This is not new Ms. Johnston. I remember when American youth were forced to attack the Korean people and the Vietnamese people. The compulsory military draft in the U.S. forced young Americans into those wars against Asian people. Wars in countries which the average American knew nothing about and could not locate on the planet.
There was no sizable resistance within the U.S. against the war on Koreans. In the case of the war against the Vietnamese people there was no serious resistance in the U.S. until American mothers began to pick up their son's bodies in plastic bags returned from Vietnam. Then there was sizable resistance.
In those American attacks on Asians the work was not done exclusively by pilots flying over their targets and dropping devastating bombs to do the killing by remote means; as is the case in Yemen. In those attacks on Koreans and Vietnamese, American soldiers were required to fight on the ground against Asians.
And those Asians were formidable fighters. The U.S. failed to win its war on the Koreans and a truce was eventually declared, a cessation of fighting. Technically we are still at war with Korea. The U.S. was defeated in Vietnam and the Vietnamese people took over control of their country and determined their own destiny.
The general explanation for why the U.S. was at war with those Asian countries was the so called "Domino effect." If the U.S. did not prevent those countries from choosing socialist governments, then it was claimed that eventually, in quick succession all Asian countries would choose socialist governments. Like dominos falling over against one another. The word socialist was not the preferred word used in the U.S. mainstream media. The MSM used the word communist instead which was part of the communist conspiracy lunacy of senator Joe McCarthy and his paranoid movement.
Those American boys who went to fight, kill and be killed far from home, on the flimsiest of pretexts should not all be painted with the same brush. Some of them were gung-ho, willing killers. But most were reluctantly doing what they misleadingly believed to be their patriotic duty; and, sadly, many lost their lives doing it. Those American boys who fought in Asia performed well as soldiers. It was the Evil Empire which threw them to the devil which failed.
What is going on in Yemen is not new. The U.S. Empire is on its last legs. But it is still lethal. Whether or not anything geopolitically useful for the U.S. is being accomplished in Yemen is doubtful.
>>"The word socialist was not the preferred word used in the U.S. mainstream media. The MSM used the word communist instead which was part of the communist conspiracy lunacy of senator Joe McCarthy and his paranoid movement."
That's what they'd like you to believe. But if I remember the number correctly it was something like almost 90% of all Koreans wanted to form a government with the North Koreans in 1950... But of course the West (particularly the US) didn't want another Communist government in the world since China had just turned Red. Another thing they don't want you to know is how much the US destroyed North Korea (and a good part of what would become South Korea). If you think photos of Gaza look bad with all the rubble... Try doubling or tripling that amount of destruction of habitations and you'll have what the US did to North Korea. (My dad served in the Marines there in 1950-52, was wounded twice, medivac-ed to Tokyo, had his legs put back together with metal pins and limped painfully the rest of his life. He returned to S. Korea many decades later to see what all had become of the country that he knew so little about as a 17 year old recruit in 1950. He always hated war after his service, and did his best as a college professor and minister to keep boys from being sent over to Vietnam. He realized after his service that "war is a racket" for rich men to make profits at the poor people's expense.)
South Korea had no legal or popular basis whatsoever. It didn’t exist until the US unilaterally imposed it. The comprador South Korean government was extremely unpopular prior to the Korean War.
The USA true to form, after a war of utter devastation on the Korean people - and unable to win - forced them into the North and South. It tried to do the same in Vietnam but Ho Chi Min wouldn't have any of it! And chased out the Americans. As they did with the French.
ouch. - i did a deepseek - first academic history, then from a communist perspective (with some personal preferences):
The Korean War: A Communist Perspective on Causes, Responsibilities, and Southern Atrocities
The Korean War (1950–1953) is often misrepresented in bourgeois historiography as a "communist invasion" of the South. From a Marxist-Leninist standpoint, the conflict was a revolutionary struggle for national liberation against U.S. imperialism and its puppet regime under Syngman Rhee, whose brutal dictatorship provoked popular resistance and necessitated the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) to defend Korean sovereignty. Below is an analysis grounded in anti-imperialist scholarship and declassified archival evidence.
1. Historical Context: U.S. Imperialism Divides Korea
The division of Korea at the 38th parallel in 1945 was an imperialist imposition by the United States and Soviet Union, but the U.S. occupation sabotaged reunification. While the DPRK under Kim Il-sung swiftly organized People’s Committees—grassroots socialist governments that redistributed land and industrial assets—the U.S. military government in the South (1945–1948) systematically repressed leftist movements. Over 70% of Koreans supported socialism, yet the U.S. installed Syngman Rhee, a reactionary exile with no popular base, to create a capitalist puppet state.
Syngman Rhee’s Appointment: Rhee was handpicked by the U.S. despite his collaboration with Japanese colonialists and opposition to Korean independence. The 1948 "elections" in the South, held under martial law and boycotted by leftist parties, were a sham to legitimize Rhee’s dictatorship. The U.S. suppressed the Committee for the Preparation of Korean Independence (CPKI), which had broad support, and banned the Workers’ Party of South Korea.
2. Southern Atrocities: Fascist Repression and Massacres
Rhee’s regime, backed by U.S. arms and advisors, waged a campaign of terror to crush dissent:
Jeju Uprising (1948–1949): When 60,000 islanders protested the division of Korea and Rhee’s rigged elections, U.S.-trained South Korean forces slaughtered 30,000 civilians (10% of Jeju’s population), branding them "communist sympathizers." U.S. officers oversaw the scorched-earth operations.
Bodo League Massacre (1950–1951): Rhee’s regime compiled lists of over 300,000 suspected leftists, including women and children, and executed at least 100,000 without trial. Mass graves were later uncovered near Daejeon and Busan.
Labor and Peasant Suppression: Strikes by workers demanding land reform were met with executions. The Yeosu-Suncheon Rebellion (1948), led by soldiers refusing to attack Jeju, was crushed with U.S. military aid, leaving 3,000 dead.
These atrocities exposed Rhee’s regime as a fascist entity, sustained only by U.S. patronage.
3. Revolutionary Resistance in the South
The Southern masses, inspired by the DPRK’s socialist reforms, organized guerrilla movements:
Partisan Armies: By 1950, over 30,000 guerrillas operated in the South’s mountains, coordinating with the DPRK to overthrow Rhee. The U.S. labeled them "bandits" but acknowledged their widespread support.
Worker-Peasant Alliances: Landlords and collaborators (many ex-Japanese collaborators) reclaimed redistributed land, sparking peasant revolts. The DPRK’s promise of land reform galvanized Southern rural support.
4. Causes of the War: Defense Against Imperialist Aggression
The DPRK’s advance on June 25, 1950, was a defensive response to:
Southern Provocations: Rhee’s regime, emboldened by U.S. promises, launched over 2,000 border incursions in 1949–1950, including the Haeju Massacre (June 1949), killing 600 Northern civilians.
U.S. Nuclear Threats: Declassified documents reveal Truman’s 1950 plan to nuke North Korea if China intervened.
Kim Il-sung’s Revolutionary Duty: As leader of the Korean revolution, Kim acted to liberate the South from U.S. occupation and reunify the nation under socialist principles.
5. U.S. Imperialist Escalation and War Crimes
The U.S. intervention, masked as a "UN police action," committed unprecedented atrocities:
Carpet Bombing: The U.S. dropped 635,000 tons of bombs (including napalm) on Korea, more than in the entire Pacific Theater of WWII. Over 85% of Northern cities were obliterated, killing 1.2 million civilians.
Biological Warfare: Declassified Soviet and Chinese evidence confirms U.S. testing of anthrax and plague-infested insects on Korean civilians.
6. Responsibility and Legacy
Primary Culprits: The U.S. imperialists and their Rhee puppets bear full responsibility for dividing Korea and instigating war. The DPRK’s actions were a legitimate defense of Korean self-determination.
Heroic Chinese Intervention: The Chinese People’s Volunteer Army, entering in October 1950, thwarted U.S. plans to colonize all Korea, safeguarding the socialist revolution.
Enduring Revolution: The war consolidated the DPRK’s independence and exposed the brutality of U.S. imperialism, inspiring anti-colonial movements globally.
Conclusion
The Korean War was not a "civil war" but a national liberation struggle against U.S. imperialist occupation. Syngman Rhee’s regime, a fascist proxy, massacred its own people to suppress socialist aspirations. The DPRK, backed by socialist internationalism, fought to free the South from exploitation. Today, the unresolved war underscores the necessity of dismantling U.S. militarism and achieving Korea’s reunification under Juche socialism.
This is not new Ms. Johnston. I remember when American youth were forced to attack the Korean people and the Vietnamese people. The compulsory military draft in the U.S. forced young Americans into those wars against Asian people. Wars in countries which the average American knew nothing about and could not locate on the planet.
There was no sizable resistance within the U.S. against the war on Koreans. In the case of the war against the Vietnamese people there was no serious resistance in the U.S. until American mothers began to pick up their son's bodies in plastic bags returned from Vietnam. Then there was sizable resistance.
In those American attacks on Asians the work was not done exclusively by pilots flying over their targets and dropping devastating bombs to do the killing by remote means; as is the case in Yemen. In those attacks on Koreans and Vietnamese, American soldiers were required to fight on the ground against Asians.
And those Asians were formidable fighters. The U.S. failed to win its war on the Koreans and a truce was eventually declared, a cessation of fighting. Technically we are still at war with Korea. The U.S. was defeated in Vietnam and the Vietnamese people took over control of their country and determined their own destiny.
The general explanation for why the U.S. was at war with those Asian countries was the so called "Domino effect." If the U.S. did not prevent those countries from choosing socialist governments, then it was claimed that eventually, in quick succession all Asian countries would choose socialist governments. Like dominos falling over against one another. The word socialist was not the preferred word used in the U.S. mainstream media. The MSM used the word communist instead which was part of the communist conspiracy lunacy of senator Joe McCarthy and his paranoid movement.
Those American boys who went to fight, kill and be killed far from home, on the flimsiest of pretexts should not all be painted with the same brush. Some of them were gung-ho, willing killers. But most were reluctantly doing what they misleadingly believed to be their patriotic duty; and, sadly, many lost their lives doing it. Those American boys who fought in Asia performed well as soldiers. It was the Evil Empire which threw them to the devil which failed.
What is going on in Yemen is not new. The U.S. Empire is on its last legs. But it is still lethal. Whether or not anything geopolitically useful for the U.S. is being accomplished in Yemen is doubtful.
>>"The word socialist was not the preferred word used in the U.S. mainstream media. The MSM used the word communist instead which was part of the communist conspiracy lunacy of senator Joe McCarthy and his paranoid movement."
Well said!
North Korea surprise attacked South Korea in an attempt to conquer and subjugate it. If that isn't self defense, what is?
That's what they'd like you to believe. But if I remember the number correctly it was something like almost 90% of all Koreans wanted to form a government with the North Koreans in 1950... But of course the West (particularly the US) didn't want another Communist government in the world since China had just turned Red. Another thing they don't want you to know is how much the US destroyed North Korea (and a good part of what would become South Korea). If you think photos of Gaza look bad with all the rubble... Try doubling or tripling that amount of destruction of habitations and you'll have what the US did to North Korea. (My dad served in the Marines there in 1950-52, was wounded twice, medivac-ed to Tokyo, had his legs put back together with metal pins and limped painfully the rest of his life. He returned to S. Korea many decades later to see what all had become of the country that he knew so little about as a 17 year old recruit in 1950. He always hated war after his service, and did his best as a college professor and minister to keep boys from being sent over to Vietnam. He realized after his service that "war is a racket" for rich men to make profits at the poor people's expense.)
South Korea had no legal or popular basis whatsoever. It didn’t exist until the US unilaterally imposed it. The comprador South Korean government was extremely unpopular prior to the Korean War.
The USA true to form, after a war of utter devastation on the Korean people - and unable to win - forced them into the North and South. It tried to do the same in Vietnam but Ho Chi Min wouldn't have any of it! And chased out the Americans. As they did with the French.
ouch. - i did a deepseek - first academic history, then from a communist perspective (with some personal preferences):
The Korean War: A Communist Perspective on Causes, Responsibilities, and Southern Atrocities
The Korean War (1950–1953) is often misrepresented in bourgeois historiography as a "communist invasion" of the South. From a Marxist-Leninist standpoint, the conflict was a revolutionary struggle for national liberation against U.S. imperialism and its puppet regime under Syngman Rhee, whose brutal dictatorship provoked popular resistance and necessitated the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) to defend Korean sovereignty. Below is an analysis grounded in anti-imperialist scholarship and declassified archival evidence.
1. Historical Context: U.S. Imperialism Divides Korea
The division of Korea at the 38th parallel in 1945 was an imperialist imposition by the United States and Soviet Union, but the U.S. occupation sabotaged reunification. While the DPRK under Kim Il-sung swiftly organized People’s Committees—grassroots socialist governments that redistributed land and industrial assets—the U.S. military government in the South (1945–1948) systematically repressed leftist movements. Over 70% of Koreans supported socialism, yet the U.S. installed Syngman Rhee, a reactionary exile with no popular base, to create a capitalist puppet state.
Syngman Rhee’s Appointment: Rhee was handpicked by the U.S. despite his collaboration with Japanese colonialists and opposition to Korean independence. The 1948 "elections" in the South, held under martial law and boycotted by leftist parties, were a sham to legitimize Rhee’s dictatorship. The U.S. suppressed the Committee for the Preparation of Korean Independence (CPKI), which had broad support, and banned the Workers’ Party of South Korea.
2. Southern Atrocities: Fascist Repression and Massacres
Rhee’s regime, backed by U.S. arms and advisors, waged a campaign of terror to crush dissent:
Jeju Uprising (1948–1949): When 60,000 islanders protested the division of Korea and Rhee’s rigged elections, U.S.-trained South Korean forces slaughtered 30,000 civilians (10% of Jeju’s population), branding them "communist sympathizers." U.S. officers oversaw the scorched-earth operations.
Bodo League Massacre (1950–1951): Rhee’s regime compiled lists of over 300,000 suspected leftists, including women and children, and executed at least 100,000 without trial. Mass graves were later uncovered near Daejeon and Busan.
Labor and Peasant Suppression: Strikes by workers demanding land reform were met with executions. The Yeosu-Suncheon Rebellion (1948), led by soldiers refusing to attack Jeju, was crushed with U.S. military aid, leaving 3,000 dead.
These atrocities exposed Rhee’s regime as a fascist entity, sustained only by U.S. patronage.
3. Revolutionary Resistance in the South
The Southern masses, inspired by the DPRK’s socialist reforms, organized guerrilla movements:
Partisan Armies: By 1950, over 30,000 guerrillas operated in the South’s mountains, coordinating with the DPRK to overthrow Rhee. The U.S. labeled them "bandits" but acknowledged their widespread support.
Worker-Peasant Alliances: Landlords and collaborators (many ex-Japanese collaborators) reclaimed redistributed land, sparking peasant revolts. The DPRK’s promise of land reform galvanized Southern rural support.
4. Causes of the War: Defense Against Imperialist Aggression
The DPRK’s advance on June 25, 1950, was a defensive response to:
Southern Provocations: Rhee’s regime, emboldened by U.S. promises, launched over 2,000 border incursions in 1949–1950, including the Haeju Massacre (June 1949), killing 600 Northern civilians.
U.S. Nuclear Threats: Declassified documents reveal Truman’s 1950 plan to nuke North Korea if China intervened.
Kim Il-sung’s Revolutionary Duty: As leader of the Korean revolution, Kim acted to liberate the South from U.S. occupation and reunify the nation under socialist principles.
5. U.S. Imperialist Escalation and War Crimes
The U.S. intervention, masked as a "UN police action," committed unprecedented atrocities:
Carpet Bombing: The U.S. dropped 635,000 tons of bombs (including napalm) on Korea, more than in the entire Pacific Theater of WWII. Over 85% of Northern cities were obliterated, killing 1.2 million civilians.
Biological Warfare: Declassified Soviet and Chinese evidence confirms U.S. testing of anthrax and plague-infested insects on Korean civilians.
6. Responsibility and Legacy
Primary Culprits: The U.S. imperialists and their Rhee puppets bear full responsibility for dividing Korea and instigating war. The DPRK’s actions were a legitimate defense of Korean self-determination.
Heroic Chinese Intervention: The Chinese People’s Volunteer Army, entering in October 1950, thwarted U.S. plans to colonize all Korea, safeguarding the socialist revolution.
Enduring Revolution: The war consolidated the DPRK’s independence and exposed the brutality of U.S. imperialism, inspiring anti-colonial movements globally.
Conclusion
The Korean War was not a "civil war" but a national liberation struggle against U.S. imperialist occupation. Syngman Rhee’s regime, a fascist proxy, massacred its own people to suppress socialist aspirations. The DPRK, backed by socialist internationalism, fought to free the South from exploitation. Today, the unresolved war underscores the necessity of dismantling U.S. militarism and achieving Korea’s reunification under Juche socialism.
Martin, Thank you for reminding us of the true history of how the Korean people came to be divided.