Chapter 11: US Invasion of North Korea
We are the sun, future and pride of Korea,
we are the new wharang of new Korea,
the student volunteers army, and
we will fight and die for Korea
A Student Volunteers Army marching song
Until the Inchon landing, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff's primary concern was bracing for a Dunkirk at Pusan. With the abrupt and unexpected collapse of the North Korean Army, the Joint Chiefs faced a new problem, to invade or not to invade North Korea. The overall US position was “one of steadfast patience and determination in opposing communist aggression without provoking unnecessarily a total war.” In short, the US was militarily NOT ready to fight the USSR and China at this time. The primary interest of US was Europe, not Asia.
On September 25, 1950, the Chinese Army Chief of Staff, Gen. Nie Ronzhen, told the Indian Ambassador that China would intervene in Korea even at the risk of a wider war with US. Indeed, Mao would welcome a chance to settle old grievances with the Yankee imperialists. A few days later, Chou En Lai told the Indian Ambassador the same message. The Chinese recited the old debts owed to the Korean people: over 250,000 Koreans in the Chinese wars of liberation, of land reform, and the help from Koreans in their battles against Chiang Kai Sek. The ambassador passed on the information, but Dean Rusk ignored “this Indian with a spade beard”.
Gen. Bradley (the JCS chairman)
was opposed to MacArthur's war in Korea but Truman overrode his objection and
approved stripping of the US, Puerto Rico, Panama, Hawaii and Okinawa to feed
MacArthur's army. Bradley told Truman that a war with China was
“the wrong war, at the wrong
place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy”.
The State Department experts on the USSR, George Kennan and Charles Bohlen, urged the military not to cross the 38th Parallel. They believed that the USSR and China would join the war, if the US invaded North Korea. But the hawks, Dean Acheson, Dean Rusk (the guy who drew the 38th Parallel and who got the US involved in the Vietnam War) and John Allison won the day and talked Truman into siding with MacArthur over the objection of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
On September 27, 1950, MacArthur received the official order to invade North Korea: “Your military objective is the destruction of the North Korean armed forces. In attaining this objective you are authorized to conduct military operations, including amphibious and airborne landings or ground operations north of the 38th Parallel in Korea, provided that at the time of such operations there has been no entry into North Korea by major Soviet or Chinese Communist Forces, no announcement of intended entry, nor a threat to counter our operations militarily in North Korea. Under no circumstances, however, will your forces cross the Manchurian or USSR borders of Korea” - Gen. Bradley, Chairman, US Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Why invade North Korea and risk a wider war with China or Russia? Once again the US intelligence failed to serve the US national interest. About 90 percent of the CIA intelligence was coming from MacArthur's headquarters, including intelligence from Chiang Kai Sek, who had vested interests in widening the war. This was the last chance for Chiang to regain Mainland China. The evidence indicates that Chiang and MacArthur were collaborating to provoke a war with China. The CIA estimated there were 565,000 communist troops in Manchuria, including about 70,000 Koreans, with more troops arriving from China. Chou En Lai's repeated warnings went unheeded. MacArthur was contemptuous of the Chinese 'peasants' army.
That same day, the British intelligence learned of a Chinese military council decision to intervene in Korea. The US ignored this information. Simultaneously Chou announced publicly “China will send troops across the frontier to participate in defense of North Korea”. The hawks at the State Department led by Acheson and Rusk labeled Chou's statement “a bravado - part of a joint Soviet-Chinese diplomatic effort to save the North Korean regime.” This arrogance, or ignorance, was shared by the CIA.
The CIA analysis of Chou's statements reads: “Despite statements by Chou En Lai and troop movements in Manchuria...there are no convincing indications of an actual Chinese Communist intention to resort to full-scale intervention in Korea....From a military standpoint the most favorable time for intervention in Korea has passed.... While full-scale Chinese Communist intervention in Korea must be regarded as continuing possibility, a consideration of all known factors leads to the conclusion that barring a Soviet decision for global war, such action is not probable in 1950. During this period, intervention will probably be confined to continued covert assistance to the North Koreans." The consensus of the US top military is that the Russians are not ready for global war while China is not militarily capable of unilateral intervention - namely, There will be no Soviet or Chinese communist intervention in Korea.”
Ever a lover of pomp and grandeur, MacArthur and Rhee made a triumphant entry to Seoul from Kimpo and held a ceremony at the capitol on September 28. MacArthur said: “By the grace of merciful Providence, our forces fighting under the standard of that greatest hope and inspiration of mankind, the United Nations, have liberated this ancient capital city of Korea. It has been freed from the despotism of Communist rule and its citizens once more have the opportunity for that immutable concept of life which holds invincibly to the primacy of individual liberty and personal dignity....Mr. President, my officers and I will now resume our military duties and leave you and your government to the discharge of the civil responsibility.”
Rhee replied: “We admire you. We love you as the savior of our race.” MacArthur told the press that the war was almost over and that the North Korean Army was basically wiped out. What remained were mop-up actions that even the South Korean Army could handle.
On September 30, 1950, the North Korean invasion of South Korea officially was turned back. The invasion cost South Korea 111,000 killed, 106,000 wounded, 57,000 missing. 314,000 homes destroyed and 244,000 homes damaged. US losses so far: 5,145 killed in action; 16,461 wounded; 402 captured and 2,164 missing.
The Inchon miracle elevated MacArthur to the status of an infallible god both in Korea and America. Once again the old general had performed a miracle and saved American honor. No one, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff, dared to question MacArthur's military decisions. MacArthur was ready for another spectacular show and readied his X Corps, those troops involved in the Inchon landing, for the second Inchon at Wonsan, on the opposite side of the Peninsula, not far from the border with Russia and China. The X Corps would trap the North Korean Army for the final kill.
At last, it seemed that Korea would be freed of Communism! As a 15-year old youth in Hamhung, I felt exhilaration and relief that the horror would end when, on October 1, 1950, Syngman Rhee ordered Gen. Kim Paik Il to invade North Korea with or without the US backing. Thus, Rhee realized at last his dream of 'buk-jin', The March North. The second phase of the Korean War, the invasion of North Korea, began. The US entered the war on the pretext of saving South Korea, but now that South Korea was saved, the US objective changed to reunification of Korea by force after destroying the communist north. The US changed from the defender to the aggressor.
A sad Kim Il Sung addressed his people as the North Korean Army reverted to guerrilla warfare. They withdrew into mountains in South and North Korea and prepared for a prolonged people's war. MacArthur thought that his military genius had destroyed the communist forces and all that remained was a mop-up operation. Kim asked Mao for help: “We request your special aid. Currently, with enemy forces attacking the area north of the 38th Parallel, our situation is extremely disadvantageous. In order to aid our forces, it is requested that the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army be directly mobilized for us immediately.”
Mao immediately notified Stalin that China would fight the US in Korea: “We are going to dispatch Chinese troops to Korea under the name of a Volunteer Force to fight the US Imperialists and Syngman Rhee's armed forces, side by side with our comrades, the North Korean forces. The reasons we are sending Chinese troops to Korea are that, if the US occupies the Korean peninsula, the Korean revolutionary forces would be completely removed, the US Imperialists would become more belligerent and arrogant, and it would result in a situation unfavorable to China.”
Mao requested that Stalin provide air and logistical support. Stalin agreed to equip 100 Chinese divisions and to send two Soviet air force divisions to Manchuria. Mao and Stalin agreed that October 15 was the day to start the operation across the Yalu in Manchuria.
On October 8, 1950, Peng Tehuai was given the command of the Volunteer Army, some 80,000 men, and prepared to enter North Korea. Kim Il Sung was in a terrible shape, he had only three divisions, one labor regiment, and one tank regiment intact and the rest of his army was in South Korea trying desperately to reach the reassemble area at Manpo near the border with China. These units retreating from South were demoralized and without heavy equipment. Gen. Peng estimated at least two months would be needed to regroup and re-equip Kim’s units.
That October 10, North Korea’s main port on the east coast, Wonsan, fell to South Korea's I Corps, with the 3rd and Capital divisions. However, ominously, North Korea's 5th Division controlled the mountains and villages around Wonsan. My father ran a state farm near Wonsan. He escaped to our home in Hamhung, and moved us to our country home in Hungsang-ri, a small farming community a few miles north of Hamhung. Radio Pyongyang broadcasted Kim Il Sung's speech: “The Korean people are not standing alone in our struggle and are receiving the absolute support of the Soviet Union, the Chinese people,,”.
We realized that there was more
bloodletting coming when at the same time, Radio Peking broadcasted: “The American War of intervention in Korea has been a serious menace
to the security of China from the very start...The Chinese people cannot stand
idly by with regard to such a serious situation - created by the invasion of
Korea by the United States and its accomplice countries and to the dangerous
trend toward extending the war. The Chinese people firmly advocate a peaceful
resolution to the Korean problem and are firmly opposed to the extension of the
Korean War by America.”
South Korea’s Capital Division, the Sudo Sadang, moved 50 miles north to take my hometown of Hamhung. The Russian Navy heavily mined the Wonsan harbor, as the the ROKA 3rd Division stayed put in Wonsan to safeguard the port for the US X Corps including the 1st Marine Div. MacArthur brought in Japanese Navy minesweepers led by Adm. Takeo Okubo to clear the mines. This was the first official entry of the Japanese forces into the Korean War.
MacArthur's generals competed to
be the first to reach the Yalu, that mighty river boundary which Chinese forces
had fled the Japanese little more than half a century before. MacArthur had not
read Sun Tzu's Art of War: “Thus, if you order your men to roll up their buff-coats, and make
forced marches without halting day or night, covering double the usual distance
at a stretch, doing a hundred miles in order to wrest an advantage, the
commanders of all your three divisions will fall into the hands of the enemy.
The stronger men will be in front, the jaded ones will fall behind, and on this
plan only one-tenth of your army will reach its destination.”
“If you march fifty miles in order to outmaneuver the enemy, you will lose the commander of your first division, and only half your force will reach the goal. If you march thirty miles with the same object, two-thirds of your army will arrive. We may take it then that an army without its baggage-train is lost; without provisions it is lost; without bases of supply it is lost. We cannot enter into alliances until we are acquainted with the designs of our neighbors. We are not fit to lead an army on the march unless we are familiar with the face of the country--its mountains and forests, its pitfalls and precipices, its marshes and swamps.” MacArthur’s ignorance of the teachings of an old Asian tactician was about to cost America more than five divisions.
Over the years, I have researched the forces that dashed our hope for an end to the fighting in those days. On October 11, 1950, Stalin informed Chou Enlai that: “The Soviet Union and China forces concluded a treaty of friendly alliance and mutual aid. In this treaty, if any one country is invaded by another country. the other must aid it as much as possible. This is clearly specified. Therefore, as far as we are concerned, we must strive, as much as possible, to limit military confrontation in Korea. As our Chinese comrades say, the Korean war must be made into a local war. If the US makes to bomb the mainland of China, we in the Soviet Union, will deploy our air forces to aid her.”
“If things work out that way, the war will become unlimited and the possibility of it expanding to Europe or various places in the world increases. Because this is the case, as far as the air force question is concerned, it is necessary to be cautious. Instead, improving the equipment of the Chinese forces seems a good idea. We agree to your requests for urgent aid to equip your 40 divisions. However. this must be done in phases. Right now, we will move to first equip 20 divisions.”
But, Stalin got scared and backed away from sending his air force to fight the US, although recently released records show Russian MIG pilots did engage American aircraft. Stalin realized that China and USSR had a mutual defense treaty, which obligated him to fight on the side of Mao, if US went to war with China. Stalin stated: “Comrade Kim Il Sung must form a government in exile in northeast China” and that the best he could do for Mao was to send back the Chinese pilots in training in Russia. Stalin was playing a game with Mao and Kim. He wanted to bleed the US to death in Korea at the expense of Kim and Mao.
In Beijing, Mao was furious at
Stalin's duplicity: “Was everything not determined by agreement? How, in a situation where
deployment orders had already been issued, could the Soviet Union unilaterally
change their decision? If it comes to fighting, one must certainly fight to
win,, absolutely. However, in the current situation, even without us having air
superiority cannot do anything but fight. If we do not fight, as far as Korea is
concerned, it will immediately go into the hands of the enemy.”
“Also after an announcement of unification by the Republic of Korea,
it is not clear if we would fight or not. Stalin! All Socialist countries are
looking to you. We are waiting for your support. But, you are saying that you
are temporarily withholding deployment of the Air Force. For Truman's part, with
Syngman Rhee fighting Kim I1 Sung, there was no delay in aid at all. If he had
delayed even a little, Syngman Rhee would have collapsed and been destroyed.”
"Stalin! Why are you saying that you will postpone aid to China and
Kim I1 Sung? As far as I am concerned, even if the Soviet Union commits air
divisions to North Korea, I don't see that Truman will immediately and
absolutely declare war on the Soviet Union. In the current situation, when the
atomic bomb is already not a monopoly of Truman's country alone, what makes you
believe that he would immediately declare war? What could he rely on that fight? Without the Soviet Union's help, if
operations are only conducted with the Chinese volunteer forces, various types
of difficulties will be forced. As far as these are concerned, in terms of
numbers. they mean increasing the number of combat casualties. “To what degree? 100,000, 200,000, 500.000? Hey, as far as the Chinese
People are concerned. even though they do not want war, this will be
relentlessly forced upon them.”
On October 12, 1950, Mao told Peng to stop his operations and wait for further instructions. Peng had already placed a sizable force in North Korea. Peng flew to Beijing for consultation with Mao.
Hungnam is an industrial port city. It had a large ammonia manufacturing factory. Eight miles northwest of Hungnam is Hamhung, the capital city of South Ham-kyong Province. Both cities are located in the Hamhung Valley. Oro-ri is at the northern tip of the valley and the Sungchung River starts at Oro-ri, flows through Hamhung, and into the East Sea at Hungnam.
A two-lane highway ran northwest from Oro-ri all the way to the Chosin Reservoir. The highway passes through Majong-dong, Sudong, Kotori, and Hagaru. Yudampo sits high in the rugged mountain terrain, some 60 miles from the East Sea. The so-called "highway" was nothing but a dirt track cut on the side of vertical cliffs. Many Soviet vehicles have fallen off the road in 1945.
I woke up in the morning of October 12 to find the city completely deserted. The communists had left the town during the night. The air raid sirens wailed continuously, a prearranged signal for all party cadres to leave immediately. One week earlier, all cadres were issued one Soviet army survival kit each and ordered to head toward Manchuria upon hearing the signal. Each cadre member was allowed to carry only one knapsack and ordered o hide or destroy important documents or equipment. I wondered how they managed to move all those wounded soldiers from the army hospitals in one night and where they had gone?
Our old family friend, Comrade Chu, the former boss of the Hamhung Communist Party and my history teacher, China veteran, stopped by our country home in Sungsan-ri, about 40 minutes walk from our main house in Hamhung, to chat with my father. He carried one knapsack on his back and nothing else, all of his earthly possessions were probably in his bag. Chu told my father that the Chinese troops were already in North Korea and that he would be back soon. He advised my father to stay out of trouble.
Chu claimed that the Chinese had reached as far south as Kotori, only a few miles north of Hamhung. It was only a matter of time when Gen. Peng's gigantic trap would be closed shut and the UN forces annihilated. My father believed Chu - but I did not believe that, and did not want to believe it. My father gave Chu a list of contacts in Kapsan and an envelope with some money. Old comrade Chu walked northward, alone as he had done years ago when the Japanese were about to arrest him. He most likely perished on the road.
Father advised those non-communists who held minor positions in the village government to go into hiding for a month or so. He figured, correctly, that the UN forces would be gone by then. My father himself fled Wonsan, where he ran a small state dairy farm, and was lying low in Sung-san. We had an apple orchard here. Wife number one and wife number two, with their kids, stayed together for the duration of the war. His young and pretty wife number three stayed in Hamhung, she had to care for her sick mother who could not be moved.
The Battle of Hamhung began October 13 with an artillery duel. A lone North Korean howitzer fired on the column of South Korean troops approaching our city from Wonsan. South Korean artillery returned fire and killed the North Korean officer directing the shelling. All this activity happened on the other side of Mt. Behnhong, only a few hundred feet from my house. A bunch of the kids watched the 'show' from the top of the mountain. I saw a jeep carrying three men in civilian clothes race toward our city. It was a South Korean army scout team looking for enemy units. No resistance, not a single North Korean soldier, was to be seen. The jeep bypassed our city and headed north toward Oro-ri and disappeared from my view.
Nothing happened for an hour or so. I could see clearly the dead North Korean artillery officer still lying next to his howitzer. Then all of a sudden, the scout car reappeared racing south. The three men in the jeep were frantically waving and shouting “tanks! tanks!”. Now we had something, we were about to witness a tank battle. We waited and waited, but no tanks appeared. The sun set and we all went home disappointed. I meandered by the howitzer (and the dead body) and reached my house in Sung-san in less than 25 minutes. On the way, I passed a South Korean guerrilla unit resting behind a farm building. The commander was exhorting his troops, mostly high school kids not much older than I was. It seemed everyone had a Russian Maxim machine gun, a heavy piece of machinery. I wondered how they managed to move fast with such heavy weapons.
Father was angry at me for running around while there was a battle blazing outdoors. He ordered everyone into our bomb shelter, actually a kimchi storage cave. Every Korean house had a kimchi cave, a large underground cavity for keeping huge man-size kimchi jars during winter. It was a large cavity dug deep in the ground with a thick earthen roof over it. Such kimchi caves had doubled as bomb shelters during World War II. It was dark and damp inside the cave. All kinds of insects, ants, spiders, cockroaches, etc., inhabited it and they crawled all over us. The air in the cave was foul and hard to breathe. I complained that I was choking, that I had to go out for fresh air, but my father was adamant that we all stayed put. I gave up and sat next my sister and took out my gun to see if it was in operating condition. My sister saw my gun and blurted out, “Dad, Young Sik has a pistol in his school bag!” My father thought she meant a toy gun and was not overly concerned, but after one quick glance at my gun, he realized that it was the real thing. He took my gun away and buried it after shouting – “You idiot! Are you trying to get us all shot?”
He said we would be all shot if either North Korean or South Korean soldiers found the gun. I was afraid to tell him that I belonged to an anti-Communist group, he would have hit the ceiling and had a heart attack. Lucky for me, my mother stayed at our house in Hamhung and so I had to put up with only my father. My mother hated to hang around my father's second wife and she spent as little time as possible in Sung-san.
That night, South Korean troops in North Korean uniforms moved into Sung-san unopposed. We could tell that they were South Koreans from their southern accent, US army issue items and their haircut; North Korean soldiers shaved their head whereas the South Koreans grew hair. They went from house to house looking for communists. Two soldiers burst into our house and asked us to line up. They were looking for military age men for questioning. One soldier spotted my teenage half sister half naked, and that seemed to have softened up the tense soldiers. The soldiers smiled and told us to go back to bed. It was on that night that my sister exchanged sex with these armed men to save her family from harsh treatment.
As we were traumatized, I have over the decades, found through research, more high level activities that would shortly impact on us in an equally painful way. On October 13, 1950, Mao Zedong cabled Peng in Manchuria and Chou Enlai visiting Moscow:
“As the result of an emergency agreement of all the various members of the Politburo, we have reached the unanimous opinion that it is advantageous for us to send troops to Korea. In the initial period, they will attack the ROK forces. In this regard, we have considerable confidence. First of all, we will put bases in the mountainous areas north of the line joining Pyongyang and Wonsan and rouse the Korean People even more. In Period 1, if only possible to annihilate several South Korean divisions, the situation in Korea will turn in an advantageous direction for us.”
Mao Zedong elaborated even further: “With regard to the adoption of the positive policies described above, for China and Korea and Asia and even to world as a whole, this is very advantageous. If we do not send troops, the enemy will control all the way up to the environs of the Yalu River, and, as far as the boasts of the reactionary forces within China are concerned, they would gradually grow higher and it would be disadvantageous for us in various respects. The whole of the Northeast Defense forces would be pinned down on the front line and the military forces in southern Manchuria would be completely dominated. For this reason, we came to the following conclusion: we should participate in the war. We must participate in the war. The profits from participating in the war will be very great. The damage from not participating in war would be very great.”
On October 13, 1950, North Korean Government moved to Kanggye, a remote village ringed by protective mountains near the Yalu River. It was from Kanggye that, almost 80 years before, groups of fierce North Korean tiger hunters had been summoned by the Yi Dynasty in Seoul to help fight invading American marines and sailors, and it would be at Kanggye where Kim Il Sung turned and made his stand against Western and South Korean forces.
From Antung on the north side of the Yalu River along the Korea-China border, Peng Dehuai sent the first train load of Chinese soldiers, the 334th Regiment, the 112th Division, the 38th Field Army, across the Yalu. Marching bands and school children gave the soldiers a fine farewell. Soon after, the 42nd Field Army crossed the Yalu at Manpojin. Peng's advance army was designated as the 13th Army Group under Gen. Li Tianyu.
The 13th Army Group was ordered to stop MacArthur at a line just north of Chungchon River. Another field army, the 42nd, would move into regions east of the 13th to protect its flank and Kanggye, the temporary capital of North Korea. Two additional Chinese field armies, the 50th and the 66th, would move into Korea to reinforce the advance units. The latter armies would be designated as the 9th Army Group, under Gen. Song Shilun. Peng had a total of 380,000 men under his control. Amazingly, the advance units crossed the Yalu undetected by MacArthur. The Chinese intelligence monitored the American radio traffic and no signal noted the massive river crossings.
War left little time for us to grieve at my sister’s lost innocence or to console her, or to heal. That October 14, the South Korean troops in Hamhung were burying anti-tank mines in the road leading to Sung-san during the night and waited for the enemy tanks rumbling in our direction. These were the same tanks spotted by the scouting jeep earlier. Early in the morning, three light tanks approached Sung-san. The lead tank hit a mine and burst into flames. One of the crewmembers managed to get out and tried to escape, and the South Koreans gunned him down. The remaining two tanks turned around and fled northward. We were happy to see the South Korean troops, but there was no formal welcoming party.
We hung around the South Korean soldiers, trying to find out what was going on. I spotted the ruined tank and decided to take a closer look, a bad mistake. A South Korean soldier grabbed me from behind and screamed, “Are you trying to get us killed?”, and aimed his M1 Rifle at my head. Lucky for me, the officer in charge stopped the soldier from killing me. It turned out the road was full of land mines and I had been about to step on one. I guess the guy actually saved my life and those of the soldiers nearby. I saw that the mines were clearly marked, and I had been too stupid to see them.
Other high leaders who were
sending fighting troops through our area and through our lives were also busy
that fateful day. On October 14, 1950, MacArthur
assured President Truman on Wake Island that no Chinese would dare to face his
army, that the Korean War was practically over now. MacArthur told Truman that: “Formal resistance will end
throughout North and South Korea by Thanksgiving. We are no longer fearful of
Chinese intervention. The Chinese have 300,000 men in Manchuria. Of these
probably not more than 100,000 to 125,000 are distributed along the Yalu River.
Only 50,000 to 60,000 could be gotten across the Yalu River. They have no air
force. Now that we have bases for our air force in Korea, if the Chinese tried
to get down to Pyongyang, there would be the greatest slaughter,” the American
Caesar told Truman. “With the
Russians, it is a little different. They have an air force base in Siberia and a
fairly good one, with excellent pilots equipped with some jets and B-25 and B-29
type planes. They can put 1,000 planes in the air with some 2,000 to 3,000 more
from the Fifth and Seventh Soviet Fleets. They are probably no match for our air
force. The Russians have no ground troops available for North Korea. They would
have difficulty in putting troops into the field. It would take six weeks to get
a division across the border.”
Soviet archives show that some 100,000 Russian ground troops were packed and ready to move in Korea; and that Russian warplanes were already operational in Manchuria and actually fighting American pilots over Korea. It is not clear if MacArthur was telling a white lie or was living in the fantasy world of a megalomaniac.
But that day on Wake Island,
Dean Rusk was not convinced and asked MacArthur point-blank, “What
about the Chinese threat?” MacArthur
answered: “I do not fully understand why the Chinese have gone out on such a
limb and they must be greatly embarrassed by the predicament in which they find
themselves." Truman believes every word of the great general -
"Good-bye, sir. Happy landing. It has been a real honor to talk to you...
I've never had a more satisfactory conference since I've been President,,”
I remember that Hamhung was secured and some form of life began to return to the city by October 15. The radio station was back in business. City water was flowing again and we had electricity back. The American engineers were superb! The citizens of Hamhung returned home by the thousands. Because of the American bombing raids and, more importantly, due to severe food shortages, most citizens had left the city for the relative safety of the countryside. South Korean troops were under strict orders not to harm any civilians.
Tossed like leaves in war winds, a new standing order came too late to spare us the pain and humiliation from what had befallen my sister and other Koreans. The standing order was: “Any soldier who harms a civilian will be shot on the spot”, jik-kyok-chue-bun. Gen. Kim Paik Il, the commander of the South Korean troops in Hamhung, was himself a North Korean and he was keen on protecting his people from the southerners. He and his troops were unaware of the Chinese trap being set for them with no inkling that the Chinese were watching everything from nearby mountain positions, and laughing to themselves.
South Korean psychological warfare teams sprang into action. Convoys of army trucks brought in loads of wheat flour and other food items. They were piled high at several locations. Captured enemy supplies were added to the piles. Everybody was welcome to it. This was indeed unbelievable. These guys knew how to win the heart and soul of the hungry citizens. Free concerts by the army bands were given daily.
For the first time, since the days of the Korean People's Republic, we heard Korean folk songs like arirang and dara-dara. No more Stalin songs! General Kim Baik Il himself gave the welcome speech. He was a great speaker and talked about the ills of communism and peddled the virtues of Syngman Rhee. He said the war was almost over.
As the euphoria swept us, US Navy Lt. Eugene Clark were leading his second CIA OPC mission of the war, following his scouting mission for the Inchon landing. Clark's first objective was to find friendly islands off the coast of North Korea where American pilots could be found by rescue teams. His second objective was to locate the lone North Korean radar site near the Yalu. His third objective was to pinpoint the source(s) of mines floating down from the Yalu estuary into the Yellow Sea. Lastly, and most importantly, he was to gather hard intelligence on the Chinese buildup in North Korea.
Hans Tofte of the CIA OPC assigned 150 Korean guerrillas and 20 agents along with arms, food and gold bars to this daring mission. Clark and a radio team boarded a South Korean Navy speedboat and the Koreans boarded four fishing boats maintained by the CIA. On the way to the Yalu, Clark lost two of the fishing boats and 75 guerrillas. He set up a base on an isolated beach near Sinuiju on the southern bank of the Yalu across from Antung. The Korean agents were sent out to find the North Korean radar site; a handful returned. No radar site was found, but they reported 300,000 Chinese soldiers south of the Yalu. Clark radioed this information to Tofte. With historically fateful disconnect, Clark's report failed to reach MacArthur.
Our exuberance was very short-lived. On October 16, 1950, happiness turned into ugliness. The communist guards at the Hamhung Reformatory, the same prison where the Japanese jailed my father, killed all political prisoners and dumped the bodies into wells. They poured gallons of acid into the wells in order to make identification difficult. More bodies were found at other sites. Even to our brutalized sensitivities, this was unbelievable; how could they have done this to their own countrymen? The bodies were dragged up and laid out in an open field for the relatives to reclaim.
Figure ham5.jpg: Hamhung residents mourn the relatives killed by communist Hamhung prison guards, 1950.
The news of the massacres hit the news worldwide and triggered anti-red witch hunt. Anybody who had any connection with the communists was hunted down, beaten up, and often killed, Students beat up their teachers, neighbors accused each other, school friends accused each other, the whole damn place became an inferno. The nightmarish days of post-liberation when unruly mobs hunted down Jap-lovers and anyone with a grudge could finger someone were back again.
On October 18, 1950 from Beijing, Mao ordered Peng to start his move next day. Chou Enlai informed Stalin that: “I have just received a telegram from Mao Zedong and the Politburo. Our Central Committee has taken the decision to march troops into Korea at once.” Stalin was impressed saying: “The Chinese comrades are good after all.” He promised Chou that he would send two air divisions as soon as he could.
Meanwhile, the South Korean Army Command stepped in and formed a civilian police unit in order to restore public order in the city. Everybody who was some body was trying to join the unit. A close classmate, Lee Chin Oh, and I walked into a police station and applied for the job. The guy in charge looked at our identification papers and told us we were too young. What a hell are you kids doing here? He questioned angrily.
You had to be at least 18 years old. We realized how dumb the idea was and apologized. We were about to depart when a man walked in carrying a burp gun. He stared at my friend for a second and then grabbed my friend by the neck shouting, “Hey, this boy is a communist spy!” I was shocked.
I had known Chin
Oh for three years. His family used to own land, just like mine did, and
his father had been killed by communists. His older brother fled to South Korea
but he and his mother were left behind. He came to my house on the day Hamhung
fell and had been staying with me since. That was the day my world reversed its
axis: it turned out that my friend was an informant of the Political Security
Unit, the communist jung-chi-po-wi-dae.
The man with a gun took my friend outside and I split. That was the last time I saw Chin Oh. I presume that he was taken to a ditch and shot to death. A few days later, Chin Oh's brother, a South Korean army captain, came looking for his family and it was my sad duty to tell him about his brother's final day. One thing about Chin Oh: I confided to him my secret (and idiotic) plans for fighting communists, but he did not betray me to the police.
My brother and I joined the Student Volunteer Army. SVA was made of 14 to 18 year old boys who were too young to serve in the regular army and some older college kids whose parents had the right connection. When the Korean War broke out, high school students of South Korea formed paramilitary forces to help the defeated regular army of Rhee Syngman. When Rhee's forces occupied parts of North Korea, tens of thousands of high school kids of North Korea were recruited into student volunteers paramilitary units. Yang Byong Hoo, a college student from Seoul, was the designated organizer in the Hamgyong provinces.
The basic doctrine of SVA was 'Wha-Rang-Do' , after the long past Silla Dynasty’s legendary, youthful soldier-knights who had saved their kingdom after all other means failed. They were the elite of Silla, the shock troops in war, the training ground of kings and generals. Wharang was first established in the 560s (AD) during the reign of King Jin Hung of Silla. The origin of wharang goes back several hundred years. In the ancient Korea, villages had organizations of teenage boys who hanged around together, practicing martial arts, learning literature and arts, ethics and history. They traveled together to far places and defended their villages against marauding bandits. A wharang commando unit led a Silla army and destroyed Koguryo's Dae-ja fortress in 576 AD.
Wharang commanders were picked from the royal family based on good looks, courage, loyalty, moral character and intelligence. The word "wha" means flowers and "rang" means shining purity, and stood for the good-looking royal youths picked to lead the elite unit. Wharang troops were stationed at several key location in Silla and each detachment had a wharang commander, who reported to a super-wharang, a high-ranking general in the Silla Army.
Figure moogoo.jpg: Moo-goong-hwa, Korean national flower since 1000 BC, was the symbol of wharang-do, pure, eternal and unbending. Rose of Sharon is the English name of this flower.
The wharang youth were taught to serve the king and their comrades, even with their lives; defend righteousness, die in battles instead of in bed, never retreat in combats, never be captured alive. They were taught Confucianism to be filial and respect and care for their parents and superiors, Taoism to perform their tasks with complete dedication and thoroughness; they were taught Buddhism to perform good deeds and never commit sins. They were trained in martial arts and arts of war.
Wharang troops played key roles in Silla's war of unification. Unfortunately, after the unification of Korea, the Silla Dynasty began to decline and wharang-do gradually faded away. Today, wharang-do is commonly associated with a Korean martial art and a Korean design of swords. The spirit of wharang-do is all but gone. But in 1950, the spirit of wharang-do came alive in Korea, all be it but for a brief moment.
When the Korean War broke out, some 40,000 high school and college students in South Korea volunteered to join the South Korean Army. In late June 1950, all elementary schools north of Seoul were shut down and junior and high schools were kept open at the discretion of their principal. Student National Defense, hak-do-ho-gook-dae, was ordered to protect schools and villages. Many students volunteered to serve on front areas and Rhee's government established the Student Volunteers Army under ROKA Col. Lee Sung Gun, chief of propaganda of Rhee's Ministry of Defense. Originally, the students soldiers were assigned to rear-area duties such as transportation and security, but as the war went badly, the young warriors engaged in combats, some with ROKA regular units and others as guerrillas in enemy-held areas.
By the time the People's Army reached Daejun, when those students of military age were conscripted into the regular army and the under-age boys. About 1,500 of the military age students became guerrillas. The under-age boys fled to Taegu when Daejun fell. The students were divided into Student Volunteers Army under Ministry of Defense, Students Security Force under Ministry of Interior, Students Service Corps and Students Propaganda Unit under Ministry of Education. The first to die in the war was a 48-men students unit in the Pohang battle, the unit was wiped out and the young bodies were buried in an unmarked mass grave. When Seoul was retaken in September 1950, all but 3,000 older student soldiers were sent home to resume their education. The older students were conscripted into ROKA. About 1,400 student soldiers were killed in action.
In North Korea, when the UN forces moved in, more than 30,000 North Korean students and youth formed various ‘student’ volunteers army units. South Korean army officers commanded some of these units but many were led by North Korean leaders. Unlike the South Korean student units, the North Korean student units were assigned to covert action duties. There were 30 official unit designations and each unit made up its own “official’ name: hak-do-dae, ho-guk-dae, hak-do-yi-yong dae and so on. The city or town name distinguished each unit. For example, my unit was called the Student Volunteers Army of Hamhung. Later in the war, student volunteers army units were organized into UN partisan groups by the United State 8th Army and fought on years after the armistice of 1953..
My father was dead against my joining SVA, but he knew how stubborn I was. Even now I remember his growing sad with tears in his tired eyes. He must have realized that his third son was about to be lost to him forever. Indeed, this was to be the last time I saw my father.
The Student Volunteers Army members learned the military basics and the ethics and ideals of Wha-Rang-Do. Our commander in chief, Gen. Lee Sung Gun, authored a book on wharang-do and we studied it cover to cover. College kids from Seoul taught us. SVA units were organized on an egalitarian basis much like the Chinese People's Liberation Army, no ranks, only job functions such as squad leader, company leader and so on. His peers could elect anyone to a leadership position. Those of us who were considered to be reliable such as sons of landowners, capitalists, Christians were organized into a special unit and got additional guerrilla and espionage technique training.
One of the teachers was Commander 'X', who was trained in South Korea and had been slipped into North Korea in 1949, one year before the War started. He led a guerrilla army of about 50 men, mostly students, in the mountains around Hamhung. 'X' reported to and received materials from a US spy unit. He got his supplies and men air dropped since the start of the war.
October 19, 1950, the North Korean capital Pyongyang fell to the ROK 1st Division commanded by Gen. Paik Sun Yup. This man was a lieutenant in the Japanese Imperial Army in 1945. His hometown, Pyongyang, mistreated Paik and his family for their pro-Japanese actions. Paik Sun Yup and his brother Paik In Yup, fled to South Korea, but several members of his relatives were killed, including Paik's infant son, whose head was sawed off by the communists. Now the ROKA 1st Division commanding general strode into Kim Il Sung's office to find no less than 5 portraits of Stalin and one statue of Kim himself.
That very day, the Chinese Volunteer Army began to cross the Yalu into North Korea en mass. Some 250,000 Chinese troops moved into positions in North Korea to surround the unsuspecting UN troops. Unbelievably, neither the US intelligence nor the air reconnaissance flights detected the movement of an entire field army.
Peng Tehuai shrewdly followed Sun Tzu's dictum: “The general who is skilled in defense hides in the most secret recesses of the earth; he who is skilled in attack flashes forth from the topmost heights of heaven. Thus on the one hand we have ability to protect ourselves; on the other, a victory that is complete.” Peng figured that MacArthur's ego and arrogance would cloud his visions and that Mac would either ignore or fail to see the Chinese hordes waiting in ambush.
Figure kim-peng.jpg: Peng Tehuai and Kim Il Sung (right) in 1951.
On October 20, 1950 (Tokyo),
MacArthur's intelligence chief issued an “end-of-war”
announcement: “Organized resistance on any large scale has ceased to be an enemy
capability. Indications are that the North Korean military and political
headquarters may have fled to Manchuria. Communications with, and consequent
control of, the enemy's field units have dissipated to a point of
ineffectiveness. In spite of these indications of disorganization, there are no
signs, at the moment that the enemy intends to surrender. He continues to retain
the capability of fighting small scale delaying actions against UN pressure.”
Kim Il Sung met with Peng Tehuai and worked out common understandings on the Sino-Korean war objectives, agreeing to wage guerrilla warfare if Peng failed to stop MacArthur. Peng's first objective was to stop further advances by the US forces and then to envelope them into a giant trap and kill as many Americans as he could.
As things developed, MacArthur's forces would collapse even faster than Peng expected, and Peng decided to chase the Americans across the 38th parallel well beyond what Mao hoped for. Mao thought that it would take three to four months to establish a defensive line along the Wonsan-Pyongyang axis and to re-equip the North Korean Army as well as his Army with the Soviet modern weapons promised by Stalin. He would have air cover provided by two Soviet air divisions. Mao then believed he would then be ready to push the Americans as far south as he could.
During the Cultural Revolution in China, Peng was accused of insulting and ordering Kim Il Sung around, among other crimes, and driven to a horrible death, even though the Red Guards later attacked Kim Il Sung's self-adulation and lavish life style, according to memoirs Peng wrote before his death. After Mao's death, Peng was restored to his former place of honor posthumously.
For general information on the Korean War:
1) A General's Life - Omar N. Bradley and Clay Blair, Simon and Schuster, NY, 1983. Gen. Bradley was the top US military man during the War and relates the 'inside' story.
2) Korea The Untold Story of the War - Joseph C. Goulden, McGraw-Hill, Inc., NY, 1982: another Pentagon paper on the Korean War with extensive references to US classified documents.
3) Korean War History and Tactics - Consultant Editor David Rees, Crescent Books, NY, 1984; some basic facts on the War.
4) US Military Operations 1945-1985 - Kenneth Anderson, The Military Press, NY, 1984.
5) The Truth About The Korean War - Kim Chul Baum, Eulyoo Publishing Co., Ltd., Seoul, Korea, 1991; eyewitness stories of a number of communist participants of the War - contains documents on Mao's dealings with Kim Il Sung and Stalin; tainted by South Korean propaganda.
For information on wha-rang-do, see
1) http://library.thinkquest.org/20186/korean/history/history1-3.htm Silla's Wharang 花郞徒.
2) http://my.netian.com/~juny0124/std4.htm King Jinhung and Wharangdo 花郞道精神
3) http://www.contest.co.kr/~run8806/interpia98/society/html/treetime/halang.htm Wharnagdo
4) http://www.contest.co.kr/~run8806/interpia98/society/html/treetime/yusin.htm Gen. Kim Yu Sin, a wharang
http://my.netian.com/~kimnala/kimyusin4.htm Kim Yu Sin 金庾信
5) http://www.musul.net/musul/kuhapright.htm Wharang Spirit
6) http://uou.ulsan.ac.kr/~history/report/korgodae/12-1.htm The Three Kingdom Era
7) http://jm-park.pe.kr/highkora/trad_art.html Korean Traditional Martial Arts
8) http://my.netian.com/~bam010/korean-ethics.html Korean Ethics
9) http://mahan.wonkwang.ac.kr/source/silla01.htm Silla Research
For student armies during the Korean War, see:
1) http://taebaek.kangwon.kr/cht.htm Memorial tower for the Students Army. 學徒義勇軍
2) http://www.edunet4u.net/jungbo/milit/docu2.html Student Volunteers Army remembered
3) http://warmemo.co.kr/special_98_56.htm History of Student Volunteers Army
4) http://monthly.chosun.com/html/200010/200010200022_1.html Boy Soldiers of the Korean War: 2.464 KIA Officially.