of his Korean government in exile. The United States hung back because of reluctance to offend Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator, at a time when Russia was a powerful military ally. Moscow had a strong bargaining point, moreover, in the prospect of giving military aid to the United States in the fight against Japan. Such an alliance was particularly desirable from the American viewpoint early in 1945 because of the losses resulting from Japanese kamikaze tactics. In the belief that active Soviet participation might shorten the war and save thousands of American lives, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was disposed to compromise with Stalin.

THE STRATEGIC TRIANGLE

The two agreed informally at the Yalta Conference of February 1945 that Korea should be independent “... and that if a transition period were necessary, a trusteeship should be established,” according to James F. Byrnes, United States Secretary of State. He added in his memoirs that “a desire to help the Koreans develop the skills and experience that would enable them to maintain their independence was the inspiration for President Roosevelt’s acquiescence in the trusteeship idea.”[2]

[2] Byrnes, loc. cit.

The Soviet dictator made a plea at Yalta for historical justice. Although Czar Nicholas II had been execrated as a tyrant and warmonger in Communist doctrine, Stalin demanded that the “wrongs” resulting from the Russo-Japanese War be righted 40 years later. The price of Soviet military aid against Japan, in short, was the restoration of Russian territory in the Far East that had been lost in the defeat of 1905.

The Historical Background

It was inevitable that the fate of Korea would be involved in any such readjustment. Korea is one of those tragic areas of the earth’s surface which are destined in all ages to be a doorstep of strategy. As the focal point of the China-Russia-Japan triangle, the peninsula offers each of these powers a threshold for aggression against either of the other two. Possession of Korea has been for centuries an aim of aspiring conquerors in the Far East, and all three rival nations have had a turn.

China was first. From ancient times down to the last quarter of the 19th century, the Chinese Empire held a loose suzerainty acknowledged by the Koreans. Japan won a brief foothold in the 16th century under the great war lord Hideyoshi, only to learn the painful lesson that control of the sea is requisite to a seaborne invasion of a peninsula. Naval victories by the Koreans cut Hideyoshi’s line of communications, and he withdrew after frightful devastations which left an enduring tradition of fear and hate. Both Japan and Korea then entered upon a period of self-imposed isolation lasting until their political hibernation was rudely interrupted by Western nations clamoring for trade.

The United States took the lead in inaugurating a new era in the Far East. Commodore Perry and his American warships opened up Japan to commerce in 1853. Several persuasive bombardments of coastal cities by American, British and French naval guns were required to end Japan’s seclusion; and in 1871 an American squadron was sent to Korea after the destruction of an American merchant ship and massacre of its crew. United States Marines and bluejackets stormed Korean river forts defended by cannon. All objectives were taken and heavy casualties inflicted, but it remained for Japan to open up the “Hermit Kingdom” to trade 4 years later with the threat of war.

Russia had not been a disinterested bystander during this era of cannon-ball diplomacy. Her participation in Far Eastern affairs dated back to the 17th century and had once extended to the North American mainland. The sale of Alaska to the United States in 1867 indicated a renunciation of this phase of expansion, but Russia had no intention of abandoning her ambitions in the Far East. Shortly after Japan compelled Korea to sign a treaty of amity, the Russians offered to train Korean officers and lend military aid to the faction-ridden kingdom.

At this point China took a hand. Suspecting that the two rival nations were dabbling in Korean affairs for purposes of their own, the Celestial Empire attempted to restore her suzerainty.

This policy was bound to lead to a collision. Western nations were not surprised when Japan and China resorted to arms, but few observers expected the supposed dwarf to beat the giant with ease. Japan’s well led army, equipped with the best modern weapons, landed at Chemulpo (Inchon) and captured the Chinese fortress at Pyongyang in northwest Korea. Sweeping across the Yalu into Manchuria, the invaders overran the strategic Liaotung Peninsula, taking Port Arthur and Dairen.

It was all over in a few months. When the Empire proper was threatened with invasion, the Chinese government sued for peace in 1895.

The Japanese terms were more than severe, they were humiliating. They included: (1) a large indemnity; (2) the cession “in perpetuity” of the Liaotung Peninsula as well as Formosa and the Pescadores group; and (3) Chinese recognition of what the Japanese were pleased to call “Korean independence.”

But the victors had overdone it. Russia, Germany, and France formed the Triple Intervention which compelled Japan to relinquish the Liaotung Peninsula. The three European powers preferred that this strategic bastion remain in the possession of China, which was ripe for despoiling at the convenience of the Western nations.

Russia now assumed the role of a friend binding China’s wounds. The secret treaty of alliance signed by the two empires in 1896 was aimed like a pistol at Japan. In return for promises of support in the event of further Japanese aggressions, China gave Russia the right to extend the Trans-Siberian Railroad to Vladivostok across Chinese territory in Manchuria.

The precept was not lost upon other European nations. England, Germany, and France also established spheres of influence in China after forcing the government to lease territory or grant special privileges. And Russia added to former gains by a 25-year lease of the Liaotung Peninsula.

THE FAR EAST

China’s Boxer Rebellion of 1900 interrupted the march of events, but two treaties in 1902 indicated that Japan and Russia would soon be at each other’s throats. Japan acquired an ally in England, as a result of that nation’s alarms over Muscovite designs, so that the neutrality of European powers was practically assured. Russia and China drew closer meanwhile with a new treaty of alliance. The stage was set for a fight to the finish in the Far East.

Possession of the Philippine Islands had given the United States a new interest in Far Eastern affairs since the Spanish-American War of 1898. John Hay, Secretary of State, realized that the American “open door” policy was imperiled by the situation in Asia.[3] But he admitted in April 1903 that nothing short of the threat of armed force could have checked Russia’s encroachments.

[3] Pauline Tompkins, American-Russian Relations in the Far East (New York: Macmillan, 1949), 21.

The Russo-Japanese War

A candid comparison would reveal a striking similarity between the aggressions of Czarist Russia in the early 1900’s and those of Soviet Russia half a century later. The expression “cold war” was not current in 1903, but the account of Russia’s threats, seizures and violated agreements has a dismally familiar aspect to the modern reader. Rudyard Kipling paid a bitter tribute at the turn of the century to these techniques of the Russian Bear in his lines:

When he stands up like a tired man, tottering near and near;
When he stands up as pleading, in wavering, man-brute guise,
When he veils the hate and cunning of his little swinish eyes;
When he shows as seeking quarter, with paws like hands in prayer,
That is the time of peril—the time of the Truce of the Bear!

Following the Sino-Japanese War, the truce between Russia and Japan in “independent” Korea was broken by both nations whenever a favorable opportunity arose. Both of them intrigued constantly at Seoul. For a time, indeed, the Korean government was directed from the Russian legation with the backing of Russian troops.

Twice, in 1896 and 1898, Russia and Japan signed agreements reaffirming Korea’s independence and promising anew to withdraw their forces. These pacts were promptly violated by both contestants for power, but Japan prepared more realistically for the forthcoming struggle. On a February night in 1904, without the formality of a declaration of war, a Japanese squadron attacked the Russian warships anchored at Port Arthur. This surprise blow was followed shortly by the landing of Japanese troops at Chemulpo. They advanced to the frontier and defeated the Russians in the battle of the Yalu—a victory that has been compared with the battle of Valmy in the French Revolution as a landmark of history.

Certainly the West was made aware that an Oriental nation had risen to the stature of a world power for the first time in modern history. The value of Korea as a strategic springboard was demonstrated when Japanese land and sea forces isolated the fortresses on the Liaotung Peninsula. Port Arthur fell after a bloody siege of 6 months. Next, the Japanese invaders of Manchuria defeated an army of 350,000 Russians and inflicted 150,000 casualties in the four-week battle of Mukden. This was the decisive clash on land; and in the one-sided naval battle of Tsushima, Admiral Togo annihilated the Baltic fleet which the Czar had ordered on the long voyage to the Pacific.

The end came abruptly in the summer of 1905. In the Treaty of Portsmouth, signed on 5 September, Russia ceded the southern part of Sakhalin Island to the victors while recognizing their “paramount” interests in Korea. All rights in the Liaotung Peninsula went to Japan as well as important concessions in Manchuria. Not much was left to Russia in the Far East except a precarious foothold in northern Manchuria.

Korea as a Japanese Colony

For 5 years Japan kept up a pretense of a protectorate in Korea. Then, in 1910, came outright annexation.

Europe’s “balanced antagonisms” soon flared up in World War I, leaving Japan free to exploit Korea as a colony. Western observers might have noted such evidences of modernization as new docks, railroads, factories and highways. But they were administered by Japanese overseers as Koreans sank to the level of coolies without a voice in the government.

Although Japan joined the fight against the Central Powers in World War I, her military efforts were made against allies as well as enemies. Using Korea as a beachhead, she attempted to enlarge her empire on the Asiatic mainland at the expense of Russia, then in the throes of revolution. Three years after the Armistice, a Japanese army still occupied the Vladivostok area; but the United States took such a firm diplomatic stand that Tokyo backed down.

This retreat was only a postponement. During the next decade Japan set up a strategic shield to the east and south by fortifying the mandated islands of the Pacific, awarded to her after the war. Treaties and agreements were violated whenever convenient, and in 1931 she turned westward again to satisfy her appetite for Russian and Chinese territory.

The time was well chosen. With the Western nations in the depths of an industrial depression, Japan began a series of aggressions against the Chinese in Manchuria. The gains were consolidated in a puppet state known as Manchukuo, comprising a fertile and populous area as large as California. China was unable to offer much resistance, and Soviet Russia could not risk a major war in the Far East. Even so, some of the Soviet border clashes with the Japanese in time of “peace” were actually battles fought with tanks and planes.

In 1937 came the Japanese invasion of China proper. Germany and Italy were launching aggressions of the same stamp in Europe and Africa, and the world was to know little stability until all three totalitarian states had been crushed in World War II.

Soviet Russia had a grim struggle for survival while resisting the full tide of Nazi invasion. But at the time of the Yalta Conference, Stalin was in a position to ask a stiff price for military aid in the Pacific. The United States agreed that the Port Arthur area and southern Sakhalin should be returned to Russia to redress the “wrongs” of 1905. Concessions were also made in Manchuria and outer Mongolia.

Stalin, for his part, consented to sign a treaty of friendship with Nationalist China as an ally of the United States. Later events made it evident that he had no intention of keeping his pledges. On the contrary, Soviet policy already visioned a Communist empire in the Far East which would include China as well as Korea.

The Yalta Agreement was stridently criticized in the United States after Stalin’s duplicity became apparent. But the War Department took a realistic view as early as the spring of 1945:

“The concessions to Russia on Far Eastern matters which were made at Yalta are generally matters which are within the military power of Russia to obtain regardless of United States military action short of war.... The Russians can, if they choose, await the time when United States efforts will have practically completed the destruction of Japanese military power and can then seize the objectives they desire at a cost to them relatively much less than would be occasioned by their entry into the war at an early date.”[4]

[4] U. S. War Dept memo for Acting Sec of State, 21 May 45, quoted in Joseph C. Grew, Turbulent Era: A Diplomatic Record of Forty Years (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1952), 2:1457–1458.

This was precisely what happened. Moscow waited to declare war until 8 August 1945—6 days before the imminent collapse of Japan. Soviet forces fought only a few actions in Siberia with a Japanese army stripped of planes for home defense. As a consequence, Russian propagandists found it hard to paint a convincing picture of “the heroic deeds of our brave Far Eastern warriors.”[5] Obviously they had met little resistance while overrunning Manchuria and northern Korea to accept the surrender of nearly 600,000 Japanese troops, including 148 generals. These prisoners were sent to Siberia for years of servitude; and the “conquerors” despoiled Manchuria of heavy machinery, turbines, dynamos and rolling stock.[6]

[5] David J. Dallin, Soviet Russia and the Far East (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948), 213.

[6] Ibid., 214, 244. Such seizures were in violation of international law, of course, and Soviet Russia had pledged the prompt repatriation of Japanese prisoners at the Potsdam Conference in July 1945.

The value of this booty has been estimated at a billion dollars, and the forced labor of Japanese war prisoners during the next 5 years was worth at least another billion. Not satisfied with these spoils, Moscow also demanded a share in the occupation of Japan. This design was balked by General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, supreme Allied commander, who made it plain that he needed no such assistance.[7]

[7] Ibid., 214, 239.

Even after the guns fell silent, there was no peace. One enemy had been exchanged for another, since Soviet Russia took advantage of war-weary allies to follow in the footsteps of Germany and Japan. There was the same familiar pattern of encroachment both in Europe and the Far East. There were the same violations of treaties, the same unfriendly acts falling just short of hostilities. The cold war had begun.

Oppression at home and aggression abroad—this had been the policy of Russia’s czars, and it became the policy of Russia’s dictators. Despotism had been replaced by Communism, but there was little difference. Communism proved to be an old tyranny presented as a new ideology, and Joseph Stalin succeeded where Nicholas II failed. Circumstances were kinder to Stalin, and he gobbled up territory in Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Germany, Hungary, Rumania, Mongolia and Manchuria.

Never before had one man ruled so much of the earth’s surface. Yet there was something neurotic and fear-ridden about the Kremlin’s outlook which success could not cure. It has long been a historical theory that this psychosis may be traced back to Russia’s bondage in the Middle Ages under the Mongols and Tartars. At any rate, victory and enormous spoils did not give Moscow a sense of security in 1945. Buffer state was piled upon buffer state, and thousands of World War II prisoners were enslaved behind the “iron curtain” to build new Soviet military installations.

The Partition of Korea

The importance of Korea in the Soviet scheme of things was indicated by the haste with which Russian troops crossed the frontier on 12 August 1945, three days after the declaration of war. They were the vanguard of an army numbering a quarter of a million men led by General Ivan Chistyakov, a hero of the battle of Stalingrad.

The surrender terms called for a joint American and Soviet occupation, with the 38th parallel serving as a temporary line of demarcation. Not until 8 September, however, did Lieutenant General John R. Hodge reach southern Korea with the first American troops.

By that time the Russians had gone through their usual routine, and the machinery taken from northern Korea was estimated at 30 to 40 percent of the industrial potential. Looting by Soviet troops went unpunished, and regular supplies of food for the huge army were demanded from an impoverished people just freed of the Japanese yoke.[8]

[8] Ibid., 285.

The Russians had a tremendous advantage over United States occupation forces. Since World War I more than a million Koreans had found a refuge from Japanese bondage on Russian or Chinese soil. Thousands of men had been indoctrinated with Communist principles and given military training to aid the Chinese Reds fighting the Japanese invaders of China. Thus in 1945 the Russians could count on the efforts of Korean revolutionists to establish Communist rule in their homeland behind a façade of democracy.

KOREA

The United States forces, on the contrary, did not even have enough interpreters. They impressed the Koreans at first as being alien occupation troops setting up a military government. Meanwhile, the Russians had installed an interim civil government at Pyongyang. Korean Reds filled the key positions, and Stalin’s portraits and the hammer and sickle emblem were seen at political rallies.

Koreans of all persuasions opposed the division of their country into two zones on either side of the 38th parallel. The Reds at Pyongyang contrived to lay the blame on the Americans. They made a further appeal to Koreans on both sides of the boundary by announcing a land reform in the northern zone. Ever since 1905 a Japanese landlord had been the hated symbol of oppression. Pyongyang won a great propaganda victory, therefore, by announcing the confiscation of all large estates, Korean as well as Japanese, and the division of the land among the peasantry.

The bait was so tempting that the hook did not become apparent until too late. Then the beneficiaries of the Agrarian Reform discovered that they could neither sell nor rent the land, nor could they use it as security for loans. If anyone ceased to work his holding, it reverted to the People’s Committee, which allocated it to some other family. The State retained possession, in short, and the peasant remained as much of a serf as ever. Worse yet, the taxes disguised as “production quotas” eventually amounted to 60 percent of the total crop, which was more than the Japanese had extorted.[9]

[9] Robert T. Oliver, Why War Came to Korea (New York: Fordham University Press, 1950), 149.

This is a sample of the methods used to reduce North Korea to a police state, just as similar states were being organized in occupied lands of Europe by local Reds doing the bidding of Moscow. In the Soviet zone of Korea all banks, factories and industries of any consequence were nationalized by the so-called People’s Committee.[10] Military training for offensive warfare was given to men armed with captured Japanese weapons. Pressure was put upon these recruits to “volunteer” for combat service with the Chinese Reds waging a civil war against the Nationalists.[11]

[10] Dallin, op. cit., 291.

[11] Oliver, op. cit., 5.

Red Victory in China

Moscow was secretly backing the Communists led by Mao Tse-tung in their efforts to wrest China from the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek. Such activities, of course, were in violation of the treaty of friendship and alliance with Nationalist China which Stalin had signed on 14 August 1945. But agreements were never allowed to interfere with Soviet ambitions, and Moscow aimed to create in Asia a bulwark of Communist puppet states extending from the Arctic to the tropics.

Asiatic soil was peculiarly suited to the growth of such institutions. Although Communism derived originally from the theories of a German revolutionist, Karl Marx, it was adapted by Lenin and Stalin to the political climate of Asia. Human lives and liberties have always been held cheaply in the East, and absolutism has been the rule in government. Communism, as it developed in Russia after the revolution of 1917, would probably have been better understood by Genghis Khan than Marx. For it is significant that no Western nation has ever embraced this political faith voluntarily, even though it has attracted a minority of radicals and malcontents in nearly every country.

Asia was ripe for change after World War II. In spite of Japan’s defeat, that nation had made a good deal of progress with its “Asia for the Asiatics” propaganda. The Far East seethed with unrest in 1946, and Communism spread ominously through a China weakened by three decades of invasion, revolution and civil war.

While Nationalists and Communist armies contended for the ancient empire, an undeclared war went on in the background. This was the cold war between the United States and Soviet Russia as they supplied arms and munitions to the opposing forces. Russia also supplied troops and laborers. For it has been estimated that no less than 250,000 North Korean Reds were induced to serve in various capacities with the Chinese Communists in Manchuria.[12] There the soldiers completed their military training in actual combat, with veteran Chinese officers as instructors.

[12] GHQ, FECOM, MilIntelSec, GS, Allied Translator and Interpreter Sec (FECOM, ATIS), Enemy Forces (Interrogation Reports [InterRpt], Sup No. 4), 16.

By 1948 there was no longer much doubt about the outcome in China. In the battles of Tsinan, Changchun and Mukden, the Nationalists lost 33 divisions, totaling more than 320,000 men, in killed, wounded and missing. Losses of equipment included 250,000 rifles and vast quantities of other arms and equipment. During the four and a half months following the fall of Tsinan in September 1948, the Nationalist losses were estimated at a million men and 400,000 rifles. Even planes of United States manufacture were captured by the Reds, who also acquired a cruiser that the British had transferred to the Nationalists.[13]

[13] U. S. Dept of State, United States Relations With China (Washington, U. S. Government Printing Office [GPO], 1949), 357.

“The unfortunate but inescapable fact,” concluded the United States State Department in 1949, “is that the ominous result of the civil war in China was beyond the control of the Government of the United States. Nothing that this country did or could have done within the reasonable limits of those capabilities could have changed that result; nothing that was left undone by this country could have contributed to it. It was the product of internal Chinese forces, forces which this country tried to influence but could not. A decision was arrived at within China, if only a decision by default.”[14]

[14] Ibid., xvi.

As a result, Mao Tse-tung’s forces could claim a sweeping victory by the end of 1949. Only the island of Formosa was left to Chiang Kai-shek and his battered remnants. Meanwhile, it grew increasingly plain that Korea was destined to be the scene of the next great tug-of-war between Communism and the free nations.

Civil Strife in Korea

Not only had the Russians made the 38th Parallel a political boundary in Korea; they had also resisted all American attempts at unification. This meant that economic recovery was badly handicapped. For the mines, heavy industries and hydroelectric plants were located in the north, while the south had most of the agriculture. Products once exchanged with mutual benefit now had to be imported from abroad.

Trusteeship was hotly resented by all Koreans, even though few of them had gained administrative or technical experience under the Japanese. This prejudice was exploited by Soviet propagandists who denounced the “undemocratic” American policy of bringing in administrators, technicians and educators. As a consequence, the United States military government made a poor showing at first in comparison to the puppet government of Communist-trained Koreans installed at Pyongyang by Russians pulling the strings behind the scenes. Anti-American propaganda won converts to the south as well as north of the 38th Parallel, with General Hodge being accused of maintaining a harsh military rule.

At the Moscow Conference of 1945 the Soviet Union had agreed with the United States that the whole of Korea was to be given a democratic government after passing through the trusteeship phase. A Soviet-American Joint Commission was to meet and make recommendations for this purpose; but as early as 1946 it became evident that the Soviet representatives had been instructed to sabotage any attempt to create a united Korea with its own government.

After the failure of the first year’s efforts, Hodge ordered the establishment of an Interim Legislature at Seoul as the counterpart of the People’s Assembly at Pyongyang. Of the 90 seats, half were to be filled by popular vote and the remaining 45 by Korean appointees of the Military Government. The election was a triumph for the American-educated Dr. Syngman Rhee and the rightists. Hodge tried to give the other South Korean factions a voice by appointing moderates and liberals, but the Interim Legislature had no solution for the discontent in Korea as the economic situation went from bad to worse in spite of American aid.

Although the Americans on the Joint Commission did their best, they were blocked by all manner of Soviet-contrived delays and obstacles. Finally, in 1947, the United States submitted the question to the United Nations. After long discussion, the General Assembly resolved that all the people of Korea be given an opportunity in the spring of 1948 to elect a national assembly for the entire country.

A commission representing nine member nations was appointed to visit Korea and supervise the voting. But the Russians not only refused to participate in the election; they went so far as to bar the commissioners from entering North Korea.

The new National Assembly elected in May 1948 by South Korea had the task of forming a government. On 17 July the first constitution in 40 years of Korean history was approved by the deputies, who elected Syngman Rhee to a 4-year term as president.

It was an eventful summer south of the 38th Parallel. The Republic of Korea came into being on 15 August, and on that day the American military government ended. John J. Muccio was appointed by President Truman to represent the United States in Korea with the rank of ambassador. Plans were made to withdraw the 50,000 United States occupation troops during the next 8 months, leaving only 500 officers and men as military instructors for the training of a Republic of Korea security force.

In the northern zone the Communists organized demonstrations against the United Nations Commission. Strikes and disorders were fomented south of the 38th Parallel, and 200,000 North Koreans marched in protest at Pyongyang.

There was an air of urgency about such attempts to prevent the election in South Korea. The exposure of the Agrarian Reform as a fraud had hurt the Communists, and the disinterested spirit of the United States occupation was gaining recognition throughout Korea in spite of initial blunders. Pyongyang could not afford to let South Korea take the lead in forming a government, and July 1948 dated the creation of a Communist state known as the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea. After adopting a constitution modeled after that of Communist Bulgaria, the Supreme People’s Council claimed to represent all Korea. In justification it was charged that “American imperialists carried out a ruinous separate election and organized a so-called National Assembly with the support of a traitor minority and with the savage oppression of the majority of the Korean people.”[15]

[15] New York Times, 12 Jul 48, quoted in Redvers Opie et al., The Search for Peace Settlements (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1951), 311.

The Russians announced in December 1948 that they were withdrawing all occupation troops. It was no secret, however, that they would leave behind them an NK army that far surpassed the ROK military establishment.[16] Kim Il Sung, the Red Korean prime minister, referred to it pointedly as a “superior army” in an address at Pyongyang.

[16] ROK, of course, denotes the Republic of Korea, and NK (North Korea) is the abbreviation usually applied to the self-styled People’s Democratic Republic of Korea at Pyongyang. Both sets of initials are used more often as adjectives than nouns. See the Glossary in [Appendix A] for definitions of other symbols and military terms found in text.

“We must strengthen and improve it,” he declared. “Officers and men must establish iron discipline and must be proficient in the military and in combat techniques.”[17]

[17] FECOM, ATIS, History of the North Korean Army, 23.

Numbers at the end of 1948 were estimated at 60,000 regulars in addition to constabulary, railroad guards, and trainees. These troops were equipped by the Russians with captured Japanese weapons, and Russian arms were shipped into northern Korea to meet the needs of an expanding army.[18]

[18] Ibid.

It was a military force of an entirely different character that American officers organized on the other side of the 38th Parallel. The new ROK army was strictly a defensive force, trained and equipped to maintain internal security and guard the border and seacoast. Neither tanks nor military planes were provided by the Americans, who leaned backward to avoid any suspicion of creating an instrument for offensive internecine warfare.

Raids by Red Korean troops across the border became a frequent occurrence throughout 1949. One of these forays, supported by artillery, was a large-scale NK thrust into the Ongjin Peninsula. Heavy fighting resulted before the invaders were driven back into their own territory.

Having failed to prevent the formation of a democratic Korean government—the only government in Korea recognized by the United Nations—the Reds at Pyongyang were making every effort to wreck it. Since 80 percent of the ROK electric power originated north of the frontier, they were able to retard economic recovery by cutting off the current at intervals. There was no other unfriendly act in the Communist bagful of tricks that Pyongyang neglected to employ while its radio stations blared forth a propaganda of hatred.

Early in 1950 the situation grew more tense daily as thousands of veterans returned to North Korea after serving in the Communist armies which overran China. When Radio Pyongyang began making appeals for peace that spring, it should have become obvious to practiced observers of Communist techniques that preparations were afoot for war. On 10 June 1950 the Pyongyang government announced a new plan for unification and peace after branding the top ROK officials as “traitors.” The motive behind this proposal was apparently the usual Communist attempt to divide an enemy on the eve of an aggression. For the long-planned blow fell at 0400 (Korean time) on Sunday morning, 25 June 1950. Russian-made tanks spearheaded the advance of the NK ground forces across the 38th Parallel, and Russian-made planes strafed Seoul and other strategic centers.

Captured NK documents offer proof that the invaders had already set the machinery of aggression in motion while making their plea for peace. This evidence included the written report of instructions given by one Lieutenant Han to a group of picked men on an intelligence mission. On 1 June 1950 they were to proceed by power boat to an island off Inchon, where confederates would help them make their way to the mainland. “Our mission,” explained Han, “is to gather intelligence information concerning South Korean forces and routes of advance ahead of our troops. We will perform this task by contacting our comrades who are scattered throughout the length and breadth of South Korea.”[19]

[19] FECOM, ATIS, Documentary Evidence of North Korean Aggression (InterRpt, Sup No. 2), 65.

The lieutenant explained that the forthcoming attack on South Korea was to be the first step toward the “liberation” of the people of Asia. And his concluding remarks leave no doubt as to the complete confidence with which the Korean Communists began the venture:

“Within 2 months from the date of attack, Pusan should have fallen and South Korea will be again united with the North. The timetable for this operation of 2 months’ duration was determined by the possibility of United States forces intervening in the conflict. If this were not so, it would take our forces only 10 days to overrun South Korea.”[20]

[20] Ibid.

CHAPTER II
Red Aggression in Korea

Units of North Korean Army—NKPA Command and Leadership—The NKPA Infantry Division—NKPA Air and Armor—NKPA Officer Procurement and Conscription—The NKPA Order of Battle

It was an army of veterans that broke the world’s peace in Korea. There were thousands of veterans of the Chinese civil war and Manchurian guerrilla operations. There were even a few scarred warriors who had served with the Soviet forces in such World War II operations as the defense of Stalingrad.

Practically all the commissioned and noncommissioned officers were battle-hardened, and a majority of the rank and file had seen action. The origins of this army were deeply rooted in Asiatic soil. During World War II an endless stream of Koreans escaped from Japanese bondage and found a refuge in Soviet or Chinese territory. Some of them took to banditry, others were absorbed into the Soviet or Red Chinese armed forces. These refugees dreamed of a united and independent homeland; and at Yenan, China, the Chinese Communists encouraged this movement as early as 1939 by supplying arms to a force known as the Korean Volunteer Army. During the first month alone the KVA attracted 3,000 recruits, and at the end of the war an advance column marched back to Korea under a leader named Kim Mu Chong.[21]

[21] FECOM, ATIS, History of the North Korean Army, op. cit., 17–28.

Although the heads of the KVA had been thoroughly impregnated with Communist doctrine at Yenan, they were coldly received by General Chistyakov and the Russian occupation forces. It was a Soviet puppet state that the Kremlin wished to see established in Korea, not a Red-tinted independent Korean government. Communist right-thinking did not save Kim Mu Chong and his KVA troops from the humiliation of being stopped at the frontier in September 1945 and disarmed.

The Russian commander piously justified his decision on grounds of upholding international law. But he offered to return the confiscated arms if the Korean Reds would retrace their steps and join the CCF fight against the Nationalists. He promised that after the struggle had been won, the KVA would be welcomed back to Korea.[22]

[22] Ibid.

Accepting these terms, Kim Mu Chong marched into Manchuria to aid the Chinese Reds. His force numbered nearly 20,000 the following spring, but the KVA lost its identity when the men were mingled with Chinese and Mongolians in the CCF Northeast Democratic United Army. Most of the officers and NCO’s of the former KVA were organized into teams to recruit and train Korean volunteers both in Manchuria and Korea. As combined military instructors and political commissars, they created an integrated Communist force out of such oddly assorted material as peasants, guerrillas and bandits. Used first as security troops and later welded into a regular army structure, these thousands of Korean Reds undoubtedly had the principal part in “liberating” Manchuria from the Chinese Nationalists.

Meanwhile, the Russian occupation forces did not neglect the conversion of North Korea into a satellite state. One of the first steps was the establishment of a military academy at Pyongyang in the autumn of 1945. Founded ostensibly for the training of police, it had as its primary purpose the instruction of army officers. Graduates of the first and second classes became teachers when branches of the academy were set up at Nanam, Sinuiju and Hamhung. These offshoots, known as the Peace Preservation Officers’ Schools, turned out the cadres which were later activated as the 1st, 2d and 3d Divisions of the new North Korean army. For more than 2 years, however, the fiction was maintained that graduates were to patrol rural areas, protect railroads and guard the frontier.

Units of North Korean Army

Not until 8 February 1948 did the “North Korean People’s Army” come into official being with the activation of the 1st, 2d and 3d Infantry Divisions. At that time there were some 30,000 troops and 170,000 trainees in North Korea, according to later United States Army intelligence estimates.[23]

[23] Ibid., 23–24.

The 4th Infantry Division was formed in 1948 from trainees plus a veteran regiment transferred from the 2d Division. Two new infantry divisions, the 5th and 6th, were organized the following year when Korean veterans of the 164th and 166th CCF Divisions returned as units with their arms and equipment.[24]

[24] Ibid., 52–75.

It is probable that the leaders of the North Korean state were committed early in 1950 to the invasion of the Republic of Korea. At any rate, the training and organization of new units was accelerated during the spring months. From February to June nine new divisions were activated—the 7th, 8th, 9th, 12th, 13th, 14th, and 15th Infantry Divisions, 10th Mechanized Infantry Division and 105th Armored Division.[25]

[25] Ibid.

Two factors combined to hasten the NKPA aggression. It had undoubtedly become evident to the Kremlin in 1949 that the Republic of Korea could never be brought into the Communist fold by propaganda, subversion, incitation of disorders or any other means short of a victorious civil war. Moreover, a successful war of invasion was equally desirable as a cure for political discontent at home. Not only was the Agrarian Reform resented everywhere in North Korea, but taxes had gone up as high as 60 percent of the crops to maintain the top-heavy military structure and pay for tanks, planes, howitzers and other arms supplied by the Soviet Union.

Although most of the heavy industries of Korea were located north of the 38th Parallel, they included no arms plants with the exception of a small factory capable of turning out submachineguns and ammunition. North Korea was also able to produce 80 percent of its own POL products for military purposes and some of the army uniforms. Other supplies, all the way from the Tokarev semiautomatic pistol (adapted from the U. S. .45 Colt) to the T-34 tank, were imported from the U. S. S. R.[26]

[26] FECOM, ATIS, North Korean Forces (InterRpt, Sup No. 1), 17–23.

Most of the weapons were old models of recent manufacture. The heaviest load came by rail from Siberia through Manchuria via Antung and crossed the Yalu into Korea at Sinuiju. As many as three freight trains a day rumbled over the bridge between those cities and continued along the west coast to Pyongyang. Supplies were also received from Vladivostok by water to Chongjin or by the east coast rail line to Wonsan.[27]

[27] Ibid.

It must also be remembered that thousands of Korean veterans of the Chinese civil war returned with their arms and equipment, including American-manufactured weapons surrendered by the Nationalists. The NKPA was second only to the Soviet Army itself in the spring of 1950 as the best armed and equipped military force of its size in the Far East.

The U. S. S. R. did not limit its aid to arms. Lieutenant General Vasilev and a group of Soviet military instructors arrived at Pyongyang in 1949 to train NKPA staff and line officers for offensive warfare. About 3,000 promising NKPA candidates were sent to Soviet schools that year for courses in such specialties as artillery, air and tank tactics.

Of the original 14 NKPA divisions, the first 6 were composed largely of well trained troops. The 12th Division, like the 5th and 6th, consisted of Korean veterans of the Chinese civil war. Constabulary troops made up the 8th and 9th, while the 7th, 13th, 14th, and 15th Infantry Divisions and the 10th Mechanized Infantry Division were formed of conscripted trainees for the most part.[28]

[28] FECOM, ATIS, History of the North Korean Army, op. cit., 52–75.

The picture grows confused in the spring of 1950, with 8 new divisions being organized in 5 months. Many of the recently drafted men received only the most sketchy training; and some of the older units were weakened by drawing off well trained men to stiffen the new outfits. All accounts agree, however, that the NKPA leaders anticipated an effort of only a few days, ending with the destruction of the ROK army. This was not an unreasonable assumption, since a swarm of NKPA spies had brought back accurate reports of unpreparedness. Not only was the Republic of Korea weak militarily, but a bad economic situation had been made worse by increased population due to immigration.

Altogether, Pyongyang could put nearly 100,000 fairly well-trained and armed troops in the field, with about half of that number in reserve as replacements, occupation troops or constabulary. But the problem of man power did not worry Communists who were not squeamish about violations of international law. For the aggressors planned to make war nourish war by conscripting both soldiers and laborers in invaded regions of the Republic of Korea. It was an old Asiatic custom.

NKPA Command and Leadership

With few exceptions, the North Korean war leaders proved to be willing and able instruments of policies formulated in Moscow. Kim Il Sung, the prime minister and commander in chief, was an imposter named Kim Sung Chu who made a bid for popular support by taking the name of a dead Korean resistance hero. As a youth he had fled from Korea and joined the Communist party in Manchuria. There he distinguished himself in guerrilla operations against the Japanese. In 1938, after rising to the stature of a corps commander, he met military reverses and found a refuge in Soviet territory. Legend has it that he attended a Soviet military academy and took part in the battle of Stalingrad. However this may be, he returned to Korea in August 1945 as a 35-year-old captain in the Soviet army of occupation.[29]

[29] Ibid., 90–99. Communist chiefs preferred to work behind a screen of secrecy and deception, so that it was difficult to obtain accurate personal data. Not only did some of the NKPA war leaders have obscure origins, but they added to the difficulties of biographers by deliberately falsifying the record for propaganda purposes. It is to the credit of U.S. Army intelligence officers that they have managed to piece out this material from prisoner interrogations and captured enemy documents.

South Korean descriptions of Kim Il Sung as an uneducated ruffian were doubtless prejudiced, but certainly he was a ruthless guerrilla leader who showed an uncommon aptitude for politics. His rise in the new North Korean state was spectacular, for in September 1948 he became the first prime minister. The following year he went to Moscow for conferences at the Kremlin, and nine days after the outbreak of civil war in Korea he was appointed commander in chief of the invading army while retaining his position as prime minister.

In contrast to this rough diamond, Marshal Choe Yong Gun cut a reserved and dignified figure as deputy commander in chief and minister of national defense. Born in Hongchon, Korea, at the turn of the century, he had the equivalent of a high school education. In 1925 he went to China and is believed to have attended the Whampoa Military Academy at Nanking and the Yenan Military School. At Yenan, after being converted to communism, he became a political instructor and later served in the 8th Route Army. Choe was commander of the Korean Volunteer Army in 1941 and fought against the Japanese in Manchuria. Returning to Korea in 1945, he commanded the Cadre Training Center until 1948, when he was named the first commander in chief.

Even Choe’s enemies in South Korea credited him with a high order of intellectual capacity and moral courage. Despite his Communist party membership, he opposed the invasion of the Republic of Korea. He was cool, moreover, toward Lieutenant General Vasilev and the other Soviet advisers who reached Pyongyang in 1949 to prepare the Korean armed forces for an offensive war. This attitude probably explains why he was sidetracked in March 1950, when Vasilev took charge of the combat training and re-equipment program. Although Choe was not on good terms with Kim Il Sung at this time, he was regarded as a superior strategist and administrator. And after being bypassed temporarily, he continued to be respected as a leader by the North Korean army and peasantry.

Nam Il stood out as the most cosmopolitan and polished of the North Korean war leaders. Born in 1911, he was Kim Il Sung’s schoolmate in Manchuria and the two remained lifelong friends. As a young man, Nam Il made his way across the U. S. S. R. to Smolensk and attended college and a military academy. He entered the Soviet army at the outbreak of World War II and is said to have participated along with Kim Il Sung in the Stalingrad defense.

Both of them returned to Korea with the rank of captain in the Soviet army of occupation, and both entered upon successful Communist political careers. In 1948 Nam Il was elected to the Supreme People’s Council and became vice-minister of education in charge of military instruction. The most Russianized of the North Korean leaders, he took pains to cultivate the good will of the Soviet advisers. Speaking English, Russian, and Chinese as well as Korean, he held an advantage over his North Korean rivals in such contacts. He also made a better appearance, being tall for an Oriental and always well turned out in a meticulously pressed uniform and gleaming boots.

A major general without an active field command at the outbreak of war, he was rapidly advanced to the rank of lieutenant general and chief of staff. His stern demeanor, while seated stiffly in his black Chrysler driven by a uniformed chauffeur, soon became one of the most impressive sights of Pyongyang. But his talents remained more political than military, and he never won the respect which the army accorded to Choe Yong Gun.

Among the corps commanders, there was none more able than Lieutenant General Kim Ung. About 40 years old at the outbreak of war, he had graduated from the Kumchon Commercial School in Korea and the Whampoa Military Academy in China. As an officer of the 8th Route Army, he won a reputation for daring in 1939 by tossing hand grenades into a conference of Japanese generals at Peiping and escaping after inflicting numerous casualties. Returning to Korea in 1946, he started as a regimental commander and made a relatively slow rise because of his CCF background. But after lining up with the Soviet faction in the army, he was promoted to the command of the 1st Division in 1948 and of I Corps during the invasion.

The rapid ascent of Lieutenant General Yu Kyong Su to the command of III Corps would indicate that promotion was sometimes due to political influence. A graduate of a Red Army tank school in 1938 at the age of 33, Yu served throughout World War II as a company grade officer in a Soviet tank unit. After his return to Korea, he married Kim Il Sung’s sister and shot up from the command of an NK tank regiment in 1948 to the rank of corps commander late in 1950. During the first few weeks of the invasion, he was awarded the highest NKPA decoration, the “Hero of the Korean Democratic People’s Republic,” with a concurrent award, the “Order of the National Flag, 1st Class.”

On the other hand, the career of former Lieutenant General Kim Mu Chong, ex-commander of II Corps and ex-chief of artillery, was blasted by the opposition of Kim Il Sung and Nam Il. A CCF veteran, Mu had served under Mao Tse-tung on the “Long March” as one of 30 Koreans to survive the ordeal. He commanded a Chinese artillery brigade and was rated the best CCF artilleryman. In 1945 he came back to Korea and conducted a speaking tour stressing the desirability of cooperating with Red China and omitting any reference to the Soviet Union. This lapse explains his failure in North Korean politics, but in deference to his high military reputation he was given command of II Corps in June 1950. The poor showing made by his units on the central front was ascribed by Mu to the fact that Kim Il Sung picked him for missions which could not succeed. Although he did not lack for support in the army, Mu was relieved of his command and other positions in the late summer of 1950. Expulsion from the North Korean Labor Party followed after Kim Il Sung denounced him in a speech for disobedience of orders.

Mu’s downfall was only one chapter in the bitter struggle for power waged by two opposing tactical schools in the North Korean army from 1948 to 1950. Veterans of CCF campaigns against the Japanese and Chinese Nationalists upheld a system of large-scale guerrilla warfare refined into a military science. Approach marches under cover of darkness, infiltrations, probing night attacks—these were the basic tactics employed by Mao Tse Tung’s forces for the conquest of China. Although mobility was the keynote, a rigid tactical system allowed little latitude of decision to officers below the regimental level. School solutions were provided for every military problem that could be foreseen, and many of the North Korean officers had graduated from the CCF military academy at Yenan.

Another group of officers advocated the tactics learned at Soviet military schools and in Soviet campaigns of World War II. This system, of course, made the CCF tactics seem primitive in comparison. For the Russians placed much more dependence in armor and artillery as preparation for infantry envelopments. Such tactics called for more supplies and ammunition than could have been provided by the elementary CCF logistics.

The CCF veterans seemed to have the upper hand in the North Korean army early in 1948. But a survey of NKPA officers’ careers during the next 2 years indicates that their opponents triumphed. Thus, at the onset of civil war, most of the key positions in the army were filled by men who had hitched their wagons to the red star of Moscow, both militarily and politically.

This does not mean that CCF tactics had been put aside entirely. On the contrary, these methods had evolved out of military poverty and were admirably adapted to an Asiatic peasant army. The North Korean forces, being compelled to import arms, were never able to afford enough planes, tanks, and artillery to make the best of the Soviet system. And it was inevitable that heavy losses of such equipment in combat would cause a reversion to CCF tactics.

The NKPA Infantry Division

No child ever bore a more striking likeness to its parent than did the NKPA to the Soviet organization of World War II.

The army as a whole came under the overall control of General Headquarters at Pyongyang, which planned and directed the invasion of ROK territory. As the troops advanced, a Front Headquarters was set up to control corps operations. This organization of Soviet origin was the highest tactical echelon of command. Normally including three or four corps of several divisions each, it resembled an army group in military establishments of other nations. Front Headquarters had only a wartime mission and could be disbanded in time of peace.[30]

[30] FECOM, ATIS, North Korean Forces, op. cit., 3–13.

Next to the corps in the chain of command was the infantry division, the basic tactical formation, modeled after that of the Red Army in World War II. Of triangular design, numbering some 11,000 men, it was reported by POW’s to consist of a headquarters, three rifle regiments, an artillery regiment, a signal battalion, an antitank battalion, a training battalion, a reconnaissance troop, and such division rear services as medical, veterinary, transport, and supply units.[31]

[31] Ibid.

Division Headquarters, with about 120 men, included the commander, a major general, and officers of the division and special staff. Closely associated with the CG, and possessing almost as much power and responsibility, was the division political deputy, usually a senior colonel, who supervised politico-military activities and reported any deviations from doctrine. This was a peculiarly Communistic institution, of course, and it was the duty of the deputy to see that officers and men of the division remained well indoctrinated.

The NKPA rifle regiment, with a T/O strength of about 2,500 men, consisted of 3 rifle battalions and supporting artillery. Each of these battalions, numbering some 650 officers and men, included 3 rifle companies, a heavy machinegun company, a mortar company, an antitank gun platoon and an antitank rifle platoon in addition to signal, medical, and supply platoons.

An NKPA rifle company, which had a T/O strength of about 150 men, was made up of a headquarters, 3 rifle platoons and a heavy machinegun section. The rifle platoon had 4 squads and a T/O strength of 45 men. Squad weapons were said to include a light machinegun, a submachinegun and Soviet M1891/30 rifles. Two hand grenades were carried by each rifleman.

An army patterned after the Soviet system was certain to emphasize artillery, and the NKPA artillery reserve at the outset of the invasion consisted of 3 regiments—1 attached to GHQ, and 1 to each of the 2 corps operating at that time. But shortages of equipment and logistical problems made it necessary in actual combat for the NKPA to concentrate most of its artillery potential within the rifle division.

The organic artillery support of each division included a regiment with a T/O total of approximately 1,000 men. Two 76-mm. gun battalions, a 122-mm. howitzer battalion and a headquarters company numbered some 250 men each. A battalion consisted of 3 firing batteries with 12 artillery pieces each, and personnel carried M1938 carbines.

There was also a self-propelled artillery battalion made up of 3 gun companies, a signal platoon and a rear services section with a total of 16 SU-76 pieces. A lieutenant colonel commanded this unit, which had a T/O strength of 110 officers and men.

The other major components of the NKPA infantry division were as follows:

Signal Battalion.—a wire company, radio company and headquarters company, making a total of 260 officers and men.

Antitank Battalion.—about 190 officers and men in three 45-mm. antitank companies and an antitank rifle company.

Engineer Battalion.—T/O of 250 officers and men carrying M1944 rifles and equipped with picks, shovels, axes, saws and mine detectors.

Training Battalion.—About 500 officers and men charged with the responsibility of training NCO’s for the division.

Reconnaissance Company.—an estimated strength of 4 officers and 90 enlisted men equipped with 80 submachineguns, 20 Tokarev pistols, 4 telescopes and 5 pairs of binoculars.

Rear Services.—a medical battalion, a transport company, a veterinary unit and a supply section. Of the 200 personnel in the medical battalion, about 60 were women, according to POW testimony. The transport company, with some 70 men, was composed of 50 2½-ton trucks, 6 or 7 motorcycles and 10 horse-drawn wagons.[32]

[32] Ibid.

The NKPA infantry division, in short, was a faithful copy of the World War II Soviet model. But it must be remembered that the foregoing T/O and T/E statistics represented the ideal more often than the reality. Owing to the speeding up of preparations in anticipation of an easy victory, many NKPA units lacked their full quotas of men and equipment at the outset of the invasion.

NKPA Air and Armor

POW interrogations revealed that NKPA military aviation evolved from the North Korean Aviation Society, founded in 1945 at the Sinuiju Airfield by Colonel Lee Hwal, a Korean who had served in the Japanese air force. The organization consisted at first of about 70 students and 17 pilots who were veterans of Japanese air operations. Equipment included a few aircraft of Japanese manufacture and several gliders.[33]

[33] FECOM, ATIS, North Korean Air Force (InterRpt, Sup No. 100), 2–15.

In 1946 the Society was required to transfer its aircraft and trained personnel to the Aviation Section of the Pyongyang Military Academy. Soviet-trained Korean officers were placed in positions of responsibility under the command of Colonel Wang Yun, a former captain in the Soviet air force who replaced Lee Hwal.

The Aviation Section numbered about 100 officers, 250 enlisted men and 500 students by November 1948. Estimates of aircraft are contradictory, but one source reported 7 Japanese trainers, 6 Japanese fighters and a Japanese twin-engine transport. Shortly afterwards the first Soviet aircraft were received, and the NKPA Air Force was created from the Aviation Section and moved to the Pyongyang air base.

The final phase of development came in January 1950 with the expansion of the air regiment into a division under the command of Wang Yun, promoted to major general. Strength of the unit in April 1950 was estimated at about 1,675 officers and men, including 364 officers, 76 pilots, 875 enlisted men, and 360 cadets. The receipt of more Soviet planes at this time brought the number of aircraft up to 178, including 78 YAK-7B fighters, 30 PO-2 primary and YAK-18 advanced trainers, and 70 Il-10 ground attack bombers.

Captured documents indicate that the aviation training program was speeded up along with other NKPA activities during the last few months before the invasion. In June 1950 each pilot was required to fly 40 training missions and attend 40 hours of lectures. As preparations for the invasion neared completion, a forward displacement of tactical aircraft was put into effect.[34]

[34] Ibid.

The North Korean armored division, a copy of its Soviet counterpart, had only about half of the overall strength. Thus the NKPA 105th Armored Division, comprising some 6,000 officers and men, included 3 medium tank regiments, the 107th, 109th, and 203d, with 40 tanks each. Organic supporting units were the 206th Mechanized Infantry Regiment and the 308th Armored Battalion equipped with self-propelled 76-mm. guns. POW reports also mentioned reconnaissance, engineer, signal, ordnance and medical battalions and a mixed unit identified as the 849th Antitank Regiment, attached to the division after the invasion started.[35]

[35] FECOM, ATIS, Enemy Forces, op. cit., 27–32.

All reports indicate that the division was split in combat, with each tank regiment being assigned to an infantry division. Even the training of the regiments had been conducted separately, and there is no evidence of prewar maneuvers on the division level.

Each tank regiment had an estimated T/O strength of about 600 officers and men. The three medium tank battalions were supported by a regimental submachinegun company, a supply and maintenance company and a headquarters section in addition to engineer, signal, reconnaissance, and medical platoons. Forty T-34/85 medium tanks were divided into 13 for each battalion and 1 for the headquarters section, which also rated a CAZ/67 jeep.

Responsibility for the indoctrination of the regiment rested with a political section headed by a lieutenant colonel. As assistants he had 2 officers and 3 sergeants.

An NKPA tank battalion included a headquarters section and three 25-man companies. A company contained three platoons, each of which was assigned a medium tank. The standard crew consisted of the commander, usually a senior lieutenant, the driver and assistant driver, the gunner in charge of the 85-mm. rifle, and the assistant gunner operating the 7.62-mm. machinegun. The usual ammunition load was 55 85-mm. shells and 2,000 rounds of machinegun ammunition.

Not much was known about the 206th Mechanized infantry Regiment, but it was believed to consist of three motorized infantry battalions, a 76-mm. howitzer battalion, a 45-mm. antitank battalion, a 120-mm. mortar battalion, a signal company, and an NCO training company.[36]

[36] Ibid.

NKPA Officer Procurement and Conscription

Officer procurement problems were solved in large part by the fact that thousands of North Koreans had seen combat service with the CCF forces. Many of these veterans were qualified as junior officers or NCO’s without further training. Remaining vacancies for company-grade officers were filled by officer candidate schools or the commissioning of qualified NCO’s.

The West Point of the NKPA, located at Pyongyang, turned out an estimated 4,000 junior officers from the time of its activation in 1946 to the beginning of the invasion. Courses normally ranged in length from 6 to 10 months, but were abbreviated to 3 months during the autumn of 1949 in anticipation of the invasion. After hostilities began, the need for replacement officers became so urgent that one entire class at the Pyongyang academy was commissioned wholesale on 10 July 1950 and sent to the front after 20 days of instruction.[37]

[37] FECOM, ATIS, North Korean Forces, op. cit., 35–42.

Three Soviet officers, a colonel and two lieutenant colonels, reportedly acted as advisers to a faculty composed of NKPA majors. The five departments of the Academy were devoted to infantry, artillery, engineering, signaling, and quartermasters’ duties.

A second military academy at Pyongyang specialized in subjects which Communists termed “cultural.” So much importance was attached to political indoctrination that graduates of this school were commissioned as senior lieutenants and given unusual authority in their units. Although a 2-year Russian language course was offered, most of the candidates took the standard 9-month term.

Branches of the Pyongyang military academy were established as officer candidate schools in Hamhung, Chinnampo, Chorwon, Mesanjin, Kaechon and Kanggye. Applicants were required to have an acceptable political background and a 6-year minimum of schooling, though the last was sometimes waived.

A command and staff school at Pyongyang offered advanced tactical and administrative courses at the battalion and regimental level to selected officers. At the other extreme, NCO schools were located at Sadong, Sinuiju, Sinchon and Nanam. Tactical instruction was given at the platoon and squad level with emphasis on weapons courses. NCO training was accelerated in preparation for hostilities, and 4,000 veterans of CCF service in Manchuria completed 2-month courses at the Sadong school alone in the spring of 1950.

Technical training in aircraft, artillery, tank and engineering specialties was offered in schools for junior officers as well as enlisted men. But it appears that most of the officers above the company level received their instruction in Soviet schools.[38]

[38] Ibid.

Conscription, according to POW accounts, was introduced as early as 1948. In the rural districts each myon (a political subdivision smaller than a county but comprising several villages) was given its quota of recruits to be furnished between the ages of 18 and 35. The village chiefs then assembled all the men in this age group and made their decisions on an arbitrary basis. Selectees had little or no hope of appeal, but were assured that provision would be made for their families during the 3-year term of service.[39]

[39] Ibid., 29–31.

The system was much the same in North Korean cities, which were divided into sections for conscription purposes. Sometimes the leaders in urban areas called for volunteers. If the response was lacking in enthusiasm, men were singled out and requested to “volunteer.” This method was invariably successful, since a man who refused could be deprived of employment.

The conscription program was speeded up along with other preparations as invasion plans neared completion. About 12,000 men were inducted from March through May 1950 and given 6 weeks of basic training at such camps as the No. 2 People’s Training Center at Sinuiju.

In some communities the men eligible for military service were requested to attend a meeting. Upon arrival, they were taken in trucks to a training center and compelled to enlist.

Harsh as such methods might seem, they were gentle as compared to the forced conscription of ROK civilians after the invasion got underway. Both men and women in captured cities were crowded into school buildings, given political indoctrination and forced to learn Communist songs. After a week of this curriculum, the men were inducted both as combat recruits and laborers. And though the women were told that their service would be limited to duty as nurses or clerks, some of them were coerced into carrying out reconnaissance or espionage missions.[40]

[40] Ibid.

The NKPA Order of Battle

The transition from a cold war to a shooting war in Korea should not have surprised anyone familiar with the events of the past 2 years. For several hours, indeed, there was a reasonable doubt on the historic morning of 25 June 1950 whether an undeclared war had begun or merely another large-scale NKPA raid across the frontier.

But this time it was the real thing. Commencing at 0400, 7 infantry divisions and an armored division swept across the 38th Parallel, with 2 infantry divisions in reserve. From right to left, the NKPA order of battle was as follows:

The 6th Infantry Division along the west coast, sealing off the Ongjin Peninsula and moving on Kaesong; the 1st Infantry Division advancing on Kaesong and Seoul; the 4th and 3d Infantry Divisions and 105th Armored Division attacking in west-central Korea and converging on Seoul; the 2d and 15th Infantry Divisions driving toward the Hwachon-Chunchon axis in east-central Korea; and the 5th Infantry Division taking the route along the east coast. Following close behind were the two reserve infantry divisions, the 13th and 15th.[41]

[41] FECOM, ATIS, History of the North Korean Army, 25–27.

There was no question as to the outcome in the minds of observers who knew the composition of the ROK army. The very name was misleading, for it might more accurately have been described as a large constabulary in process of being converted into an army. Given another year of training and added arms and equipment, the Republic of Korea would perhaps have built up an adequate defense establishment. But the enemy took good care to strike while this development was still at the blueprint stage.

In June 1949, at the conclusion of the occupation, the United States forces turned over arms and equipment to the value of about $110,000,000. These supplies included 100,000 small arms (rifles, pistols and machineguns) and 50,000,000 rounds of ammunition; more than 4,900 vehicles of all types; about 2,000 2.36″ rocket launchers and 40,000 rounds of ammunition; and a large number of 105-mm. howitzers, 37-mm. and 57-mm. antitank guns, and 60-mm. and 81-mm. mortars, together with 700,000 rounds of ammunition for those weapons. Twenty training planes (L4 and L5 types) were transferred as well as 79 light naval craft suitable for patrolling the coast.[42]

[42] U. S. Military Academy, Dept of Mil Art and Eng (U. S. MilAcad), Operations in Korea (West Point, 1953), 4–5.

It is noteworthy that this list was limited to light arms for a constabulary of about 50,000 men. Tanks, military aircraft and medium or heavy artillery were significantly lacking.

At the request of the ROK government, a Korean Military Advisory Group remained in South Korea after the conclusion of the American occupation. Composed of 500 United States Army officers and enlisted men, the KMAG took on the task of directing the training of a ROK constabulary. The group was under the control of Ambassador Muccio, since General MacArthur’s responsibility for the defense had ended along with the occupation.[43]

[43] Ibid.

After the NKPA invasion, the United States was severely criticized in some quarters for failing to provide the Republic of Korea with arms and training equal to those of the enemy. American reluctance was due in some measure to indiscreet declarations by that fiery old Korean patriot, Syngman Rhee. The ROK president, 74 years old at the outbreak of civil war, did not shrink from advocating the unification of Korea by armed force. On 20 February 1949 he predicted that his troops “could defeat North Korea within 2 weeks” if the U. S. S. R. did not interfere. Eight months later, on 7 October, his confidence had increased to the point where he was “sure that we could take Pyongyang in 3 days.”[44]

[44] A. Wigfall Green, Epic of Korea (Washington: Public Affairs Press, 1950), 125–26.

Such remarks placed the United States in an uncomfortable position. If aid to the Republic of Korea were to include tanks, military aircraft and training for offensive warfare, Americans would be open to the charge of inciting civil strife. Communist propagandists would scream that accusation in any event, of course, but there would be grounds for the suspicion of other members of the United Nations. Ambassador Muccio made sure, therefore, that United States assistance did not extend beyond the legitimate needs of ROK frontier defense and internal security.

The triangular ROK infantry division was modeled after the United States unit but numbered about 9,500 troops. Eight divisions and a regiment had been organized and partially trained by June 1950. They were the 1st, 2d, 3d, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, and Capital Divisions and the 17th Regiment.[45] Only 4 of these divisions, the 1st, 2d, 6th, and 7th, had their full complement of 3 regiments. All the others had 2 except the 5th, which had 2 and a battalion.[46]

[45] The absence of a 4th Division is explained by an old Korean superstition. Because the symbol for that number resembled the ancient symbol for death, it was regarded as unlucky. Apparently the North Koreans managed to overcome this superstition, however, in numbering their units.

[46] LtCol Roy E. Appleman, USA, ms. history of UN operations in Korea, Jul–Nov 50.

ROK military strength was estimated at 98,808 troops by the KMAG in June 1950. About 65,000 of them had been given unit training for combat. They were fairly proficient in the employment of small arms and mortars, but their instruction had not included defense against tanks. Command and staff work were still at a rudimentary stage, and both officers and NCO’s needed seasoning.

The ROK Army of June 1950 had made good progress, in short, when it is considered that most of its components had been activated within the past year. But it was no match for the Red Korean columns which attacked at dawn on 25 June 1950. The ROK order of battle, if such it could be called, consisted of a regiment and four infantry divisions ranged from left to right across the peninsula—the 17th Regiment and the 1st, 7th, 6th, and 8th Divisions. The remaining divisions were dispersed for purposes of internal security: the Capital at Seoul; the 2d at Chongju and Taejon; the 3d at Taegu; and the 5th at Kwangju.

NKPA
ORDER OF BATTLE
25 JUNE 1950

The ROK frontier forces were not well disposed for defense in depth. Taken by surprise, they put up an ineffectual resistance despite brave fights here and there against odds. On other occasions the sight of an enemy tank or armored car was enough to scatter ROK riflemen, and the progress of the invading columns resembled an occupation rather than an attack.

Before sundown on the day of invasion it appeared that NKPA leaders had not erred in allowing a timetable of 10 days for overrunning the Republic of Korea. The question now was whether the conflict could be confined to that Asiatic peninsula. Communist aggressions were no novelty, to be sure, either in Asia or Europe. But in the past there had always been some show of peaceable intentions, however hypocritical, or some shadow of legality. This was the first time that a Soviet puppet nation had been permitted to go as far as open warfare. Matters had come to a showdown, and it could only be interpreted as a challenge issued by Communism to the free nations of the world.

CHAPTER III
The Marine Brigade

NKPA Gains of First Week—Early United States Decisions—Geography of Korea—United States Ground Forces in Korea—Requests for United States Marines—Activation of the Brigade—Brigade Leadership

At three o’clock in the morning of 25 June 1950 the telephone rang in the New York suburban home of Trygve Lie, secretary-general of the United Nations. He was informed that North Korean forces had crossed the 38th Parallel to invade the Republic of Korea.

The news had just been received by the United States Department of State directly from Seoul. Ambassador Muccio had emphasized that this was not one of the large-scale North Korean raids into ROK territory which had become an old story during the past 2 years. For his report concluded:

“It would appear from the nature of the attack and the manner in which it was launched that it constitutes an all-out offensive against the Republic of Korea.”[47]

[47] U. S. Dept of State, Guide to the U. N. in Korea (Washington: GPO, 1951).

The implications were disturbing. Every middle-aged American could recall the failure of the League of Nations to halt Japanese, Italian, and German aggressions of the 1930’s with moral suasions. Even when economic sanctions were invoked, the aggressors went their way defiantly without respect for anything short of armed force. And now history seemed to be repeating itself with dismaying fidelity as new aggressors challenged the new union of nations striving to maintain peace after World War II.

There was even an ominous parallel in the fact that another civil conflict in another peninsula had been the prelude to Armageddon in the 1930’s. For it might well have been asked if the Korea of 1950 were destined to become the Spain of a new world war.

The answer of the United Nations was prompt and decisive. At 2 o’clock in the afternoon on 25 June 1950, a meeting of the Security Council was called to order at New York. A dispatch had just been received from UNCOK—the United Nations Commission on Korea—reporting that four Soviet YAK-type aircraft had destroyed planes and jeeps on an airfield outside of Seoul. The railway station in the industrial suburb of Yongdungpo had also been strafed.[48]

[48] Ibid.

By a unanimous vote of nine member nations (with the U. S. S. R. being significantly absent and Yugoslavia not voting) the blame for the aggression was placed squarely upon the North Korean invaders. They were enjoined to cease hostilities immediately and withdraw from ROK territory.

The United Nations had no armed might to enforce its decisions. But the Security Council did not intend to rely merely upon moral suasion or economic sanctions. At a second meeting, on 27 June, the Council proclaimed the NKPA attack a breach of world peace and asked member nations to assist the Republic of Korea in repelling the invasion.

For the first time in the war-racked 20th century, a group of nations banded together for peace had not only condemned an aggression but appealed to armed force to smite the aggressor. On the same day that the Security Council passed its historic resolution, the United States announced that it was giving immediate military aid to the Republic of Korea.

President Truman, as commander in chief, ordered American naval and air forces into action. Fifty-two other members of the United Nations approved the recommendations of the Security Council. Their pledges of assistance included aircraft, naval vessels, medical supplies, field ambulances, foodstuffs and strategic materials.

Only 3 of the 56 nations responding to the Council were opposed to the majority decision. They were the Soviet Union and her two satellites, Poland and Czechoslovakia, which had been brought into the Communist orbit by compulsion after World War II.

On 29 June President Truman authorized General MacArthur to send certain supporting United States ground force units to Korea. An American naval blockade of the entire Korean coast was ordered, and Japan-based Air Force planes were given authority to bomb specific military targets north of the 38th Parallel.

These decisions were upheld by the wholehearted approval of nearly all Americans, according to contemporary newspapers.[49] Virtually the only dissenters were such left-wing extremists as the 9,000 who attended a “Hands off Korea” rally held early in July 1950 under Communist auspices in New York.[50] Barring such rule-proving exceptions, Americans had long been smoldering with indignation at Soviet cold-war tactics. They applauded the resolute stand taken by the United Nations, and they were proud of their country for its response. Unfortunately, they did not anticipate that anything more serious than a brief “police action” would be necessary to settle affairs. Never in their wildest imaginations had it occurred to them that an Asiatic peasant army might be more than a match for all the United States ground forces in the Far East.

[49] Newsweek, 10 Jul 50, 17.

[50] Ibid., 29.

NKPA Gains of First Week

It was by no means a contemptible army, judged even by Western military standards, which ripped through ROK defenses after crossing the 38th Parallel. The major effort was the two-pronged attack on Seoul, conducted with precision by the 1st NKPA Infantry Division, advancing through Kaesong and Munsan while the 4th and 3d united south of the frontier with elements of the 105th Armored to proceed by way of the Yonchon-Uijongbu and Pochon-Uijongbu corridors.

On the right the 6th Infantry Division made short work of overrunning the isolated Ongjin Peninsula and thrusting eastward toward Kaesong. On the left the offensive was covered by the drive of the 2d and 12th Infantry Divisions on Chunchon while the 5th made rapid gains along the east coast.

In this area the North Koreans initiated the first amphibious operations of the war with four Soviet-manufactured torpedo boats. Built entirely of aluminum, of about 16 gross tons displacement when fully loaded, these craft measured slightly over 19 meters in length and were powered by two 10-Cylinder engines rated at 850 horsepower each. With a crew of 8 men, a cruising speed of 20 to 25 knots and a range of 15 hours, the boats carried 2 torpedoes and were armed with a 12.7-mm. heavy machinegun and 2 submachineguns.[51]

[51] FECOM, ATIS, North Korean Forces, op. cit., 45–6.

During the first 5 days of the invasion, the 4 torpedo boats escorted convoys which transported NKPA troops down the east coast for unopposed landings as far south as Samchok. But on 2 July 1950 the tiny North Korean “navy” was almost literally blown out of the water when it encountered UN Task Group 96.5 off Chuminjin while escorting 10 converted trawlers. With more bravery than discretion, the small North Korean craft accepted battle with the American light cruiser Juneau and two British warships, the light cruiser Jamaica and the frigate Black Swan. Evidently the enemy hoped to score with a few torpedoes at the cost of a suicidal effort, but the U. N. guns sank 2 of the aluminum craft and drove a third to the beach, where it was soon destroyed along with 7 of the convoy vessels. The North Koreans were credited with “great gallantry” in the British dispatch after the fourth torpedo boat escaped.[52] But it was the last naval effort of any consequence by an enemy strangled in the net of the UN blockade.

[52] Capt Walter Karig, USN, Battle Report: The War in Korea (New York: Rinehart, 1952), 58–59.

On land the NKPA columns advanced almost at will during the first 4 days. Nearly a hundred tanks and as many planes were employed by the two main columns advancing on Seoul, and on 27 June 1950 the ROK seat of government was removed to Taejon while Far East Air Force planes were evacuating United States citizens. ROK fugitives, winding southward in an endless stream of humanity, choked every road and multiplied the difficulties of the defense. To add to their misery, one of the bridges across the river Han was blown prematurely when masses of Koreans were crossing.

The fall of Seoul on the 28th ended the first stage of the offensive as the NKPA forces halted for regrouping. Chunchon had surrendered in east-central Korea, so that the invaders held a ragged line stretching from Chumunjin on the east coast through Chunchon, Kapyong and Seoul to the port of Inchon on the west coast.

The beaten and in some instances shattered ROK forces were meanwhile falling back through Suwon in the hope of establishing new positions of defense.

Early United States Decisions

A strategy of delaying actions was the only course open to General MacArthur for the time being. One of his first decisions led to the establishment on 27 June of the GHQ Advanced Command Group at Suwon under the command of Brigadier General John H. Church, USA. This group had as its primary mission the reorganization of the demoralized ROK forces, which were already reporting thousands of men missing in action. Secondary missions were to keep Tokyo informed as to military developments and expedite the delivery of supplies. As early as 27 June, 119 tons of emergency supplies had been sent to Korea by air, and an additional 5,600 tons were being loaded on ships in Japan.[53]

[53] U. S. MilAcad, op. cit., 7–8.

American naval and air forces lost no time at getting into action after President Truman’s authorization. United States Naval Forces in the Far East, under the command of Vice Admiral C. Turner Joy, had as their principal element the Seventh Fleet, commanded by Vice Admiral Arthur D. Struble. Its tactical organization, Task Force 77, immediately clamped down a blockade on the Korean coast after wiping out enemy naval opposition. Other warships of the Seventh Fleet were meanwhile blockading Formosa to guard against the possibility of Chinese Communist intervention by means of an attack on the last Nationalist stronghold.

The United States Far East Air Forces, commanded by Lieutenant General George E. Stratemeyer, USAF, consisted of eight and a half combat groups responsible for the defense of Japan, Okinawa, Guam and the Philippines. Primary missions assigned to the fighter and bomber squadrons were the elimination of NKPA air opposition and the retarding of enemy ground forces by means of interdictory air strikes on bases and supply routes.

Geography of Korea

Geography being a first cousin of strategy, maps of Korea were almost literally worth their weight in diamonds both in Tokyo and at the Pentagon. For that matter, they were nearly as rare as diamonds, and it became necessary in many instances to work with outdated Japanese maps.