Essay on "Why Did the Korean War Start?"

Essay 4 pages (1160 words) Sources: 5

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Korean War

After World War II, international relations were complex and in flux. The fascist powers had been defeated, Europe was in shambles, and Joseph Stalin's combination of paranoia and greed soon caused a rift between the U.S.S.R. And the West, now commonly known as the Cold War. Because of the Soviet desire to spread international communism, and the fears from the West about nuclear proliferation, intelligence agencies played a seminal role in the culture of the era. However, it wasn't simply the Soviets that worried the West, for by the end of the decade China, too, had become communist.

The paranoia was not all fantasy. The FBI, for instance, worked with the British to break a Soviet Code in Project Verona. This effort confirmed the existence of Americans working in the United States for Soviet Intelligence, later to be a basis for the paranoia of the McCarthy Era. (Romerstein, 2001). During the late 1940s and early 1950s, America feared a nuclear attack from the Soviet Union. Many middle class Americans built bomb shelters, students were trained in the "duck and cover" method of civil defense, and popular culture reflected this paradigm of fear (See: "Cold War Culture," 2009).

Thus, one can imagine that the tension that existed in most aspects of international diplomacy simply waited for something to happen to cause conflict. During World War II, though, the Japanese utilized Korea's food, livestock and metals for the continuation of their war effort. They conscripted almost 3 million Koreans as forced laborers, and even into the Army. Per agreement with President's Roosevelt and Truman, the Soviet Union declared war against Japan in August 1945, and occupied the northern part of the Korean Peninsula, up to the agreed upon 38th parallel (Goulden, 1983, 17). As the Allies were dividing up Europe, the also decided to divide up Korea, and since the Soviet Army stopped at the 38th parallel, gave the northern part of Korea to a Soviet "Zone of Influence." This was primarily done as part of the give-and-take agreements when dividing up Europe and assigning influence to the other parts of the older colonial empires. So, by the end of 1945, Japan had surrendered, the Soviets controlled North Korea, the United States the Southern State, and the Chinese communists were at war to overthrow the warlord monarchy in mainland China (Miscamble, 2008, 4-32).

As tensions grew over the Korean issue, there was a new solidification of the Japanese-American alliance, and changing the political structure within Japan. A new Constitution was ratified in 1946, and became a more western style democracy in which it "drew much of its inspiration from the U.S. Bill of Rights, New Deal social legislation, the liberal constitutions of several European states and even the Soviet Union…. [it] transferred sovereignty from the Emperor to the people in an attempt to depoliticize the Throne (Emperor) and reduce it to the status of a state symbol. Included in the revised charter was the famous 'no war,' 'no arms' Article Nine, which outlawed belligerency as an instrument of state policy and the maintenance of a standing army. The 1947 Constitution also enfranchised women, guaranteed fundamental human rights, strengthened the powers of Parliament and the Cabinet, and decentralized the police and local government" (Eiji 2003, xxxix).

Additionally, between 1946 and 1950, tensions escalated between the newly elected governments in Korea. By 1948, the pro-democracy movement in the South established the Republic of South Korea, and the Soviets aided Kim Il-sung in… READ MORE

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