What impact did the Korean War have on the cold war? Since no peace treaty was signed to formally end the conflict, the Americans and the Chinese continued to view each other warily, setting the stage for another potential superpower confrontation in Asia. What lessons did the United States and China take away from the Korean War that helped them shape their respective responses to the growing conflict in Indochina? How did their experiences in Korea influence their domestic and foreign policies, especially with regard to the Soviet Union? Finally, how did South Korea become the unexpected beneficiary of this continuing cold war struggle, with lasting implications for its own ongoing legitimacy war with North Korea?
Although the fighting in Korea ceased in 1953, the war continued to shape events. The United States emerged staunchly anticommunist with, for the first time in its history, a large permanent standing army, an enlarged defense budget, and military bases around the world. The Korean War also did much to forge Chinese self-perceptions. The Chinese had lost nearly half a million men in Korea, but they had fought the world’s greatest superpower to a standstill and emerged with their reputation and self-esteem greatly enhanced. The Korean War led to mass mobilization campaigns that aimed to eradicate the “impure” and “foreign” elements of Chinese society and inspire a politically motivated popular nationalism that Mao used to consolidate his power.
After a brief repose (1954–57) during which China cultivated a new international image to correspond with its claims of peaceful coexistence, as reflected in its role in ending the First Indochina War in Geneva in 1954, China once again reverted to themes of war, revolution, and mass mobilization in the wake of Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin in 1956. In 1958, Mao started the Great Leap Forward movement for economic development, which led to widespread famine and the deaths of millions. He also initiated military actions against Taiwan in 1958 and India in 1959, partly to divert domestic attention away from the failure of the Great Leap.
China’s new radicalism caused strains in the relationship between Mao and Khrushchev. China accused the Soviet Union of abandoning the true principles of Marxism-Leninism by seeking accommodation with the West. It was during this period that China provided substantial military aid to the Vietnamese communists in their struggle to “liberate” South Vietnam. The CCP’s claim of leadership of the world revolutionary movement directly challenged the Soviet Union. To China’s leaders, the Vietnam War essentially served a similar purpose in radicalizing the Chinese masses as the Korean War had done a decade earlier. In each case, “resisting America” became a rallying cry to mobilize the Chinese population along Mao’s revolutionary lines.
Meanwhile, the responses by Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson to the growing awareness of Chinese radicalism and the Sino-Soviet split informed Washington’s view of the war in Vietnam and their retrospective view of the war in Korea. Both presidents believed Vietnam to be a test of whether Moscow’s seemingly more benign form of communism or Beijing’s radical Bolshevism would triumph in the international communist movement. Vietnamese communist success, it was believed, would dramatically encourage the radical national liberation doctrine espoused by China. The dominant assumption was that the Chinese communists were the vanguard of the most aggressive wing of world communism and had to be stopped. The crucial moment that led America down the path to tragedy in Vietnam took place in July 1965, when Johnson committed American power to seek a military solution.
The “lessons” of the Korean War played a significant role in Johnson’s decision. Although Eisenhower had opposed American intervention in the First Indochina War on the grounds that he did not want a repeat of Korea, Johnson saw the lessons of that war quite differently. The frustrations of an indecisive victory in Korea had been tempered in time by the domino theory and the notion that the communist threat in Asia had, at least, been contained. The Korean War was now seen as an extension of the cold war and the global struggle against communism. Korea was held up as a model of how the battle line for freedom had been successfully drawn.
Along with the decision to deepen American commitment in Vietnam, Johnson sought to internationalize the war by seeking combat forces from other countries. South Korea’s President Park Chung Hee responded positively. Major General Park had come to power in 1961 after a decade of economic stagnation. South Korea during the 1950s appeared to be losing its legitimacy war with the North. Mired in hopeless poverty and plagued by corruption, the gap in economic performance between the South and the North was increasing. In April 1960, a popular uprising, led by labor and student groups, overthrew the Rhee regime. The post-Rhee government floundered. In May 1961, Park Chung Hee and some thirty-six hundred troops staged a coup, steering the country into a new direction.
Park portrayed involvement in Vietnam to his own people as repayment to the free world for saving South Korea during the Korean War, but he also saw an opportunity to strengthen South Korea’s security and economy. Washington provided an extensive list of economic and military incentives. Vietnam also furnished a compelling replay of the Korean situation that Park used to rally support for national construction and anticommunism. “Re-fighting” the communists in Vietnam provided South Korea the foundation for the nation’s spectacular growth in the coming decades. South Korea’s involvement in America’s second major cold war struggle in Asia thus brought about enormous advantages for the Park regime, largely because the first struggle in Korea between the United States and China had remained unresolved.
In addition, Park abandoned Rhee’s anti-Japanese attitude and normalized relations with Japan. In June 1965 the two countries signed the Treaty of Basic Relations, and South Korea obtained Japanese grants and loans for Park’s modernization program. This step had troubling implications for Kim Il Sung, since Japan had recognized the ROK as the only lawful government in Korea. Moreover, the economic benefits accrued to South Korea for help in Vietnam led Kim to believe that South Korea would soon catch up to the North. Time was quickly running out if he was to achieve the “liberation” of South Korea.
Under these conditions and fearful that the South would soon surpass the North in economic and military power, Kim Il Sung began to embark upon a series of provocative actions against the South, setting the stage for a new “phase” of the Korean War.