WHEN THE CHINESE entered the Korean War in October 1950, their principal goal was to protect their historic Korean buffer. For most of a millennium Korea had served as a shield against incursions from Japan. After Japan’s defeat, the United States became the danger from the sea.
The Chinese had nothing to do with dividing Korea along the 38th parallel in 1945 and the subsequent formation of a right-wing South Korea supported by the United States and a Communist North Korea supported by the Soviet Union. However, the arrangement suited China well, for North Korea became a buffer in front of the Chinese frontier along the Yalu River.
After U.S. commander Douglas MacArthur’s invasion of Inchon in September 1950 led to the destruction of the North Korean army, the United States resolved to conquer the north and unite it with the south into a single U.S.-dominated state. The threat of an American army along the Yalu brought China into the war—and led to a very different strategy than Mao Zedong had employed in defeating the Nationalists.
For China it was imperative to keep the Americans off Chinese soil. Mao Zedong wanted to avoid the destruction inherent in such a clash, but the primary reason was to prevent the Nationalists in Taiwan from reentering the mainland as American allies. The administration of President Harry S. Truman had signaled its hostility to Red China from the outset and had formed an unofficial alliance with Chiang Kai-shek immediately after North Korea invaded the south on June 25, 1950.
China’s overriding geopolitical imperative thus forced it to fight on the Korean peninsula. But the Chinese could not conduct a guerrilla war in Korea. Such a war, without a main line of resistance, would allow the Americans to advance directly into China. To ward off the possibility of invasion, Mao and Peng Dehuai, the Chinese commander in Korea, were obligated either to drive the Americans off the peninsula altogether, a virtually impossible task, or to establish a firm defensive line in Korea with regular troops manning it.
China was materially extremely weak compared to the United States. The Chinese possessed virtually no air force and few motorized vehicles, including trucks and tanks. Their armies were equipped with weapons from numerous sources, many obsolescent and some going back for three or four decades. Chinese industry in 1950 could manufacture rifles, machine guns, and mortars, with the ammunition for them, but could not build modern artillery pieces, jet aircraft, or other advanced weapons. The Chinese logistical system was primitive in the extreme. The Chinese brought some reserve stocks to forward railroad depots about thirty miles behind the front. But not much could be accomplished forward of the railheads because the Chinese relied for supplies on human and animal transport. Consequently, they fired mortars only on the most lucrative targets, and troops normally relied upon small arms, machine guns, and grenades.
The Chinese leaders recognized that they could not challenge American firepower directly. The methods they devised to emphasize their strengths and minimize their weaknesses demonstrate skills that other countries might use against us in the future.
The first job was to stop the United Nations advance, which was nearing the Yalu River.
Although extremely limiting in some respects, the Chinese dependence upon the backs of animals and soldiers liberated them from roads and permitted troops to fight anywhere they could walk, whether in front, on the side, or behind the enemy lines. UN forces, on the other hand, were tied to the roads because their supplies arrived by truck. The roads, therefore, were vulnerable to being cut by roadblocks.
During the Chinese civil war, Mao Zedong and his commanders had developed a highly effective method of dealing with more heavily armed Nationalist troops. Peng Dehuai now adapted these tactics to the Americans and their allies.
The Chinese tried whenever possible to infiltrate through enemy positions in order to plant a roadblock on the supply line, in hopes of inducing the enemy to retreat to regain contact with the rear. If UN forces stayed in position, the roadblocks still were useful in cutting off escape routes and supply.
In infiltration and assaults against front-line positions, the Chinese moved largely at night to avoid air strikes and reduce aerial observation. In attacks they tried to isolate individual outposts, usually platoons, by striking at the fronts, while at the same time attempting to outflank them. The purpose was to defeat forces in detail by gaining local superiority. If they could not destroy enemy positions, they hoped to induce the opponent to withdraw. When this failed, they got as close as possible to the enemy so that, when daylight came, U.S. aircraft would be unable to bomb them for fear of hitting friendly troops.
Advancing Chinese units generally followed the easiest, most accessible terrain in making their approaches: valleys, draws, or streambeds. As soon as they met resistance, they deployed, peeling off selected small units to engage the opposition. However, if they met no resistance, the whole column often moved in the darkness right past defensive emplacements deep into the rear of enemy positions. There were many examples of this in Korea. In some cases entire Chinese regiments marched in column formation into the UN rear.
Once fully committed, the Chinese seldom halted their attack, even when suffering heavy casualties. Other Chinese came forward to take the place of those killed or wounded. The buildup continued, often on several sides of the position, until they made a penetration—either by destroying the position or forcing the defenders to withdraw. After consolidating the new conquest, the Chinese then crept forward against the open flank of the next platoon position. This combination of stealth and boldness, usually executed in darkness against small units, could result in several penetrations of a battalion front and could be devastating.
Since the Chinese tried to cut the defending force into small fractions and attack these fractions with local superiority in numbers, they favored the ambush over all other tactical methods. As a rule attacking Chinese forces ranged in size from a platoon to a company (50 to 200 men) and were built up continually as casualties occurred.
The best defense was for the UN force somehow to hold its position until daybreak. With visibility restored, aircraft could attack the Chinese and usually restore the situation. However, Chinese night attacks were so effective that the counsel often went unheeded and defending forces were overrun or destroyed.1
On October 25, 1950, two South Korean infantry battalions ran into two separate Chinese roadblocks a few miles north of the Chongchon River, some fifty miles south of the Yalu.
The 3rd Battalion of the South Korean 6th Division’s 2nd Regiment stopped eight miles northwest of Onjong when it came under Chinese fire. Shortly afterward, the Chinese threw another roadblock behind the battalion. The South Koreans panicked and about 350 died or were captured. Meanwhile the 2d Battalion arrived at Onjong, learned of the firefight ahead, moved out to rescue the 3d Battalion, but got only a few miles before it was halted also by Chinese roadblocks front and rear. The 2d Battalion escaped by moving across country back to Onjong, where the remainder of the regiment had taken up a defensive position. Only remnants of the 3d Battalion, all without weapons or vehicles, reached the village.
Korean anxiety mushroomed during the night. The Chinese with seeming ease had been able to walk through the mountains on the Korean flanks, descend on the road behind, and establish blocks the Koreans could not break. At 3:30 A.M. on October 26 Chinese soldiers penetrated the Onjong position. The entire South Korean force immediately abandoned the village and rushed back toward the Chongchon River. It got only three miles before striking still another Chinese roadblock. The South Koreans, completely routed, abandoned their vehicles and weapons, scattered into the hills, and made for the river as best they could.
A similar situation faced the 15th Regiment of the South Korean 1st Division outside Unsan a few miles southwest of Onjong. There a Chinese roadblock halted the regiment and Chinese forces began slipping around its flanks. The regiment, though supported by American medium tanks, could get nowhere. The division’s 12th Regiment, following behind, turned west at Unsan and struck another Chinese roadblock just outside of town.
By daybreak on October 26 the Chinese had nearly surrounded Unsan, the two South Korean regiments having retreated during the night. With the Koreans at Unsan were two American tank companies and two artillery battalions. Meanwhile the division’s, third regiment, the 11th, had to move south of Unsan because the Chinese had cut the main supply route in an envelopment from the west.
The 11th Regiment cleared the main supply road, but the other two regiments made only slight gains. The Koreans found the Chinese to be exceptionally well camouflaged and dug-in, and extremely hard to locate. Aided by heavy artillery concentrations from American guns and repeated strafing runs by American aircraft, the Koreans attacked over the next three days, but could make no gains against Chinese troops using only mortars, automatic weapons, and small arms.
On November 1, 1950, the American commander, Lieutenant General Walton H. Walker, sent in the U.S. 8th Cavalry Regiment (really an infantry outfit) to relieve the battered 11th and 12th South Korean Regiments. But over the next two days, the Chinese forced the 8th Cavalry’s 1st and 2d Battalions into precipitate retreat and surrounded and virtually destroyed the 3d Battalion.
The Chinese then drew off, probably hopeful that the Americans would heed their warning blow and stop their rush to the Yalu. However, Douglas MacArthur insisted on continuing the offensive, and, on November 24, 1950, sent his forces forward. The Chinese repeated their tactics of infiltration and roadblocks front and rear and forced the entire UN army into headlong flight. Nearly a third of the U.S. 2d Division was destroyed and large elements of the U.S. 1st Marine Division and the army 7th Division were surrounded and destroyed at Changjin (Chosin) Reservoir, and the survivors were forced to undergo a terrible retreat to the sea under incredibly difficult winter conditions.
The Chinese tried to push the Americans far back into South Korea but did not have the strength to drive them out. Not only were Chinese weapons decidedly inferior, but China could not mount a sustained offensive since the Americans had overwhelming superiority in the air and U.S. aircraft could interdict most supplies coming by road and railway. Since Chinese attacks had to be conducted with supplies brought forward secretly, at night, and carried mostly on the backs of porters and animals, Chinese offensives always petered out after advances of fifty or sixty miles—when the Chinese soldiers ran out of supplies.2
The Chinese offensives also were costly because American air power and artillery exacted heavy casualties on troops having to advance in the open. As a result, the Chinese command decided, after its May 1951 drive failed, to abandon offensive war entirely and move over to the defense.
The Chinese probably all along had planned a shift to the defense if they could not induce the United States to withdraw from the peninsula. China’s defensive strategy—which continued until the armistice more than two years later—demonstrated that Mao and his generals had found another method than guerrilla warfare to stalemate a much more powerful enemy. The same method can be used today, but the expense of it is tremendous.
The Chinese realized they had to establish a battle line, but to do so they had to neutralize American artillery and air-dropped bombs and napalm.
The Chinese did not have an air force capable of challenging American air supremacy and their relatively few artillery pieces mostly remained far in the rear because American command of the sky prevented bringing up enough shells to make them effective. The Chinese consequently continued to rely on rifles, machine guns, mortars, and hand grenades.
The only way the Chinese could both maintain a battle line and keep their troops from being destroyed was to burrow into the ground. The result was a continuous line across the waist of Korea consisting of deep bunkers dug into Korean mountainsides, roofed with thick timbers over which were placed heavy piles of rocks or earth.
United States military leaders were stunned by the rapid materialization of this bristling main line of resistance. But they and political leaders back home were so angry with China for having foiled their original effort to seize the north that they inaugurated a series of attacks on this line in the late summer and early fall of 1951. They ordered the assaults despite the fact that they had privately, though not publicly, renounced efforts to conquer North Korea. Thus the battles had no strategic purpose whatsoever.
Employing immense artillery bombardments and aerial strikes with bombs and napalm, the Americans attempted to knock out the enemy bunkers at the points on the Communist line they planned to assault. The preliminary bombardments and strikes went on for days. In the cases of the most intense of these efforts, against Bloody Ridge and Heartbreak Ridge in eastern Korea, shellfire and bombs destroyed all vegetation and left the hills as cratered and barren as a moonscape.
American commanders hoped that the shelling and bombs would eliminate most of the bunkers and enemy so the infantry could just walk up the ridgelines and occupy the heights with few losses. They found, however, that bombs and shells destroyed only a few of the bunkers. The Chinese and North Korean soldiers waited out the infernos deep in the ground. When the bombs and shelling stopped, they pulled out their weapons and directed highly accurate fire and rolled grenades down the slopes onto the UN infantry as it climbed the fingers leading to the ridgetops.
The result was a series of inconceivably bloody firefights that cost both sides huge losses. American and other UN troops suffered relatively less because of their massive firepower. But the total effect was staggering: an estimated 234,000 Communist and 60,000 UN casualties, most of them American, during the period of the battles on the ridge lines from August to November 1951, when they ceased.
The only gains by American and UN forces were a few shattered hillsides. Their capture not only did not change the strategic situation in Korea, but they scarcely affected the tactical situation either. For behind every hill the UN captured rose another hill, also covered with Communist bunkers. To seize that hill would have required another stupendous effort. And behind the second hill rose still another hill which could have been armored with bunkers.
The American commanders at last decided that the cost of assaults against the ridge lines was too great and they called them off. The Chinese could sustain high casualties far longer than the Americans could. China was an authoritarian state and controlled all of the media; thus the extent of Chinese losses was not generally known to the Chinese people. This was not the case for the American people, who did know of the United States’ losses. The war entered into a stalemate that was not broken until the armistice in July 1953.
The United States could have ended this deadlock only by an amphibious landing around one of the flanks. This would have required an immense effort. And, since it could not have been concealed entirely, the Chinese could have prepared a fierce resistance.
China’s experience in Korea demonstrates how extremely difficult a defensive strategy is for a weaker power to carry out. It indicates that such a strategy can be sustained only by a country with immense manpower resources and a political system that permits it to hide its price from the people.
China’s losses in killed and wounded in Korea were about 900,000 men, the overwhelming bulk of them suffered in the defensive phase of the war. Total American casualties were about 140,000, but 28,000 of these came before China entered.3
This enormous disparity—eight times as many losses for China as for the United States—is a reflection of the tremendous superiority of firepower that the United States could bring to bear and how effective this firepower can be when directed against known concentrations of enemy troops, however well shielded by fortifications. In a guerrilla war firepower largely is wasted, because the quarry usually has flown before gunships, bombers, and artillery are brought to bear. Life magazine calculated in 1967 that it cost the United States $400,000 to kill a single Vietcong guerrilla. The cost included 75 bombs and 150 artillery shells.4
Therefore, one of the salient advantages of guerrilla over positional warfare is that guerrillas largely neutralize the greatest strength, firepower, of the enemy and force him to engage on terms more nearly equal. In Korea the Chinese developed a method to reduce, but not to eliminate wholly, the effect of American firepower. This reduction permitted China to turn the Korean War into a standoff, but at a staggering cost.
And the Chinese were compelled to use colossal numbers of troops, well over half a million at any one time, in manning their line across Korea. The expense would have been even greater except for the fact that the waist of Korea is fairly narrow, about 120 miles. This made it feasible to construct a front that was not impossibly long.
The greatest disadvantage today in a strategy such as the one that China followed in Korea remains in challenging American firepower directly. Where U.S. forces have identifiable targets and can bring their weapons to bear, their capability for destruction is awesome. Bunker-type defenses are less effective today because accuracy and deadliness of weapons have increased greatly in the past four decades. Although enterprising forces can still hide positions from the enemy, American detection systems could find and weapons could destroy a much higher percentage of emplacements than they were able to do in the Korean War.
Consequently, the argument against most powers challenging American military power directly remains compelling. China or another large nation with much manpower might duplicate the Korean War solution with defensive positions of great strength in the hope of deflecting American missiles and bombs. Such a strategy might prevent American occupation of the country or large parts of it, and might be justifiable in some cases. A manpower-rich country also might elect to occupy part of a neighbor’s territory and then shift over to a defensive line, creating a Korea-like stalemate. However, a defensive approach would be essentially a fortress strategy, and the defending power would have to abandon offensive war and the benefits of a decisive solution that an offensive might bring. It would have to wait until the United States became weary and withdrew. Also, the expense to the defending nation in lives and property would be gigantic.
These are the reasons why Mao Zedong’s guerrilla warfare strategy—which leaves the initiative in the hands of the invaded country—holds the most promise for most countries confronting American power.