Exactly sixty years ago, today, 27 July 1953, the Korean War Ceasefire was signed by the UN, in this case alias the US, DPRK(North Korea) and China, putting an end to the three-year bloody war covering the whole of the Korean Peninsula. The ROK(South Korea) refused to sign, which means that technically there is still war, not even truce, between the two Koreas. The ROK may be well advised to sign it even at this late hour, and think about the future on that basis. It may be difficult, however, to do so given that the DPRK is celebrating at this moment the occasion as the day of their great victory.
The BBC has in the past day or two broadcast an interview of several Chinese men and women who participated in the fighting in 1950-53. Some of them gave their age when they went to Korea as sixteen. One of them said that in just one aerial bombing by the US as many as 800 of his fellow soldiers were blown off. If China had not sent their army the DPRK might not have been in existence since then. One also wonders if the enormous casualties China suffered had not had an effect on her population composition.
As for the US, the great majority of their casualties occurred after they crossed the 38th Parallel in their "roll back" policy, which put them in contact with the Chinese Army in a couple of months' time. China had repeatedly warned the US through India, and, as the US continued to move northward, ultimately began to engage them on full scale toward the end of November 1950.
This is not to say, and I am not prepared to say, that China acted only in a self-defensive manner. Bruce Cumings, an American scholar on Korea, writes, 'we still know too little to determine the respective North Korean, Soviet, and Chinese roles in initiating the June fighting'(Korea's Place in the Sun, 1997, p.263), although the biographer of Zhou Enlai writes that 'He(Zhou) had not expected it(the Korean War)' (Han Suyin, Eldest Son, 1994, p.223). But, as Cumings says on the same page, there is no doubt that 'Kim Il Sung bears the grave responsibility for raising the civil conflict in Korea to the level of general war.
What has been the impact of the Korean War on Japan? Upon the North Korean invasion, starting on 25 June 1950, the US decided to intervene. Was there any possibility of making it a "Police Action", not only in name but in substance also? As is debated on the US response to the 9/11? Or, more, was it not possible to leave it to the Koreans alone, treating it as an ordinary civil war? Let us not discuss these and related problems here. But let me assume that the US was determined to hold the ROK in her camp, in view of the Soviet and the then emerging Chinese powers, in other words in the Cold War situation.
And Japan also. She was still under the US occupation. The moment the four divisions stationed in Japan were moved to Korea, the US ordered, in the form of a letter of advice from MacArthur to the Prime Minister, the founding of a Reserve Police Force of 75,000. This was against the letter and the spirit of Article 9 of the Constitution, promulgated only three years before. But we were not in a position to debate it. It greatly encouraged the right wing in the country. The Reserve Police was soon developed into the Self-Defense Force which is an Armed Force all but in name.
Would it be a waste of time to think if the SDF would still be there if there had not been the Korean War? And what about the Japan-US Security Treaty? No, I do not think so, as this hypothetical question would help clarify what Japan's position has been, and still is, in East Asia. I believe that it would have been much more difficult to rearm Japan, and keep it as a de facto US protectorate in this way, if there had been no Korean War. Therefore Kim Il Sung's responsibility is all the more greater. But we will have to look at the process of the division of the Korean Peninsula, and to ask what Japan's responsibility for the division has been. As far as we are concerned, this is one way of how we should spend this 60th anniversary.
The BBC has in the past day or two broadcast an interview of several Chinese men and women who participated in the fighting in 1950-53. Some of them gave their age when they went to Korea as sixteen. One of them said that in just one aerial bombing by the US as many as 800 of his fellow soldiers were blown off. If China had not sent their army the DPRK might not have been in existence since then. One also wonders if the enormous casualties China suffered had not had an effect on her population composition.
As for the US, the great majority of their casualties occurred after they crossed the 38th Parallel in their "roll back" policy, which put them in contact with the Chinese Army in a couple of months' time. China had repeatedly warned the US through India, and, as the US continued to move northward, ultimately began to engage them on full scale toward the end of November 1950.
This is not to say, and I am not prepared to say, that China acted only in a self-defensive manner. Bruce Cumings, an American scholar on Korea, writes, 'we still know too little to determine the respective North Korean, Soviet, and Chinese roles in initiating the June fighting'(Korea's Place in the Sun, 1997, p.263), although the biographer of Zhou Enlai writes that 'He(Zhou) had not expected it(the Korean War)' (Han Suyin, Eldest Son, 1994, p.223). But, as Cumings says on the same page, there is no doubt that 'Kim Il Sung bears the grave responsibility for raising the civil conflict in Korea to the level of general war.
What has been the impact of the Korean War on Japan? Upon the North Korean invasion, starting on 25 June 1950, the US decided to intervene. Was there any possibility of making it a "Police Action", not only in name but in substance also? As is debated on the US response to the 9/11? Or, more, was it not possible to leave it to the Koreans alone, treating it as an ordinary civil war? Let us not discuss these and related problems here. But let me assume that the US was determined to hold the ROK in her camp, in view of the Soviet and the then emerging Chinese powers, in other words in the Cold War situation.
And Japan also. She was still under the US occupation. The moment the four divisions stationed in Japan were moved to Korea, the US ordered, in the form of a letter of advice from MacArthur to the Prime Minister, the founding of a Reserve Police Force of 75,000. This was against the letter and the spirit of Article 9 of the Constitution, promulgated only three years before. But we were not in a position to debate it. It greatly encouraged the right wing in the country. The Reserve Police was soon developed into the Self-Defense Force which is an Armed Force all but in name.
Would it be a waste of time to think if the SDF would still be there if there had not been the Korean War? And what about the Japan-US Security Treaty? No, I do not think so, as this hypothetical question would help clarify what Japan's position has been, and still is, in East Asia. I believe that it would have been much more difficult to rearm Japan, and keep it as a de facto US protectorate in this way, if there had been no Korean War. Therefore Kim Il Sung's responsibility is all the more greater. But we will have to look at the process of the division of the Korean Peninsula, and to ask what Japan's responsibility for the division has been. As far as we are concerned, this is one way of how we should spend this 60th anniversary.
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