05: 50th Anniversary of the start of the Korean War
Certain ‘Korea experts’ who claim to be friends of Korea have asserted that the newly-opened Soviet archives provide evidence that North Korea did start the Korean war, against the advice given by Stalin and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. What this archival material is, where it is to be found, etc., has never been specified. It is, however, absurd to make such a suggestion. In fact, if anybody were able to produce such ‘archival material’ there could be no doubt at all that it was a forgery.
The fact is that if the government of north Korea HAD started the war, they would not have been committing any crime – they would only have been endeavouring to liberate their own country from foreign occupation and extend socialist revolution to the southern part of their country where the vast mast masses of the population would certainly welcome them.
This undeniable truth is clear from the fact that it is now admitted by US imperialism that mass murders of communist sympathisers and their families took place in the early stages of the war. It is instructive to quote from Sang-Hun Chose of the Associated Press, writing on 20 April 2000:
“Observed at times by US Army officers, South Korean soldiers and police executed more than 2,000 political prisoners without trial in the early weeks of the Korean war [the reporter is ashamed to admit just how many thousands more than 2,000 were killed!]
, according to declassified US military documents and witnesses. Supreme commander Gen. Douglas MacArthur became aware of at least one of the mass shootings, according to documents originally classified ‘top secret’.
“The new information, detailed in reporting by The Associated Press and a Korean researches, substantiates what some historians have long believed: Large numbers of South Korean leftists arrested by the right-wing regime were secretly killed as its forces retreated before the North Korean army in mid-1950, apparently to keep them from collaborating with the communist invaders.”
The
Pyongyang Times
of 5 February discloses the scale of the slaughter:
“A conservative estimate puts the death toll at 1,146 in Suwon, 2,060 in Chungju, 600 in Kongju and Phyongthaek respectively, 2,000 in Puyo and Chongju respectively, 8.544 in Taejon, 4,000 in Jonju, 400 in Kunsan and Anyang respectively and 800 in Thongyong.”
Despite popular support for the cause of national liberation in the South, the Workers Party of Korea did not wish to engage in war at that particular time, although it would have been entirely justified in doing so. Why then should anybody disbelieve the DPRK’s unwavering insistence that it was the US that started the war with a view to extinguishing communism?
KCNA of 6 June 2000 publishes an article called ‘Facts Tell’ produced by the History Society of the DPRK, and we reproduce this article below for those who are interested in knowing the truth about the start of the Korean war.
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The article describes the Korean War as an inevitable product of the US imperialists’ strategy for world supremacy and their policy of aggression against Korea. It goes on:
Taking advantage of its favourable position as the leader of imperialists after World War II, the US considered it as a strategic aim of its immediate foreign policy to “lead the world,” that is, to achieve world supremacy.
To this end the US declared “Cold War” against the socialist countries and the revolutionary forces around the world, set forth what they called “deterrence strategy” (“blockade strategy”), and the then US President Truman declared his “Truman doctrine” at a joint meeting of the U.S. House and Senate in March 1947.
The Korean War was an inevitable product of this brigandish world supremacy strategy and of the policy of aggression against Korea pursued by the US in its bid to colonise the whole of Korea and realise its designs for world supremacy in the far east with Korea as an advance base.
The US worked out a “plan for northward expedition,” and noisily called for a “northward expedition” to be mounted, while it adjusted and perfected its plans for the Korean War.
For the execution of its world supremacy strategy and policy of aggression on Korea it worked frantically to map out plans for the Korean War.
The “ABC plan” was part of its plan of aggression in the Far East. It is known to the world that the “ABC. plan” was worked out by the MacArthur command on the Pentagon’s instructions from 1948 to early 1950. This plan was approved by the US joint chiefs of staff in around January 1950.
The plan envisaged three stages of war. The first stage (A) was to begin the war of aggression against Korea, involving US troops alongside the “ROK” Army. The second stage (B) involved spreading the war to Manchuria with the support of the re-armed Japanese Army and the Chiang Kai-shek Army. And the third stage (C) was to conquer the whole of Siberia, including the Urals.
For the “Stage A scenario” the US worked out for the ‘ROK’ Army its “plan for northward expedition”. This was a detailed military action programme for the provocation of a war of aggression in Korea.
While clamouring for a “northward expedition” to be launched, the US and the South Korean ruling quarters carried out an unending series of armed assaults across the 38th parallel, paving the way for a full-dress war of aggression against North Korea.
The US’s new war plan for “northward expedition” envisaged beginning the Korean War before July 1950, which would require the finalisation of the war preparations in the US mainland and Japan, and particularly in South Korea, before the outbreak of war. It also called for making US troops as well as the
‘
ROK
’
Army take an active part in the war from its outset and for concentrating all forces on breaking through the 38th parallel instead of carrying out landing operations on the east and west coasts of the North Korea which had been envisaged in the “northward expedition” plan.
It elaborated on the diplomatic role of the US State Department in giving political backing to the Pentagon’s military plan of operations, and on the role of the US joint chiefs of staff, the intelligence action programme of the KLO and the South Korean authorities, etc. With a view to meeting the demands of their world supremacy strategy and their policy of aggression against Korea, the US imperialists worked out and perfected its most reckless plan to launch a war of aggression by letting the ‘ROK’ Army provoke the war of aggression against the North of Korea, and then promptly hurling US troops into the front to conquer the whole of Korea in a short time, and thereafter turn the Korean War into a world war.
The article discloses that an armed intrusion of the US and the South Korean authorities into the area north of the 38th parallel was a prelude to the Korean War. In fact, the US orchestrated a series of “small wars” and armed intrusions into areas north of the 38th parallel against the DPRK from 1947 onwards, which it then escalated in order to provoke the Korean War on June 25, 1950.
The number of cases of armed intrusion reached 2,617 in 1949 when the “plan for the northward expedition” entered a phase of implementation, and this continued and became more pronounced in the first half of 1950.
The US resorted to a crude hoax to cover up its aggressive nature and shift the responsibility for the war on to the DPRK. Behind the curtain of this deceptive offensive the US finally rounded off its war preparations.
Among other things, it decided to bring forward the month for the start of the war to June from July.
This decision taken by Dulles, political adviser to the US President, caused defence secretary Johnson and Bradley, the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, and others to rush to South Korea and Tokyo for final examination of the preparations for the Korean War and taking any necessary measures.
Military proposals set out at the “four-party talks” were ratified by Truman and a combat order was issued to the “ROK” Army to invade the north at dawn of June 25.
Robert, head of the U.S. military advisory group, explaining the reason “why the U.S. chose June 25,” said that it had been chosen because June 25 was a Sunday and no one would believe that the U.S. and South Korea would start a war on a Sunday, as the U.S. and South Korea, both being Christian countries, observed Sunday as the lord’s day.
There is no way that the US imperialists cover up their true colours as the instigators of the Korean War or escape the severe judgement of history, the article warns.