Essay: The Korean War and the Vietnam War

There are two wars in our history that left permanent emotional and physical scars on America as a whole. The first war being the Korean War, fought from June of 1950 to July of 1953. The second being the Vietnam War, lasting from November 1955 to April of 1975. These two hard-fought wars maintained a similar goal – an attempt to stop the spread of communism throughout Asia. Along with a similar goal, the wars shared many other similarities. Those include the wars never having an official “declaration of war” by members of Congress, as well as both being considered ill-favored back home in the U.S. Among these similarities, there are also interesting differences in why the U.S. chose to get involved. Both wars came at an interesting time in our country, hence, differences in the spark that lead to war. Although there are numerous similarities, the Vietnam and Korean Wars were sparked due to different reasons. These reasons include the status of international relations, the timeliness of the wars, as well as the foreign policy enacted at that time under different presidents.
The Korean War was ignited by a surprise attack by the communist Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) on the non-communist South Korea. This surprise attack came after North Korea gained the support of Russia. Unbeknownst to South Korea, a war was sparked that would claim the lives of more than three million (Mount Holyoke). In the early morning hours on June 25th of 1950, 75,000 troops from North Korea stormed through the border between the two countries, known as the 38th parallel (Gillie). When asked about the 38th Parallel, Clancy Sigal, a journalist for The Guardian, elaborates:
The line had been hastily drawn with pencil using a National Geographic map by two junior American officers in President Truman’s White House. But five years later, supported by Stalin’s Russia and Mao’s China, the North Koreans under Kim Il-Sung had decided the time was ripe to force the reunification of Korea under communist rule. (Sigal)
Sigal is shining light on the amount of thought that went into dividing the two nations of Korea, each side being back by opposing powers. He highlights that this was meant to be a very temporary fix, when it proved to be anything but peaceful separation of powers. Seoul, the capital of South Korea, was captured rather quickly by North Korean troops. The South was very overwhelmed by the sudden invasion. The war was North Korean leader Kim Il Sung’s attempt at spreading communism throughout the Korean peninsula. The 38th parallel was created as a peaceful way of dividing the differences between the United States and the Soviet Union. Once the approval was given by the UN for foreign states to send troops, the United States rushed to the aid of the South, while North Korea turned to the People’s Republic of China. Ultimately, this war resulted in a three-year-long battle on the Korean peninsula. Many scholars suspected that the war could have led to World War III (BBC). The war concluded in a cease-fire in 1953 that is said to have “left the two Koreas divided once more” (Gillie). It is said that the two nations have been at arms with one another until this year when Moon Jae-in, the President of South Korea and the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un came to an agreement to end the divide.
Both, World War II and the Cold War laid the precedent for the Korean War. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, Korea remained a part of the Japanese empire. In the aftermath of the war, the Japanese empire fell and left Korea suddenly free. This lone state proved to be an easy target for Soviet, communist influence. Although they were allies throughout the second world war, the tensions between the Soviet Union and United States grew stronger. After World War II, the United States and Soviet Union grew into enemies of one another by fighting for allies through proxy wars. Adam Richards, a history professor who holds a doctorate degree in the subject, explains:
The United States and Soviet Union had different ideas. The Soviets wanted to expand the sphere of communist influence into Korea. The United States countered by encouraging the establishment of democracy. Additionally, the United States stressed the importance of containment, which is a foreign policy used to prevent the spread of communism. (Richards)
Richards is explaining the clash between the Soviets and the U.S. that followed the second world war. Ultimately, it was a conflict of interests between the two countries, and a great divide in beliefs caused the animosity. Although the U.S. Congress never officially declared war, this friction eventually brought the United States into war on the Korean peninsula. After North Korea was given the approval and backing of the Soviet Union dictator, Joseph Stalin, they launched a full scale invasion on South Korea. Even though the U.S. Secretary of State at the time, Dean Acheson, delivered a speech that removed Korea from the defense perimeter of America, the U.S. was almost immediately involved in the war (Greenspan).  On June 27, the North Korean troops made their way into the outer parts of Seoul. This sudden descent into the capital of South Korea prompted U.S. President Harry Truman to order U.S. air and naval forces into action. Soon after, he called for ground troops in Korea.
Southeast Asia was under Japanese rule throughout World War II. When facing the loss of the war, the Japanese handed Southeast Asia over as a part of their reparations. The French then re-occupied the Indochina region in 1945. Shortly thereafter, the Geneva Conventions followed. The Treaty of Geneva in 1954 divided Indochina into North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos (Britannica). One piece of the agreement included that there were to be elections held in an effort to unify the two parts of Vietnam. The ruler of South Vietnam at the time, Ngo Dinh Diem, elected not to hold the elections which resulted in the obvious – the two pieces of Vietnam failing to unify as one. According to an article by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), there was a strong determination by North Vietnam to take the South by a new war tactic. The BBC explains, “Ho Chi Minh was a communist, who was supported by China. In 1960, he set up the National Liberation Front (NLF) in South Vietnam, which started a guerilla war to take over South Vietnam from Diem and his American backers” (BBC). The United States started referring to these National Liberation Front guerilla warriors as the Vietcong, and the Americans quickly supported Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam by sending military advisors and funds. Ngo Dinh Diem was a hated ruler in the South, as he and his government consisted of wealthy, Christian men who owned a vast number of South Vietnamese assets. His government and his leadership is noted as being one riddled with corruption. The government persecuted the less-fortunate and those of the Buddhist faith. This failure of the South Vietnamese government made it easy prey for the Vietcong. The Army of the Republic of Vietnam, a militia installed by the French, could not defeat the Vietcong and immediately surrendered vast areas of rural land. America took note of the quick accumulation of South Korean land that the North Vietnamese were gaining, finding it necessary to support the efforts of overthrowing Diem’s government. Eventually, Diem was murdered and a military government was installed in South Vietnam with the aid of the U.S.
Many historians can agree on the fact that the United States was involved in Vietnam for a variety of reasons that essentially came to a head. The four most discussed reasons behind the U.S. entrance into the war are said to include the domino effect, containment of communism, the weakness of the South Vietnamese army, and the simple fact that the United States was essentially attacked. In the Cold War era, the United States was aggressively attempting to fight against the spread of communism and its values. The United States’ foreign policy at the time was to contain communism and prevent the spread of it throughout Southeast Asia. In 1949, Mao Zedong, the principal of the Chinese Communist movement, proclaimed a new, communist People’s Republic of China. Before the turn in government, there was a costly civil war following World War II in China. In the following years, the U.S. fought to contain the threat of communism spreading into the Korean peninsula. Through these actions, the United States was prepared to wage war in order to protect its international interests. At the time, U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, explained that he refused to be the commander-in-chief that oversaw the rapid spread of communism into Southeast Asia (BBC). The policy of containment and the domino effect go hand-in-hand. The United States hypothesized that if South Vietnam succumbed to communism, then nearby countries such as Thailand and Laos, and eventually, India, would fall to communism. The threat of this rapid spread to these countries was a direct threat to United States’ interests. President Johnson provided an analogy for the threat, by saying: “If you let a bully come in and chase you out of your front yard, tomorrow he’ll be on your porch and the next day he’ll rape your wife in your own bed” (NY Times).